Cookware Comparison

Stainless Steel, Aluminium and Hard Anodised Pans. Which ones?

I’ll put up my hand now and admit that my cupboard is an exercise in how not to choose your pans. I, like a lot of people I suspect, used the trial and error way of honing in and deciding on my favourite pot and I know little about the difference between Stainless Steel, Aluminium and Hard Anodised pans, going more by the brand than by any inherent quality they may possess. The one thing I do know is that once you use a good pan you’ll find that you’ll have difficulty going back to those $15 supermarket jobs that seemed alright when you first moved out of home but then swelled at the base and scratched on the surface.

Not all pans are the same, as I learnt with some research. Without boring you with all of the details (and I sometimes nodded off) here is the quick lowdown, all you need to know before you buy when comparing Stainless Steel, Aluminium and Hard Anodised pans (all 3 make up 85% of the world’s cookware business and 90% of department store cookware business). “Traditional” means that there is no non stick coating applies to it, while “Non stick” obviously means that they have non stick properties.

Non stick versus traditional

The advantage of non stick versus traditional is obvious. You food won’t stick to the pan. Non-stick is the most slippery substance in the world, shorted to "PTFE" in trade talk.

Non-stick coatings are apparently safe and do not pose a hazard to human health. If particles of non-stick coating are ingested, the coatings are inert and nontoxic.

Stainless Steel traditional

The quality of SS depends on the nickel content. 18/10 stainless steel with 10% nickel content is the grade to look for although for pans 18/8 is also acceptable. How shiny it is depends on how it is polished.

Nerd fact: The number "18" stands for the chromium content, which is the same for all stainless steel. Chromium prevents rusting.

As Stainless Steel cannot conduct heat well, you either need an aluminium base or a copper one (a aluminium base needs to be thicker, up to 3 times thicker than copper). They’re bonded either by using “Brazing” or “Impact” bonding (eg Scanpan Impact), Impact bonding being the more favoured way as the process for Brazing bonding means that if you expose the pot to prolonged overheating or boil it dry for an extended period the base will separate.

BUT of course it’s not that easy and as aluminium and copper are soft metals, you may have heard of Tri ply, where there is an additional Stainless Steel protector under the copper or aluminium base. This is the pan I have and if it’s possible to love a pan, then yes I do. There are also “tri ply clad” like All-Clad where the whole base and sides of the pan or pot have 3 layers, not just the base, and obviously these will conduct heat up the sides well as well as the bottom. And stay away from any tri ply with a carbon steel core instead of aluminium, just because it’s heavier, doesn’t mean that it’s better. Carbon is a poor conductor of heat.

And as for which is a better base, copper or aluminium for heat control, copper is better but for retained heat, aluminium is better. French chefs prefer copper pans but a copper pan gets hot very quickly and cools off very quickly. This level of control is why copper has always been the French chefs' choice. If you have chef fantasies (and no I don’t mean Mr Darcy fantasies about Gordon Ramsay but being a chef), you may favour copper.

But the obvious advantage to the aluminium retaining heat is that when you go back for seconds, the aluminium will keep the food warm for longer whereas a copper base will cool off quickly.

Brands: Scanpan Impact, Essteele Australis, Scanpan Fusion 5, Scanpan Fusion 5 Copper, Scanpan Coppernox

Stainless Steel non stick

The above applies for non stick and like most pans as you’ll see, thickness is the key to quality in pans. We’ve probably been drilled into us by now that non sticks can only be used on low to medium heat so I’ll dispense with that warning. Brands:Jamie Oliver Professional Series Stainless Steel, All-Clad Non Stick, Tefal Ingenio, Circulon Steel Elite

Aluminium traditional

Aluminium is the most popular finish because it is inexpensive compared to Stainless Steel and Copper and conducts heat well. Thickness is the key, the thicker the pan the better. They can either be very good quality (huge stock pots found in restaurant kitchens) or shockingly bad (the kind you’ll find in variety stores or supermarkets). Needless to say, steer clear of the latter.

Aluminium Non stick

Again thicker is better. Don’t be dazzled by pretty patterns on the base of the pan. It is size that matters!

One thing to look out for is that aluminium expands when it heats up so if the base of an aluminium pan (or stainless steel pan with an aluminium disc) is absolutely flat prior to heating, it will most likely become convex when heated, due to metal expansion. This creates what is called a "spinner," which is very dangerous when cooking as the surface is not steady or flat to the heat.

Good cookware has a concave base so that when it heats up and the metal expands, the base remains flat and steady on the heat. You can test this by turning a pan over and putting a ruler on the base. The centre of the pan's surface should not be touching the ruler, rather slightly concave. It is this concave base that prevents warpage.

One thing that aluminium is is soft, so cooking utensils will start to break down the surface quicker than other finishes and thus the non stick coating will gradually decrease.

P.S. We have all heard about aluminium and Alzheimers. The latest is that there is no correlation between the two and that Alzheimers is due to a gene mutation.

Brands: Scanpan Classic, Scanpan Professional

Hard Anodised non stick

This is the most popular and fastest growing category. Again the toughness and durability of these are better than regular aluminium or Stainless Steel pans. The non stick coating is also protected due to the durability. Again, like a lot of pans, the thickness is what determines the quality (rather than price).

And the reason for this category’s popularity is the durability of the non stick. It is at least 100% more durable than aluminium non stick pans. Like aluminium the surface is porous allowing the non stick coating to be lokce din permanently but it is much harder than aluminium which means that whilst cooking utensils can break down the surface of aluminium, it cannot with the Hard Anodised surface because it is so hard.

Brands: Circulon Infinite, Jamie Oliver Hard Anodised, Anolon Advanced

All the best in cooking,

Not Quite Nigella