How Can I Tell Whether a Pot is Stainless Steel or Aluminum?

Reader Contribution by Tabitha Alterman
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by AdobeStock/Sodamika

We have a bunch of tomatoes that we plan to cook into sauce. We have an enamel stockpot, but the bottom isn’t perfectly flat, so we can’t use it on our glass-top stove. We have another stockpot, but I’m not sure if it’s aluminum or stainless steel — but it does have a flat bottom. The outside is shiny; the inside looks more like a stainless steel sink. It has a thick/heavy bottom. I couldn’t find a definitive way to tell if the pot is aluminum or stainless — do you know of one? It doesn’t have any numbers or words stamped on it. And if I did cook tomatoes in it (and it’s aluminum), would the sauce be toxic or just taste bad?

How to Tell the Difference Between Stainless Steel and Aluminum

But now to your question about how to tell the difference … Here a few helpful indicators (all of which would be even more helpful if you happen to have a known aluminum or stainless steel pan around for comparison):

  • Aluminum sounds duller and has less of a ring than stainless steel. Rap your knuckles on the edge of the pot or bang it with a wooden spoon.
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