Triply Stainless Steel Saucepan

Details

The pan that gets used twice a day, for milk, dal and chai. Straight sides, a rolled pouring rim on both sides that does not dribble, litre markings stamped into the interior so you can measure without a jug, and a cladding that runs all the way to the rim. 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. On a saucepan the difference is not academic. Milk scorches on the wall, not on the floor of the pan, because the wall of a disc-base pan is a single sheet of steel with nothing behind it to spread the heat, so it runs hot in a band just above the disc. Clad walls are the reason this pan can be left for the thirty seconds it takes to answer the door. 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 construction: 0.6 mm SS 304 inside, 1.8 mm 1050 aluminium core, 0.6 mm SS 430 outside, 3.0 mm at the base
• The cladding continues up the walls to 2.6 mm at the rim, 0.5 and 1.6 and 0.5, and the three layers are visible at the cut edge
• SS 304 on every food-contact surface, alloy-checked on finished pans, not a low-nickel IS 15997 grade
• The SS 430 outer layer is magnetic, which is what makes it work on induction. Put a magnet on the base of any triply pan before you buy it: if nothing sticks it will not induct, whatever the box says
• Litre markings stamped in at 0.25 L steps, on the inside, not printed on the outside
• Cast SS 304 handle, riveted, angled away from the flame. No plastic and no chrome plating
• SS 304 lid included on all three sizes. Not glass, so it will not crack and it goes in the oven with the pan
• ISI marked to IS 14756, the stainless steel utensils standard in the cookware order
• Nothing is coated, so nothing can peel into the dal, and a metal spoon does no harm
• Bare steel is not non-stick. Milk will leave a film and dal will catch if the flame is high and the pan is empty in the middle. Heat it, add liquid, and it behaves
• Hard water leaves white spots if you let it dry on its own. That is the water, not the steel, and vinegar takes it off