What You Need to Know About Aluminum Cookware

Update:16 Dec

Aluminum is an excellent conductor of heat, which makes it ideal for cookware. The thermal conductivity of aluminum is 16 times that of stainless steel. What this means to you is that aluminum will heat up to 16 times faster and more evenly than stainless steel pans! Aluminum is also the third most abundant element in nature, which means that aluminum cookware is often affordable, and it's light. Aluminum reacts with acidic foods, causing the metal to leach into the food. Because of this, you'll find that most aluminum cookware available is either non-stick coated or anodized.

Aluminum has excellent thermal conductivity, which means it heats up quickly and evenly, it's plentiful, it's the most common metal found on Earth, and it's cheap to use. Compared to aluminum, only copper conducts heat better, and copper heats up about twice as fast as aluminum. But copper is rarer and more expensive, so it's usually only found in high-end, expensive cookware.

Most aluminum cookware is coated, anodized or laminated. This means that food does not come into direct contact with the metal. If you're one of the few who use pure aluminum cookware, the amount of metal leached seems to be negligible. This also applies to non-stick aluminum pans with scuffed or scratched Teflon or ceramic coatings.

Durability will vary depending on the type of aluminum cookware you're talking about. Nonstick-coated aluminum pans are the least durable of all cookware, as the nonstick coating is easily damaged by high heat, dishwashers, metal utensils, and abrasive scouring pads. In fact, any cookware with a nonstick coating is the shortest-lived cookware in the kitchen. Many people accept this and replace their nonstick cookware every few years with easy-to-clean cookware.

Anodized aluminum with a stainless steel cooking surface is extremely durable and will last for decades. If you can find 100% anodized aluminum with no non-stick coating, that will be very durable too. But any anodized aluminum with a non-stick cooking surface should be considered not very durable. These pans don't have a delicate nonstick coating that wears away, so you can use them no matter how scratched or old they are. All in all, composite cookware with an aluminum interior is the most durable form of aluminum cookware: With no exposed aluminum, these pans have the durability of stainless steel or, less commonly, anodized aluminum.