Cast Iron and Stainless Steel Cookware with Infrared Camera

A few weeks back, two cast iron skillets were shot with a long-wave infrared camera to see what they looked like when heating up on an electric coil stove top. It wasn't really a surprise what the footage looked like after having used the pans for actual cooking and dealing with hot spots, but cool to see nonetheless?

Doing the same with a stainless steel frying pan didn't seem like a good idea initially because of how reflective the steel interior was. The idea then popped in my head to use what I learned to do with cast iron: rub a layer of oil to the inside of the pan.

Stainless Steel Frying Pan

Video
Infrared: Stainless Steel Frying Pan Warming Up
Cast Iron & Stainless Steel Pans: Heating up in Infrared

Cast Iron Frying Pan

Stainless Steel Frying Pan and Cast iron Skillet
A video was made, similar to the cast iron ones a while back, showing a stainless steel fry pan on a stove top warming up. More accurately, the camera was probably picking up the thin layer of oil heating up -- the cast iron pans should also have had relatively thin layers of oil on their interior surfaces when shot.

Then a second video was made showing the cast iron and stainless videos together. They were not time-synced, so both events did not take place over the same period of time (i.e. both pans didn't heat up in the same amount of time). Different heat settings and camera settings were used as well. In summary, totally unscientific, purely to see the two videos side by side and maybe compare the patterns.

Reminder: Temperatures are not accurate.