Pots and Pans

How well do you know your pots and pans?   Do you know what advantages there are to cooking with cast iron or copper?  Well, today is your lucky day to find out.



Pots and pans can be made of all sorts of things.  Metals that don't react with our food (like acids in tomatoes) and that conduct heat well are used in pans most often.  There are also enameled metals, coated metals and glass type cookware.





Metal

1. Aluminum

Aluminum has a very high rate of heat distribution - second only to copper. This means that if you change the flame, the change in the amount of heating will very rapidly be noticed in the pot. This agility is desirable for many cooking methods. The problem is that aluminum is highly reactive and will give acidic foods a bad metallic taste (and could be toxic).





2. Copper

Copper is quick to heat evenly, but is usually mixed with tin or stainless steel in order to prevent it from reacting with food and leaching into said food.  It is favored by many chefs, but is quite expensive.



3. Cast Iron

Cast Iron, the old stand by may just be the healthiest choice of cookware.  A little iron leaches into all food cooked in cast iron, thereby giving your blood an added boost.  It does however have to be seasoned each time you use it and should not be washed with soap if you want to preserve the non-stick qualities that build up with continued use.  It is also quite heavy.



4. Stainless Steel

Stainless steel's great attributes are ease of care and tremendous durability. Stainless is non reactive and can be run in a dishwasher. It's also ductile and much more resistant to thermal shock cracking than iron. It is very hard and does not bend like thinner pieces of aluminum can. It doesn't tarnish or react like copper. It's also fairly inexpensive and when it's clean it's beautiful. This combination of attributes is very attractive for cookware - as long as you can tolerate the slower rate of heat transmission that is a fundamental property of steel.





5. Carbon Steel

In cookware, carbon steel is an excellent heat conductor. It is suitable with all heat sources, including induction. It is a high density metal and therefore doesn?t retain odors. If non-coated and if protected from rusting, it will last a lifetime. It withstands high temperatures and allows for longer preheating. A steel pan may come with different finishes. One is a silver finish achieved through additional polishing in the manufacturing process. It is then commonly called ?carbon steel?.







Coated and Composite Cookware

6. Enameled Cast Iron

Available in many beautiful colors, this is another alternative to cast iron.  It is dishwasher safe and doesn't require seasoning with every use.  It's expensive and heavy, but fun to cook with.



7. Anodized Aluminum

 Anodization involves placing the aluminum or aluminum alloy in a chemical bath consisting of electrolytes like sulfuric acid, and then running an electrical current through the bath.  The result is a protective layer that is thicker than the naturally-occurring oxidation process, and which resists corrosion for a longer time.  The advantage of cooking with this material is its non-stick qualities, strength, non-reactive properties, heat retention and as an added perk, it holds dyes so the outside can be colored.

8. Enamel over Steel

At the lowest price levels you get rustable carbon steel coated with enamel or nonstick. To aid heat distribution there is often a clad bottom or sometimes just copper paint on the bottom. This kind of cookware isn't worth the low price because of poor heat distribution and short life expectancy. As the coating comes off these pieces will rust up and be unpleasant to use.  Chantal makes a much higher quality carbon steel cookware, but it's also much more expensive.





9. Non-Stick



Non-Metallic Cookware

10. Glass

Glass cookware,  nowadays, consists primarily of bakeware dishes in various shapes, liquid measuring cups, and mixing bowls, all made of borosilicate glass, the same kind used for laboratory ware.  Pyrex glass cookware can withstand severe temperature differentials, such as cold liquid on the inside and a direct flame on the outside. It is subject to chipping, scratching, and cracking, though. Such minor damage, if liquid works its way in and then is subject to rapid heating, can cause the glass to shatter. When this happens in the oven, it makes a mess, but at least nobody is hit by flying glass. Fear of such catastrophic failure on the stovetop may be the reason few, if any, ceramic glass cookware pots and pans are made anymore.





11. Ceramic

Ceramic cookware can withstand extremely high heats (2700 degrees!!), it's easy to clean, it can be used in the oven, on the stove and in the microwave.  It is dishwasher safe and is scratch resistant.  Check out this website of some really cool ceramic cookware called Xtrema.



12. Glass-Ceramic







13. Silicone

Used in baking, silicone is a type of synthetic rubber created from bonded silicon and oxygen. Silicon is a very common natural element found in sand and rock - it makes up 28% of the earth's crust.  It is fairly new, so there are no long term studies on safety issues.  It comes in all sorts of wonderful colors, is heat resistant, flexible, cools quickly, light weight and recyclable.  It may not be as non-stick as manufacturers would have us believe and lower quality (read cheap) silicone products may have fillers that are hazardous to our health.