18/10 stainless steel

What it is

18/10 stainless steel is steel with about 18 percent chromium and 10 percent nickel, and the British Stainless Steel Association says it's essentially the same as grade 304. It's bare metal with no coating to wear off, and food sticks to it until you learn the heat.

Why it matters in your kitchen

The first time an egg welds itself to a stainless pan, it feels like the pan's fault. Usually the pan wasn't hot yet, or the egg moved too soon.

Get the heat right and a steak lets go on its own, and the brown bits left behind become a pan sauce. There's nothing on the surface to scratch off, so the dishwasher is fine.

The "10" is mostly marketing. The BSSA says it doesn't mean more nickel than 18/8, so the useful fact is that the steel contains nickel at all.

Good at

• Searing and pan sauces. Bare steel browns meat well, and the browned bits, called fond, are the start of a sauce.
• Tomato, wine and lemon. Acidic food has no seasoning or coating to strip, because there isn't one.
• The oven and the dishwasher. The Cristel 18/10 pans we sell go in the oven to 550°F and in the dishwasher, per Cristel.
• Induction, in a layered pan. 18/10 on its own is barely magnetic, so makers add a magnetic layer outside. On Cristel's Castel'Pro, that's an 18/0 outer layer.
• Years of use. There's no coating to wear out, and Cristel backs its stainless cookware with a limited lifetime guarantee against manufacturing defects.

Watch for

• Food sticks until you learn the heat. Preheat the empty pan and flick in water: Cristel says it's ready when the drops turn into tiny rolling bubbles. Then turn the heat down by about a third and add a thin film of fat.
• Eggs are the hardest test. Even with good technique, eggs want more fat than a coated pan does. If slick eggs every morning matter most, keep a small coated or carbon steel pan for them.
• It shows marks. Rainbow heat tint, white mineral spots and an amber film of baked-on oil all come with use. A baking soda paste or white vinegar takes them off, and heat tint doesn't change how the pan cooks.
• Salt can pit it. Undissolved salt sitting on the bottom can leave small permanent marks, Cristel says. Add salt once the water boils, and stir until it dissolves.
• Weight, in clad pans. A 12-inch clad stainless skillet weighed about 3½ to 4 pounds in Bon Appétit's tests. Cristel doesn't publish weights, so we can't give you ours, and if your wrists complain, try a 10-inch.

Who it suits

Good for you if you sear, make pan sauces, cook acidic food and want a pan that goes in the oven and the dishwasher for years. Skip it if you want eggs to slide with no fat and no learning curve. If you're avoiding nickel, check the grade before anything else.

In short. 18/10 is essentially 304 stainless: bare, happy in the oven and the dishwasher, and long-lasting, and it sticks until you learn to preheat.

We sell 18/10 cookware from Cristel, made in France: see Cristel stainless cookware. Start with how to cook on stainless without sticking and how to clean a stainless pan. For what research has and hasn't shown about stainless and nickel, see our guide.

Where it is used

• Cooking surfaces of clad and disc-base pans and pots, including the Cristel pans we sell
• Flatware

How to care for it

• Dishwasher is fine on the pans we sell. Dry them soon after to avoid water spots.
• Salt the water after it boils, and don't leave salty or acidic liquid standing overnight.
• Baking soda paste for heat tint and baked-on oil. White vinegar for white spots.
• No bleach and no steel wool. Both can damage the steel's surface.