Triply Stainless Steel Kadhai

Details

A deep pan for sabzi and bhuna, clad through the walls rather than only under the floor. 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. This is the shape where the difference bites hardest, because the whole technique is masala worked up the sides. On a disc-base pan the sides are 0.7 mm of single-ply steel and they run hot and thin, so the masala catches on the wall while the floor is still fine, and every cook blames the flame. 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 at the floor and 2.6 mm at the rim, continuous
• The three layers show at the cut rim, all the way round. That is the whole test and it takes two seconds
• SS 304 on every food-contact face, alloy-checked on finished pans. Aluminium is sealed inside the sandwich and never meets food
• SS 430 backing, so a magnet sticks to the wall as well as the base and the pan inducts over its whole area
• Cast SS 304 handles, three rivets each, no plastic and no chrome plating that can flake
• SS 304 lid included, with a steel knob. Not glass, so it will not crack and it goes in the oven to 260 C
• ISI marked to IS 14756, the stainless steel utensils standard in the cookware order
• No coating of any kind: no PTFE, no ceramic wash, no anodising. Metal spoons and steel wool do no harm
• Rivets can be drilled out and re-set by any steel fabricator, so a loose handle is a repair and not a new pan
• Bare steel is not non-stick and will not become non-stick. Heat, water-drop test, oil, then food, and it releases. That is the deal and it is the same deal every clad pan makes
• Do not preheat it empty on a high flame for minutes on end. Nothing will break, but the base will discolour and stay that way
• Hard water leaves white marks if it dries on its own. Dry it, or take them off with warm vinegar