Originally Posted by
fuzz2050
I'm actually not even sold on cast iron for home use. It's heavy and awkward on a stove, and not as non-stick as non-stick. A good clad skillet has a better thermal mass (Cast iron per gram is fairly low, it's only in sheer mass that makes it so good), and a good teflon coating is better than even the cast iron skillet you inherited from your grandmother (at least in my experience), and you can cook acidic foods without worry.
One of the things that I love about Bike Forums is that it makes me go back and think about things I learned in college that I haven't had a need for in a long time. This is one of those things. I'll apologize in advance if you already know this stuff but here goes.
In post 21, I talked about the heat requirements for heating various metals. The data for those calculations were taken from the
Engineering Toolbox website. Using that information, it's possible to tell a tale of why cast iron isn't all that good for cooking and why titanium is abominable. The specific heat of aluminum, i.e. the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of the metal, is actually higher than cast iron, steel or titanium. If you had the same mass of material, it would take more heat to raise the temperature of the aluminum than it would the cast iron by a factor of almost 2. Titanium has a specific heat that is almost the same as cast iron. To think of it another way, if you could make cast iron pans as light as aluminum, it would take less heat to raise their temperature from room temperature to cooking temperature. Energy-wise, the advantage goes to cast iron, although getting cast iron as light as aluminum would be next to impossible
The interesting bit, however, is when you figure in the thermal conductivity (provided by Carbonfiberboy). As I said above, aluminum has a thermal conductivity that is twice that of cast iron. This means that heat applied to the metal moves through the metal to the food you are cooking much more quickly. Because the heat doesn't go through the cast iron as quickly, heat used to raise the temperature of the metal doesn't cook food but instead is dissipated back into the environment. In essence, the cast iron pan acts like insulation and, by radiating the heat away from the food, keeps the food in the pan from cooking as quickly when compared to aluminum.
The really interesting bit is that titanium's thermal conductivity is 2 to 4 times less than that of cast iron and around 10 times less than that of aluminum. You really have to heat the bejeebers out of titanium to get any heat through.
So the take away is that titanium is horribly expensive and doesn't work all that well. Cast iron is heavy and doesn't work all that well. Stick with aluminum...at home and on the road.