I don’t have a great understanding of why people like 304 (or 316 or 18/8 or 18/10) etc stainless steel for cooking so much. Nickel is not that cheap, and whil

I don’t have a great understanding of why people like 304 (or 316 or 18/8 or 18/10) etc stainless steel for cooking so much. Nickel is not that cheap, and while it’s apparently not toxic per se, it’s a rather common allergen. Adding large amounts of nickel makes steel austentitic and hence non-magnetic at room temperature, which is suboptimal for induction cooking and for use on refrigerators :) Apparently nickel adds a small (tiny?) amount of corrosion resistance, and I think that austentitic steel is more ductile, but there is no shortage of extremely cheap non-austentitic cookware out there. So why does nicer cookware usually contain nickel?