this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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I've fried already-cooked rice in a pan, but when I cook rice it's in a pot. Have you cooked rice in a pan?
Are you an American or something? A pot is just a subtype of pan to me. Does pan only mean frying pan where you live?
Edit: okay I am stretching slightly here. A pot can also be a container that you don't cook with, and that wouldn't be a pan. Anything that can go on a hob is a pan.
I live in Canada, where a pan is shallow and has 1 long handle and a pot is deep and typically has 2 small handles. A pot isn't a pan, although you can get crossovers like a saucepan which is typically deep like a pot but has a single long handle like a pan. If it's not shallow it isn't a pan. Pans can include frying pans, skillets, saute pans, even a wok would be considered a pan. Pans are for cooking at high heat. Pots are for boiling things or for preparing something that's mostly liquid: soups, stews, sauces, etc. You can also have roasting pans or cake pans for use in the oven, but once again, the key thing is they have shallow sides compared to the bottom.
To me, a pot being a subtype of pan is like saying a knife is just a subtype of spoon. They're completely different things.
Yeah I am English. I would never call a cake tin a cake pan. Same with a roasting tray is never called a roasting pan. For it to be a pan it has to go on a hob. Even the way you describe things like a sauce pan seems contradictory, by your definition it should be a pot rather than a pan. It's interesting to note what local differences exist in the use of language.
You definitely can do high heat cooking in a pot. Most of them are stainless steel or cast iron after all, the material doesn't care.
Edit: forgot to mention that you can also have oven trays, which are flatter than a roasting tray. Roasting tray would be for say roasting potatoes or meat with sauce, and a tray would be for pizza or flatbread or chips.
Sure, but most of the time when you're doing high-heat cooking you're not using a lot of liquid so a pan with its shallow sides makes it easier to get a spatula or tongs in to move things around. The high sides are only useful when you want to heat a large volume of stuff. Typically that means you're using a water-based liquid (even something like a tomato sauce is mostly water based), so the heat will be at most 100C.
I suspect the British version of "pan" including what I'd call a pot must be from after North American English and British English diverged. The etymology of pan says that it has referred to a shallow thing since even before ancient Greek:
I guess the North American English dialects kept this meaning of a shallow thing, whereas British English focused on whether or not it goes on a burner (which apparently you call a hob).
I've heard differing interpretations even in england. According to my dad for example a pot is made of ceramic, so if it's made of stainless steel it's a pan.