To me, someone who celebrates a bit more of the spectrum than most: Metal hot. Make food hot.
Non-stick means easier cleanup, but my wife seems to think cast-iron is necessary for certain things (searing a prime rib roast, for example.).
After I figure those out, then I gotta figure out gas vs. electric vs. induction vs infrared…
Cast iron is fairly cheap and reliably buy it for life. Non stick pans are so delicate that you can’t even use metal tools with them and their handles are usually plastic so melt if you put them in the oven, and even then they won’t last more than a few years.
All of my pans are cast iron. For saucepans I have stainless steel. Never really had a problem with cleanup, what are you doing?
Everything has it’s pros and cons. There is no ‘better’. A stocked kitchen will have variety of different cookware types, a professional kitchen will have more than one heat type as well. most people for whatever reason, only use one cookware type and convince themselves it’s the ‘best’, but that isn’t true at all. i’ve taken professional cooking classes and they use every type of cookware and tell you to but certain types for certain styles/dishes.
choose your heat source first, then your cookware. non-ferrous cookware won’t work on induction stoves.
personally i have non stick, stainless steel, cast iron, and ceramic. i don’t bother with carbon steel because i don’t do high heat cooking that works best with it. i have a couple of basic alloy stock pots too, because they are lighter.
Consumer reports does a non-stick pan test where they fry an egg without oil repeatedly until it starts to stick. The point is that normal use degrades non stick surfaces, so every non-stick pan, no matter how fancy, will one day be garbage.
Don’t get me wrong, I use both non-stick and metal surface pans. I think they both have their place, but I think of non-stick pans as expendable.
I have Lodge cast iron and De Buyer carbon steel and I definitely prefer the carbon steel. I do have non stick for things like eggs or pancakes but they don’t last forever, I get a few years of use. I recently replaced my old Tfal PTFE with Blue Diamond and I’m quite happy with them.
I have Lodge cast-iron skillets, Le Creuset and Staub ceramic-coated cast-iron dutch ovens, Le Creuset stainless saucepans, and one non-stick frying pan (which I bought for my wife).
I use the skillets for pretty much everything that isn’t going to be simmered in tomato. Had them for years and they are non-stick. I happily fry eggs in them with no worries whatsoever.
I don’t like non-stick anymore because the coating eventually gets all scratched up and doesn’t work as good. Idk how it gets scratched up, I never used metal. My ex did, so maybe it was her.
Cast Iron, if maintained well (i.e just don’t cook anything too acidic. You don’t usually need to re-season), lasts forever. It’s also great for when you want to sear something without the pan cooling down once you put your food on it. Because it’s thick and stores a bunch of heat. Yet somehow it also gets hot pretty fast.
I don’t get stainless steel personally. Apparently to get things to not stick, I should be using MORE heat? But I already use a lot of heat! On the up side, they get hot really fast.
Copper and carbon steel I’ve never used. I hear carbon steel is similar to cast iron in many ways, but easier to maintain?
If you’re doing a new build, definitely go induction. Electric sucks because it’s kinda slow-ish to get started, gas sucks because either you need to have a gas line built to your house if you don’t already have one, or you change out the gas container every now and then (and that thing is heavy, mine’s 17 KG of gas + whatever the huge chunk of metal weighs, which is definitely more than 17 KG). Plus the whole issue of, y’know, freshly burnt hydrocarbons (yay CO2 and potentially other gases). Oh and gas explosions aren’t common, but they can happen!
Only downside of induction is that if you lose power, you can’t cook. A wood-burning stove as a backup is excellent in this case, because depending on what your heating system is, you may also lose heating if power is gone.
non stick is fine if it’s seasoned or anodized.
i have anodized non stick and it’s worked for over a decade. it’s not cheap though, easily $80 a pot/pan.
Seconding your thoughts on nonstick and cast iron. I haven’t used other kinds of pans, but I like cast iron enough that I’d consider having at least one of them to be essential.
Getting a good sear is pretty helpful towards avoiding something sticking.
Induction FTW and cast iron does work the best with induction since it heats up the most. However, I also enjoy non-stick since it being slower is an OK trade-off for the easy cleanup
Depends on what you’re doing. Yes, it’s better for most things where you’ll need to sear.
Carbon steel frying pans good as well.
I use cast iron on electric and am 100% happy with both. I have a mix of pans that I bought new and acquired used. One of them was quite rough and I restored it. I find them extremely easy to use and cleanup.
Induction gives you the speed and control of gas, without the exhaust gases. Induction is more efficient than infrared, because you’re heating the pan directly. The cooktop only gets hot from the pan resting on it.
Get induction, it’s by far the best!
i also want to add that you should avoid ones with capacitive buttons. they suck, and imagine cleaning them…
Also against the capacitive buttons my cat has accidentally turned on my stove so now I need to turn on the cleaning lock whenever I am done using it
Induction also requires specific pans, right? So a regular cast iron pot won’t work?
I have induction; anything magnetic will heat, pans sized to your elements work best. Pans with too much aluminum and not enough iron (or other ferro magnetic material) won’t work very well. Getting induction was a great excuse to dump the cheap pans I’d wanted to replace anyway. When shopping the discount racks like Home Goods, Marshalls, etc. I always grabbed some fridge magnets and tried them on the bottom of any prospective purchase; the stronger the pull, the better it will perform with induction. The only item I really missed was my moka pot (stovetop espresso, usually all aluminum casting), but I was able to find one with a stainless steel base that works great. Your pots and pans will also need a flat bottom to react to the induction elements, so woks and such built with a slope or curve to encourage flames to lick up the sides don’t work so well compared to gas. Finding a Teflon coated pan that works with induction was difficult (I don’t often use it anyway, but SO insisted we have one for their use). I’m looking into replacing the Teflon pans with nitrided carbon steel soon.
Cast Iron and induction are a match made in heaven though. The cast iron heats fast and evenly and the induction means you can be very precise about how much heat you apply and when. When you turn off the element, the only heat left in the whole system is what you’ve already put into the pan, which is a big deal in my tiny kitchen when I don’t always have room to move a pan off to the side to rest or cool. The cast iron and stainless pans I have heat fast enough that I can basically cook starting from a cold pan for most things. Heating an empty pan takes seconds. I can bring a pot of a water of a couple quarts/liters to a roaring boil in about 4 minutes, then back down to a gentle simmer in seconds.
If gas is cooking with fire, induction feels like cooking with science. As may be clear from the rant, I love my induction range.
Small note on induction.
Since power setting works by turning the element off and on quickly, having a really thin pan with little thermal mass will result in some really weird uneven heating (basically just a hot circle).
Two ignorant questions for you:
Do you see any benefits to teflon over carbon steel?
I’ve been using airbnb a bit and sometimes the tops are some form of electric (but I’m ignorant enough not to know what type of electric) and by far the most brittle part seems to be the touch buttons that many have. Do you have any pointers on shopping around for stovetops without issues with the buttons?
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If it’s sticking to a magnet, it will work. Cast iron works. Induction is great, i’ll never go back to gas!
Thanks! Sorry for spreading the FUD
Probably answered below:
All will work with induction, except for cheap aluminum nonstick pans
I thought it was more involved than that but after a quick search online I’m wrong
A very slight clarification here:
cheap to make alumin
spoiler
i
um nonstick pans. Mine doesn’t work AND it wasn’t cheap : (.
I like carbon steel, mainly for two reasons
- Heats up insanely fast
- Super easy to clean
Hell yeah. Carbon steel pans are great. Gonna get a carbon steel wok soon and then home deep frying is gonna be a breeze.
High carbon steel. The real champion. Agree
Yes. Our house only has cast iron and stainless.
There’s a small learning curve with cast iron, but the less you worry and over think it, the easier it gets. I fry eggs every other day in mine, and it’s about as non-stick as anything else. Preheat the pan or griddle, that’s all. Cleanup is a wipe with a paper towel or a rinse and quick scrub.
Cast iron works 95% of the time, but acid can strip the seasoning. So anything simmered an hour or more in tomato or win,e or sauted with lemon juice, get stainless. Don’t put it in the dish washer. Not a lot of rules, really. My pan is 15 years old. My Mom uses ones that might be older than her.
When I travel and have to use someone else’s non-stick pans, I hate the delicate little snowflake pieces of shit. Flimsy, toxic, someone else showed it a fork once so now it has damage and sticks anyway in a line across the middle, can’t go on the oven, can’t sear, handles all wobbly. Generally just disposable trash. Why would you love trash?
Nonstick pans are amaaaaazing the first few months. After that, they get non-non-stick in places.
because you’re buying cheap non stick stuff.
I have a non-stick, and I use it rather infrequently. I have read about the effects of damaged coating, and GOD I would throw it away immediately as soon as I see ONE flake in it. Maybe I’m just overreacting it, but I treat it like it was a delicately covered layer of asbestos.
It’s great and smooth NOW, but I’m only using it until I see a noticeably hard scratch. Until then, I get rid of the oil and juices with a paper towel immediately after cooking (and I’m already slightly worried that the dry paper could be too abrasive on the dry bits of the pan), and I leave it to cool down before I wash it to prevent it from heat stress.
I might be overthinking it. But I’m playing with the thought of getting a cast iron or carbon steel already.
Please consider how many decades it took for lead in the atmosphere from leaded gasoline to be considered bad enough that we got rid of it. PFAS and other toxic chemicals that are ubiquitous are known to be toxic in lab conditions, so just imagine how bad that shit is in the wild.
I agree don’t waste money, but might as well get the cast iron now, keep it in training mode for 2-3 months, and just wait for the cast iron to get bumped up to the big show.
Totally agreed, that’s the p(l)an.
Everyone else in the comments are saying Teflon is harmless to consume. Who do I believe?
Scientists are your best bet, I guess. I wish I could cite you studies, but I would have to search, as well. I might soon.
UPDATE: This far all I got was ‘best to be careful’ or ‘staying away never hurts’:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389425031759
These findings challenge the assumption that PTFE particles are biologically inert, highlighting hazards arising from their physical interactions, especially at the nanoscale. Given the relevance of the co-culture in vitro model of intestinal barrier to human intestinal physiology, the results underscore potential intestinal health risks from PTFE-MNPL exposure. Future studies should focus on chronic, low-dose exposures to elucidate the specific cellular pathways activated by PTFE-MNPL exposure.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736/
Due to toxicity concerns, PFOA has been replaced with other chemicals such as GenX, but these new alternatives are also suspected to have similar toxicity. Therefore, more extensive and systematic research efforts are required to respond the prevailing dogma about human exposure and toxic effects to PTFE, PFOA, and GenX and other alternatives.
Non-stick chemicals have been historically poisonous, don’t know about the modern stuff though.
Also, cooking with cast iron increases iron intake.
Teflon itself is harmless, it’s the by-products in its production (PFAS) that are dangerous. Here’s more in the topic: https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY
i have a nonstick with a ceramic coating. has lasted a lot longer than teflons
Cheap “modern” stuff? Still toxic. Though there are plenty of coatings that are less toxic and more robust. Not to say any, including a seasoned cast iron pan, are abuse-proof. Use metal utensils on anything, and you will damage any coating.
Yeah, PFAS or forever chemicals like Teflon are not all equal. The bigger “fluffier” molecules can pass through the body way easier than the smaller ones.
If people are in the US they should check their drinking water first since that’s the majority of PFAS that stay in the body weirdly enough.
I use a metal spatula on my cast iron all the time.
There’s no [edit: manufactured, not easily replaced] coating on cast iron (unless enameled)
You seasoning is a coating
Yes there is, it is polymerized fats and oils that build up over time.
Technically the truth, but using a metal spatula will not have much impact.
Also It is technically plastic.
Unwise regardless of how it can be ‘replaced’ on cast iron.
Cast iron can take a fair amount of abuse.
The method some people use to clean super stuck on bits it literally a square of chain mail. I just use salt, I don’t think the chain mail works that well.
Yeah, grandma’s been sending me those ‘good luck’ chain mails since the nineties, and I’ve still not seen any luck at all.
cast iron increases iron intake
You need acidic ingredients for that. Cook your tomato sauce in a cast iron to get a healthy dose of iron for the whole family!
Non-stick is teflon. Not harmful unless you burn it (at over 300°C).
Not sure why you are down voted, you are right. Teflon molecules are really long chains, your body doesn’t interact or store it, you just shit it out as it entered. The issue is the molecules used in it’s production, that are dumped in rivers and end up everywhere.
Yea, and if you burn them they break down into shorter molecules that accumulate in the liver or something.
Would be surprised how many people used scratched Teflon pans. I watched one friend of mine put the empty non-stick pan with no oil or anything on maximum heat to “pre heat the pan” before adding oil. Very sketchy.
It’s only better in two things: longevity and taste. Maybe the two most important things for a cooking utensil.
Absolutely love that I can toss them right into the oven, and maintenance is not that bad
Searing and oven safe.
It lasts forever, you wont scrape whatever “non-stick coating” they use off. If you want a pan that will outlive your grandchildren and is permanently non-stick once it’s seasoned, for most things a cast iron is perfect. If you have that, some pots of various sizes, and a wok, youre set.
I prefer induction or infrared stovetop. We dont need to burn more gas.
Imo, the main advantage to cast iron vs literally everything else is how you can abuse it as long as the one rule you follow is to clean it after use.
Teflon and other nonstick coatings are too easily damaged by things like scrubbing pads or metal utensils.
Cast iron don’t give a single fuck.
Teflon will eventually flake off even if babied. The problem is thermal stress between the aluminum and Teflon. Repeated heating and cooling will eventually cause it to fail.
You can absolutely scrape the seasoning off a cast iron pan through aggressive use of metal utensils, but you can also re-season it by applying a little cooking oil and getting it hot for an hour or so.
