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I have a pork rib dish that is essentially pork in water with sugar and fish sauce. The water evaporates and the pork eventually cooks coated in a sweet-savoury sauce. The dish is finished when most of the water has evaporated.

When I cook this in a cheap black aluminium pot it cooks beautifully. However when I cook it in a stainless steel copper Tri-ply pot it does not cook as well. The water takes ages to evaporate and even once it does it does not seem that the sugar has caramelised the same.

I can do the experiments side by side and this has consistently been the outcome.

What is the reason for this?

Even if one pot is not getting to temperature as quickly, the cooking time is in the order of an hour so by that point I assume both pots are the same temperature.

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  • I assume the stive is the same, and set to the same dial position, but what is it? Are the pans the same diameter?
    – Chris H
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 13:28
  • 1
    Stovetop or oven? Type of stove?
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 16:03
  • Regular gas stovetop.
    – TSGM
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 16:32
  • @ChrisH the steel pot has higher volume than the black pot but the amount I put in is roughly the same. Same heat positions.
    – TSGM
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 16:34
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    Also, "I assume that both pots are the same temperature" feels like a BIG assumption. The most likely difference is that one pot has more mass than the other, and never gets quite as hot.
    – FuzzyChef
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 20:29

3 Answers 3

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I can think of a few possibilities here:

A taller pot will hold more moist surface near to the surface of the liquid, and may slow down the evaporation rate when you’re simmering. For materials that conduct heat well, if the pot above the liquid is significantly hot it might be acting as a heat sink, transferring some of the heat to the air and not just the food.

A wider pot will concentrate the heat differently. This can be especially significant with electric stoves (which does not have heat lick up the sides like with gas heat). This results in the sides staying cool, especially for cast iron or other heavy pans, which can change how something cooks.

Different materials will heat up differently. Aluminum is a pretty good conductor so should transfer some heat up the sides, such as a tri-ply pot (and unlike a stainless steel pot with a copper or aluminum disk on the bottom). But you also said that the aluminum was dark and so it will both absorb and radiate heat easier than a light, shiny surface.

When changing pots for things that you have perfected, I would suggest looking at the signs of how something cooks— is it bubbling the same? Is it warm along the sides of the pot? (Don’t check this with your hand for small pots on gas stoves)

Ordinarily, I’d recommend adding a lid to try to balance things out, but you require evaporation, so that won’t work. You’re likely going to need to experiment with adjusting the heat to see if you can come up with the same result… and it’s possible that you can get close (and maybe even better), but it will never be exactly the same.

And now for a thermodynamics lesson:

Assuming that your stove’s burners put out constant heat, equilibrium is when the system is shedding an equal amount of heat. Some of this might be heat that is never absorbed by the pot or radiates from the pot into the room and may not all go into state changes (evaporation, creation of new chemical compounds, etc)

If you want to do a real test, you’re going to need a long thermometer, and check to see not only what the temperature is at the middle of the pot but at the bottom and near the surface as there will be a temperature gradient.

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Sounds like you're cooking it in a manner where the IR (infra-red) reflectance of the pot matters, so the shiny stainless is reflecting more heat (or absorbing less heat, same difference) than the black aluminum.

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Aluminum transfers heat more efficiently than stainless steel, even at the same temperature. This is why aluminum is added to stainless steel in clad cookware.

Source https://industrialmetalservice.com/metal-university/aluminum-vs-stainless-steel/

Aluminum exhibits high thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity, outperforming stainless steel in these aspects. This makes it favorable in electrical and heat-transfer applications.

Also, your assumption that both pots are at the same temperature is probably incorrect since clad will need more energy to reach the same temperature.

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