From my childhood days, I have adored the dishes that my grandma prepared in her clay pots. During the family gatherings, everybody would become excited when she serve something in these traditional pieces of cookware.
For the last several years I have been cooking and experimenting a lot with clay pots by myself. Moreover, always I felt like there is something very special in the taste of stews, beans, and other slow-cooked dishes when they come from Clay cookware.
However, through experiments and reading the scientific literature, I relay tried to figure out was this difference in taste was a part of the placebo effect that I have or if it is more than that.
So, if you ask me now what I would conclude -Does the food, taste better in clay pots? I would say the following:
As a general impression, food prepared in clay pots tastes better, especially when it comes to dishes that include meat or legumes. This phenomenon can be influenced by moisture and volatile aroma preservation by clay pots as well as the generally long cooking process applied.
Finally, if you want to hear more about experiments that I did to see does food really tastes better in clay pots, then the following text will be interesting to you.
In addition, I will share my experience of preparing different dishes in clay pots, and for which of them particularly I find differences when I prepare them in clay pots compared to other utensils.
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1. Does food taste better in clay pots?
From my personal experience with dishes such as stews, braises, or beans I felt the difference in food taste, texture and smell exist. However, I wanted to see does this impression comes from psychological effects related to my beliefs and positive experiences with clay pots or not.
In one of the scientific studies performed in 2017 researchers conducted a blind degustation test with pea pasta prepared in both clay and stainless steel pot. They wanted to compare the different sensory qualities of dishes prepared in clay cookware and metal utensils. In the end, they concluded:
,, The clay pot-cooked samples had higher scores of “color”, “mouthfeel”, “taste”, and “overall quality” than the iron pot-cooked pastes. In conclusion, iron pot can allow the production of iron-enriched pea pastes whose sensory qualities are remarkably lower than those of the clay pot-cooked samples but are still in the acceptable range.”
At first, I was convinced by the study. However, I wanted to go further and perform a similar blind degustation test.
I decided to prepare the cooked beans in clay and stainless steel pot and to serve several of my friends to see their judgment. I mixed 3 ingredients including fried onions, carrots and soaked white beans into one batch. In addition, I split around the same amounts of the dish in both clay and stainless steel pot.
I cooked the dish for the same amount of time in both pots without adding extra water. Finally, I served my friends both versions of the dish(clay pot and stainless steel one) without telling them which one is which.
This is how I did it and what I have found:
I would like to highlight several downsides of the experiment before making conclusions based on it.
In the first place the splitting of the beans into two potes has been done by eye, so I haven’t applied strict measurements.
Second, I started to heat both pots at the same time, after adding a dish. Clay pot in this case needs far more time to heat up. Because of that even if the final length of cooking was the same, the beans in SS were cooked for a longer time.
Finally, for making statistically significant conclusions I would need more people or perform extra repetitions with the same persons.
However, my idea was to make just a pilot experiment to see if there are any indications that differences exist so I can take to design a real experiment with much more strict measurements of ingredients and temperature control while the cooking process.
In addition, I asked my friends at the end to give me two versions of the dish without telling me which one is which, and I have chosen the one for the clay pot because I felt a stronger umami taste and a more creamy texture.
From personal experience of using clay pots by myself for several years, some of the literature findings and some initial testings that I have tried I am convinced that the good taste of food from clay pots is more than a phycological effect.
However, I am looking forward to designing a new more strict experiments, with a potentially higher number of people to tackle this question further.
Now, let me share my experience about the dishes that I find very special when they come from the clay pots, as well as the ones for which the clay pots haven’t made a big difference from my point of view.
2. Which dishes especially taste better in clay pots?
From personal experience, I would say that stews and braises coming from non-glazed clay pots really have a special part in my kitchen. Or speaking more in general dishes made of meat and vegetables cooked slowly in liquid in a closed clay pot.
Additionally, if there is a type of dish that I would especially highlight here, it would be the food based on the legumens. Doesn’t matter if I prepare the baked beans with smoked sausages or if I am cooking the coralline lentils, I always get impressed by the intensity of the umami taste I got. So such kinds of dishes would be definitely on top of my recommendations.
Moreover, in one of my articles, I have collected the experiences of other home cooks to make the statistics of which dishes people love to cook in clay pots more than in any other type of cookware. And not surprisingly, I find that we have shared similar impressions. See more info in this post.
Moreover, in the same post, you will find the data about what people perceive as the biggest benefits of cooking in clay pots based on ther cooking experience.
In the end, When it comes to the cases when cooking in clay pots doesn’t give me an observable difference is when I cook recipes from the stovetop in the glazed clay pots that I was able to test.
So, from my experience, If you want to feel the full flavor of stews, braises or other dishes from the stovetop non-glazed cookware would be my recommendation. I would add up on this that bare ceramics makes an especially difference os in dishes that include either meat or legumes.
On the other side for baking, roasting, or even frying purposes both glazed and non-glazed pure ceramics(clay cookware) could give great results. This is especially true with dishes where I want to make a crusty surface on the top. Examples could be roasted chicken or bread.
Finally, by collecting the impressions from people about their top dishes from clay pots(find blogpost mentioned abowe), roasted chicken was one of the top pick-ups.
3. What can be the cause of food tasting better in clay pots?
I would split the effects of clay pots on gastronomical and psychological ones.
The first one could be related to the “color”, “mouthfeel”, “taste”, and “smell” like the ones used in the scientific studies, as the one mentioned at the beginning of the post.
Such effects can be a consequence of the specificities of cooking in non-glazed clay pots, such as clay properties related to Ph neutralization of the food, prevention of the loss of water and volatile aromas from the clay pots as well as the exchange of minerals between the clay and dish.
Moreover, I would take all these phenomena more in-depth through scientific literature and my experiments in the in-depth posts about the advantages and cones of clay pot cooking.
In addition, I would say that the uniqueness of the food taste coming from the clay pots can be described by the psychological effects. This can come to form the fact that our perception of clay pots as an old, traditional way of cooking, that can be even associated with our growing up can affect positively our experience of the food coming from clay pots.
Finally, the effort that you put into clay pot cooking can increase the amount how much you appreciate the dishes you cook in this way. There is a psychologically-based phenomenon called the Effort heuristic. According to it the worth of a dish that we prepare is determined by the perceived amount of effort that went into making that dish.
In other words, putting in a little more effort to cook with clay pots won’t make your dishes just more healthy and natural but you will deeply perceive them as even more delicious and worthy.
4. Conclusion and final thoughts
Clay pot cooking is a traditional way of food preparation that brings many benefits. Even though I daily use different types of cookware utensils, clay pot cooking has become one of my favorite ways of preparing food in the last several years.
From the experiences of many people as well as from my personal impressions food cooked in clay pots bring a special taste to food. Such effects can rely on psychological effects related to the perception of clay pots as something related to family and tradition. Moreover, through some of the experiments that I have performed, I found out that this impression goes much further than the pure psychological effects.
Finally, if you are thinking of choosing a clay pot for your kitchen you can read my article where I present a few internationally available clay pot brands and some things to be aware of before buying from them. In addition, for you who have the luck to have access to locally produced clay pots, I share some steps on how I search for clay pots when buying them in local production.