Why does food in saucepan cook quicker when the lid is on?

Answer 1

Hot water cannot evaporate and take heat away, as the lid is keeping it in. So the result is that more heat remains in the saucepan. More heat means faster cooking.

Answer 2

food or whatever you put in the saucepan is cooked faster when the lid is on than then its not. this happens becuse due to the reduction of energy lost.

since hot air/heat energy is trapped in the sauce pan, the temperature will stay at a quite stable level, so all the stow(source) has to do is to keep it at a maximum temperature level.

when the lid is not on, due to energy lost to cold air/surroundings through steam and saucepan itself. the source will have to heat the sourcepan up constantly to keep it at a certain temperature which wont be as high as when the lid is on,

and this is why the food in saucepan cook quicker when the lid is on.

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Answer 3

Heat is trapped in the saucepan when the lid is on, and so the cooking temperature is reached more quickly.

When the lid is open, heat (in the form of steam) escapes from the saucepan.

Answer 4

with the lid on, more heat is retained to hasten the cooking. you have both heat from below and steam from above to cook quicker. Pressure is also built up under the lid which aids quicker cooking. With the lid off only the heat from below cooks and a lot of it is lost any way to escaping steam, and there is little pressure thus slower cooking

Answer 5

Because the steam retained by the lid maintains the heat in the saucepan

Answer 6

What is the principle of the pressure cooker?
If you remember that the rate of most reactions is recorded at standard temperture and pressure. If you alter these standard conditions, i.e. by increasing the temperature and/or the pressure, you will affect the rate of the reaction.
placing a lid on a saucepan reduces the heat escaping and limits the expansion of water vapour and therefore increases the pressure et voila, faster cooking time.

Answer 7

The principle is somewhat similar to a microwave. The lid keeps helps the food cook uniformly as the heat spreads all around it.

If the container is subject to a high flame, then the food at the bottom of the container would burn, hence you would want to keep it at a medium or low- this still does the trick

Answer 8

More heat doesn't cook things faster... It just burns things. Constant heat on the same point heats things more (there is a difference). Lids on pans simply cook things from both the bottom of the pan (heat source) and top of the pan (heat trapped by the lid) so cooking time is reduced.

Answer 9

It not only cooks from the bottom where the heat is generated, but the steam and heat being contained by the lid also help to cook it faster

Answer 10

The energy (heat) is held in the saucepan, and so the heat builds up. As the heat builds on heat the saucepan's contents cook more quickly.