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pecuniumPots and pans
Cooking is, by and large, the application of heat to food. It can be done over open flames (spit roasting is a wonderful thing, and too rarely done), but the more common methods involve putting the food into a pot, heating the pot, and then the pot heating the food.
It’s done that way because it’s easier to control the way the heat affects the food.
Which means the pots and pans have to be good at several things.
1: Absorbing heat
2: Conducting heat
3: Apply heat to the contents evenly.
What sort of stove you use matters some. Electric has the advantage of spreading the heat more evenly. It has the disadvantage that changes in heat take place slowly. The only way to reduce heat quickly is to take the pan off the fire.
Gas stoves have a different problem, where the actual flame hits the pot, the heat is more intense. This can be used, but mostly it presents a risk that food in the middle of the pan will scorch. Using a heat diffuser moderates this. I have three, for my four-burner stove, all they are is a piece of cast iron, enameled on the top. When they are in place it takes a couple of minutes longer to heat the pan, but the hot spot is larger, and not so prone to spikes of temperature when I up the flame.
They also allow me to finish a dish by turning off the heat, and letting the residual energy in the diffuser, diffuse into the pan.
Which brings us to the pans.
There are four materials, commonly used as pans; cast iron, steel, aluminum and copper. Corning made a line of glassware for the stovetop. It has it’s own quirks, but I like it. It can often be found second-hand. It is mostly found as sauce-pans and pots, not skillets.
There are two factors in how a pot conducts energy, it’s ability to conduct heat (conductivity), and it’s ability to store heat (capacity). Combined those make up it’s qualities as a pan. They are affected by one more factor, the ability of the pan to release the heat, once it’s been absorbed (call it diffusion)
Copper happens to be very poor in conductivity, but good at capacity, which means it has the best, overall, diffusion; so the better stainless steel pans are often covered, on the bottom, with copper. If it weren’t that copper is very reactive (which is a different aspect of pans which has to be considered) and toxic, we’d just use copper for everything. Since it is toxic, and reactive no one makes pans with it. It does cool down quickly, so unless it’s clad, that has to be taken into account. It can be useful, so long as the food won’t react too it. It’s heavy, and expensive.
To deal with that the pans made from it are lined, or clad, with steel, aluminum, or tin. They are expensive, and tempermental. If the bonding isn’t good, it will separate. If the copper is exposed, it can scratch, and tarnish. If acids get on it; it will tarnish, and get a green scale.
Steel is the worst of the lot. It has high conductivity, and mediocre capacity. Put a thin steel pan on the stove, and it will have a hot spot right over the heating element, and be much cooler where the heat isn’t in direct contact. To fix this, pot makers can thicken the bottom, or apply another metal to it, copper is the preferred metal.
Steel comes in two varities, stainless, and carbon. Carbon steel is treated much as cast iron.
Aluminum is right behind copper in diffusion, but it’s also reactive. To keep it from affecting foods flavors (and from leaching into the food, which has been implicated in Alzheimer’s) professional aluminum cookware is anodized. From a design standpoint I don’t care for most aluminum cookware, because the inside of the pots have bossed rivets, and they make it hard to clean.
Less expensive are teflon lined pans. Usually cheap pans with teflon coatings aren’t worth the money. They tend to be thin, which makes for hot-spots. If they get too hot the lining will separate. One can’t use metal utensils on them, or the finish will scratch. The same, basic complaints apply to the more expensive teflon-lined pans, though the heavier pans are less likely to separate the bond, and the thicker linings are less likely to be scratched all the way to the base.
Cast iron is worse than either steel, or aluminum, in conductivity, and in capacity, though it’s not much behind steel, pound for pound.
That qualification is why cast iron has such a beloved place in the kitchen, no matter how delicately it’s made (and Griswold made some fairly light cast iron) it’s massy. That makes it a great battery, and means it releases that heat slowly. Put it over a diffuser and it makes slow-cooking on the stovetop really easy. On a simmer burner, with diffuser, one can keep a pot of water below the boil.
Care and feeding.
All except the cast iron are washed pretty much the same, soap and water. If something is baked/burnt on, a stiff brush/scrubbing pad is needed. For anodized aluminum avoid hard scrubbing, whenever possible, because the layer which is anodized is only a few mils thick.
Teflon, doesn’t get scoured. On the plus side, it should never need it. If something gets burnt onto the bottom, the lining is toast, and the pan is trash.
Cast Iron.
Lots of people are afraid of cast iron. They think seasoning it is arcane, and that care is difficult. Both are false. Seasoning is the process of varnishing the inside of the pan. The first time is the only one that take work.
Coat the pan with oil (I like grapeseed, because it has a high smoke-point, but any oil will do, and in a pinch solid vegetable shortening can be used).
Place the pan, upside down, in the oven, and turn it to 350-400 degrees.
After 30-45 minutes, turn off the oven.
That’s it.
Because the surface is made of oil, boiled to a hard finish, soap isn’t used on cast iron; it would remove the season, and things would stick. For the same reason, metal implements aren’t the best idea. If you do get metal spatulas, don’t get curved ones and see to it the corners are rounded.
Instead the pan is wiped out, heated and then either buffed with rag/paper towel, or water is added, and then stirred. I’m not worried about bacteria that can survive that treatment.
*Warning* Do this only with high quality cast iron. Poorly cast iron can be “foamy” and the shock of the water can cause it to break. If you buy cheap cast iron, test it for hot spots. That’s a sign of foaming. If you have hot spots, don’t clean it that way; best to just chuck it and buy better pans.
When things get baked on, salt, or baking soda; rubbed with a rag, will clean it out. The same thing will smooth the surface, and make it less likely that food will stick.
After the pan is clean, a wipe of fresh oil, and a couple of minutes on the heat are all that needs be done. All in all, cast iron is at least as easy to maintain as any other pot.
It does, however, need to be used. If it sits too long unused the season goes stale, and starts to smell a trifle rancid (artificial shortenings will go bad faster. As a general rule, the higher the smoke point of the oil, the better). If you are going to store the pan, put it in a 350F oven for about 30 minutes to harden the finish. If it has a lid, use a piece of cardboard to let some air in.
If it goes off, just put a little oil in it, turn it upside down, and bake it again.
Brands I think are worth the money.
Steel: Revere Ware.
Copper: All Clad, Copper Core (treat at steel)
Aluminum: Calphalon
Cast Iron: Lodge is the only maker of new cast iron I recommend, but there are a couple of brands which can be found second hand, Griswold, and Wagner. Griswold will say, Erie, on it, even if it doesn’t have the name. It will also have a + shaped symbol. Wagner will say Wagner. Other than that, heavy is what you’re looking for. If it has good weight, and the price is nice, buy it. Then put it on a diffuser, and make pancakes, big pancakes; pancakes which go from edge to edge.
Then look for abnormal spots on the pancake. If there are burn marks, which aren’t concentric to the heat source, it’s a bad pan. Use it for roasting coffee.
There is a special category of cast-iron; enamel ware. There are basically two styles, those which line the whole pot, inside and out, and those which line the exterior, but not the inside. Le Crueset makes the former (except for the omelette pan, which they line with teflon. I wish that was an option, but it isn’t). If the interior isn’t lined, treat just as you would cast iron. If it is, treat it as if it were steel, or aluminum.
There’s a Danish brand, Deska, (which I think you can only find second-hand) notable because the handles, which are wooden, are on a fast-pitch screw. That means you can move something to the oven to stay warm/brown the top. Just spin the handle and close the door. When you want to take it out, just open the door and put the handle back on. It’s great for a gratin&eeacute;e.
Reactivity: Aluminum reacts to acids, and gets a white bloom. It can lend a metallic taste to food.
Steel: Stainless steel is, largely, non-reactive. The thing to be careful of is corroding the trace metals which make it rostfrei. The big culprit is salt. The easiest way to avoid that is to never put it directly onto the pan. When boiling pasta, etc., boil the water, then add the salt.
The second culprit is acid. Don’t let acidic things sit in the pot for long.
Cast Iron/Carbon Steel: They can add a metallic taste to acidic foods. Carbon steel does this more than iron. Mostly it’s not obvious, but it does increase the iron content in acidic foods. As with stainless steel, don’t let acids sit in the pan too long. It’s not as permanent a problem, but it can strip the season, and make it needful to reseason the pan.
Cooking is, by and large, the application of heat to food. It can be done over open flames (spit roasting is a wonderful thing, and too rarely done), but the more common methods involve putting the food into a pot, heating the pot, and then the pot heating the food.
It’s done that way because it’s easier to control the way the heat affects the food.
Which means the pots and pans have to be good at several things.
1: Absorbing heat
2: Conducting heat
3: Apply heat to the contents evenly.
What sort of stove you use matters some. Electric has the advantage of spreading the heat more evenly. It has the disadvantage that changes in heat take place slowly. The only way to reduce heat quickly is to take the pan off the fire.
Gas stoves have a different problem, where the actual flame hits the pot, the heat is more intense. This can be used, but mostly it presents a risk that food in the middle of the pan will scorch. Using a heat diffuser moderates this. I have three, for my four-burner stove, all they are is a piece of cast iron, enameled on the top. When they are in place it takes a couple of minutes longer to heat the pan, but the hot spot is larger, and not so prone to spikes of temperature when I up the flame.
They also allow me to finish a dish by turning off the heat, and letting the residual energy in the diffuser, diffuse into the pan.
Which brings us to the pans.
There are four materials, commonly used as pans; cast iron, steel, aluminum and copper. Corning made a line of glassware for the stovetop. It has it’s own quirks, but I like it. It can often be found second-hand. It is mostly found as sauce-pans and pots, not skillets.
There are two factors in how a pot conducts energy, it’s ability to conduct heat (conductivity), and it’s ability to store heat (capacity). Combined those make up it’s qualities as a pan. They are affected by one more factor, the ability of the pan to release the heat, once it’s been absorbed (call it diffusion)
Copper happens to be very poor in conductivity, but good at capacity, which means it has the best, overall, diffusion; so the better stainless steel pans are often covered, on the bottom, with copper. If it weren’t that copper is very reactive (which is a different aspect of pans which has to be considered) and toxic, we’d just use copper for everything. Since it is toxic, and reactive no one makes pans with it. It does cool down quickly, so unless it’s clad, that has to be taken into account. It can be useful, so long as the food won’t react too it. It’s heavy, and expensive.
To deal with that the pans made from it are lined, or clad, with steel, aluminum, or tin. They are expensive, and tempermental. If the bonding isn’t good, it will separate. If the copper is exposed, it can scratch, and tarnish. If acids get on it; it will tarnish, and get a green scale.
Steel is the worst of the lot. It has high conductivity, and mediocre capacity. Put a thin steel pan on the stove, and it will have a hot spot right over the heating element, and be much cooler where the heat isn’t in direct contact. To fix this, pot makers can thicken the bottom, or apply another metal to it, copper is the preferred metal.
Steel comes in two varities, stainless, and carbon. Carbon steel is treated much as cast iron.
Aluminum is right behind copper in diffusion, but it’s also reactive. To keep it from affecting foods flavors (and from leaching into the food, which has been implicated in Alzheimer’s) professional aluminum cookware is anodized. From a design standpoint I don’t care for most aluminum cookware, because the inside of the pots have bossed rivets, and they make it hard to clean.
Less expensive are teflon lined pans. Usually cheap pans with teflon coatings aren’t worth the money. They tend to be thin, which makes for hot-spots. If they get too hot the lining will separate. One can’t use metal utensils on them, or the finish will scratch. The same, basic complaints apply to the more expensive teflon-lined pans, though the heavier pans are less likely to separate the bond, and the thicker linings are less likely to be scratched all the way to the base.
Cast iron is worse than either steel, or aluminum, in conductivity, and in capacity, though it’s not much behind steel, pound for pound.
That qualification is why cast iron has such a beloved place in the kitchen, no matter how delicately it’s made (and Griswold made some fairly light cast iron) it’s massy. That makes it a great battery, and means it releases that heat slowly. Put it over a diffuser and it makes slow-cooking on the stovetop really easy. On a simmer burner, with diffuser, one can keep a pot of water below the boil.
Care and feeding.
All except the cast iron are washed pretty much the same, soap and water. If something is baked/burnt on, a stiff brush/scrubbing pad is needed. For anodized aluminum avoid hard scrubbing, whenever possible, because the layer which is anodized is only a few mils thick.
Teflon, doesn’t get scoured. On the plus side, it should never need it. If something gets burnt onto the bottom, the lining is toast, and the pan is trash.
Cast Iron.
Lots of people are afraid of cast iron. They think seasoning it is arcane, and that care is difficult. Both are false. Seasoning is the process of varnishing the inside of the pan. The first time is the only one that take work.
Coat the pan with oil (I like grapeseed, because it has a high smoke-point, but any oil will do, and in a pinch solid vegetable shortening can be used).
Place the pan, upside down, in the oven, and turn it to 350-400 degrees.
After 30-45 minutes, turn off the oven.
That’s it.
Because the surface is made of oil, boiled to a hard finish, soap isn’t used on cast iron; it would remove the season, and things would stick. For the same reason, metal implements aren’t the best idea. If you do get metal spatulas, don’t get curved ones and see to it the corners are rounded.
Instead the pan is wiped out, heated and then either buffed with rag/paper towel, or water is added, and then stirred. I’m not worried about bacteria that can survive that treatment.
*Warning* Do this only with high quality cast iron. Poorly cast iron can be “foamy” and the shock of the water can cause it to break. If you buy cheap cast iron, test it for hot spots. That’s a sign of foaming. If you have hot spots, don’t clean it that way; best to just chuck it and buy better pans.
When things get baked on, salt, or baking soda; rubbed with a rag, will clean it out. The same thing will smooth the surface, and make it less likely that food will stick.
After the pan is clean, a wipe of fresh oil, and a couple of minutes on the heat are all that needs be done. All in all, cast iron is at least as easy to maintain as any other pot.
It does, however, need to be used. If it sits too long unused the season goes stale, and starts to smell a trifle rancid (artificial shortenings will go bad faster. As a general rule, the higher the smoke point of the oil, the better). If you are going to store the pan, put it in a 350F oven for about 30 minutes to harden the finish. If it has a lid, use a piece of cardboard to let some air in.
If it goes off, just put a little oil in it, turn it upside down, and bake it again.
Brands I think are worth the money.
Steel: Revere Ware.
Copper: All Clad, Copper Core (treat at steel)
Aluminum: Calphalon
Cast Iron: Lodge is the only maker of new cast iron I recommend, but there are a couple of brands which can be found second hand, Griswold, and Wagner. Griswold will say, Erie, on it, even if it doesn’t have the name. It will also have a + shaped symbol. Wagner will say Wagner. Other than that, heavy is what you’re looking for. If it has good weight, and the price is nice, buy it. Then put it on a diffuser, and make pancakes, big pancakes; pancakes which go from edge to edge.
Then look for abnormal spots on the pancake. If there are burn marks, which aren’t concentric to the heat source, it’s a bad pan. Use it for roasting coffee.
There is a special category of cast-iron; enamel ware. There are basically two styles, those which line the whole pot, inside and out, and those which line the exterior, but not the inside. Le Crueset makes the former (except for the omelette pan, which they line with teflon. I wish that was an option, but it isn’t). If the interior isn’t lined, treat just as you would cast iron. If it is, treat it as if it were steel, or aluminum.
There’s a Danish brand, Deska, (which I think you can only find second-hand) notable because the handles, which are wooden, are on a fast-pitch screw. That means you can move something to the oven to stay warm/brown the top. Just spin the handle and close the door. When you want to take it out, just open the door and put the handle back on. It’s great for a gratin&eeacute;e.
Reactivity: Aluminum reacts to acids, and gets a white bloom. It can lend a metallic taste to food.
Steel: Stainless steel is, largely, non-reactive. The thing to be careful of is corroding the trace metals which make it rostfrei. The big culprit is salt. The easiest way to avoid that is to never put it directly onto the pan. When boiling pasta, etc., boil the water, then add the salt.
The second culprit is acid. Don’t let acidic things sit in the pot for long.
Cast Iron/Carbon Steel: They can add a metallic taste to acidic foods. Carbon steel does this more than iron. Mostly it’s not obvious, but it does increase the iron content in acidic foods. As with stainless steel, don’t let acids sit in the pan too long. It’s not as permanent a problem, but it can strip the season, and make it needful to reseason the pan.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 10:19 am (UTC)If you want to see the effects of really low thermal conductivity, try titanium. These make great lightweight camping saucepans for boiling things, but trying to fry anything in them over a gas stove is painful -- the heat distribution is just so uneven.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 04:42 pm (UTC)When you look at heat capacity the chart goes like this.
When the numbers get crunched, copper, stell and cast iron come out about the same; all having about 1.5 times the effective ability to store energy (based on the specific heat, density, and conductivity.
At which point mass, and the rate of release come into play. That's why, good, aluminum cookware, tends to be a lot thicker than steel.
I agree, titanium is a lousy cookware. As you say, about all it's good for is boiling water. Better, when backpacking, to plan things which bake in the fire. That means less in the way of clean-up, less in the way of soap required (good on two fronts, weight, and footprint) and less in the way of food which is poorly cooked.
When camping, cast iron is great; this does assume one is using a car, or mule to carry the gear. It takes abuse well, doesn't, takes the heat of the fire, and tempers it. The only thing to worry about is leaving it on too high a fire for too long, which will peel the season right off. But that can be fixed; and with care it can even be fixed in camp, over that same fire.
For all the quirks of cast iron I think it's probably the best compromise out there. Easy to care for, and forgiving of error. It takes some practice, but so does grass fed beef, and stir-fry.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 05:24 pm (UTC)The ability to _store_ energy has minimal influence on cooking performance for any process that takes long enough to reach a "steady state". Flambeing might be an issue, but most cooking isn't going to care too much. Besides which, "storage" is effectively "inertia" here and as anyone used to cooking on gas and forced to use an electric stove will moan, that's a _bad_ thing for cookery.
The conductivity also has negligible effect on storage (if we can ignore external heat losses). Even the density doesn't matter - it's just the total mass that's significant and the relative thickness of the differing materials (except cast iron and Ti) mean that this is less significant between Al, copper and steel than the simple density would suggest (unless you're using cheap thin Al pans).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 08:23 pm (UTC)How does conductivty not relate to storage, as the contact with external sources is part and parcel of the equation? Steady state is a hard thing to attain without something that can store enough heat to attain it (which why thin pans are bad, and even cast iron wants a diffuser... the area right on the flame/element will get hot.
I'm confused as to what you are trying to say.
TK
A scientific answer on cookware and conductivity
Date: 2007-08-08 01:22 am (UTC)"Copper happens to be very poor in conductivity, but good at capacity". It has the highest conductivity at 401 W/m*K and lowest capacity at 390 J/kg*K. That's why it doesn't have hot spots over a gas flame: it conducts the heat away from the area being directly heated. The low capacity means that it cools quickly and removing the food from the flame is going to increase the chance that it won't boil over because there will be little residual heat for the copper to give up to the food - most will already have been conducted to the food and what's still in the copper is low compared to other metals.
"Steel is the worst of the lot. It has high conductivity, and mediocre capacity". It has the lowest conductivity at 16 to 51 W/m*K. It has middling heat capacity, higher than copper or cast iron, lower than aluminium. "Put a thin steel pan on the stove, and it will have a hot spot right over the heating element, and be much cooler where the heat isn’t in direct contact". The low conductivity is why it has hot spots over a gas flame: it isn't conducting the heat away form the area exposed to the flame as quickly as copper. The middling heat capacity means that it gets hot quite quickly because it doesn't take much energy to raise its temperature one degree. "To fix this, pot makers can thicken the bottom" which increases the area available within the walls of the pan for conducting the heat away from the area exposed to the flame and hence decreases the concentration of heat at those spots. It also increases the mass to be heated.
"Cast iron is worse than either steel, or aluminum, in conductivity" is not what the measured numbers say. Those say that it is low compared to aluminium and copper but still significantly above steel. "and in capacity" it depends whether you mean higher is worse or lower is worse and that depends on whether you want residual heat or responsiveness to changes in applied heat. You appear to value responsiveness more and since the heat capacity is close to copper it would be better than steel or aluminium pound for pound. But aluminium has very low density so it would need to be thick to get the same mass as cast iron, hence practical aluminium pans will have lower total capacity than the cast iron equivalent of similar wall thickness.
"At which point mass, and the rate of release come into play. That's why, good, aluminum cookware, tends to be a lot thicker than steel". The rate of release is high - high thermal conductivity - but the mass isn't there so the total heat stored in an aluminium pan of similar wall thickness is lower and you need to have thicker walls to match the amount of stored heat in a steel pan. However, there's one fact missing in your comparison: the thermal conductivity of the anodised layer and what effect it may have on the thermal conductivity from the pan walls to the food. If it has a low thermal conductivity that would explain observed low ability to transfer the heat to the food. Boundary layer effects from coatings can be very significant.
"Steady state is a hard thing to attain without something that can store enough heat to attain it (which why thin pans are bad". Steady state is when you have heated the bottom of the pan to the highest temperature it will get to and water is boiling away as a result of heat being conducted to it. The temperatures are stable throughout the pan (not the same, just not changing any more) and only the amount of water left is changing. A steady simmer for stew making is an example of steady state cooking. Thermal capacity is irrelevant in this state because the pan is not changing temperature any more so it's neither absorbing heat from the flame nor giving any of its stored heat up to the water (not quite true - it's actually both storing and giving it up at the same rate but that's potentially confusing...).
A scientific answer on cookware and conductivity, part 2
Date: 2007-08-08 01:23 am (UTC)"Steady state is a hard thing to attain without something that can store enough heat to attain it". The mass is completely irrelevant to whether there is a steady state. You can get one with a sheet of aluminium foil or barbell weight. Each will have different temperatures throughout the material and will take different times to cool down once heat is removed but that's not a steady state situation. The foil wouldn't be the ideal material for coddling an egg, say: too little mass so minimal heat stored within it, which is why you can touch dry aluminium foil that has been in a hot oven without getting burnt if you allow even a small amount of cooling time. Think of Space Shuttle thermal tiles taken out of an oven for another example: very low thermal conductivity and heat capacity so the outer layer gives off its minimal amount of stored heat to the air quickly and the next layer inside isn't able to replenish that lost heat, so you can touch them. The ultimate useless pan material.
"The mass factor is why the bottoms of steel are thicker (to increse storage/slow uptake)". To increase the cross-sectional area of the pan walls to increase the rate of heat transfer and decrease the unevenness of temperature rise by increasing the transfer of heat to other parts of the pan.
Just in case you like qualifications, I have a degree in applied chemistry which included subjects such as heat exchanger design, which includes studying rates of heat flow through materials to design a heat exchanger that will exchange the required amount of heat. It's still possible that those who write cooking books define the terms to mean exactly the opposite of their scientific meaning. That opposite meaning is how you appear to be using them when writing about cooking utensils. And in accepted cooking word usage you could be exactly correct, even while writing scientifically incorrect statements. :)
Re: A scientific answer on cookware and conductivity, part 2
Date: 2007-08-08 03:22 pm (UTC)If I take a pan, add a chunk of meat, portion of vegetables, I want that pan to no lose too much heat, nor require much change to the flame to regain the heat it does lose. I want the fluctuations to be minor, and, pretty much, self-correcting. That's the steady state in question.
I'm not clear about the meaning of the sentence To increase the cross-sectional area of the pan walls to increase the rate of heat transfer and decrease the unevenness of temperature rise by increasing the transfer of heat to other parts of the pan.
If I understand what you are trying to say, (a thicker pan wall will make the floor of the pan heat more evenly/stay in balance (by having latent energy from being heated, which moves back to the bottom when something drains heat), that's not the way they work on the stovetop. Even with really heavy cast iron, the flame adds more heat; with more speed, than the rest of the pan.
Even, thick, copper, for example, does generate hot spots over flame
Re: A scientific answer on cookware and conductivity, part 2
Date: 2007-08-08 04:40 pm (UTC)As you say, you can't completely eliminate hot spots anyway and something like iron with it's high density is going to have more mass to absorb and store heat than aluminium if they have the same wall thickness. That means more even heating even though the smaller mass of aluminium is more efficient weight for weight. And you just don't get the same mass of aluminium in cookware anyway.
For your consistent temperature requirement when adding more pieces of food, high heat capacity is the objective. Which implies both high specific heat capacity and high enough density to get sufficient mass in the cookware. And that's what iron or steel can deliver.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 04:29 pm (UTC)Given my druthers, I use cast iron, or visionware. Yeah, my 14' skillet's heavy, and I can't do a tossed sauté but that's about it. I have steel for deep pots, but dutch ovens for things like daubes and stews.
They don't take up more space (and for sauté pans, less; because the walls are shorter) and the sloped sides make it possible to nest them; though I commend a liner between the pans). The only hassle is lifting a stack to get to the bottm pan.
I don't don't like molds, regardless of material, because of the cleaning issue, as well as heat concentrations.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 05:56 pm (UTC)My basic rule of thumb is "If I can't pick it up when it's full of water, I might want to look for something smaller in volume/lighter in construction" and while this is a variable metric, it's a good one to keep in mind--which is why your stock pot is steel, more than likely.
And, bless their hearts, I know people who will go out and buy the 10-gallon cauldron because it exists, or the skillet that measures 2 feet across.
I realize that where you are this is not that great a problem, but if one lives in a damp climate and has cast iron not in regular use, re-seasoning it regularly even if it won't be used soon should be considered--I have seen pans in storage in the back of the cupboard get sizeable rusty spots down here in the South. Re-seasoning even the unused cast iron is easier than scaling the rust off.
The Visionware was mighty fine stuff--even more resilient than ordinary pyrex. I never warmed up to the cranberry-colored kind, though.
I've noticed that even with jello molds, the ones people use the most are the simplest shapes, because it's easier to get them clean--and gelatin will wash off with really hot water without much scrubbing! Really fancy cake pans are a pain. There's a reason great-grandma made gugelhupf on special occasions only.
*Not the burner, the stove top.
**We mislaid the lid to the 14" skillet once, and found out that a good-sized clay drip saucer for a flowerpot does the trick quite nicely for oven use--you can even fill the saucer with water like a dutch oven, but then you'd want to put it on right-side up instead of upside down.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 08:26 pm (UTC)But that does require that the season be solid.
I have some cranberry visionware, I use it for presentation (well, the 6" skillet is good for sweating veggies, melting butter, etc.).
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 08:55 pm (UTC)Which is annoying, because I like the color, qua color.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 09:43 am (UTC)My instinct is to take steel wool to it to remove the rust, wash and rinse it, dry it, and then re-season. Thoughts on that plan? Suggestions?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 03:57 pm (UTC)The smoother you can get it, the better, but buff and reseason is the method of repair.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-07-28 01:37 am (UTC)I'm developing a liking for iron, because it lets me simmer things low and slow. Long and low and slow is good for the things I tend to do, and makes for very tasty and tender stews.
I can see some other possibilities here, if I got an iron skillet good and hot, I could do some nice things with cuts of beef. Rare on the inside, seared on the outside would make me a Rather Happy Girl.
Good to read, and I like how you break things down piece by piece.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-28 01:39 am (UTC)The only thing to be aware of is the heat required to do it, is hard on the season (which is just a varnish of vegetable oils, and animal fats).
So it will take some care and feeding of the pan when you are done.
Some of the physics of that will come up later.
TK