Stainless Steel Ice Cube Trays: Lever, Twist, or Lid

Every steel ice cube tray in the table below names a real grade — 304 or 18/8 — which settles the corrosion question plainly. What almost none of them names is anything else: one states where it’s manufactured, and two confirm the tray ships with a lid, checked on the maker’s own page or, where a brand sells only through Amazon, on its Amazon listing on August 30, 2026. The material claim turns out to be the easy part; whether a tray comes with a lid, whether the release is a lever or a twist, and where it was made are the questions most listings leave unanswered.

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Pick	Release	Best for	Where to buy
Ecozoi Stainless Steel Ice Cube Tray	Lever, 304 disclosed	Buyers who want the grade and country of manufacture both named	Amazon
Vortihive Ice Cube Tray with Lid	Twist, lid included	Stacking multiple trays without picking up freezer odor	Amazon
RSVP International Large Cubes	Not disclosed	One big rocks-glass cube instead of several small ones	RSVP International

Why Buyers Give Up on Silicone and Plastic Trays

Steel isn’t most people’s first ice tray. Silicone and plastic are cheaper and dominate the category — but both have a specific, documented failure mode that pushes some buyers toward metal. Silicone is porous enough that food-contact compounds move across its surface in both directions, which is the mechanism behind a tray that starts smelling faintly like whatever else shares the freezer. Rigid plastic has a different problem: depending on the resin, it can turn brittle well before it reaches freezer temperature, and neither of the plastic-based trays checked for this article names which resin it uses.

Does a Silicone Ice Tray Absorb Freezer Odors?

A 2022 study in Food and Chemical Toxicology analyzed migration compounds from silicone molds used in food contact and confirmed that silicone’s structure allows compounds to migrate across the silicone-food boundary — the same porosity that lets a tray pick up odors from whatever else is packed around it. A separate 2020 study in the Journal of Odor and Indoor Environment measured how readily silicone oil absorbs common volatile organic compounds, the class of molecules behind most food and freezer odors — a related material, not the moulded silicone a tray is made from. Ecozoi’s own listing makes the direct comparison, stating its steel tray “won’t absorb odors or stains” the way silicone can — a maker claim, but one the porosity research doesn’t contradict. Steel has no polymer matrix for anything to migrate into in the first place.

Why Do Plastic Ice Trays Crack in the Freezer?

It depends which plastic, and most listings don’t say. A materials-properties reference lists polystyrene’s brittleness temperature at 20°C (68°F) — already brittle at room temperature, before a freezer factors in — against 0°C (32°F) for polypropylene, which stays flexible well past the point where polystyrene turns stiff. Neither OXO’s plastic tray nor the rigid parts of any listing checked for this article names its resin by number, only “BPA-free,” which speaks to chemical safety and says nothing about which of the two behaviors to expect at 0°F. Steel sidesteps the question outright: metal doesn’t have a brittleness temperature in the same sense, and none of the steel listings checked describes cold-cracking as a failure mode the way plastic trays do.

The Lever Tray That Never Left

The lever-release steel tray isn’t a modern design wearing a retro label. Guy L. Tinkham built the first flexible, all-metal ice cube tray in 1933, and a metal tray with a lever that lifts the cubes free appeared around the same era; the encyclopedia entry cited below traces both to Jonathan Rees’s 2018 history of the ice trade. Nine decades later, the mechanism hasn’t changed: Captain Cranberry markets its steel tray on a “classic vintage lever handle,” and several other trays here use the identical hinge-and-lift design with no functional update.

That continuity is useful for a different reason than nostalgia. A steel lever tray built to a 1930s pattern and one built this year work the same way, which means a genuinely old one — thrifted, inherited, or found on eBay — still does the job a new one does, often for less money and with zero new manufacturing. Checking a secondhand shop or a kitchen drawer before buying anything new is the first real move here, not a caveat tacked onto the end of a buying guide.

How Do You Get Ice Out of a Steel Lever or Twist Tray?

Steel doesn’t flex the way silicone does, so pulling straight up on a frozen tray rarely works and isn’t how any of these are designed to be used. The listings that spell out a technique agree on the same two moves: let the tray sit at room temperature for a few minutes, or run the underside briefly under warm water, then either pull the lever or twist the tray from side to side. Ecozoi’s large-cube tray asks for a warm-water soak before a gentle twist; Vortihive says to wiggle the tray side to side. Skip that step and force a lever cold, and a perfectly functional tray will feel stuck — that’s a technique difference from silicone, not a defect to return the tray over.

Grade, Release, Lid, and Origin, Tray by Tray

A silicone tray and a plastic one sit at the bottom of this table on purpose — W&P Peak and OXO — because the steel case only means something next to what steel is replacing. Several brands a shopper would expect here are missing for a simple reason: Norpro, Life Without Plastic, and Fox Run do not sell a stainless steel ice cube tray under their own name.

Tray	Steel grade as stated	Cube size/count	Lever or twist	Lid	Dishwasher safe	Made in	Price (Aug 2026)	Where stated
Ecozoi (standard, 18 cubes)	304 (18% chromium, 8% nickel)	~1.5″, 18 cubes	Lever — integrated handle, states no twisting	No	Yes	Designed in Texas, USA; made in China	$45.45	ecozoi.com
Ecozoi (large cube, with lid)	18/8	12 large slots	Twist — “gently twist” after a warm-water soak	Yes, with stand	Not disclosed on this listing	Not disclosed	$36.95	amazon.com (Ecozoi store)
Onyx Containers	18/8	Not disclosed	Not disclosed — described only as “a two-part system” resembling 1950s trays	Not disclosed (lid sold separately)	Not disclosed	Not disclosed	Not disclosed (wholesale listing)	onyxcontainers.com
RSVP International	18-8	18 cubes, 11.19″ × 4.75″ × 1.25″	Lever — “lift the lever to break cubes apart”	Not disclosed	Yes	Not disclosed	$16.50	rsvp-intl.com (large-cube listing; standard-tray page not confirmed)
RSVP International (large cubes)	18-8	6 cubes, ~1.5″ × 2″	Not disclosed	Not disclosed	Yes	Not disclosed	$16.50	rsvp-intl.com
Thrseely	18/8	18 cubes	Lever — “lift the handle… no twisting”	Not disclosed	Yes	Not disclosed	$20.99	amazon.com
Captain Cranberry	304	18 cubes	Lever — “classic vintage lever handle”	Not disclosed	Yes	Not disclosed	$21.90	amazon.com
yeesport (2-tray set)	304	Not disclosed	Lever — “lift the handle”	Not disclosed	Not disclosed	Not disclosed	$30.98 (2-pack w/ hammer & tongs)	amazon.com
Vortihive (4-tray set, with lid)	304	1″ × 1.5″ cubes	Twist — “gently wiggle the tray from side to side”	Yes	Yes	Not disclosed	$32.99 (4-pack)	amazon.com
W&P Peak (contrast: silicone)	Not steel — silicone with a stainless steel frame	12 cubes, 1.25″	Pop-out — individually molded, no lever needed	Yes	Yes	China	$16.00	wandp.com
OXO (contrast: plastic)	Not steel — resin type not named on the page	Not disclosed	Flex-release — “rounded cube shape releases easily”	Yes	Yes (top rack)	Not disclosed	$7.99	oxo.com

Do Stainless Steel Trays Come With a Lid?

Rarely, and it’s worth checking rather than assuming. Only two steel trays here — Ecozoi’s large-cube tray and Vortihive — confirm an included lid; Ecozoi’s standard 18-cube tray explicitly ships without one. Captain Cranberry’s own listing notes that its trays “do not stack evenly on top of each other,” which is exactly the problem a lid or a dedicated stand is built to solve. Both contrast picks, W&P Peak and OXO, include a lid as standard, which is one real advantage silicone and plastic trays hold over most steel ones checked here.

Can You Move a Steel Tray From the Freezer to a Glass?

Yes, and more safely than the glass itself handles the trip. The thermal-shock risk in a freezer-to-drink move is to whatever the ice lands in, not to the metal tray — chilling the glass first, or adding ice gradually, is the same precaution that applies whether the cubes came from steel, silicone, or plastic. Several of these trays are marketed directly for whiskey and cocktail use, which assumes exactly this freezer-to-glass handoff as normal use, not an edge case.

What Buying One Changes

If the ice tray already in the freezer drawer still releases cubes without a fight, replacing it with steel isn’t a waste win by itself — a working tray, plastic or silicone, doesn’t need to be retired to make a point. The case for steel is specific: a tray that’s visibly cracking, warping, or has started smelling like the freezer around it has a real reason to be replaced, and the vintage lever design covered above means a secondhand steel tray from a thrift shop or eBay listing is a genuine first option before buying anything new.

Bought once, a steel tray is built to outlast several plastic replacements. Cold-cracking, the failure mode that ends most plastic trays, is not a property steel has at freezer temperature at all. A polystyrene tray that turns brittle at room temperature, by contrast, is a tray a household is likely to buy more than once.

On what the material doesn’t leach: steel has no polymer matrix for anything to migrate into, which is the pathway the two peer-reviewed studies above describe for silicone. That’s a structural difference, not a safety verdict on silicone at normal use — but for reducing what touches food and drink, it’s the more defensible material on that one question.

At end of life, the two materials part ways further. A stainless steel tray that finally fails is scrap metal — most municipal metal-recycling streams and any scrap yard will take it. Silicone has no equivalent path: as our guide to silicone’s end-of-life reality lays out, most curbside programs don’t accept it, it needs a specialty mail-in recycler to be recycled at all, and it won’t biodegrade in a landfill either. A rigid plastic tray sits somewhere in between, depending on the resin and the local program — another reason a maker that won’t name its plastic by number is withholding a genuinely useful fact.

The bottom line: if steel grade and country of manufacture both matter, Ecozoi is the only maker here that names both plainly. If freezer stacking without picking up neighboring odors matters more, Vortihive’s included lid solves that directly. And if 18/8 versus 18/10 versus an unnamed “food-grade” claim is confusing on its own, our breakdown of what those numbers mean covers the same grade question this table raises. For the rest of a steel kitchen, our stainless steel colander guide runs the same part-by-part check on a different tool, our reusable food storage guide covers the same steel-versus-silicone-versus-plastic question for containers, and our zero waste kitchen guide covers the rest of the room.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Stainless Steel Ice Cube Trays Rust?

304 and 18/8 are the same corrosion-resistant alloy family and resist rust well through ordinary use, and every steel tray in the table names one or the other. A listing that says only “food-grade” or “stainless steel” without a number doesn’t confirm the corrosion-resistant grade either way, which is why two such listings are not in this comparison.

What Size Are Stainless Steel Ice Cubes?

Most of the eighteen-slot trays here produce cubes around 1 to 1.5 inches, sized for a standard glass. RSVP’s large-cube tray is the deliberate outlier: six cubes per tray at roughly 1.5 by 2 inches, built for a single big cube in a rocks glass rather than a full glass of small ones.

Is a Stainless Steel Ice Cube Tray Better Than Silicone?

Steel wins on durability and disposal: it doesn’t crack at freezer temperature, doesn’t have a documented odor-migration pathway, and is scrap-metal recyclable at end of life. Silicone wins on ease of release — W&P Peak’s cubes pop out individually without a lever or a warm-water step — and usually costs less upfront. Which one is the better buy depends on whether the extra few seconds of technique per batch outweighs the odor and disposal trade-offs for a given kitchen.