Or BarKeeps.

Best to address your cooking method. Every stovetop is different so you need to find the sweet spot. It should not burn. Lower heat i think...and it will heat up much faster and more even than the cast iron ones. No real lengthy pre-heating needed. I've only used mine for fresh tortillas and homemade english muffins so far. Oh, and arepas. (i just keep forgetting i have it) ...and not needing such a large surface lately.

Usually if the product is in your header it gets more attention. Like 'help me with my Demeyere griddle!'...

I need more time with mine to be helpful.

Expanding on what slevendog said, there are several tips for use and cleaning that I picked up, some on Chowhound and some by old fashioned trial-and-error the first few times I used my Demeyere plancha.

First thing, though, is to clean the mess made by burned on oil/butter. We'll get to how to avoid and or mitigate this later.

For starters, though, when the burned on oil thing happened to me on my first use, I had pretty good luck with soaking it in hot water for about 10-15 minutes, pouring off the water and then applying undiluted dish detergent (I used Dawn, if that matters) followed by scrubbing with a blue scrubbie sponge. (Scotch Brite is the brand I have). If that leaves some crud (as it sometimes did), then I sprinkled Barkeeper's Friend over the problem area, and got it damp to make a pasty covering. Let it sit for about ten minutes. Then scrubbed with a wet blue-scrubbie/sponge. That quickly took off the burnt oil for me.

Yeah, yeah, I know that the user guide says to avoid using abrasives on the Silvinox. My online research convinced me that the warning was about the coarse abrasive powders like of Ajax and Comet and coarse steel wool cleaners like SOS.

Also, Demeyere sells its own cream-type cleaner which you can get through Amazon and other online sources. To me, it seems rather like the glass stovetop cleaners like Ceramabryte. Haven't tried it myself, yet, but several Chowhounders think it works better than BKF on Silvinox. If you have not already seen it, you might find this Chowhound discussion helpful and reassuring.

Now, going back to avoiding or limiting the problem, let's start with heat levels. It took me several tries with my plancha to figure out a couple of things. One is that the plancha and other 7-layered-silvinoxed Demeyere are very efficient at absorbing heat. The other is that you don't need to crank the heat all that high. I find that I can turn down the heat from what I would use with other pans, especially when it comes to pancakes.

I've found that I rarely add oil for searing fatty foods, particularly meats. Just get the pan to the right heat and you can sear steaks and such without adding oil or other fat. Easiest way to tell when you've got the pan properly pre-heated? Sprinkle water drops. When the drops skitter and bounce about like pool balls (some say "like mercury balls"), that's the proper heat level for grilling and searing. This is often called the Leidenfrost effect. You can google that for clearer explanations than I am providing. Meat sticks for a couple of minutes but then releases and can be easily lifted away. I will still wind up with "stuff"stuck to the pan, but a lot of that (often all of it) seems to clean away easily if I immediately pour some water in the pan when I've removed the food. If I'm not using that liquid as a base for a sauce, I'll just let the plancha sit until after the meal is done.

For pancakes, I've found that lesser heat is preferable. The first couple of times I tried it, I was using high heat searing
temperatures. With those, a little butter or oil would immediately flash sizzle into a dark, baked on, seemingly immoveable coating. FWIW, my pancakes came out okay, anyway, (as yours apparently did, too.) But, then I had to work hard on cleanup.

Here's is the thing to bear in mind: this heavy seven-ply plancha can really soak up a lot of heat. It does it a lot more efficiently than, say, cast iron. (Nearly as good as cast iron in holding onto to it, too.) Because of that efficiency, I had to learn to dial back the heat for things like pancakes and eggs. Otherwise, the pan just gets way too hot for cooking those things.

When I learned to use the griddle with lower heat, so that a little butter would sizzle and brown a bit, that was where I found the right temp for pancakes and eggs. Also, bacon. Again, though, pouring water into the pan immediately after cooking, and letting it sit, seems to make the plancha easy for me to clean later.

First off, a trick I learned at Purcell Murray (high end appliance distributor), while the plancha is still warm (or rewarm), use half a lemon, rubbing the cut side all over it. It should loosen most of the goo.

Something I learned for oven racks in Appliances, which will work fine on the plancha for the unscrubbable fats, is baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. A little first aid. :) Slightly dampen, cover thickly with soda (I got a big box from the big box store), and lightly spray with the peroxide until it's nicely damp but not runny. Set in the sun or a still-warm oven if you can, but not required. Come back in a couple of hours and give it a light scrub.

I have no qualms scrubbing my Silvinox with plant based scrubbies. They don't scratch, and I just do that with hot water for small spots. I also put mine in the dishwasher with eco friendly detergent (non-etching).

Thank you all so much! Jwvideo great cooking tips. Yes, our pancake experiences were similar. I have all these cleaning products handy except the Demeyere cleaner, which I might invest in. plllog, I like your method. I'm a huge peroxide fan.

Does anyone oil their Silvenox before storing? Did anyone try to "season it" in any way? Thanks for your patience. I generally cook only on cast iron, Staub enamel, or non-stick Anolon copper. This griddle is so obviously a fine piece of cookware, and I got it at such a steal, so I really want to learn to use it!

Don't season or oil the silvinox! It's just stainless steel (the 'inox" in Silvinox) with a bright finish. I don't know what it is, but I'm guessing maybe chrome in the alloy. Treat it like stainless steel. Don't baby it or fuss with it. I don't like the appearance of scratches, but this is work equipment, and they don't hurt the function. I do use a metal fork in my frying pan. My other pots are mostly Le Creuset enamel, so I get where you're coming from. I have the old style Demeyere plancha/griddle that's big and round for the big round induction element, too, and a small John Pawson covered pot. They all clean up just fine. The Demeyere doesn't need the care that the enamel does. It's there to be abused. Just find what works best for you on the residue, and cook away!

It's funny that we all have this Demeyere plancha. It's a terrific product. I'd been searching for it for a long time, and finally they brought it back overseas. I now have two, one for the main home (gas) and one for the vacation kitchen (induction).

Jwvideo is of course right -- you don't need the high heat of cast iron or other materials. It just needs the lowest of heat for pancakes, quesadillas and even eggs. For pancakes eggs, I just need a little rub of butter.

In the case where you do crank the heat up, say to medium for a sear, you may get some polymerized oil. Since Silvonix is some sort of surface treatment, you don't get the discoloration that you get with say your All-Clad or other stainless, just that hard to remove polymerized oil. It's not non-stick, it's still just stainless, but it will release easier than other types of stainless steel.

I have the Demeyere cleaner. Most times, I don't need it. A little soak is all it takes. If there is some case where you do get the polymerized oil and you want to clean it, it does help. A soak in some water and then a little of the cleaner (let it soak for 30 seconds) and a scrub with a blue sponge is all it takes. There seems to be a mild acid like BKF plus some grease cutters in the formulation. Works better than BKF alone. You can also try Dawn Power Dissolver but I've never had to use it for the plancha.

Yes, thanks jwvideo. I get it now. It is being discontinued i think and why chowhound is buying. Once they all have one i bet some more information will be available about using and cleaning. I picked mine up when i bought some Staub around Thanksgiving.

I bought mine for tapas, noodle bowl toppings, veg mushroom onion....protein on the warmer front burner and veg on lower heat back end. Easy to go strait to the table with the handles and lighter weight than my cast iron one that is a beast. Easy in and out of the oven if needed. Google image some recipe ideas.

It isn't a mirror finish. Slightly matt/satin. And no, it is not to be seasoned as plllog mentioned.

Someone mentioned just adding a bit of water while still warm and soaking a bit, or back on the burner with water, low heat for a few minutes. I usually start with BonAmi and water if i scorch a stainless pot, then move up to BarKeep.

Baking soda/hp is great. I used that on my kitchen cabinets where it gets a bit gunky on the handle area. Lemons are expensive but i use them always. Cut in quarter using the round hand squeezer always leaves a bit of juicy pulp so into the freezer they go in a zip-lock next to the parm rinds.

FWIW, the silvinox treatment is a chemical wash that just
decreases the surface ratio of iron and impurities to chromium/nickel, resulting
in what you could call a 18+/10+ stainless steel surface. Kind of like annodizing aluminum, it results in a surface that is harder and more
corrosion-resistant than the underlying plain 18/10 steel. Also makes the Demeyere pans a bit smoother and thus less "sticky" than untreated 18/10 stainless pans.

As for "seasoning" a stainless pan, plllog is right that you cannot and should not try to season it like cast iron. No need for oiling the pan for storage unless you live on the ocean or in a foggy marine environment and won't be using the stainless pan in the forseeable future.

I'm guessing that MizLizzie's question about seasoning may have come from seeing postings by internet "experts" who talk about "seasoning" stainless pans. Their the use of the term "seasoning" is misleading.

Now, when you get past the hoopla and hooey, MizLizzie, there actually is an old cook's trick for oiling a stainless pan, but you do it before cooking and you do it to reduce the amount of oil when planning to cook eggs and other such sticky foods.

The trick is this. Heat your stainless pan for a couple of minutes. Shut off the heat, wipe on some oil or fat . Let the pan sit and cool down for a several minutes. (Five is usuualy more than enough.) Then wipe out the excess oil with a paper towel. Now, reheat the pan for cooking your eggs or whatever. You can now cook with no more or a lot less oil. This is just for a single cooking session. When done, clean the pan as per usual. Storing it with oil is just going to collect goo and crud.

Thanks!! My eyes tend to glaze over when I read the puffery about it but figured by color that there had to be chrome in there somewhere.

BTW, I've seen stainless pans on TV, mostly when they're showing real restaurant kitchens, that are crusted over, especially on the bottom, with polymerized fat and char. That's not "seasoning". That's laziness! It's actually harmless, but ugly.

jwvideo, I have used that technique with regular stainless to good effect. I guess I have been fearful that "Silvenox" could be scrubbed off like teflon, or something. Silly me. Thanks for the explanation. ITA, pllog. Those crusty pans are nasty looking. I probably wouldn't want to see 90% of the kitchens in the restaurants I frequent. Better than Weight Watchers, probably.

I cannot cook an egg on stainless steel at all. I will for sure, be trying your method, jwvideo.

Thanks for the compliment, Jasdip, but it very literally is an "old" cook's trick. I'm now an old cook, but my great aunt Katherine used it, too, and she was already really old back before I was born in the middle of the last century.

Plllog, I know exactly what you mean by "crusted over" restaurant pans! When I started college, I had a part-time job in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant owned by a friend of my grandparents. Part of my job was scrubbing crud off pans at the end of the evening service so that customers who saw the kitchen hopefully would not be thinking "Weight Watchers" thoughts like MizLizzie mentioned. I might add that a lot of the pans you see in restaurants may be bare aluminum. Really cheap but great for omelettes and such if you do the pre-oiling. I recall them being harder to clean than the stainless ones, though, and they seemed to wear out pretty quickly, too.

I can't say about restaurant pans, but I learned to make eggs in an aluminum pan, and it was much nicer than stainless. Smooth. Nowadays, I use De Buyer carbon steel crêpe pans for eggs. Perfect on induction. Instant reaction because they're so thin. Smooth, seasoned surface. Keep it moving, though, because it's still steel, and it'll show the inductors if you leave it in one place.

I had a year cooking constantly on cheap thin aluminum (thousands of miles from home). It's actually very easy to polish up--at least if you only have one at a time rather than a restaurant full. The trick is that if you keep scrubbing aluminum, either the stain will come off, or you'll scrub off the bits of aluminum its stuck to. Like when you wash dye off your hands, you're really exfoliating it off. :)