The Best Stainless Steel Steamer Inserts

Measure your pot before you shop

Do this first and most of the category sorts itself out. Take a tape measure and record three numbers for the pot you intend to steam in: the inside diameter at the rim, the inside diameter at the base, and the depth from base to rim. Write them down. Almost every bad review of every steamer insert ever sold is a fit problem, and almost every fit problem is one of those three numbers.

The rim diameter is the one that decides whether the insert goes in at all. You want the insert at least a quarter-inch narrower than your rim, because a basket that just squeezes past the rim will bind on the way out when it is full and hot. The base diameter matters because many pots taper, and an insert that passes the rim can still wedge halfway down. The depth matters because you need an inch to an inch and a half of water underneath the basket, and a shallow pan with a deep insert leaves nowhere to put it - the food ends up boiling rather than steaming.

Then check one more thing, which the specs will not tell you: lid clearance. Put the insert in, put the lid on, and see whether it seats. Rigid inserts commonly sit an inch or two above the rim, and on a pan with a shallow domed lid the lid will no longer close. That is the single most common complaint about the Viking insert and the reason the Cuisinart universal steamer ships with a cover of its own.

What actually matters in an insert

1. Published fit. Only one brand on this page tells you the pan diameters its insert fits. That single piece of information is worth more than every other spec combined, because an insert that does not fit is worth nothing regardless of its steel grade. When a maker publishes nothing, your only safe purchase is the insert made by your pot's own manufacturer in your pot's own size.

2. Rigid or folding. A rigid basket holds its shape, holds real volume, lifts out in one piece and lasts decades. A folding expandable basket - the ten-dollar type with petals and a central post - fits many more pots, stores flat, and is a consumable: the hinges loosen, the petals bend, and the post is in the way of whatever you are steaming. For a site whose readers hate rebuying, rigid is the right default. Folding is the right answer only when nothing rigid fits your pot.

3. Steel grade, slightly. 18/10 has marginally more nickel than 18/8 and marginally better corrosion resistance. For a part that spends its life in steam rather than in acid or on direct heat, the practical difference is small - smaller than in a pan, where it is already modest. Both are fine. Neither is a reason to choose. The detail is in 18/10 vs 18/8 vs 18/0.

4. Dishwasher safe. Steaming leaves a perforated basket with vegetable residue in several hundred small holes, and that is a genuinely unpleasant thing to scrub. A dishwasher rating is the single most useful care spec in this category, and it splits the field cleanly: the Viking and the Hestan have it, both Made In inserts specify hand washing.

5. Handles and lift. You will be lifting the basket out of a pot that is still on the heat, with steam coming off the water underneath. Long handles that stay outside the pot and clear of the steam are better than folding wire bails. Anything that needs two hands means you cannot hold the lid at the same time.

Do not buy one if this is you

We would rather you kept the money. If you steam vegetables two or three times a year, you do not need an insert at all: an inch of water, a heatproof plate or a small heatproof bowl inverted in the bottom of a saucepan, and the pan's own lid will steam broccoli perfectly well. If your cookware set already came with a steamer basket, use it - almost every multipot and several cookware sets include one, and the one in the box is unlikely to be worse than a generic replacement.

And if what you actually want is to cook pasta as well as steam, buy a pasta insert or a multipot instead and get both functions in one purchase. That comparison, including the pots worth buying for it, is in the best stainless steel pasta pots.

What size to buy

Match the insert to the pan you will really use, which for most people is smaller than they think. An 8 to 8.5-inch insert suits a 2 to 4-quart saucepan and steams for one to three people - a side of green beans, half a head of broccoli, a few potatoes. That covers the great majority of home steaming and it is the size the Viking, the Hestan and the Cuisinart universal steamer all occupy.

A 10 to 11-inch insert needs a wide 6 to 8-quart pot and steams for a family or for something bulky: a whole cauliflower, two pounds of clams, tamales standing on end, corn. That is the Made In and the larger Cuisinart. Buying this size for a 3-quart saucepan is the most common mistake in the category, and it is why we keep repeating the measuring instruction. If you are not sure what size pans you own, start with what size saucepan you need.

What we left off, and why

Folding expandable baskets. There are dozens under fifteen dollars, they fit almost any pot, and we did not rank one. None of the brands selling them publishes a steel grade, a thickness or a warranty address, the hinges and the central post are the failure points, and they are the opposite of a buy-it-once purchase. If nothing rigid fits your pot then one of these is the practical answer - just buy it knowing it is a consumable.

Silicone steamers. Flexible silicone petal steamers fit anything and collapse to nothing. They are a reasonable product and they are not stainless steel, which is what this site is about.

Pressure cooker trivets and Instant Pot baskets. Sized to a specific appliance's inner pot rather than to cookware, and the dimensions that make them work there make them wrong in a saucepan.

Two-tier and three-tier steamer stacks. Genuinely useful if you steam whole meals, mostly sold as complete pot-and-tier sets rather than as inserts, and a different purchase from the one this page is about.

Premium inserts from brands whose pans we do not cover. Demeyere, Fissler and Mauviel all sell inserts for their own pans. They are well made, they are sized to those pans, and buying one without the matching pan is a fit gamble at a premium price. If you own the pan, buy its own insert.

Using and cleaning one

Two habits. Use an inch to an inch and a half of water, no more - the water must not touch the food, because food sitting in water is boiling, not steaming, and that is where vegetables lose their color and their minerals. And lift the basket with the heat still on rather than turning the pan off first, because the steam under a stationary basket is what keeps cooking the food while you are deciding what to do next.

Cleaning is where perforated steel is unpleasant and where the dishwasher rating earns its money. If you are washing by hand, do it while the basket is still warm and before anything dries into the holes; once residue sets you are into a soak. Hard water leaves chalky spots on a part that is permanently wet, which look like damage and are not - see white spots on a stainless steel pan. For anything baked on, the full method is in how to clean stainless steel cookware.