Gourmetsteel is a slab of super-pure Viking steel from the far north, and it is a superb cooking surface, bar none!

The quality is extremely high, even though it is made of the most fundamental of metals, prized since antiquity.

And proudly forged in Sweden.

One of its best features is its versatility, and we tested it indoors and outdoors in the UAE.

And as we admired the excellent cooking results, we experimented a little more and found that Gourmetsteel is truly magic!

The most interesting discovery was its heat conductivity – and this we believe is Gourmetsteel’s secret to success.

The thick steel simply sucks in the heat, and maintains it stable, over time.

And this makes for cooking at extremely high temperatures, such as when searing a thick steak, or baking a pizza – and it also makes for very low heat cooking over a long period of time, such as roasting slow-cooked meats or grilling vegetables.

The thickness is key, although this also makes it very heavy. However, it is totally indestructible!

We placed it on top of our live-fire barbeque firepit.

At full flame, within minutes, incredibly, we had surface temperatures of a large home fireplace…

The Gourmetsteel didn’t warp and bend, and it basically just laughed at us and said: “Let’s cook something!”

So we took it to the beach…

And we did cook something!

The temperature gradually dropped, but it maintained for at least 30 minutes, and even after 45 it was still hot to touch.

Yet, the portability, and the cooking area size, were both very good features of Gourmetsteel – and having such a wide and solid grill surface made cooking seafood very easy.

No spaces for the food to fall through, no trouble turning them over with a wide metal spatula – no worrying about scratches and chemical non-stick surfaces.

This is why steel has been used for cooking for centuries!

We moved indoors, to continue our testing – this time with pizza bread, my famous mini-calzoni!

In the oven, again Gourmetsteel was at home absorbing and maintaining that beautiful stable surface heat.

A bit low for pizza, but that’s my oven’s capacity – for the small calzoni, however, it was perfect!

Cleaning appears to be a nightmare, but actually it looks worse than it is.

Since Gourmetsteel is forged steel, you can attack it with any sort of steel wool or hard metal scraper, and it really is indestructible – even bang it with a hammer, if you want.

The simplest way is to pour water on it while still hot and then just use a metal scraper – easy!

However, with use we understood a nifty trick – as old as the cast-iron that my grandmas used to use…

Gourmetsteel can be seasoned. This means that you coat it with a thin layer of cooking oil and then bake it at high heat until the oil polymerizes, and thereby leaves a smooth, black, and naturally non-stick patina that covers the entire surface.

This black surface makes clean-up extremely easy!

Now food no longer sticks, and you can just wipe it clean after use!

And use it we did!!! It’s our favorite cooking surface!

In the mountains we balanced Gourmetsteel over some rocks and cooked a fantastic Lebanese babaganouj – simply eggplants, until soft and smokey, slit the burnt skins and scoop out the soft insides with a spoon, add garlic, lemon, salt, and olive oil (tahini, if you like – we don’t, we keep it rustic) – for a super delicious and healthy BBQ that does not necessarily mean meat all the time!

And Gourmetsteel really fit the outdoor, wild cooking theme… it was the envy of all our friends!

In the desert, we raised the temperature and zapped some fresh South African sausages, Boerewors!

Everywhere we tried it, Gourmetsteel delivered with excellence – a sturdy flat cooking surface of incredible heat conductivity, and tough enough to be dropped onto rocks and washed in the sea!

Gourmetsteel has replaced our oven grill bars, and even most of our frying pans – we use it on the stove-top, too.

Fried eggs and bacon, all sorts of breads and parathas (which we love, using them as wraps!), pancakes, all sorts of seafood, all oven dishes that won’t spill, stirfries, teppanyaki style thinly sliced beef, absolutely ideal for burgers, and the very best thick steaks you can imagine!

Can’t wait for a version with handles and a half-inch of lip to contain juices and sauces!

Until then, let’s be content with the strongest, toughest, and most excellent cooking surface we have found to date!

In Dubai and UAE, you can find Gourmetsteel right here!