Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where one man drives by the dragon that eats the moon by harassing it with food. I’m your Celestial Savior, Jon O’Guin, and today, we’re wrapping up a discussion about Pans we started last week. Last week, we described the absolute basics for what defines a pan versus a pot, and explained that the kind of pan you use can affect your cooking results. So today, we’re going in chronological order to explain what makes each of the Five Major types of pan tick.

COPPER

“I came seeking copper and found pans”

Be honest, you expected Cast Iron to be here, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong. Man was making copper pots CENTURIES before Iron pans.  Copper’s a bit of a weird material these days: the metal itself, while a popular option for its beautiful color, is too reactive for many cooking surface qualities: it can leave streaks on pale foods and reacts to acidic ones, leaching metal ions into the dish. As such, many modern versions are lined with either stainless steel or tin.

However, it’s a facet of copper’s reactivity that gives it one of its strengths: copper is an amazing heat conductor. A copper skillet placed on a burner will reach temp faster than any of the other options here. Small problem: if used on too HIGH a temp, it will also start emitting chemical fumes that aren’t great for you. (and, if it’s lined with tin, the lining can start to fall apart) This makes copper great for fast cooking, and makes it somewhat great for serving: since the metal conducts heat so well, it will COOL quickly too, meaning you can safely set the pot on…I forgot the phrase “hot pad” for a minute there. I had to google “cooking glove, but it’s just a square”

I also apparently forgot the phrase “OVEN MITT”.

Copper’s nice on a good burner over medium-high heat. The downside? You have to polish it fairly regularly to keep it looking nice, and it’s expensive. Copper’s useful for a ton of things, so there’s high demand for the metal.

Summary

Pros: very good heat conductor, heats up quickly, looks great, nice for serving, minor antimicrobial properties

Cons:  Often needs to be lined or it’s too reactive for many tasks, expensive, requires special care, avoid harder metal tools

Cast Iron

My ongoing effort to use this one nice picture of my cast-iron pan continues.

Cast Iron is one of the signature cooking tools of the American homestead: a heavy black chunk of metal, ready to be used over fires, on burners, in ovens, during combat, etc. Where the high heat conductivity of copper made it very easy to heat, Cast Iron is the opposite: it takes a long while to warm up. Many recipes will call for up to 10 minutes to preheat a pan before cooking. And that has several advantages:

See, the reason it takes so long to heat up is iron holds heat very well, meaning that once the pan IS heating, it will STAY heated. Many pans will have temperature drops once the food is added, but Cast Iron minimizes that. It’s also relatively difficult to get hot spots in a cast iron pan because of this (unless you’re using too small and weak a burner to heat a large pan.)

The biggest issue with cast iron pans is their variability, and THAT depends a lot on their seasoning:

Seasoning, as I know we’ve covered before, but will cover again, refers to a thin layer of polymerized fat coating a cast iron pan. It’s bit up over frequent use/maintenance, and it is the CORE component to a LOT of what makes the pan great. Essentially, if used regularly and properly, a cast iron pan will become MORE non-stick over time, and actually become immune to several of the bugaboos of lightly seasoned cast iron: normal cast iron, like copper, can leach iron ions into acidic foods cooked in it. But not if it’s well-seasoned. Soap can tear off layers of cast iron seasoning, leading to the common refrain of “never use soap on a cast iron pan”, a lesson I’ve taught in the past, and am sufficiently connected with rural communities to know that marriages have teetered in the balance when that lesson is not adhered to. But, fun fact: since modern soaps are a lot less physically and chemically abrasive, that rule is actually much weaker than it used to be! Technically, if you’ve seasoned your pan faithfully, it SHOULD be able to stand a brief wash with soapy water no problem.

I say that knowing in my heart that I have likely started at least one fight in the future. But it IS the TRUTH.

But it’s that qualifier that gets you: SO much about caring for a cast iron pan, and so much of its strength, relies on proper seasoning. Do it wrong, and you’ll get rust (which you can just scrape off, give the pan another seasoning, and move on) or scaling, a process of under-oiling or improperly seasoning a pan, where it ends up flaking off seasoning in large chunks. And THAT will require you basically scrub the pan down thoroughly and start over on seasoning. (It should be noted that, while the initial seasoning of a pan is a slightly involved process (you have to rub the pan completely in oil, then put in in a hot oven for half an hour, and then repeat the process a couple times), in most cases afterward, you just season a pan by, after cooking in it and cleaning it, rubbing a small bit of oil over it until it’s gone.

Maintain it well, and the only problem with cast iron is that it’s heavy as shit and will burn your hand if you’re not paying attention. Fuck up the maintenance, and it becomes a MUCH bigger pain.

Summary

Pros: cheap, versatile, able to withstand high heat, holds heat well, can be very non-stick

Cons: Heavy, and while it doesn’t require a TON of care, it requires more active care than most other options.

BONUS ROUND: Enameled cast Iron.

They must have had to grind up SO MANY teeth for this pot!

Enameled cast iron is just cast-iron that’s been…well, enameled. Meaning it’s been covered in ceramic or porcelain, NOT ground up teeth as Caption Jon seems to believe. Why? Well, he’s quite odd-oh, you mean the ceramic. Because it removes the need to season it. It’s not AS good as a really well-seasoned cast-iron pan, but it’s much easier to maintain.

Summary

Pros: Many of the benefits of cast iron, without the need to season, AND no risk of reaction with acidic compounds

Cons: It’s even HEAVIER, since it’s cast iron with extra bigs. It’s EXPENSIVE (Enameled Cast Iron pots are commonly like, 300 fucking dollars), and it’s not quite as non-stick as a great cast iron pan is.

BONUS BONUS ROUND: Carbon Steel

Two bonuses for the price of one!

These aren’t super popular, but they have a couple specific venues. Basically, a Carbon Steel pan is made from thin steel made with, rather obviously, a lot of carbon. This gives it a lot of the same properties (and the same kind of shiny black look) as cast iron, but thinner and lighter. This means if you season it well, you’ve basically got a cast iron pan that doesn’t hurt your wrist…except that it kind of emphasizes the cast iron problem of not conducting heat well. Cast Iron got around that by having to heat up a lot of metal. Carbon Steel instead goes “yeah, but what if you DON’T want heat conducted well?” Which is why it’s a popular material for woks: the bottom portion gets super hot, the sides stay cooler, so you can cook at different speeds in different zones. It’s also used for fast thin work, like frying eggs or making crepes, where you can just heat the whole pan and basically treat it like a mini-griddle.

Summary

Pros: Lighter than cast iron,

Cons: still needs seasoning, can be temperamental for new cooks

Stainless Steel

It’s hard to believe THIS was the clearest picture I could find of a stainless steel pan. I almost went upstairs and took my own picture. But alas, the stairs, they are so tall!

I actually can’t find any evidence for whether these guys or aluminum came first, I THINK Aluminum came first, but since we just did Cast Iron, I figured like Shaq after Kazaam, I should do Steel. (Remember when we all just…let Shaq try acting? Was that Space Jam’s fault? Moving on.) Stainless steel is a pretty popular cooking material, because it’s basically the middle road of all the options we’ve discussed so far, and it needs the LEAST attention. Stainless steel is stainless because it’s alloyed with chromium, which makes it much less reactive. You can simmer tomato sauce in this shit all DAY and nothing’s going to happen. It’s dishwasher safe, oven safe as long as the handle’s metal. It doesn’t get weird when over-heated, it’s harder to scratch than copper or aluminum, and it’s lighter than Cast Iron.

So if it’s got so many good qualities, why isn’t it clearly the best? Well, firstly, because it sits in an awkward middle ground in terms of heating/heat conduction: it’s not as long as cast iron…but it’s not as consistent. And it’s not as fast as copper, with a greater risk of hot spots. Also, it’s not non-stick, and how hard it can be to clean really depends on the quality of the steel: really good (and therefore really EXPENSIVE) pans are easier than cheaper ones. You can get ‘inserts’ in these to help with the heating problem, where a layer of copper or other highly conductive metal is sandwiched in the steel, but that’s, say it with me now: MORE EXPENSIVE. Huh. Probably should have had a little more of a lead up to that bit. And, you know, not just been writing it. Now I don’t know if you said it, and if you did, you probably look kind of silly.

Summary

Pros: A great material for someone who wants to keep their pans simple, very little maintenance, little risk of damage from other tools.

Cons: You get what you pay for: cheap stainless steel is the “it’ll do, I guess” of cooking materials. More prone to hot spots.

Aluminum (or, if English, Aluminium)

There’s something off-putting about the AMOUNT of white space around the picture, but I have NO time to figure out what’s going on.

Lighter than steel, and cheaper than copper. Aluminum comes in two forms: normal and Anodized. Normal aluminum is what you use if you want a copper pan but don’t want to fork over the cash: it heats quickly and well, but it’s reactive to acids and certain foods (like egg yolks) will actually oxidize the metal.

Anodized has been treated in ways I don’t have the space to go into, but it makes it much less reactive, sturdier, and harder to scratch. The downside is: surprise, it costs more money.

There’s also some concerns that maybe cooking in untreated aluminum raises your odds of getting Alzheimer’s, as exposure to aluminum is a risk factor for the illness, but that more refers to “high aluminum counts in your local water supply”, and it’s still not a fully established link.

Summary

Pros: Reactive, light, and if anodized, fairly non-stick/scratch resistant.

Cons: Anodizing costs more, unanodized is reactive to acids.

Non-Stick

Well of course they’re not sticks, they’re pans!

Slightly silly to label as its own material, non-stick is technically a ‘covering’ for other pans. You can get Teflon-coated Aluminum pans, steel pans, etc. There’s a LOT of chemistry here, but basically, standard non-stick pans use a chemical coating and treatment that essentially hyper-seasons the pan, making it almost impossible for food to stick to it.

That sounds great! What’s the downside? Well, firstly, they’re more expensive. Secondly, the non-stick layer is vulnerable: using steel tools can chip off or scratch up the coating, making the pan less effective. ALSO, several of the earliest non-stick chemicals are tentatively connected with increased cancer rates. There’s some evidence that, like with Aluminum earlier, it’s more about “the chemicals permeating the air or water table near plants producing the chemicals” than “your specific pan affecting you”. There’s also weird things, where like, if you use non-stick cooking spray on non-stick pans, the spray will build up as a weird residue over time.   

There’s also a lot of confusion in general, since different companies have different methods and chemicals, so what’s true of one non-stick pan might not be true of another. But well-made pans should be safe and relatively easy to care for. One BIG downside is that, in almost all cases, they have the shortest shelf-life of all the pans listed. Over time, the non-stick coating WILL wear down. Within 6 years or so on average, your non-stick pan is…just a pan. Often one that’s been scratched up and worn down, and now could serve as a vessel for introducing weird chemicals to your body.  And at that point, many recommend you dispose of the pan.

Summary

Pros: A delight to cook on, and often basically just a better version of the basic tool.

Cons: very dependent on the given manufacturer, have to be replaced the most often, often finicky

And while there are other things we could discuss such ceramic non-stick (which is basically “what if we did the enameling thing to PANS?” or All-Clad pans (which are basically a brand/variety of the earlier noted “inserted steel”: pans made from a layer of steel, a layer of aluminum, and another layer of steel) glass baking pans, and the hundred little niches, those are the broad strokes, and we’re already over 2,000 words .I’m all panned out.

MONDAY: JON MAKES NOODLES, I GUESS. OR MAYBE A DIP. IT DEPENDS ON IF I CAN BULLY MY FAMILY INTO DOING SOMETHING IN TIME FOR NEXT THURSDAY.

THURSDAY: IT DEPENDS ON IF I CAN BULLY MY FAMILY INTO DOING SOMETHING IN TIME.