W. Hilditch
Active member
If you’re lookin’, you ain’t cookin’.
Hilditch
Hilditch
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Cooking in Cast Iron Rule #5
- Thread starter W. Hilditch
- Start date
That's the barbecue rule, where the lifting of the lid or the opening of the cover or door of the pit allows the escape of heat energy which requires significant time to recover. Cast iron being the great storer of heat energy that it is, just removing a lid to stir or assess doneness should not affect overall cooking time materially if at all.
Generally agree with you Doug, but I think the tossing of all iron pieces into one pot that often happens with cooks needs to be avoided. The plain truth is that old light pans (early Wagner, Gris, Fav, etc.) don't hold a lot of heat. Compared to a 2 mm al pan, yeah, but to a modern lodge, not even close. That said, old light iron is probably not the best choice for a process requiring the ability to maintain consistent heat in the pan itself.
The whole idea is silly anyway. Air isn't dense. It is a good insulator, to be sure, but it doesn't hold a lot of heat. Opening a lid on a Dutch oven (any oven, regardless of material and thickness) replaces that layer of air, which doesn't suck a lot of heat out of the water (normal cooking medium) because it doesn't have nearly the heat capacity before it reaches thermal equilibriuim with the enclosed environment.
The difference between cooking in a closed or open environment has more to do with evaporation and a slight temperature increase of boiling water with elevated pressures under a lid than with temperature loss to the open atmosphere. There is a lot of entropy involved here, but really it is the evaporation that plays the biggest role. If you constantly replenish the evaporated water in for instance a stew with water that is just below boiling cooking times for that stew won't be significantly different than if you cook it with the lid on constantly.
The whole idea is silly anyway. Air isn't dense. It is a good insulator, to be sure, but it doesn't hold a lot of heat. Opening a lid on a Dutch oven (any oven, regardless of material and thickness) replaces that layer of air, which doesn't suck a lot of heat out of the water (normal cooking medium) because it doesn't have nearly the heat capacity before it reaches thermal equilibriuim with the enclosed environment.
The difference between cooking in a closed or open environment has more to do with evaporation and a slight temperature increase of boiling water with elevated pressures under a lid than with temperature loss to the open atmosphere. There is a lot of entropy involved here, but really it is the evaporation that plays the biggest role. If you constantly replenish the evaporated water in for instance a stew with water that is just below boiling cooking times for that stew won't be significantly different than if you cook it with the lid on constantly.
W. Hilditch
Active member
There is that factor that all that steam that smells so good is stealing flavor from the pot. I try to keep the flavor locked in the pot as what escapes has always provided the right effect with the lid on.
Hilditch
Hilditch
Really? I guess all those soups, stews, and sauces that call for slowly simmering uncovered or "reduce by half" don't really concentrate and enhance flavor because it's all going up in steam.
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You nailed it.