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Cookware Material: Silver

Cooking surface: 4/5 Very Good (comparable to stainless steel in stickiness)
Conductive layer: 5/5 Excellent (highest thermal conductivity among all metals)
External surface: 3/5 Good (silver is only about a hard as aluminum, so it scratches easily on stovetop grates)
Examples: Soy Turkiye (Soy Türkiye)
Health safety: 5/5 Excellent (ingesting trace amounts of silver is completely safe, and silver is naturally antimicrobial)

—–

This copper pan is lined with a thin layer of silver
This copper pan is lined with a thin layer of silver

DESCRIPTION AND COMPOSITION

Silver is the most thermally conductive metal in the universe that we know of. It even beats copper by about 10%, depending on metal purity. (In order of highest to lowest thermal conductivity: silver (406 W/m*K), copper (385), gold (314), aluminum (205), typical cookware-grade aluminum alloy (~160), platinum (72), tin (67), cast iron/carbon steel (~50), stainless steel (16), enamel/ceramic/glass (~1), water (0.6), and PTFE such as Teflon (0.25). [Read more…]

In-Depth Product Review: Induction Interface Discs: The Inefficiency of Induction Converter Discs (aka Induction Interface Discs or Diffusers) and What Your Real Alternatives Are

THE SHORT STORY OF WHY INDUCTION CONVERTER INTERFACE DISCS ARE A SCAM AND WHAT YOUR REAL ALTERNATIVES ARE

There are two main instances in which you might even think about using induction converter discs (also known as induction interface discs):

  • You already have some non-induction compatible cookware and want to use them on your new induction stove. (If a kitchen magnet strongly sticks to the bottom of your pots and pans, then they are induction-compatible.)
  • You have an induction stove, but you heard that copper cookware is the best. And unfortunately, most copper cookware is not induction-compatible. (Exception: Prima Matera, which I reviewed here.)

[Read more…]

CenturyLife.Org Cookware Thickness Database: How thick is (insert brand, e.g., All-Clad) cookware? How thick is the disc base? Where was it made, is it induction compatible, and how long is the warranty?

Q: So how thick is All-Clad, really? Or any other brand?

A: See below for a sortable list of cookware thickness. My preferred way of estimating thermal performance of cookware (heat-spreading ability) is to use thermal imaging, but that takes a long time to perform. You can see the results for induction/electric and gas.

Even without thermal images, you can still do some guesstimation of how a particular piece of cookware performs relative to other cookware by looking at the thickness of the cookware. If we assume that everyone is using the same grade of aluminum/copper/thickness and the same thickness of stainless steel, then all else equal, the thicker cookware is more thermally conductive. Obviously those assumptions are shaky, but they can be good enough for a guesstimate if no thermal data is available.

[Read more…]

How to choose an enameled Dutch oven: Is Le Creuset worth it? Le Creuset vs Staub: is Staub worth it? Why does Le Creuset cost so much? What are my alternatives?

Top: All-Clad Stainless. Bottom: Lodge Logic Cast Iron 12-inch (SK10) skillet. The left images are after 4 minutes of medium heat on an 1800-watt induction cooktop; the right images after 5 minutes. (Ignore the reflections, which make the sidewalls of the All-Clad look hotter than they really are.) The All-Clad's aluminum layer is only about half the thickness of the ~5 mm thick cast iron, yet the All-Clad is beating the cast iron in even heating AND speed. Cast iron won't win many even heating contests on the stovetop unless first pre-heated in an oven. Ovens heat from all directions equally, so ALL cookware is even heating in an oven.
Top: All-Clad Stainless. Bottom: Lodge Logic Cast Iron 12-inch (SK10) skillet. The left images are after 4 minutes of medium heat on an 1800-watt induction cooktop; the right images after 5 minutes. (Ignore the reflections, which make the sidewalls of the All-Clad look hotter than they really are.) The All-Clad’s aluminum layer is only about half the thickness of the ~5 mm thick cast iron, yet the All-Clad is beating the cast iron in even heating AND speed. For instance the center vs. edge temperature difference after 4 minutes is 157.5F for the All-Clad and 211.2F for the Lodge.

Le Creuset (pronounced by French as “luh cruh-zay” and Americans as “leh crew-ZAY”; just don’t call it “leh kressit”) is a French company dating back to 1925, when Armand Desaegher, a caster, and Octave Aubecq, an enameler, joined forces and coated cast iron with porcelain enamel. It was a success and the rest is history.

Le Creuset’s claim to fame is their enameled cast iron cookware, especially their Dutch ovens–or French ovens, as they like to call them. So for purposes of this article, I am talking about just enameled cast iron cookware–mostly Dutch ovens, but some topics are applicable to enameled cast iron skillets as well.

“Le Creuset” means “the cauldron” in French, and Le Creuset insists on calling its most famous products “French” ovens. Yet many people call them Dutch ovens, because the Dutch were famous for making high-quality, thick-walled, cast-metal pots in the 1600s, so the term “Dutch oven” stuck regardless of who actually made the pot. It will probably continue to stick despite Le Creuset’s best efforts. But a “Dutch oven” by any other name would cook just as sweetly.

Q: What’s a Dutch oven (also known as a French oven or cocotte, pronounced “ko-KOT”)?

A: A Dutch oven is any thick-walled cooking vessel with a lid. There is no requirement that a Dutch oven be made of cast iron. Dutch ovens can be made from aluminum, copper, and multi-layered materials (e.g., stainless steel bonded with aluminum and/or copper). Ideally, the sidewalls of the Dutch oven should be heat-conductive and the lid should be tight-fitting and heavy enough that you don’t get too much evaporation during cooking.

Q: Why does Le Creuset cost so much?

A: The short answer is that it’s a) made in France using higher-cost labor than you can find in China; b) Le Creuset likely has higher marketing costs that many rivals; c) Le Creuset likely has higher quality control and sourcing standards and enamel quality than many rivals; d) Le Creuset honors its warranties, unlike some companies that pretend that product defects are the result of user abuse; and most importantly e) product prices are determined by what people are willing to pay, not how much it costs to produce a product. Cast iron is a relatively inexpensive material, and despite reasons a) through d) above, I suspect Le Creuset makes very healthy profit on its French ovens anyway.

That said, here’s a word of caution: only buy from companies that manufacture their own products and from well-established cookware product lines if you can help it. Many companies–even big-name companies–merely import product from Chinese factories for resale, and often don’t spend enough resources to verify quality after the first batch. It takes money and expertise to continuously ensure that products lie flat, do not contain harmful or radioactive chemical contaminants, are polished properly, and so on. If a company doesn’t operate its own factories in China, it could end up like Lumber Liquidators, which sold floorboards with excessive formaldehyde that leaked into the air of the homes it was installed in, which increased consumer cancer risks among other things. Lumber Liquidators told its Chinese partner that it wanted in-spec product, but received out-of-spec product anyway, and nobody caught the discrepancy until end-users started getting unexplained symptoms like headaches and nausea. There are many more examples of Chinese and Indian exports containing toxic or radioactive chemicals, and even more examples of Chinese cookware falling apart, such as handles breaking off while in use, frying pans exploding or popping rivets off, enamel coatings cracking and flying off, ceramic roasters shattering, lids breaking, etc. In contrast, chemical contamination and structural failure are almost unheard of with cookware made in the USA/EU, such as All-Clad and Le Creuset.

Q: Is Le Creuset worth it? That is, is worth the price?

[Read more…]

What is the difference between 3-ply (tri-ply) and 5-ply and 7-ply? How many plies do I need??

You occasionally see breathless marketing material about how their fancy cookware has heat-conductive walls that have more than three plies.

Q: What’s a ply?

A: A ply is just another name for “layer.”

Q: How thick does a layer have to be, in order to be counted as a “ply”?

A: It depends on whose marketing department is answering…

[Read more…]

A No-Nonsense Guide to Cookware Materials

THE SHORT ANSWER

For each common cookware material below, I’ll summarize their strengths, weaknesses, and offer a quick summary.

Material Strengths Weaknesses Summary
Aluminum Cheap, Best heat spreading power per pound (a thick aluminum layer can spread heat quite evenly) Easily bends and scratches, chemically reactive, not dishwasher or induction compatible Cookware makers usually coat aluminum with PTFE (such as Teflon) or stainless steel because bare aluminum is chemically reactive and can give metallic off-tastes to food, particularly acidic foods like tomatoes and citrus. Stainless also makes it dishwasher/induction compatible and more resistant to bending. Anodized aluminum is a thin layer of hard aluminum “rust” that can chip/flake off over time and does not provide the structural support or dishwasher/induction compatibility that stainless provides. But anodization that hasn’t chipped off yet makes it relatively chemically inert and resistant to scratches.
Carbon Steel Thinner, lighter, more expensive alternative to cast iron Uneven heating, chemically reactive, rusts, stays hot and takes more care (keep away from small children and pets) Basically a thinner, lighter version of cast iron with similar drawbacks like weight, chemical reactivity, and sensitivity to rust. New carbon steel pans are usually smoother than new cast iron pans, so carbon steel requires less seasoning to make semi-nonstick.
Cast Iron Most cast iron is produced thick (3.5 mm or more) and thus holds a lot of heat. Thus cast iron is slow to heat up and slow to cool down. Can be seasoned to create a semi-nonstick surface. Uneven heating, chemically reactive, rusts, stays hot and takes more care (keep away from small children and pets) Cast iron rusts if not cleaned and stored and seasoned properly. Seasoning means burning oil onto the pan to produce a semi-nonstick, plasticky film that also prevents the iron from rusting. Modern cast iron is bumpy and requires lots of seasoning to make it semi-nonstick. Although the seasoning produces far less pollution than manufacturing PTFEs like Teflon, there aren’t lots of studies on the long-term effects of ingesting small amounts of seasoning each meal, though presumably your body’s natural defenses can handle it. Cast iron is chemically reactive (even through layers of seasoning) and can create metallic off-tastes/off-colors, so avoid cooking acidic foods like tomatoes in bare cast iron. Enamel-coated cast iron gets around the reactivity problem, but enamel can chip off and often costs more.
Copper The best common cookware material in terms of spreading heat quickly and evenly. Expensive and heavy. Higher upkeep than stainless, not dishwasher or induction compatible. Bare copper is chemically reactive and creates toxic compounds, so copper cookware must be lined with something nontoxic like tin or steel. Millimeter for millimeter, copper delivers the fastest and most even heat spreading power of all common cookware materials (silver is slightly better but is softer and cost-prohibitive). Copper is also heavy and stores almost as much heat per millimeter as cast iron. Bare copper changes color when exposed to heat and eventually turns into a dull, matte brownish-black if not polished. Copper is harder than aluminum and not as easily bonded to stainless, so “clad” copper designs (copper coated with stainless steel) usually have very thin layers of copper, to the point where you’re probably better off with thicker aluminum pans coated with stainless, instead. (NOTE: Copper is toxic when ingested in large quantities which is why it is usually layered with tin or stainless steel to prevent its direct contact with fod. But for certain applications like whisking eggs or jam, bare copper is okay. Where one runs into bigger problems is cooking anything acidic in bare copper.)
Glass Transparent, chemically nonreactive TERRIBLE thermal conductivity, fragile. Avoid cookware made purely out of glass/enamel/ceramic for the stovetop. An oven with gentle, even air heating is fine, but stoves deliver highly concentrated heat which will lead to hotspots if the material can’t spread the heat around fast enough. If the cookware has a layer of heat-conductive material like cast iron, carbon steel, aluminum, or copper, and is merely coated with glass/enamel/ceramic, that’s fine.
Stainless Steel Resists dents and bending, chemically less reactive Very bad thermal conductivity Stainless steel resists bending and dents and has no possibility of chipping/fracturing like enamel/glass/ceramic if you accidentally bang it into the side of the sink or drop it. Stainless is also relatively chemically nonreactive, unlike carbon steel or cast iron or copper or aluminum. However, stainless by itself is a poor thermal conductor, so you almost always want to buy stainless steel bonded with a better heat conductor like aluminum or copper; the heat conductor does the job of spreading heat around evenly, and the stainless steel provides a chemically less-reactive cooking surface.
Tin Used as a relatively inexpensive cooking surface on copper Fragile, low melting point, re-tinning gets expensive Copper’s toxicity is usually addressed in one of two ways: bonding stainless steel as a nonreactive cooking surface (expensive but long-lasting), or coating the copper with tin (inexpensive up front but costly long-term to hire someone to re-tin the cookware; for instance, it costs about $100 including shipping and insurance to re-tin a 28cm-diameter frying pan, though some people live close to re-tinners and don’t have to pay shipping/insurance). Tin is a little less sticky than stainless but is very soft. Even if you don’t use metal utensils or nylon scrubbies on tin, and even if you take great care to avoid cooking anything with bones in it (since meat/fish bones can scratch tin), tin wears away eventually and must be re-applied. Lastly, tin melts at about 450F (230C), and it takes only one accident to melt off enough tin to render a pan unusable. Tin is only for households where everybody has a perfect or near-perfect record of never overheating pans.
PTFE (Teflon) Relatively inexpensive, easy to clean Wears off with use, breaks down when overheated, creates pollution, and emits trace amounts of PFOA into your body PTFE like Teflon is chemically inert (will not react to food, so it’s a popular coating for aluminum, which is very chemically reactive). PTFE is very slippery and easy to clean. However, PTFE is fragile and will eventually wear off with use, especially if you use metal utensils or stiffer nylon scrubbies on it. PTFE begins to break down and emit potentially toxic gases at about 400F depending on exact formulation, with the breakdown accelerating as temperatures increase. Bonding PTFE to cookware emits PFOA pollution which is toxic and takes decades to break down in the environment. There is almost no PFOA left in the cookware, but if you do cook on PTFE nonstick pans, you may eventually ingest very small amounts of PFOA. The amounts are small enough by themselves to not pose a health risk according to US government standards, but PFOA stays in your body for a very long time.

Back to How to Choose Cookware.

THE LONG ANSWER

If you want to know more about the common cookware materials, please see their respective information pages below:

  • Aluminum
  • Carbon Steel
  • Cast Iron
  • Copper (Cuivre)
  • Enamel/Glass/Ceramic
  • Silver
  • Stainless Steel (Inox)
  • Tin
  • PTFE (e.g., Teflon)

If that’s not enough for you, then also see Thermal Properties of Metals.  You may also want to see the electric and gas even heating rankings.

Back to How to Choose Cookware.

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