Imagine your grandmother’s kitchen. Maybe it is spacious, with a glossy ceramic stove and matching sink, or it may be compact but tidy, fitted with porcelain countertops. Either way, there is one thing for sure: the cookware she uses to prepare holiday feasts and family dinners will most likely be made of ceramic or porcelain. While ceramic and porcelain are both baked clay materials, but there are some major differences between them.
- Cooking Performance
- Construction Process
- Cost
Cooking Performance:
Ceramic cookware performs very well, cooking food evenly and quickly. Generally, ceramic cookware is so good at distributing heat that it can be used on any type of stovetop including induction ranges. This makes it versatile to use in homes with different types of stoves.
Whereas Porcelain cookware is designed for heat retention, to ensure that food cooks evenly. It can be used on gas or electric ranges, but should not be used on glass-top stoves because it may scratch the surface.
Construction Process:
Porcelain cookware is made by mixing porcelain powder with water, shaping it into the desired form, and then baking it in a kiln at over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. This process makes the porcelain pots and pans very sturdy, but also makes it possible for the pottery to release harmful chemicals into food.
Ceramic cookware is made by mixing the ceramic powder with water, shaping it into the desired form, and then baking it in a kiln. As opposed to porcelain pottery, this process does not make ceramic cookware as sturdy or as impervious as porcelain cookware is.
Cost:
Porcelain cookware tends to be more expensive than ceramic cookware because of its better heat retention capabilities. Ceramic cookware is generally cheaper than porcelain pottery because it does not retain heat as well, but it still performs well under most cooking conditions.
Porcelain cookware costs more money to produce and the production process involves toxic chemicals that are burned off during the firing process.