Ways in which conduction is used in the kitchen

The effect can also be seen in Hot Pocket brand stuffed sandwiches which utilize a microwave sleeve slipped around the Hot Pocket with similar metallic coating.

The microwave sleeve heats up hot enough to brown the crust of the Hot Pocket. Aaron Chan believes that since everyone needs to eat to live, food should be everyone's top priority.

Hide comments. Aaron did a great job explaining the different methods of cooking in simple terms. A few notes that I would add are that dry cooking techniques just mean that the technique does not dominantly use water to transmit the heat.

That's why pan frying and deep frying are not considered "wet". In addition, microwave oven cooking can be considered both dry or wet depending on what was cooked. The frequency of radiation used in a microwave oven 2. Even so, if the food doesn't contain water or fat it doesn't heat well - and what's the point of eating it anyway? One interesting thing to note is that because microwave ovens deliver energy efficiently to fats, you brown food in a microwave through the application of fat.

In fact, you can cook a steak in a microwave and have it brown effectively by brushing oil or melted butter on the surface. You'll need to devise some way to catch the splatter and release teh steam or you'll end up with a soft soggy browned meat because of trapped steam or a really dirty microwave oven. In most cases, the browning occurs so slowly as to be competely ignored when cooking unless you're a chemist , but some proteins such as milk solids can be browned through Maillard reaction at these lower temperatures effectively.

Ive never really thought those silver disc work very well. Who could forget the old infomercial for Microcrisp? You could buy a roll of that silver paper stuff, and wrap anything in it place it on the included stand and it would allegedly turn your nuclearwave into an oven.

My dad bought some, and sadly, his steak was mushy, and not too good. I put a hamburger in it, and burned it. I am amazed that "engineers" would refer to the microwave heater panel as a "metal disc". That disc is a die-cut piece of polyester film Mylar that has ben metallized with aluminum.

The film is then laminated to paperboard to give it some dimensional stability. The thickness of the aluminum deposition determines the amount of heat produced. Subject: erroneous explanation of heat transfer in cooking. This article leaves a lot to be desired in terms of technical accuracy. Not only does the author erroneously refer to the browning disk simply as "metal", but the author is fundamentally incorrect in the entire treatment of heat transfer as it relates to cooking.

The explanation of various forms of heat transfer is fundamentally deficient. The author faithfully if oversimplified repeats the definitions of various means of heat transfer. But, as they relate to cooking, the author confuses generic concepts of 'heat transfer' with how heat actually transfers into food.

The author's description of convection is by far the most problematic. Heat transfer, and browning in particular, is about the temperature difference between the surface of the food and its surroundings and the thermal conductivity of the surroundings.

Because material is not moving into and out of the food, convection does not play a substantial heat transfer role into the food -- it does move heat from heating elements to the food's surroundings e. Convection only helps maintain a higher temperature at the food surface by allowing heated portions of the surroundings to move toward the food and cooled portions away. The author errantly states, "The fast moving molecules of the convection medium collide with the slower molecules in the food and heat them up.

Likewise, it is heat capacity, not density, that helps heat conduction -- they are not the same thing! A correct rephrasing would be, "The higher the heat capacity and heat conductivity, the higher the heat flux into food, and the faster the food heats up.

The author's treatment of conduction is also mistake-filled. The author misses the most basic function of oil in conductive cooking -- as a heat transfer medium. Oil's high heat conductivity and capacity make it a superior heat transfer medium for high temperature cooking. It's not just about 'uniform contact with heat' as the author states. It's about the temperature and heat conductivity. With respect to browning, water provides uniform contact with heat, but water boils before browning can occur.

Air gives perfectly uniform contact as well, and with no temperature limit, but has poor capacity and conductivity. Cooking in a dry pan really means that small portions of the food are in contact with the pan, but mostly separated by air, which is a poor heat conductor.

Oil, with its higher heat capacity and thermal conductivity transfers more heat from pan to food, thus getting more even browning and, by transferring more heat, faster cooking. In the portion about radiative heating contains a very simple error, but this is indicative of the fundamental misunderstanding of heat transfer that runs throughout the article: referring to fats as polar molecules.

Almost axiomatically, fats are non-polar. For those who avoid chemistry, try microwaving identical bowls of water and oil and compare the temperature difference. Water will be much, much hotter. When it comes to good food, opinions vary according to taste. While some people prefer combinations of rich, savory flavors, others go for the zing and pep of lively spices. On one matter we can agree, however: good flavors are a poor mask for badly-cooked food.

Conduction is one of three ways to accomplish heat transfer and cook food. It can allow you to keep food at a constant temperature, keeping the food warm but not cooking it further. The trick is to keep the food's container, or the air around the food, at a constant temperature, so the food neither gains nor loses heat.

You can accomplish this in your oven or on your cooktop with very accurate temperature controls and adjustments made for the conductivity of the vessel holding your food.

Of course, a food warming device - like a steam table , or holding cabinet - would make this task much easier. Whichever method or device you choose, we hope you find these conduction principles helpful for maintaining the integrity of your food. If you have questions or comments, please contact us. Warranty Lookup Sales: Parts: Conduction is typically the slowest method of heat transfer, but allows food to be cooked from the outside in.

The heat transfer is done using direct contact with the flame or electric coil to the piece of cookware.

The heated molecules from the burner get transferred directly to the pot or pan, making it typically the slowest of the five heat transferring methods. This is the case as cookware is heated up gradually before it is ready to be used.