Picture your jovial, smiling family sitting down to a delicious holiday meal. All of your hours of planning and preparation have been worth it. Now imagine your panic as you take a burnt turkey out of the oven. Choosing the best stainless roasting pan goes a long way to helping you to create a perfect holiday meal. A bad pan could result in unevenly cooked meat, a pan so heavy that the roast is dropped, and scorched gravy.

The initial consideration when choosing a roasting pan is size. Measure your oven and choose a pan that will fit, but will also have 2 inches of space between it and the oven walls so that air may circulate. Also, you don’t want an over-sized pan that will allow too much space in the pan and around your meat. This will cause the juices to thinly fill these areas and burn.

The metal or alloy that your roasting pan is made of is also essential to consider. Things such as weight, sturdiness, and heat conductivity vary from pan to pan. The best heat conductor is aluminum, but it can react badly to acids in some foods. Stoneware is nice but it can be heavy and sometimes fragile. The best choice is a sturdy stainless steel roasting pan, layered in with aluminum and maybe copper. This gives you the best heat conductivity, low reactivity to acids in foods, and a good weight.

Be sure to check that your stainless roaster can stand up to high temperatures from the burners on your stove and also the near-broiling temperatures required inside your oven. With roasting meat comes the desire to make gravy, and it is easiest to place your roaster on the stove top and go. In addition, you may need to brown the meat on the stove top before placing it in the over. Warping or buckling are symptoms of an inferior roasting pan placed on a stove top. In addition, these pans can heat differently in different areas of the pan and cause burning of your gravy.

Another factor to consider is how your pan is made. A rectangular shape with sides that are rounded is best. The round corners make for easier cleaning. In addition, the height of the pan matters. You want sides that allow good air circulation but also have enough height so that juices don’t spill when you are taking your roast out of the oven. A great height for the sides of the pan is between 2.5 and 3 inches. Also, know that the kind of handles on your roaster are important. More inexpensive pans have handles that fold down and are very hard to hold with potholders. Some handles stick straight out from the sides of the pan and waste space in your oven. Therefore, you should look for strong, riveted handles that come straight up from the pan.

Look for extras to go with your pan such as a rack. Heavy meat forks are also indispensable at the moment you must transfer that large, heavy bird or roast to your serving platter.

Want to find out more about stainless roasting pans, then visit Bethany Payne’s page on how to choose the best turkey roasting pan for your needs.

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