Basic Cookware Materials

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today I?m going to take a few minutes to show you what to look for when buying yourself a new set of pots and pans. Okay, once you've decided what pots and pans you're going to need or what pots and pans you would actually use, you need to decide on a material. First up this is hard anodized aluminum. This is non-stick coating on the inside. It?s got that grey anodized coating on the outside. You can tell from looking at this one this one seem to be used. I?ve had this one for about thirteen years and it?s still going strong. And as aluminum, it?s very, very ductile which means that it gathers heat quickly. It?s actually very easy to care for. You usually just wipe it down. Although, after time you will see that it will start to pit and corrode from acid. But, that is kind of the downside to it. Other than that these will last you a very, very long time and they're relatively inexpensive compared to some other metals out there. Keeping along the Anodized aluminum theme, here's another hard-anodized aluminum pan. The difference being that this one actually has a non-stick surface inside. These are actually really nice and I know that a lot of people would scoff at using a non-stick pan, but these are really nice just if you don?t want to have to deal with a huge tremendous mess. This is going to have all the same properties as your regular hard-anodized aluminum pan. The big difference is you've got the non-stick surface, which makes a big difference in clean-up. This pan will not last as long though, because eventually this surface will come out. It could take two years it may take ten years, but there will be some point in which this surface no longer works. And there is also some debate as to how good this surface is for you because it does come off into your food as you cook. Going along with the non-stick theme, this is a really inexpensive steel, non-stick lined pan. These are really popular. A lot of your inexpensive sets are going to be made of this. Steel is very, very resilient. It holds heat better than aluminum, it heats up almost as fast as aluminum and it's really inexpensive. Those are the pros. The cons are that it?s easy to warp it and it?s just a non perfect material unless it?s a stainless steel."