What Materials to Seek in Cookware

While the characteristics of a piece of cookware are determined in part by its shape and size, they are mainly determined by what the cookware is made of. Materials for cookware differ in many ways, but the chiefest of those are: the ability--or inability--of that material to readily conduct (and thus evenly distribute) heat; and its "structural" qualities. The cookware materials of common choice are metals: copper, aluminum, iron, and steel, especially "stainless" steel. Serious cooks do not seem much enamored of non-metallic cookware, probably because their heat-conductivity properties are terrible--"hot spots" abound; but what kills them for serious stovetop use is immaterial in oven baking, where the heat floods in from all sides, and it is essential to have a few such things about if one has--and one should--a microwave oven; they can also be useful in ordinary ovens. Clay also is best reserved for oven cooking.
"Steel" is iron with a slight (c. 1%) admixture of carbon, which changes the qualities of the iron. Stainless steel is steel with some chromium alloyed with the steel; if the chromium content is at least 12%, the alloy qualifies as "stainless" steel, but 18% chromium is the norm. Stainless steel can also, and often does, have some nickel mixed in as well; nickel is not essential to steel being "stainless"--though it does add a little further corrosion resistance--and it is chiefly used to enhance the characteristically bright, shiny surface finish of stainless steel (it does also somewhat increase the metal's hardness and temperature tolerance). Stainless steel with the usual 18% chromium but no nickel is referred to as "18/0" stainless; if nickel is present as, say, 8% of the alloy, that alloy is designated "18/8" stainless. Top-of-the-line cookware commonly contains 10% nickel, and is thus "18/10" stainless steel. The nickel content is crucial to the suitability of the steel for use with induction, as explained farther below.

There are several nice summaries of the pluses and minuses of cookware uses of the various metals available on line, a few of which are linked a little farther on here. In short, though, any one material alone invariably represents serious tradeoffs between advantageous heat-

transfer qualities and disadvantageous structural qualities, or vice-versa. (Steel is strong, but has poor heat transfer; aluminum and especially copper have excellent heat transfer, but are relatively soft.) Sigh. What a shame that we can't develop a cookware material that shares stainless steel's structural qualities with the heat-related virtues of copper or aluminum. But, if we can't (yet) roll out such a material, we can do what's almost as good: combine those materials in the construction of our cookware. That is accomplished by making cookware that constitutes a "sandwich" with stainless steel on the outsides--as the "bread" of the sandwich--and copper or aluminum between, as the "meat" of the sandwich. We refer to the heat-transfer material, be it copper or--more commonly--aluminum, as being "clad" in stainless. In some fancier constructions, the base is not merely a 3-layer "sandwich", but can have 5 or occasionally as many as 7 layers.

Just as one example, the well-liked All-Clad Stainless Steel cookware line (illustrated at left) can be considered as--depending on how one looks at it--a 3layer sandwich or a 6-layer sandwich, in that the "middle layer" is in fact three separate layers of heatdistributing aluminum; the inner layer is full 18/10 stainless steel, while the outermost layer is 18/0 magnetizeable stainless steel. By using clad "sandwiches" of materials to construct cookware, we get most or all of the heatrelated virtues of copper or aluminum combined with the structrual advantages of stainless steel. While no one suggests that such cookware is the only satisfactory form--many like pure copper, despite the perpetual grief of keeping it clean and shiny, others like other things--but it is an excellent one that is very widely used by both professional and home chefs. Incidentally, there is a fairly common belief that for a piece of cookware to be "quality" clad, the cladding must continue from the base on up into the walls of the vessel, and correspondingly that cookware consisting of a clad baseplate with solid stainless-steel walls is something lesser. The truth is--as always--not so simple. While some excellent makes (such as All-Clad) do indeed carry the cladding up the vessel walls, other equally good lines do not. Much depends on the particular vessel: for some purposes (meaning for certain types of vessel meant for those cooking purposes, such as sauce pans) having a vessel wall that is heated augments the functionality; for other purposes, in which having the heat concentrated in the vessel bottom is desired or at least satisfactory, having heated walls may actually just waste some heating energy. Remember that on a gas burner, there are often flames licking up the sides of a cooking vessel, so having cladding in those sides can be important; but with induction, it may be less important (though the wall cladding will still help conduct heat up from the base into the walls). In short, it's a complex topic with no simple answer. (Cook's Illustrated stated that "Our tests have shown that disk-bottom pans often perform just as well as fully clad pans: With some exceptions, the thickness of the core is more important than whether or not it covers the sides of the pan.") So much for the bare basics. For much more detailed explanations of general cookware considerations, we refer you to these several excellent articles: