Why Do Some Cooking Pots Have Wooden Handles?
Metal Pots To understand why some cooking pots have wooden handles, we need to first understand why cooking pots are made out of metal. Metal is a conductor of heat. That means that heat moves through it very quickly and easily. When the bottom of the cooking pot is heated, the heat is conducted through the metal of the pot into the food inside, cooking it. This, along with the fact that most metals won’t burn at cooking temperatures, makes metal an ideal material to use for cooking. Unfortunately, it also poses a problem for anyone trying to hold onto the cookware. Negative Side of Conduction The heat doesn’t just go into the food–it goes through the whole metal cooking pot, including the handles. As the heat moves away from the fire, the temperature gets lower, but the metal handles of many cooking pots can still get hot enough to scorch your hands. And the longer you leave a cooking pot on the stove, the hotter the handles will get. Solution Wood is an insulator–a material that do
