0:04 This is a $4,000 frying pan made from
0:06 sterling silver. And this is my $40
0:08 carbon steel pan that I've cooked with
0:10 for years.
0:13 This silver pan sent me down a rabbit
0:16 hole of testing. Stainless steel, carbon
0:19 steel, cast iron, aluminum, copper, and
0:22 yes, silver to find out which metal
0:24 actually makes the best pan. What I
0:26 learned made me swap my trusted carbon
0:30 steel and cast iron pans for a new daily
0:33 driver. And no, it's not the silver one.
0:36 I also found a simple mistake that makes
0:38 every pan [music] perform worse than it
0:40 should. Fix that and it almost doesn't
0:43 matter what your pan is made from. Wait,
0:45 you're probably wondering why anybody
0:48 would buy a $4,000 frying pan. I mean,
0:51 that's insane, right?
0:54 Let me try to explain. I am obsessed
0:55 with tools that are thoughtfully
0:58 designed, well-built, and uncompromising
1:00 in performance. It's the approach I take
1:02 with the tools I design and build
1:04 myself, like the combustion predictive
1:07 thermometer. It has eight evenly spaced
1:09 temperature sensors to find the true
1:11 core and predict when your food will be
1:13 ready. It's built for high heat cooking
1:16 up to 900°, Wi-Fi enabled, so you can
1:18 keep an eye on your cook from anywhere,
1:20 and you can use it with or without an
1:22 app using the optional kitchen display.
1:24 You can learn more about my products
1:27 here or by going to combustion gut. Now,
1:29 back to the silver pan. When I came
1:32 across engineer turned silvermith Jim
1:34 Hammond making solid silver pans at
1:37 Duparquet Cookware in Rhode Island, I
1:41 rationalized my purchase was rational. I
1:44 mean, there's over $1600 of actual
1:46 silver in it, so technically it's an
1:50 investment that will grow in value. Right.
1:56 And then there's the craftsmanship, the
1:58 gentle curves and polished mirror
2:01 finish. Stout silver rivets bonded to a
2:03 handle covered in handstitched leather.
2:06 And it has that perfect balance. Not too
2:09 heavy and not too light.
2:12 On paper, this should be the ultimate
2:15 pan because it spreads more heat faster
2:18 than any other metal. To understand why,
2:21 we need to look at two things together.
2:24 Conductivity, how easily heat moves, and
2:26 heat capacity, how much heat it holds.
2:28 The ratio of those two measures gives
2:31 you diffusivity, which is the single
2:32 best measure for predicting a pan's
2:35 potential performance for even heating
2:38 and powerful searing.
2:39 Let's start with stainless steel with
2:42 about 6 units of diffusivity. It's tough
2:44 and non-reactive, but it is actually
2:47 terrible at moving heat. Step up to
2:49 carbon steel and cast iron, both around
2:51 10 units of diffusivity, better than
2:54 stainless, but still pretty sluggish.
2:57 Then comes aluminum, jumping way up to
3:00 about 62 units and six times better than
3:03 cast iron at spreading heat. Copper is
3:05 renowned for a reason. About 97 units,
3:08 which is why old school French cookware
3:10 was always copper. And finally, quite a
3:14 bit ahead of copper is silver, 147
3:16 units. That's about 25 times better at
3:19 moving heat than stainless steel. The
3:21 only natural material that moves heat
3:24 faster is diamond. It sits way off this
3:27 chart at about 700 units. Roughly five
3:30 times better than silver and 120 times
3:32 better than stainless steel at spreading
3:34 heat evenly. Unfortunately, I couldn't
3:37 find a solid diamond frying pan, so I
3:45 But many cooks still swear by cast iron
3:47 and carbon steel for a perfect sear,
3:49 including me.
3:51 That's why this carbon steel pan has
3:54 always been my go-to. But you know how
3:56 that first pancake never turns out
3:57 right? That's because it's telling you
3:59 something about the diffusivity of your
4:04 pan. So, can a better pan fix that?
4:08 Same batter, same cooking, but look at
4:11 this. Totally different results.
4:13 Pancakes are perfect for showing heat
4:15 patterns. Even a few degrees difference
4:17 in the surface temperature changes how
4:20 it cooks. So each pancake literally maps
4:23 the hot and cold spots of our pans. Each
4:25 pan was preheated until its temperature
4:27 was stable, adjusting the burner so the
4:29 center of every pan started at the same
4:32 temperature. Cast iron and carbon steel
4:34 look almost the same. A burned bullseye
4:36 in the middle that fades fast towards
4:38 the edges. That maps to the surface
4:41 temperature swinging over 100° from the
4:43 edge to the center of the ironbased
4:46 pans. The diffusive metal pans far more
4:50 even, less than 20° in most cases. The
4:52 first pancake knocked down those hot
4:54 spots and even the surface temperature a
4:56 little, but even the later pancakes
4:58 cooked in the ironbased pans still look
5:01 rustic. The hot spots never really go
5:04 away. With high diffusivity pans, you
5:06 don't need that sacrificial pancake.
5:08 From the get- go, pancakes cooked in
5:11 aluminum look pretty good. Mostly even,
5:13 just a hint darker in the middle. Copper
5:15 is noticeably better, more uniform
5:18 browning and silver. It is annoying how
5:21 perfect the pancake looks. Pancake after
5:23 pancake came out flawless from the
5:26 silver pan. Among the high diffusivity
5:28 pans, aluminum is nearly as good as
5:30 copper and silver, though, which is
5:32 weird, right? I mean, silver's twice as
5:35 diffusive as aluminum. Turns out
5:38 aluminum cheats. This pan is twice as
5:41 thick, 4 mm, instead of two.
5:43 That extra thickness gives heat more
5:46 room to move around, like adding lanes
5:48 to a highway. Now, you might be
5:50 thinking, why not do that with iron or
5:52 carbon steel, but you'd need about 70
5:55 mm, nearly 3 in, of metal, and the pan
5:58 would weigh more than 40 lb. So,
6:01 diffusivity wins for pancakes. But
6:04 searing's different, right? For a hard
6:06 sear, you want a pan that can hold a lot
6:08 of heat, which is why I've always
6:11 trusted carbon steel and cast iron. If
6:13 you multiply the weight of the pan by
6:15 the specific heat of its metal and its
6:17 temperature, you get a measure of its
6:20 heat capacity, which is the total energy
6:23 held inside a pan. Stout cast iron holds
6:26 about 135,000 jewels. The slightly
6:30 thinner carbon steel pan around 117,000.
6:32 But aluminum isn't that far behind at
6:36 100,000. Copper trails at 88,000 and way
6:39 behind all the other metals is silver
6:42 with about 62,000 jewels of store heat
6:44 energy, about half that of iron and
6:47 steel. These rankings are the reverse of
6:54 So, which wins the race for a hard sear,
7:01 To keep it fair, I'm taking the burner
7:03 out of the equation. Every pan starts at
7:06 the same surface temperature of 600°
7:08 before the flame is turned off and a
7:09 single pork chop is placed in the center
7:11 of the pan.
7:14 All that matters is the energy stored in
7:16 the pan. I'm recording two things. The
7:19 sound of the sizzle
7:22 and what the infrared camera sees. The
7:24 sizzle tells us the surface is still hot
7:26 enough to flash water to steam. No
7:29 sizzle, no sear. And by spray painting
7:31 the surface of all the shiny pans black,
7:34 they all have the same emissivity so the
7:35 infrared camera can see how the heat
7:38 flows to where it's needed in each pan.
7:41 High diffusivity silver. Its heat flows
7:42 fast towards the food from every
7:44 direction and the surface of the pan
7:47 cools evenly as the sear uses up all of
7:50 the heat in the pan. This is exactly
7:53 what you want. Copper is nearly as good
7:55 with a steady and even temperature drop
7:57 across most of the surface, while the
7:59 sizzling lasts longer from its higher
8:05 Aluminum's half as diffusive as silver,
8:07 but its thicker base gives heat more
8:10 lanes to flow, so its surface also cools
8:12 evenly as the heat moves around to keep
8:15 the sear going.
8:17 carbon steel. You can still see hot
8:19 spots around the edges of the pan that
8:21 aren't contributing to the sear. That's
8:25 just wasted heat. Cast iron is the same
8:27 story. The pan is still glowing hot
8:29 around the food after the sizzle has
8:31 stopped. Its stored heat simply can't
8:33 flow through the sluggish metal fast
8:37 enough to keep the sear going.
8:39 In the end, Fast and Nimble Silver
8:42 dumped all its heat into the pork chop
8:44 in a quick 2 and 1/2 minutes, while my
8:46 heavy cast iron pan kept the sizzle
8:48 going longer than all the other pans at
8:51 over 8 minutes, a bit more than 3 and
8:54 1/2 times as long as silver.
8:58 So, iron and steel hold more total heat,
9:00 but it doesn't really matter if the heat
9:02 can't go to where it's useful, which is
9:05 under the food. Despite its lightweight,
9:07 aluminum actually holds nearly as much
9:09 heat as my carbon steel and only about
9:12 26% less than cast iron. Its high
9:14 diffusivity means it can move that heat
9:16 around the pan to where it's needed,
9:18 which is why it kept the sear going for
9:21 well over 6 minutes, vesting all but the
9:24 cast iron pan. So, it's kind of the
9:27 perfect middle ground. Good diffusivity,
9:29 plenty of heat capacity, and light
9:31 enough to easily handle. Maybe there's a
9:33 reason this pan is ubiquitous in
9:36 restaurants. Okay, but how do the pork
9:38 chops actually look?
9:41 Not fully seared yet. Even when starting
9:45 the pans at 600°, they all ran out of
9:47 steam before the chops were fully
9:50 seared. And these pork chops all look
9:52 very similar despite significant
9:54 differences in both the heat capacity
9:57 and diffusivity of the pans.
9:59 So, that's pretty strong evidence that
10:01 what's underneath the pan matters as
10:04 much or more than the pan itself. Now,
10:06 you probably think I'm about to compare
10:10 gas, electric, and induction burners.
10:12 They all have their pros and cons, and
10:14 honestly, they can all be made to work,
10:17 but that's a topic for another video.
10:19 [snorts] Now, in restaurants, I mostly
10:22 cooked on carbon steel pans on all kinds
10:24 of burners, and I never once gave a
10:26 thought to hotspots. The pans just
10:28 worked. But when I started testing
10:31 cookware at home, the results were not
10:34 the same. Professional stoves aren't
10:37 just powerful. They're oversized. Large,
10:39 powerful burners, or even enormous
10:41 French tops that act like one massive
10:44 even burner. But domestic gas burners
10:47 are nothing like that. Smaller rings and
10:49 smaller flames. And the most common
10:51 stove in the US isn't gas at all. It's
10:54 an electric coil about 6 to 8 in wide.
10:57 Watch how my favorite 12-in cast iron
10:59 skillet heats on this 6-in electric burner.
11:01 burner.
11:04 There's about a 200° variation from the
11:06 hottest to the coldest spot. Now, an 8in
11:09 pan on an 8-in coil burner, which
11:11 reduces the variation in temperature to
11:13 less than 50° across the bottom of the
11:16 pan. Same stove, same temperature, and
11:19 metals with very similar diffusivities,
11:21 but the pan that fits the burner heats
11:23 evenly and will cook evenly. I don't
11:26 know how else to say this, but um size
11:28 matters. Here's a pancake cooked in my
11:31 8-in carbon steel pan on an 8 in burner.
11:33 And here's the same pancake in the same
11:36 pan on a 6-in burner.
11:38 You can pretty easily see how much more
11:40 evenly cooked the pancake is when the
11:43 burner is sized just right. Here's
11:46 what's happening. When your burner is
11:48 smaller than your pan, heat has to
11:49 spread sideways through the metal before
11:52 it reaches the food. And that spread is
11:54 limited by the pan's diffusivity.
11:56 Professional stoves avoid this by
11:58 putting the heat everywhere. At home,
12:00 you can't make your burner bigger, but
12:02 you can match the right burner to the
12:05 right pan. For low diffusivity metals
12:08 like carbon steel or cast iron, having a
12:10 burner that's at least 90% of the
12:12 diameter of the pan makes a big
12:14 difference. Because if the heat only
12:15 needs to travel straight up from the
12:17 burner through the pan to the food,
12:20 diffusivity matters far less. That's why
12:22 matching your burner to any pan feels
12:24 like a better pan. So far, we've looked
12:26 at pans made from single metals, and
12:29 each has its strength and its weakness.
12:31 Silver, for example, is impressive for
12:35 both its performance and its price.
12:38 Copper is similarly beautiful, but high
12:40 maintenance. In restaurants where I
12:42 worked, like the Fat Duck, polished
12:43 copper like this was for the dining
12:46 room, not the line.
12:48 The workh horses were aluminum, carbon
12:51 steel, and stainless. But you've
12:53 probably noticed I haven't shown
12:55 stainless steel in the results so far.
12:57 That's because a pure stainless steel
13:00 pan mostly doesn't exist. And that's
13:02 because pan manufacturers know that
13:04 stainless is an absolutely terrible
13:06 metal for moving heat around. Twice as
13:09 bad as cast iron or carbon steel. But
13:12 stainless is wonderful for durability,
13:14 strength, being non-reactive and
13:16 induction compatible, and not needing
13:18 any maintenance. In that sense,
13:20 stainless is nearly a perfect metal.
13:22 Cookware engineers know this, which is
13:24 why they laminate stainless with high
13:26 diffusivity metals like aluminum or
13:29 sometimes copper, or they braze a thick
13:32 aluminum plate to the bottom. So, nearly
13:34 every stainless steel pan is actually a
13:36 combination of stainless and usually
13:38 aluminum. And testing a pan like this
13:40 would have been misleading since it
13:42 performs more like the metal at its core
13:45 and not pure stainless steel. The
13:47 aluminum core heats quickly, spreads
13:49 heat to the edges, and buffers small
13:50 burner mismatches so the surface is
13:53 evenly hot. The stainless exterior makes
13:56 it induction compatible and durable, and
13:59 you can scour it clean. It's not the
14:01 fanciest pan I own, but it is a very
14:03 forgiving daily driver. And no
14:05 sponsorship here, by the way. I bought
14:06 this pan from Maiden with my own money
14:08 and I like cooking with it. My wife
14:10 likes cooking with it too because it's
14:12 lighter than our carbon steel and cast
14:15 iron pans and that is another benefit of
14:18 aluminum cores. They're lighter. Its
14:20 only real downside is that because it's
14:22 stainless steel, it never develops that
14:25 self-healing semi-nonstick patina that
14:27 is really useful for certain dishes like
14:29 a classic French omelette where a
14:32 seasoned surface is unbeatable.
14:35 And that is why I actually have a second
14:37 pan for day-to-day use. And it is very
14:41 close to being my ideal pan. This is an
14:43 8 and 12 inch frying pan from Strata
14:45 that I bought on Amazon. It's a sturdy
14:47 triply pan with a stainless steel
14:50 exterior, a diffusive aluminum core, and
14:52 important to me, a carbon steel
14:55 interior. You can see I've built up a
14:57 nice non-stick patina of seasoning from
15:00 a lot of cooking.
15:02 It's not perfect, though. The handle's a
15:04 bit too heavy, and it throws it out of
15:07 balance. I'm willing to overlook that to
15:09 get the benefits of carbon steel that I
15:11 love with the performance of aluminum.
15:13 And while it isn't as non-stick as
15:15 Teflon, it's nonstick enough that with a
15:17 bit of practice, you can make a very
15:20 nice French omelette. And then there's
15:24 my silver pan. It is absurdly expensive
15:27 and not a practical purchase, but as a
15:29 work of craftsmanship, of unrivaled
15:33 performance, it is impressive. Plus, and
15:35 I must be honest here,
15:39 I love cooking with it. It is no choice.
15:41 If you have the means, I highly
