I think carbon steel is better than stainless. It can be seasoned to almost Teflon levels of non-stickness, just by burning some cooking oil, the seasoning is maintained by cooking, often comes pre-seasoned, is cheap (there’s no reason to buy an expensive carbon steel pan! Get one from a restaurant supplier)
No, like with a cast iron skillet, the hard, black, very-attached, coating is the burnt oil. Cast iron and carbon steel are normally shiny metal, not dull black, without this layer.
The oil fills the pores of the metal and polymerizes. Subsequent layers cross-link with each other to develop the non-stick coating. It doesn't really 'come off' although I'm sure small amounts will occasionally. It doesn't contribute to flavor and it's not exactly toxic. Same deal as cast iron, details here. [1]
Most oils polymerize at high temperatures. Getting the temperature juuuust right is pretty tricky in a home setting. Much easier is to just burn the shit out of the oil and wipe away the burnt oil, leaving any oil that happened to polymerize behind.
This is in fact how they used to make linseed based paints. They'd boil the oil, setting the stage for it to polymerize, and add pigments. The oil would slowly polymerize after being applied, locking the pigment into place. These days I think they mostly use chemical accelerants instead, Which makes the curing times much more tolerable.
only if you don't clean out your pan. Any youtube video on seasoning it will explain it quite well. Seasoning isn't "burnt oil" by any stretch or chemistry.
I would add that is far better and easier to season, almost as easy to maintain, and much less cantankerous. I use stainless for sauces and such but carbon steel or trust old cast iron is a much better choice for the majority of kitchens. Stainless steel is great for commercial though since it's nearly maintenance free
I switched to stainless last year after getting fed up of going through so many teflon pans, and decided I wanted to stop ingesting teflon flakes (I know PFOA is not technically in the end result and it's supposed to be inert, but I'd rather not ingest it all the same).
Cooking on stainless is not as bad as I expected in terms of sticking, it does require better care over temperature control, but that also seems to have resulted in me cooking better. Also when stuff does get a little stuck or burnt, it comes off without deteriorating the pan unlike non-stick.
Honestly my favorite thing about non-nonstick pans is how if something gets stuck you can just dig it out with a metal implement. Turns out things sticking is much less a problem if you can just force a sharp metal spatula under there.
We use seasoned cast iron for eggs with very few issues. We used to use butter which led to some sticking, however recently we've been using olive oil and it's much better, with little to no sticking depending on what style we're cooking the eggs.
Thanks for the replies everyone. I've loved and cooked on my cast iron and carbon steel pans for years but recently life got busy and I went back to non stick for some things (like scrambled eggs or salmon skin).
I think we just forget how low maintenance a non stick pan is for normal people who don't care about cooking. To normal folks, the idea of preheating a pan slowly, or wiping some oil on with a piece of paper and reheating the pan to dry it (after cooking!) are extra steps that take time out of your busy day. I do notice I use fewer paper towels once switching back to nonstick. I probably also use less oil in my cooking too!
I just smoked a batch of salmon, skin-on. When we eat some, some very happy dogs get the skin. I would be curious if there was a good prep for human consumption though.
I'm not usually a fan of the texture straight off the meat, but frying it up does sound good! And after all, this has been smoked already, so there's a ton of flavor.
Humans can eat it the same way. I just pan fry until it's crispy and add some salt to taste. My kids love fried salmon skin (along with salmon + rice + dry seaweed wrap).
Once properly seasoned (not in the r/castiron sense, but cooked on for a while on top of a solid base coast of seasoning) I just don't really get any sticking at all on my lodge pans. Oil or butter. There's recommendations for pan temp, etc, but I'd say just cook on it some more and it stops mattering.
When I first get a new pan it's very picky with technique, but cooking some bacon and steak on it for a few weeks, and nothing sticks anymore.
I love my Lodge but modern cast irons like Lodge can never get that true non-stick texture that people talk about, although it can reach a not bad level [1]
Higher heat means there's a more robust steam layer, but then that means you either need to be stirring or flipping or adding some water and a lid for steaming.
To heat the pan I turn the electric range to high for a bit and then down to 4 (of 10), and then I turn it off before the eggs are done, as the thick cast-iron pan and the glass and coil has enough residual energy. Same for popcorn, same for pancakes, etc.
Interesting, I've also got a Lodge. I use a low heat with a longer preheat, usually somewhere between a 3 or 4 out of 10 for for I'd say 2-3 minutes or so to preheat (not sure if that's relatively long or not).
Maybe it's the seasoning? I haven't seasoned ours in a long time but the last time I did I used flax seed oil.
I generally preheat my cast iron until drops of water instantly sizzle away or for searing dance around the pan . I pretty much only use extra virgin olive oil (low heat cooking) or avacado oil (high heat cooking, like searing a steak) in a well seasoned cast iron pan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect
Same here. One thing that works really well to cook eggs in our daily-use cast-iron pan is to add a tablespoon or so of water and put a lid on; the steam cooks the top of the eggs this way. Not great if you like your eggs brown and crispy, but it is very easy to clean; if there are any stray bits I just wipe them out with paper and put that in the compost.
yeah I use my hexclad or well seasoned cast iron for eggs. An unsung hero is also carbon steel, as it's lighter and smoother (unless want to pay arm and a leg for super smooth bottom ground cast iron). Stainless is great for sauces or something that has a lot of acid (which can eat away at your seasoning in in cast/carbon steel). Carbon steel is super easy to season as well because it's extremely smooth.
but y tho? I use (in addition to my carbon steel pans) the standard cast iron el cheapo version of Lodge and nothing sticks if you season your pan and heat to the proper temperature.
If you don't mind using a moderately high amount of fat (~1.5 tbsp for 4-5 eggs), stainless is perfectly fine for eggs. If you start with med-high heat be sure to drop it down relatively quickly. Or fry on medium to med-low heat the whole way through. For whatever reason beaten eggs seem to stick even less (basically not at all) so omelets and scrambled eggs are my go-to. I've gotten my technique down so I can flip my omelets with the stainless pan, no spatula required.
I’ll give that a try tomorrow! I normally put scrambled eggs in a cold pan and whisk while heating because either I’m a masochist, like creamy eggs, or both.
Cast iron is fantastic for eggs. After you season it well and use it for a bit it's almost as non-stick as a teflon pan. There's videos of well seasoned pans cooking eggs without oil. You can throw metal utensils at it, and just wipe it down with some oil when you're done. Holds heat well, sears well, goes into the oven. If you're only going to have two pieces of cookware, a stainless stock pot and lodge 10" skillet is all you really need. Best of all if you mess up, you can just take the seasoning off and re-do it. It will outlast your grandchildren.
I have gotten an amazing season on stainless steel by slowly cooking oil onto it. It crosslinke into a super hard super smooth almost ceramic surface.
You can also use a drill attachment polish one stainless steel pan to a mirror chrome finish, then heat it up, add oil and add the rgg to thr cold oil. For me that guarantees teflon level performance of nonstick. However, the mirror finish has lower emissivity so its a bit weird at first when a hot pan doesnt seem to transfer heat to the food at nearly the rate that it “should”.
I really love eggs, but they’re really high in cholesterol. It’s better to skip them, sadly.
I wouldn’t normally offer unsolicited advice like this, but this is a thread about optimizing for health/safety. If you’re going to avoid teflon, you should probably avoid eggs too.
You don't need to skip eggs! They are high in cholesterol, but the dietary cholesterol from eggs doesn't impact your serum (blood) cholesterol levels the way other fats do. Eggs are one of the best bang-for-your-buck foods you can work into your diet.
The site you linked says that studies have shown a link between eating eggs and heart disease, which was the basis of my suggestion that they be avoided.
> Although some studies have found a link between eating eggs and heart disease, there could be other reasons for these findings.
and:
> Health experts now suggest eating as little dietary cholesterol as you can, aiming to keep intake under 300 milligrams (mg) a day. One large egg has about 186 mg of cholesterol — all of which is found in the yolk.
People really like eggs, me included. That unfortunately doesn’t change the fact that they’re bad for you and we shouldn’t eat them (and I no longer do). Two eggs is more than the recommended daily total amount of cholesterol, and a good omelette is 3. I don’t imagine most people are going to be vegan for 60 hours following to compensate.
Previously, the Dietary Guidelines for
Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be
limited to no more than 300 milligrams per day. The
2015 DGAC will not bring forward this
recommendation because available evidence shows no
appreciable relationship between consumption of
dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent
with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC report.
Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for
overconsumption.
"A note on trans fats and dietary cholesterol: The
National Academies recommends that trans fat
and dietary cholesterol consumption to be as low
as possible without compromising the nutritional
adequacy of the diet. The USDA Dietary Patterns are
limited in trans fats and low in dietary cholesterol.
Cholesterol and a small amount of trans fat occur
naturally in some animal source foods. As of June
2018, partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), the major
source of artificial trans fat in the food supply, are no
longer Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). Therefore,
PHOs are no longer added to foods."
So, I've read the linked report. I think it's important to include the full context. If it wasn't important, it wouldn't be in the report in the first place.
The quote appears on page 44. On the same page, before the quote, there's additional information about saturated fats:
> Healthy U.S.-Style Dietary Pattern include saturated fat. Approximately 5 percent of total calories inherent to the nutrient-dense foods in the Healthy U.S.-Style Dietary Pattern are from saturated fat from sources such as lean meat, poultry, and eggs; nuts and seeds; grains; and saturated fatty acids in oils. As such, there is little room to include additional saturated fat in a healthy dietary pattern while staying within limits for saturated fat and total calories.
Following that, on page 45, there's figure 1-11 called "Top Sources and Average Intakes of Saturated Fat: U.S. Population Ages 1 and Older". It breaks down the average saturated fat consumption by food types. It's summarized on the page 44:
> The main sources of saturated fat in the U.S. diet include sandwiches, including burgers, tacos, and burritos; desserts and sweet snacks; and rice, pasta, and other grain-based mixed dishes.
The Figure 1-11 shows that eggs amount to 3% of the average saturate fat intake; same as starchy vegetables (3%) and slightly less than non-starchy vegetables (4%). The main sources, as mentioned before, are sandwiches (19%) and desserts and snacks (11%).
Right after that there are practical recommendations about limiting saturated fats intake:
> Strategies to lower saturated fat intake include reducing intakes of dessert and sweet snacks by consuming smaller portion sizes and eating these foods less often. Additional strategies include reading food labels to choose packaged foods lower in saturated fats and choosing lower fat forms of foods and beverages (e.g., fat-free or low-fat milk instead of 2 percent or whole milk; lean rather than fatty cuts of meat). When cooking and purchasing meals, select lean meat and lower fat cheese in place of high-fat meats and regular cheese—or replace them with ingredients with oils, such as nuts, seeds, or avocado. Cook and purchase products made with oils higher in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat (e.g., canola, corn, olive, peanut, safflower, soybean, and sunflower) rather than butter, shortening, or coconut or palm oils.
Careful readers will notice eggs don't appear in the above paragraph.
A few points to demonstrate why your comment might be seen as unpopular:
1) Dietary (exogenous) cholesterol has been shown to have a lesser affect to the total cholesterol levels in the blood (70-80% of all the cholesterol in your body is produced by your body endogenously by your liver and other tissues).
2) Eggs are an affordable source of various fats and proteins that are essential to metabolic health.
3) There are a group of people who assert that correcting hypercholesterolemia is best done by understanding the root cause of the overproduction of endogenous cholesterol.
4) We are beginning to understand that not all cholesterol is the same, and that high total cholesterol alone isn't a sufficient biomarker for predicting heart disease. Advanced lipoprotein fractionation tests looking for the ratio of small dense LDL to normal LDL, and HDL cholesterol is a better test; small dense LDL is bad and is a biomarker for inflammation and artery calcification, which can lead to heart disease.
There is no such thing as dietary “bad cholesterol”.
When people use that term, it generally refers to low-density lipoproteins, which are an endogenous transportation mechanism for cholesterol in your body.
All dietary cholesterol is just cholesterol, and it essentially has no impact on serum (blood) cholesterol levels.
I have nothing to back this up with* but my understanding is that simple carbohydrates like sugar are more readily converted to bodily fat. Dietary fat is digested and processed by the body into component parts that are less readily converted into bodily fat. It's not like your body just takes fat and stores it directly in your love handles unmodified.
Since a few years, I do own only iron pans. Teflon for home use as pans was a ridiculous idea: you need to take care of it and it will wear out after some time and needs to be replaced. Iron pans need very little care and get better with age. What is the point?
I know you're going to rebut with saying that iron pans are too, and I'm sure they are, but most people don't want to put in any level of the effort needed to make iron pans as non-stick as teflon.
A lot of people care only a mild amount about cooking, and don't want to invest the time to know how to properly use a cast iron or a carbon steel (which I have and only seldom use). They'd rather get a non-stick pan which lasts a while anyway, throw whatever on there, and never worry about food sticking or cleaning it after.
This. I absolutely hate cooking. With a passion. I don't want to spend time on it.
I wish it was possible to buy decent home cooked food for a reasonable fee :(
We can outsource pretty much everything else that's a chore. I drop my washing in a bag to be ready for a tenner tomorrow. Groceries can be delivered for cheap.
But delivered or takeaway food is generally very expensive and not very healthy. It's still viewed as a luxury.
There's just no benefit to cooking for a single person and I just hate doing it so much. So I get implements that make cleanup as simple as possible. Like the non-stick pans.
It's very different for someone who would view coming as a hobby and takes pride in it.
Idk to me this sounds like: I hate washing myself or I hate going to the bathroom. Maybe it’s a cultural thing but adults just need to be able to cook in my society. No place for hefty emotions. Just a fact of life.
It might be nice to live in a society where not cooking is possible. Probably less healthy though, you have different incentives than people making your food. (Taste [salt levels] and “adictiveness” vs healthy and nutritious).
Cooking is a skill, it takes practices and you have to develop some dexterity. But I usually enjoy it now.
I have to admit I never really cooked extensively for 1 person. I imagine I’d use the freezer a lot for lasagnas and sauces etc.
>Maybe it’s a cultural thing but adults just need to be able to cook in my society. No place for hefty emotions. Just a fact of life.
I have an impaired sense of smell, as do 20% of the adult population. Most foods are utterly bland or actively repulsive to me. Sweet tastes are mildly pleasant, but otherwise I do not enjoy eating, I just do it to avoid hunger. I maintain a BMI of 19, but only because I actively monitor my food intake to avoid becoming clinically underweight.
Cooking is a chore that I will perform in the most perfunctory way possible in order to keep myself alive, but it is also something I will avoid wherever possible. Any effort I might put into making a delicious meal is wasted on me, because I don't have the sensory apparatus to perceive deliciousness.
From my perspective, the world seems almost pathologically obsessed with food. People often struggle to understand my complete indifference to food ("surely there must be some foods you enjoy"), but I struggle to understand how vast numbers of people eat so much that they become disabled and die prematurely. I can only make sense of it through the lens of addiction, which would raise all sorts of questions about the way in which we think talk about food versus other addictive substances.
My experience is obviously atypical (although not as uncommon as you might imagine), but I can't help thinking that the rest of you would be better off if you took a slightly more functional and utilitarian approach to eating. Obviously you can't just all pretend that you don't enjoy eating, but maybe you could all spend a bit less time talking and thinking about food?
I don't agree. I lived in Thailand where it's common to just buy a plastic bag of food from a street vendor. Most houses apparently don't even have full kitchens.
People in ancient Pompeii didn't either. They bought bread from bakers, or paid for time in public ovens, and bought premade food from pubs or other vendors. Preserved homes very clearly did not typically have the means to prepare food.
It's a statement kind of like insisting that everyone should know how to farm or do animal husbandry, when those were specialist jobs (sometimes serfs' jobs...) since time immemorial. Humans built cities millennia ago and lived in semi-specialized social groups before that.
The outmoded self-sufficiency obsession is very culturally American, due to its relatively recent status as a more or less agrarian colony.
I would say paying a tenner to wash a bag of clothes is luxury pricing, it's far more expensive than sticking it in the washing machine. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the same factor more expensive as takeaway vs cooking, and cooking is more laborious.
I do agree that it's annoying cooking as a single person though. Batch cooking and freezing can help.
I've heard of people finding a large family (through Craigslist or something) that's already making many servings for every meal, often days ahead, and paying them to make one more serving and freeze and deliver it on a weekly basis.
> I wish it was possible to buy decent home cooked food for a reasonable fee :(
I mean that’s pretty much what supermarkets sell right? Ready meals that can be heated, which are effectively cooked the same way as at the home but just on an industrial scale. Or pasta that’s pre-made and pre-filled and you just have to heat and add some sauce that’s already pre-made.
Im in the UK where we have services like Cook that are good quality meals you can heat up.
There is still a trade off here. Typically pre-made at industrial scale is looking for 'cheats' they can use to increase transportability and shelf life of food before it's served. It is not common it means the quality of 'decent home cooked' food.
There are made at store foods like you're talking about, but quite often they are 2-3x the cost of the ingredients.
I like cooking, but I don't want to take care of the small details, so I just get a non-stick pan and cook what I like with it.
(Similarly, I like programming, but that doesn't mean I enjoy taking care of all the mallocs/free that a C program requires, I just use a language with a GC)
The utility isn’t what’s in question, it’s the safety. There’s enough questions around the safety of teflon for consumption… is it really worth risking your or your family’s health to avoid some annoying cleanup?
Lots of things about cooking are risky. If you ask one by one if that's really worth risking, it's tempting to say no every time, and then there's almost nothing left. It doesn't work to treat risk as a binary factor.
I think the Teflon question is different though. It is like lead in a sense, we know it is carcinogenic, just like we know lead is a neuro-poison. The only question is whether we are doing good enough job at preventing it from leaking into our bodies.
With lead, a lot of people thought so, but still they put it in our gasoline, in solder for our water pipes, etc. and a lot of people got some pretty bad neuro-developmental disorders as a result. I certainly hope we are not repeating the same story with teflon, though I, personally am not willing to risk my and my families bodies to it.
We do not know that PTFE is carcinogenic. Some of the products that can be used to make it are, but they should not be in the final product, if they are it's a manufacturing defect.
We also know that using more oil in cooking is bad, and who knows what results from the incomplete polymerization of oil and carbonized food. I'm at least as suspicious of it as I am of Teflon.
Hm. My cast-iron skillet I've used for 20 years doesn't stick. Ever.
If there's a little stuck-on stuff on the bottom after use (should have put a little wine in there, gotten that flavor back into the dish, oh well) then a Scotch-brite bad and 30 seconds fixes it.
> If there's a little stuck-on stuff on the bottom after use (should have put a little wine in there, gotten that flavor back into the dish, oh well) then a Scotch-brite bad and 30 seconds fixes it.
For people seriously care about cooking (perhaps you're one of them), this is non sticking.
For a lot of people this is the definition of sticking.
The best frying pan I've ever owned is the cheapest-possible cast iron one I got when I moved out of my parents' house 30 years ago or so. Very rarely does anything stick and when it does I fill the pan half way with water, put it back on the stove, let it boil for a couple of minutes while I do something else and then wipe it clean.
I have parrots so I theoretically have a strict "no Teflon in my house" rule but with a Japanese wife I've had to grudgingly tolerate a Teflon-coated rice cooker.
I use non-stick pans so that I don't ever have to care about things like that.
"should have put a little wine in there" - well, I should not have to! I expect that after I sear some meat, there will be nothing that will require scrubbing the pan with a Scotch-brite pad and that I don't even have to check if there's any little stuck-on stuff.
I don't care if fixing this is easy, because I can live in a world where it isn't something that needs fixing in the first place - and apparently moving to a cast-iron skillet would make me have to fix them. Also, why would I want to spend time (and, more importantly, attention) on 'seasoning the pan'? I expect the tool to be functional with minimal maintenance, a good tool is one that reduces the amount of care and attention that needs to be done, and a tool that requires extra attention itself isn't worth it if there are alternatives that don't require that. It makes sense to spend an hour preparing or maintaining an expensive tool, but it doesn't make sense to do that for something like pan, where you can get a new functional one for less than an hour of pay.
Not a cook, are we? You put wine in there to get all the 'fond' back into the finished dish, so it tastes yards better. Not a burden or a duty; something good cooks know to do.
I never seasoned my pan. I never work to clean it, not any more than washing that non-stick on.
We've been sold a bill of goods, by the non-stick pan people, that there's some problem that needs solving. There isn't. The worst sticking problem I ever had, was with a non-stick pan. Threw it away, went back to iron.
I mean, you'd typically rinse it pretty thouroughly, I doubt a lot of micro anything remains. I'm not sure pan cleaning is a significant source of overall micro plastics emissions, though I'm open to it.
Yeah really hard to measure, but the thought of little bits of plastic melting back into the pan makes it worth the 5$ to "splurge" on a nicer scrubber that causes less anxiety haha.
My cast iron is 4 years old and every time I use scotch-brite on it, I have to spend hours stinking up my house with flaxseed oil to reseason the pan because scotch-brite makes little dots of shiny iron show up.
I don't mean for my salty comment to justify a not-ideal method. But for this topic, the proper use of the pan will generate a good seasoning as it is used.
That seems excessive to me. I use my cast iron every day, clean it off with steel wool, and just throw a little oil on there. No fancy prep, and it cleans up with less effort than 2 year old no longer non-stick pans
Nothing can beat Teflon on non-stickiness, for sure. But really, it’s actually fairly rare that it is a useful property when cooking: mostly for eggs. I mostly use stainless steel and have no problem of food sticking.
It asks for a bit of technique, but it’s just technique needed to make good food anyway (preheating pan, using fat, deglazing, managing heat)
I wouldn’t recommend cast iron either, it’s just too much faff. Stainless steel by default, Teflon for the few things that it’s useful for!
I usually use stainless and cast iron but with green chef meals I’m often tasked with searing chicken or fish in a pan and cleaning those types of pan after a cook like that gets mighty old. So I bought a Tramontina non stick exclusively for those cooks. I suspect it may last a bit longer since it’s a secondary pan I only use for those cases so it feels less wasteful as a purchase.
Is all searing associsted with carcinogens regardless of how it is done — eg toaster, grill in open flame, in a pan? I tend to really like the seared pieces on bread, steaks, and especially slices of Schwarma / Gyro / Doner
You’re not really supposed to blast heat stainless without anything in it either. But you can certainly get it hot. Just as with nonstick. At least to Leidenfrost temps.
you can deglaze that on the stove. heat a very shallow layer of water in the pan, the stuck layer will soften and dissolve. push a roux spoon gently around the bottom and then simply pour it out.
beyond that, if you are using stainless, go ahead and clean it with steel wool. a bundle of small chain is a good equivalent for cast iron.
Huh. Stainless steel is like the perfect cooking surface for searing chicken and salmon. Cleanup is super easy, ten seconds with a steel wool and/or, unique among pans, you can put it in the dishwasher with zero worries.
I mean you’re not wrong (well kinda wrong, it’s more like a few minutes). But with 2 kids, a full time job and myriad other hobbies, I couldn’t be arsed to spend another 10 seconds on dishes.
It seems some people have misconception that excessive oil and overcooking are causes for sticking, while opposite of that is how to completely eliminate sticking. When they can't accept the latter, they might resort to Teflon and steel wool sponges.
A tbsp or three of a good vinegar or wine + some scraping at the end of a nice sear adds so much flavor back into the dish, and cleanup is that much easier. When the pan is extra crusty just put a bit of warm water in it while the pan is still hot and let it sit till after the meal. Unless you are charring the absolute crap out of your food (in which case, practice your technique and heat management), everything is going to come off with a few seconds of hot water + soap + scrubbing.
Teflon is hot garbage. I wont even use it for eggs.
I care about cooking. I have a bunch of pans I experimented with in my kitchen, including cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel.
None are as non-stick as the non-stick ones. Sometimes I can cook eggs in them without it sticking, but the results are inconsistent and underwhelming. Of course, when the cooking fails and it sticks, I need to re-do the non-stick layer of oil.
I also need to use way more oil when cooking than when using non-stick. I care about this because I'm trying to cut and I'm calorie counting.
And my wife is unhappy whenever I pull out the "wierd" pans, since she can't use them and they're heavy as hell for her.
As one commenter posted. It is unreactive and it bioaccumulates in your body. Removing unwanted molecules from your body is done by means of chemical reaction. If a substance doesn’t react then what?
By your analogy, we should all be eating uranium because it produces clean nuclear energy. Yes?
No. My analogy doesn't say what we should eat. It only says that in spite of something having an association with something bad for you, it might still be just fine for you.
Here's another example. "Potassium explodes on contact with water! I think I'll pass on potassium in my diet, thanks!" That would not be a good reaction. Note the logical difference between saying "that's a bad reaction" and saying "you should eat everything that explodes." You're implying that I'm saying the latter. I'm not. I'm saying the former.
Okay Mr Logic. My response was tongue in cheek but this detracts from the main point.
I hope you’re not living under the DuPont shitstorm umbrella as appealing as it may sound.
Check out the 3M/DuPont Missisipi teflon lawsuits as well as the story of Robert Bilott, and his nationwide class action lawsuit for anyone with detectable teflon in their blood:
I had a lovely fight with my wife many years ago, because she threw away my cast irons; in her words it was “dirty” and “sticky” and she replaced them with teflon.
Years later she is a convert—from small, personal pans to dutch ovens that heat retention makes a difference—but I’m called to move them around but she’ll ensure that it gets oiled and seasoned after every use.
We also have high quality multi-ply stainless steel pots and pans but lightweight or not those are used less frequently.
If you only want non-stick without the fuss and don’t care about the health implications, it’s hard to beat teflon.
I used to cook almost exclusively with cast iron but lately I bought a set of heavy carbon steel skillet, they are now my favorites. They have a very similar heat retention as CI but are a bit lighter and that make them a real charm to work with.
I’m assuming this is one of those enamel/ceramic non-stick pans. I’ve used a number of these over the years. They’re great for “non-stick that isn’t teflon” (I have a bird, so that is useful to me), but they do degrade very fast if you’re not extremely careful, and even if you are careful they still usually only last a short while before becoming significantly less non-stick. I’d recommend saving them for eggs and other very sticky foods, and using cast iron or stainless or carbon steel for everything else.
I’ve never heard of an actual granite pan. You surely mean a metal pan coated with a combination of silicone-ish things and silica, and maybe the silica is derived from granite.
Sadly, it seems that some of these things still contain potentially nasty highly fluorinated compounds. Here’s a patent for such a thing:
Hmm, the “FAS” additive in the outermost layer has a perfluorinated C6 chain. Whoops. I wonder whether this is better or worse than PTFE. At least intact PTFE ought to be harmless. PFHxA is not so wonderful:
I bought it at an Asian kitchen store 8-9 years ago because I needed a pan, and it's still unbelievably nonstick. I have overheated it multiple times, but carefully avoided using metal utensils on it. I'm not sure if it's really made of marble but it certainly is durable.
It really depends on your kitchen, and the sort of cooking you do. There's definitely been a trend towards disposable kitchen equipment in the pro kitchens, no longer do you see chefs with carbon steel knives, but cheap stainless knives with plastic handles, plastic cutting boards etc. These are considered consumables, which I find weird, but that's what their world now looks like.
I personally use hard anodised aluminium pans for non-stick duties, and use le creuset pots for lots of stuff, and these last a long time if you take care of them. The non-stick stuff is typically eggs or reheating stuff like soup. I'd guess 10 years from the anodised stuff without much trouble, and more like 50 years for a le creuset (i've got a hand-me-down one from an aunt which was from the 70s).
They work phenomenally well on induction stoves! I use a single-burner plug-in induction unit in my small apartment kitchen and it works so well cast iron pans and an iron dutch oven.
Teflon allows pans to be made of aluminum, which makes fabrication easy. The coating also scratches easily, leading to more sales. There is no point for consumers but there are few reasons market as a whole erroneously incentivize Teflon pans.
Probably a good idea to keep any birds away from the kitchen when actively cooking regardless of the type of cookware you’re using. The main danger from Teflon cookware comes from overheating it but anything cooked to a sufficiently high temperature would produce potentially toxic fumes to a bird not to mention if they’re flighted the trouble the could get into with hot pans or boiling water, etc.
You can do quite a lot with All-Clad stainless cookware. Heat the empty pan for 120s then add oil and reduce heat as desired. From there any sticking will be truly minimal, and for any of that use a metal spatula and you'll be all set.
I like all clad for durability, and if you use copious oil or scale the pan as you cook, you usually meet minimal sticking substance, but it does require some cooking background to get there.
It also requires some $$. For most people who aren’t keen cooks, there’s much cheaper stainless steel alternatives that get the job done, a simple ikea pan is fine
Ha - I had a line cook show me to get a pan fuming hot, no oil, before throwing mushrooms in, the moisture from the mushrooms create a ledenfrost effect and you get as close as you can to having some browning on the mushrooms (while keeping a lot if moisture in). Can't burn em!
I'm unhappy that I've done this exclusively with t-fal non stick pans over the years. Going to get myself a nice 3 ply stainless pan today!
Edit0: If you try it, the mushrooms sound like sneakers squeaking in a gymnasium.
Another good method for getting mushrooms to brown and crisp without getting them oil-logged is to cook them in some water to break down their structure. The end of this video details the technique, although I usually use more than 1/4 cup of water. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XLPLCmwBLBY&pp=ygUOZGFuIG11c2h...
My main issue with non-stick cookware, aside from the temperature constraints which limit its culinary usage, and the physical constraints which limit implement usage, is the way it liberally absorbs modern dishwashing soaps, then imparts a nice soapy taste to the next thing cooked in it.
Some online anecdotes <everyone sits up and pays attention> suggest that such absorbed odors are oil soluble and will not 'wash out' easily, except by way of the next batch of hot oil - a speculation borne out by my experience.
That’s kinda half-right. The issue isn’t having a Bowden tube, it’s having teflon that extends into the hot part of the hotend. For example, a v6 lite can’t go above 250 regardless of whether it’s in a Bowden config or not, while a V6 can hit 350 with a Bowden tube.
Yes, recently swapped my hotend and discovered that the PTFE tube in my old hotend extended all the way into the heatbreak and started to disintegrate into brown-ish goo.
That's a clickbait title, the article implies that a lot of kitchen fumes are toxic to birds and that can include fumes released when a skillet is left on the stove with nothing in it. It could me that teflon is worse than everything else, but there is not enough information to reach this conclusion. Would a plastic handle melting and burning on the stove be better? Chili fumes of strengths that make humans cough and eyes water? I don't yet see evidence that if one gets rid of teflon, it's Ok to cook around birds without same precautions.
This article from Teflon.com is not clickbait, they’re just massively underselling the risk of fluorocarbons to birds. Burning a teflon pan will straight up kill any birds in your home. It’s not a minor irritant like onions, you can’t just crack a window to let the fumes out, if they’re exposed they’ll start having seizures within minutes and be dead before you could get them to a vet (not that there’s really anything that could be done).
Just as a general rule birds are delicate, there’s a lot given up to allow for flight. Teflon is somewhat risky for humans too but it’s not remotely on the same scale.
My ceramic pans all died in 10yeara. just threw out my last one. stainless and iron some beeing 30 yo are still working fine (and the ceramic would get sticky with time anyway)
Ceramic that works with induction doesn't seem that common. Non-induction electric sucks (inefficient, slow response) and gas spews out indoor pollution.
Yes, I used a DA orbital sander (pneumatic) to remove all the rough surface from the inside base of a Lodge pan. This, of course, removed the seasoned finish. The new surface was harder to season (took several months to get a uniform surface with no spots that would wear off under scraping/abrasion), but it's very capable now. I prefer it to the rough stock surface.
Wear a respirator unless you want to taste rust every time you breathe for several days.
These are similar metal composition to cast iron, where you can season them with oils, but are forged (ie pressed) into shape, rather than cast. So you get a smooth surface, which is easier for non-stick use and lighter weight.
Carbon steel are better for eggs, omelettes, etc, but cast iron are often better for steaks/meats, because they retain heat better. There are tons of videos on Youtube if you are curious.
I have done it. I picked a lodge cast iron off of a stoop once and it had started to rust. I used fine grit sandpaper in an electric sander and got a decent result. Compared to the other lodge pan that I bought new, the one I polished is smoother and nicer to use.
[edit]: I did not polish it nearly as much as the mirror finished ones in the link nearby. I only did the cooking surface, and probably worked on it for 15 minutes.
A mirror-polished 12" Lodge skillet costs an eye-watering $250 [2].
Even if this is a special case, what is it about the polishing process that adds $100 or more to the base cost? I'd be interested to hear from anyone in the know.
Get a carbon steel pan instead. Same material as wok's, and they will take a seasoning.
I like the BelleVie, because it hits the mark on cost/quality, but you have to be accepting of a slightly uneven seasoning, or strip them once a year and start over (spring cleaning project).
Carbon steel is a great choice for light cookware and general use (i.e., what you'd use a Teflon pan for), but cast iron beats it handily for e.g., searing or use over a fire. Cast takes longer to heat (and to develop even heat), but it has a high thermal mass (resists variation in heating) and is happy to dump that heat quickly into e.g., a steak.
It takes small flap/disk sanders, lots of flaps/disks, and lots of time. Just taking off the high spots takes 10-15 minutes. A mirror finish requires working through progressively finer polishing compounds and can be quite time consuming, particularly in the spots harder to reach with power/pneumatic tools (like the transition between the base of the pan and the walls).
Edit: Given the text on the site, it appears this is a single individual craftsman polishing those pans, which likely also contributes.
seems the polishing is done by a second party. by the website's own text, they are made to order. 250 for something an individual probably spends an hour or two on is not that bad in terms of price.
Polishing likely isn't required, but there are cast iron pans out there with a milled surface that seem to be a good compromise. That said, food sticking is mostly due to proteins bonding to the surface, so I'm not sure how important surface roughness is. I also have a carbon steel pan which is quite smooth, and I've not been able to get a seasoning on it that is as good as my cast iron pan so the cast iron remains more non-stick.
I tried this. It was a huge pain in the ass, made a big mess, took a lot of time, and still isn’t perfect. It definitely has a better nonstick surface now, but while I’m usually inclined to be cheap and do things myself,
I might spring for a pre-polished one in the future.
The JWST folks contacted me about my mirror-finish cast iron. Eggs still stick.
I went through about a dozen different seasoning formulas from reddit. Still stick. Someone then insisted my #10 Lodge must be from the 40s when the iron had too much boron or whatever because of war shortages. Really.
Every conspiracy in modern times is a distraction effort from the only real one: seasoning doesn’t work.
I’m sure a few of them will show up here. They’re everywhere.
Not really sure what half of what you said actually means, but you can get excellent results with a cheapo lodge, grapeseed seasoning and cooking with butter. I'm lazy as hell, and it typically lasts me many months of effectively non-stick cooking.
You can't cook acids with it, but I'm not sure where you've gotten the idea that seasoning doesn't work. Perhaps you haven't been able to make it work yet?
Some modern, e.g., Stargazer, pans also have a smoother surface, though with the requisite price bump due to the extra care and finishing needed post-casting.
Thrift store/"buried in the back yard" pans are still my preference.
If you are of British or Irish ancestry you may want to get genetically tested before you switch to iron cookware. Hemochromatosis (iron overload disease) is a genetic disease that is common in that population. Everyone in my family has it and we have to be mindful. There are probably millions with the mutation that are unaware.
Just use ceramic pans instead, they're pretty affordable nowadays. Admittedly, they wear out just like Teflon pans but it does the same job. The biggest caveat is that you have to clean them well. I usually let some water boil on it and it gets off any of the gunk that makes food stick to it.
I have two small birds and to accommodate them we switched over to ceramic nonstick only. The Greenpan ones are fantastic if you keep metal out and don’t put them in the dishwasher, which i noticed accelerated the wear. I wish it could be repaired more easily but better than than eating or breathing a Teflon flake
Came here to add that I've never looked back ever since being gifted two forged iron pans (thanks Birgit!). Because they had been in use for years (decades?) at that point already I could just start using them. I immediately became a big fan of these pans, if a bit incredulous, wondering how on Earth we've all come to use Teflon and other PFASes stuck to the heated things we prepare our food with when one of the oldest and most available materials known to mankind does such a great job.
At first I didn't listen and cleaned the pan with hot water and dish soap; don't do that. Just take a piece of suitable paper (I'm keeping a toilet paper roll around for that kitchen to avoid wasting the kitchen paper which is overkill here IMO) and get rid of the excess fat after use; after using butter, I warm the pan a bit first. It's just swipe swipe swipe, done and the paper goes to the compost. A very satisfactory state of affairs. Of course one can also re-use the fat or oil if deemed not too over-used; in that case just get out any bits the messy cook left in from the previous meal.
When you get a new pan then the first burn-in may seem intimidating but it's not rocket science; you're even allowed to let the oil smoke a bit nd if you don't believe me search for Adam Ragusea on YouTube who did a great video specifically on burn-in (of cast iron pans but no difference with forged ones AFAICT).
Hardly anything gets stuck in my pan, ever; even the sunny-side-up eggs just lift off. Before the iron pan I had a white ceramic one; that love lasted but a few months before the ceramic had one tiny dent and, worse, some micro-scratches and, presumably, many more nano-scratches that subtracted from its ability to repel stuff; it's been hanging for months on its hook, unused because why would I. It's not quite clear to me what caused the scratches because I was quite religious with only using a wooden spatula with this pan, although in some occasions I neglected that and sometimes the only thing that worked would be a thin metal lifter (orwhachamaycallit); I am not at all careful in that regard with the iron pan and it just bears with me, thank you pan.
To the people out there with slight eating <del>disorders</del> challenges and those inexperienced in cooking slash unwilling to cook—getting the right, mostly fairly cheap tools is an essential step because it lowers the entry fee to getting shit done. Even if it's just another sunny-side-up, well if it always sticks to the pan and / or if your pan forbids you to use that very capable flat-metal lifter, then it's just that much more frustrating each and every time.
They're toxic to humans as well, just far less. Under no circumstance should you allow PTFE pan to exceed 250C, as the manufacturer normally tells you to.
Your stove is capable of burning your oil and your food, which will make carcinogens.
Preheating an empty pan is just not something you should do if you're cooking with Teflon. You'll want to at least put some oil or something in there, or have a temperature control stove. It's a tradition that doesn't apply.
You may have missed who I was replying to in the thread. The toplevel comment quotes Teflon's website talking about "cookware" in a generic sense, like heating up a pan with nothing in it is universally bad. That's bullshit. Obviously Teflon doesn't want to directly admit that it is specifically Teflon that, when heated, releases gases that will kill your birds dead. This happens at temperatures that would be no problem at all for stainless or carbon steel. That was my point. It's not the "overheating cookware" that's the problem, corporate weasel wording aside, it's specifically the Teflon that is the problem. I don't own or use any non-stick cookware.
Just to birds, of course. We have nothing to worry about until 15 years from now that we learn burning teflon causes some poorly understood conditions the maker knew about all along. Ban it already.
I don't understand the question. What would be a better alternative to poisonous cookware?
It's not clear how convenience is even part of the equation. It's not their proper use, it's the manufacturing of teflon, the disposal of used cookware and use of it when scratched. What's better than non-stick cookware? Literally anything. Teflon is a scourge.
Everyone here be talking about cookware where increasingly teflon is getting produced via gore-tex and going into higher end products for companies like Vans, Nike and Adidas as a waterproof feature.
I do keep a non stick around just for eggs though, hard to beat.