Triply Stainless Steel Fry Pan

Details

A flared pan for browning, searing and tossing, in bare SS 304 over an aluminium core with an SS 430 back. Bare steel takes heat that no coating survives, which is why a crust and a proper fond happen here and not in a non-stick pan, and why this one can go under a grill whole. The second cheat is triply that is not triply. An honest triply pan is three bonded layers running through the walls as well as the base. The common article is a single-ply body about 0.7 mm thick with an aluminium disc spot-bonded or brazed to the bottom, sold on the strength of the base figure alone. You can see the difference without a laboratory: look at the cut rim. A full-clad pan shows the sandwich at the edge, a light line between two dark ones, all the way round. A disc-base pan shows one sheet at the rim and a step where the disc is stuck on underneath. A fry pan is where the disc-base trick does the most damage, because the flare is the part you cook up: food pushed up the side of a disc-base pan sits on unheated single-ply steel and stops browning the moment it gets there. The word stainless with no number after it is the defining cheat of Indian cookware, and it is not even a black-market one. BIS publishes two raw-material standards for utensil steel: IS 5522, which covers the austenitic grades including 304, and IS 15997, which covers six low-nickel austenitic grades carrying 0.2 to 6 percent nickel where 304 carries 8 to 10.5, with manganese raised to make up the difference. Both are legal, both can carry an ISI mark on the finished utensil, and both are sold to you as stainless steel. The low-nickel ones pit, stain and go dull in a year of tamarind and salt. A magnet will not tell you which one you are holding, because they are both austenitic and both nearly non-magnetic; anyone who tells you the magnet test settles 304 against 202 is wrong. What settles it is an alloy check, and ours is run on the finished pan.

• Full-clad: 0.6 mm SS 304 inside, 1.8 mm 1050 aluminium core, 0.6 mm SS 430 outside, 3.0 mm base and 2.6 mm at the rim, cladding continuous
• Three layers visible at the cut rim, which is the check you can do standing in a shop with no tools at all
• SS 304 cooking face, alloy-checked on finished pans, not a low-nickel IS 15997 grade
• SS 430 outer layer, so a magnet sticks to the base and to the wall, and induction works on the whole pan and not only the disc
• Cast SS 304 handle, three rivets, angled to keep the grip off a gas flame. Oven and grill safe to 260 C, handle included
• No coating anywhere, so there is no maximum-heat rule, no metal-tool rule and no replacement cycle
• ISI marked to IS 14756, the stainless steel utensils standard
• Weights are published, 1.05 kg at 24 cm, and a clad pan cannot be light: anything at 24 cm weighing under 800 g is a disc base with thin walls
• Bare steel needs one technique and then it is a habit: heat the empty pan until a water drop beads and skates instead of hissing, then add oil, then add food. An egg released from bare steel is a skill for the first week
• Food sticking means the pan was cold or you moved it too early, not that the pan is faulty
• It discolours. A rainbow tint is oxide, it is harmless, and warm vinegar takes it off if it bothers you