Whether its name comes from pendulum, because it was hung over a fire, or whether it derives from pinta, because in ancient times it was a painted earthenware, the pot is one of the most widely used cooking tools in Italy.
The perfect pot is one in which the height corresponds to the diameter, if the height exceeds the diameter we should call it a tall pot, if on the other hand the diameter exceeds the height we have already entered the casserole department. Not all manufacturers respect these proportions exactly, and so the choices we have vary slightly from company to company.
In order to choose the right pot for our needs, we need to analyze the type of cooking.
The pot is mainly used for:
boiling, simmering, blanching and blanching
Some simple considerations regarding the cooking technique will help in choosing the best material.
Boiling belongs to cooking in a liquid (water or other liquid) and so it is a cooking by convection, that is, when the cooking of a food starts through the transmission of a fluid brought to a high temperature. It is also a type of cooking by expansion, that is, during cooking an osmosis occurs between the liquid (and its flavors) with the food releasing part of its flavors into the liquid. Each food, moreover, through boiling can lose weight like meat, for example, which releases water, or increase its volume like pasta, which, on the contrary, absorbs water during cooking. If foods are placed in cold water or at any rate before the boiling temperature, the process of osmosis of flavors is accentuated, but the loss of vitamins and minerals is also accentuated; on the contrary, if the food is placed in water at the boiling temperature, the heat shock it undergoes brakes the dispersion of its components and the process of l'osmosi, and therefore for some cooking is essential as for cooking pasta, for example, which must not lose its starches during cooking. If you want to boil vegetables while limiting the loss of valuable nutritional elements, it is a good idea to minimize the amount of liquid so as to speed up as much as possible the time it takes the water to reach boiling temperature and thus limit the process of osmosis to the shortest possible time.
Considering the factors listed here, it can therefore be said that the materials that will give us guaranteed results and to be favored when choosing a pot are aluminum and steel. For more special uses we can also find enameled steel and cast iron cookware.
Aluminum we can favor because of its easy handling and lightness, which also allows us to use a large amount of water while maintaining a calibrated weight, and because of its low cost, steel, on the other hand, needing more time to transmit heat is particularly suitable for long cooking such as boiling, is indestructible and easy to clean, being able to be washed even in a dishwasher. In both materials the pot can generally be found from a minimum diameter and height of around 18 to 20 cm. and can go up to 60 cm.
