These affordable pans are 9 times tougher than non-stick - I love them

Salter Megastone Thermo Collar 3 Piece Frying Pan Set: was £44.99 now £29.99 at salter.com

At full price, this set is a steal. With £15 off, it's an absolute must have. If I didn't love it already, I really love it now.

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Budget and beauty don’t often go hand in hand, so you can imagine my delight when Salter announced their Megastone collection. These pans, with their luxuriously textured surface, are not just beautifully designed — they’re better than non-stick, a joy to cook with, and built to stand the test of time.

I regularly test cookware as part of my role at woman&home, often using some of the best induction pans on the market. So when these arrived, I swapped out my Ninja ZeroStick Pan collection (a set that costs nearly five times the price) to see if Salter’s more affordable offering could hold its own.

Whether you're starting fresh in a new kitchen or simply after a pan that will both sizzle and sparkle on your hob, you're in the right place.

Specifications

Unboxing

The Salter Megastone Pan set comes with minimal packaging. From a set-up and a sustainability perspective, this is great news. Everything can go in the recycling bin and you won’t even need to pick up a pair of scissors to get cooking on these. My one word of advice would be to rinse out the pans, as they are very open and factory dust or dirt might have settled inside them in transit.

Who would it suit?

The Megastone collection has far-reaching appeal. Not only is it a brilliant price point, the PFOAS-free coating can replace your traditional non-stick pans, but with the promise that they won’t scratch if you use metal utensils because they are nine times tougher.

They make a great first set of pans too, or a collection to buy for less confident cooks, because there is a neat line on the handle that will glow red when the pans are enough to cook on.

Aside from the fact that they aren’t dishwasher safe, these are the pans you could use for everything and anything. Salter sells them in a whole host of different combinations, but this one is perfect for covering all the basics. It’s a great starter set.

What is it like to use?

The three different frying pan sizes offer you versatility. You could squeeze three American pancakes into the 28cm frying pan, or one large pancake in the 20cm pan. Whilst I would happily just cook and test pancakes all day, I have a set series of tests that I put all our frying pans through. I think you'll like what you hear.

For my first test, I put my induction hob into its top power setting. Within thirty seconds, the handle had changed colour. I splashed water in the base and little beads of water sizzled and danced around, demonstrating that this was up to temperature.

I carried out a few tests in each frying pan: a classic pancake to see how evenly heat transferred across the base. You can see this on the colouring on each pancake, which makes for a really simple test. I start off all the pancake tests by melting a knob of butter. However, I quickly found that the butter usually reserved for making my pancake flippable wasn’t needed.

It moved almost too much around the pan, so I swapped it out for a very light coating — to help the pancake brown. To my delight, the pancake really evenly browned on both sides and the feel of the pan made it easy to flip and shuffle around.

The onions make for a similar success story: they cooked evenly and quickly, with some nice colour. It was lovely not to worry about the utensils that I was using too, as I was cooking the onions for burgers and wanted to use my metal tongs.

The final test that I did was making a chocolate sauce. This needs a low and slow heat so that the chocolate doesn't burn and cease. You can see that the pan transferred heat really gently across the base, melting my chocolate with the delicate touch that I would expect from pans at least ten times the price.

Cleaning

This is the only downside of the pans and, actually, it doesn’t make much difference to me. You can only hand wash them, which I think should be best practice anyway. Your pans last a lot longer and they get put through a lot less when they are washed by hand, but for those times when you don’t have the energy, it’s nice to have the fallback of pans that can go in. Either way, the non-stick is so good on these that I couldn’t actually burn anything to the base of them. Believe me, I tried. This made cleaning really really easy, because everything washed off under water. So, these make up for any compromises.

How does it compare?

I mentioned right at the beginning of this review that the Salter pans took the place of my Ninja NeverStick for the week that I was testing. They’re really similar — and not just because of the stone-effect non-stick. Both pan sets were nice to handle, lightweight, and quick to transfer heat. Ninja had a few extra touches, including the stackable set and neat lip around the edge, but they are only slight touches that I think will only make the difference for really serious chefs. The Salter makes a great option for those after Ninja pans, but who want to save some money.

Should you buy it?

As a stylish set, the Salter Megastone collection are unrivalled. They look beautiful, they’re nice to handle, and I cooked up a whole host of delicious dishes in them. So, if you’re shopping on a budget, here’s somewhere you won’t need to compromise.

How we test

At woman&home, all the pans that we test go through a standardise series of tasks that are designed to test their versatility, usability, and quality. I keep these identical so that I can compare between other pans that you might be eye-ing up as well as for the sake of context.

You’ll see that I test fast and slow cooking, all the while, thinking about how they feel to handle. If you have questions about them after you’ve read my review, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask me a question. My inbox is always open.

You can read more on our dedicated page for how we test pans.