Stainless Steel saucepans

DullGreyGuy

Mnoee said:

If you're not familiar with the difference between them and regular stainless steel - tri ply has the same layers throughout the pan, the sides are the same the base, meaning excellent even heating all over. Most stainless has a 'sandwich' base to conduct heat well on the bottom, but the sides are just thin stainless.

Tri-ply, like the M&S ones, tend to be two different metals. The outside and inside are steel but the middle layer is aluminium. Others can use copper or other more conductive materials. Most will use it for the whole pan but have seen some where it's also the base only. 

SS tend to have a thicker base than sides to try and distribute the heat better. If you think of a gas ring you clearly have a ring of fire where it's the hottest and a graduation outwards and inwards. We have a cheap Tesco SS pan who's base isnt notably thicker and its vastly more prone to burning... when we had a gas hob with its different size rings could easily tell which ring the wife had used based on the size of the burn ring of food. 

So technically its the opposite, its not to conduct heat well but to distribute it better.

As always there can be an element of you getting what you pay for. In both cases the different layers can become unbonded from each other. On a gas hob the impact is probably not that noticeable but on an induction hob it makes buzzing like noise as the layers vibrate against each other.

Valli

My Prestige stainless steel, copper-bottomed pan set was bought one pan at a time, and I've had them for 45 years and they are brilliant.  

calleyw

thanks for the all suggestions,  I will be ordering from Ikea.  It will be a set of these IKEA 365+ cookware set of 6, stainless steel - IKEA  its  set of 3 saucepans and lids in 5L,3L,2L sizes they should last a while. 

Murphybear

We bought a set of Stellar saucepans in a sale quite a few years ago.  They are still as good as new.  We put them in the dishwasher with no problems.