You can see many stainless steel pans online and offline, which proves stainless steel pans are some of the essential cookware for beginners.
Stainless steel pans also have reputations for being “all-rounder”: High durability and versatility to cook practically everything.
At the same time, there are things you should consider if you only started to cook with stainless steel pans.
After all, you want your cooking experiences with stainless steel to be irreplaceable, even though you are a newbie.
Here, these are tips on cooking with stainless steel cookware you can consider to practice.
Essential Guide for Cooking With Stainless Steel Pans
1. Couple The Pans With Gas Stoves
Gas stoves are among the cheapest choices for kitchen sets. Not stopping in only being one of the most affordable stove choices to pair with the stainless steel pans.
According to Cookware Ninja, pairing your stainless steel pans with gas stoves will also add the durability for both of your gas stoves and your pans.
The fact that you have to put your essential wok accessories, as in wok rings, make the combination of gas stoves and stainless steel woks a safe combination.
Additionally, both of gas stoves and stainless steel pans have the same levels in tolerating heat.
Such levels usually fall around 500 degrees Fahrenheit. This way, you don’t spend lots of time in adjusting and re-adjusting the heats before, during, and after cooking.
2. Never Forget To Pre-Heat
Stainless steel pans are some of the pans types that you should heat before you use them for cooking your ingredients.
This is because stainless steel pans almost always leave out food stains and leftover ingredients after you finish cooking.
So, you have to pre-heat your stainless steel pans for a while when you are cooking with stainless steel pans.
You should pre-heat over a low fire and about 15 minutes.
Remember to pay attention to the time. Or, your overheated stainless steel pans will corrode faster.
Then, you insert your food ingredients one by one while gradually increasing the fire levels on your stove.
3. Oil Before Cooking
The first ingredient you should always insert after you have done with your pre-heating process is the oil. Vegetable oils are some of the most common oils newbies can use to cook with stainless steel pans. At the same time, you can use other “non-mainstream” oils such as peanut, coconut, or grapeseed oils.
Whatever cooking oils you use on your stainless steel pans, oils are useful to make the leftover food ingredients easy to clean. Be sure to spread the oils all over your stainless steel pans to make your pans nonstick.
Make sure the oils are hot enough before you insert your other food ingredients. This usually lasts for another 10-15 minutes. Then again, it all depends on the oils and your cooking needs.
You should do this to your stainless steel pans, especially when you are cooking eggs with stainless steel pans. Or, if you heard the “tsshh…” sound from your oil, that means you are ready to plunge in other ingredients you want to process.
4. Consider Your Butter
This applies if you are going to serve foods with butter. It is okay to use regular, everyday butter.
Yet, if you have access to clarified or non-fat butter, you should consider those instead of the regular, everyday butter. Clarified and non-fat butter have more powers to unstick food ingredients even after you have finished your cooking. This is because both types of butter blend in well with hot oil.
While at the same time, you should make sure your oils inside your stainless steel pans are scorching hot if you use regular butter. Here, you should beware of the “scorching hot”.
After all, stainless steel pans are not designed to sustain heat for a long time. Flip it according to smell (and the tenderness as well). Some people will say flipping foods in a stainless steel pan only applies to meats. This is because you can tell cooked meats from the color changes while you are about to flip them.
At the same time, other ingredients, as in when you are cooking eggs with stainless steel pans, also apply in this flipping process.
Some times you can’t differentiate between colors because they are not so obvious. But at least, you can distinguish the smells.
If they start to be fragrant, it is a sign that your food ingredients are ready to flip and/or serve more so when you feel tenderness in your food ingredients.
That way, you make your foods nonstick and safe to eat for you and your entire households.
5. Avoid Frozen Foods As Your Ingredients
Frozen foods will not only make the fire burn slower at the bottom of your stainless steel pans.
Other than leaving plenty of shredded ices that will make your stainless steel pans even harder to clean.
Frozen foods also tend to contain more harmful chemical ingredients than non-frozen foods. If possible, when you’re cooking with stainless steel pans, try to keep your food ingredients as dry and raw as possible.
That way, you won’t have to clean too much, especially when you plunge them inside a stainless steel pan that is known to be hard to clean or scrub.
At the same time, almost all dry and raw ingredients have more health benefits than other ingredients that are not dry or raw.
They don’t contain any toxic substances. So, for those of you who have started to cook with stainless steel pans.
It is not enough to consider ingredients, such as what oils and butter suit best with stainless steel pans or what types of ingredients you want to avoid to keep your physical health, but you also have to consider what gas stoves you want to pair with your stainless steel pans.
You should also pay attention to other cooking processes when you are using your stainless steel pans.
Some of them are pre-heating and flipping ingredients, such as meats or eggs.
Nina Smith