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I'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Add the tendency o
by yamtaddle 4y ago
I'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Add the tendency of cast iron to unpleasantly flavor acidic foods (which is lots of foods) and it's hopeless, as far as convincing goes. At least stainless doesn't do that. I might win her over for stainless, mostly, but cast iron's going to remain only for me.
No denying that it's a lot easier to make eggs or pancakes or whatever on teflon, while distracted by also trying to get the kids dressed and such, without ruining the food or making a mess, than it is on other materials. Even if you know what to do with other pans, you still have to do it, and that takes more attention and care than teflon.
If it comes out that teflon pans are, in fact, a major source of ingested or inhaled PFAS, I'll probably kick up my efforts to convert her. In the meantime I suspect a lot more of it comes from other household materials (clothes, carpet, furniture—plus stuff in cars) that've been treated for fire and stain resistance, so I'm not super worried about the pans.
- hgomersall 4y agoYou need stainless for acidic foods. We have both types of frying pans. The problem with Teflon as I understand it is that it breaks down to PFAS at temperatures that are easy to reach in a frying pan. It might be that Teflon other things are better (like a stand-alone grill thing), but I just try to avoid it.
- buu700 4y agoI'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Would she be willing to use a timer? She can just set it for 10 - 15 minutes after turning the burner on, and avoid putting anything in the pan until after the timer is done. I've certainly ruined my fair share of eggs by rushing, but having the patience to let it get up to temperature is pretty much the only "hard" part of using cast iron.
- kingnothing 4y ago10 minutes? You don't need the pan to be 900 degrees! It's more like 1-2 minutes.
- buu700 4y agolol, well I was erring on the side of caution because she's clearly doing something wrong here. That being said, in my experience, 5 - 10 minutes is about right unless I go out of my way to preheat at a higher temperature.
- yamtaddle 4y agoMaybe, I dunno, but it only took a couple fucked-up dishes before she was like "why the hell am I doing this when there's a teflon pan right there?"