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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

• JUNGLEISMASSIVE 3y ago
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• etblg 3y ago
  It's super non-stick. 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.
  • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    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.
    • NegativeLatency 3y ago
      > doesn't stick. Ever. > If there's a little stuck-on stuff So it does stick?
      • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
        Not so I should use exotic plastic coatings (Teflon) and expensive cleaners to avoid. A few seconds gentle washing. There's way, way too much made over so-called 'non-stick' pans. Worst experience I even had with sticking? A non-stick pan.
    • raincole 3y ago
      > 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.
    • sneak 3y ago
      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.
      • markl42 3y ago
        Don’t use flaxseed! https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/b4pxaq/yay_kenji_again_explicitly_debunks_flaxseed_oil/ https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/b4pxaq/yay_kenji_...
        • arcanemachiner 3y ago
          Good lord. > You MUST use flaxseed oil to season your pan. Then > You MUST NOT use flaxseed oil to season your pan. Just season the fucking pan with some cooking oil and be done with it. I swear, the internet has made some of the simplest things into this relentless pursuit of perfection.
          • InSteady 3y ago
            flaxseed has an atrociously low smoke point (225 F). You really shouldn't be using it for cooking whatsoever, let alone seasoning cast iron. In general I agree with your sentiment though. Find something that works for you and go with it.
            • arcanemachiner 3y ago
              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.
      • richiebful1 3y ago
        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
    • buildbot 3y ago
      FYI scotch-brite pads are plastic and shed microplastics into your pan. As a replacement, there are coconut fiber based pads that work better actually.
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        For cast iron, the best scrubbers are steel chainmail, IME. Last forever, too.
      • morsch 3y ago
        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.
        • buildbot 3y ago
          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.
    • wastholm 3y ago
      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.
    • PeterisP 3y ago
      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.
      • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
        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.
  • williamdclt 3y ago
    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!
    • dclowd9901 3y ago
      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.
      • williamdclt 3y ago
        Can you sear with a non stick? Searing requires preheating the pan hot, which isn’t recommended with Teflon I think
        • EGreg 3y ago
          Asking the biochemists here… 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
          • mplanchard 3y ago
            AFAIK almost all charred compounds contain some amount of carcinogens of some kind. The question is just whether it’s worth it to you.
        • dclowd9901 3y ago
  • bluejekyll 3y ago
    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?
    • Dylan16807 3y ago
      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.
      • runarberg 3y ago
        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.
        • Dylan16807 3y ago
          > we know it is carcinogenic Do we? PFOA is "possibly carcinogenic" but they've stopped using it when making teflon.
        • sudosysgen 3y ago
          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.
  • wkat4242 3y ago
    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.
    • teekert 3y ago
      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. Check out “Nat’s what I reckon”.
      • wkat4242 3y ago
        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.
        • teekert 3y ago
          Yeah I loved that about Thailand, I’d eat small things all day from street vendors. Good stuff.
        • redwall_hp 3y ago
          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.
  • mrcode007 3y ago
    “An early use was in the Manhattan Project as a material to coat valves and seals in the pipes holding highly reactive uranium hexafluoride” Considering the applications, I’ll pass :)
    • jtbayly 3y ago
      Why? One of the first uses for wood was burning it for heat, creating toxic poisonous fumes. I don’t have any problem using it as a material for my utensils, though.
      • mrcode007 3y ago
        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?
        • jtbayly 3y ago
          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.
          • mrcode007 3y ago
            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: https://www.taftlaw.com/news-events/news/taft-wins-class-certification-in-pfas-suit https://www.taftlaw.com/news-events/news/taft-wins-class-cer... https://theintercept.com/2018/10/06/dupont-pfas-chemicals-lawsuit/ https://theintercept.com/2018/10/06/dupont-pfas-chemicals-la... More recently, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-08/how-cancer-linked-pfas-forever-chemicals-found-their-way-into-everyone https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-08/how-cance...
  • RealityVoid 3y ago
    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. So, overall, the non-stick sees the most usage.
• Tade0 3y ago
  I received a granite pan recently and I can't recommend it enough. It doesn't stick and contains no teflon or any other such material.
  • almostdigital 3y ago
    I thought those pans that are marketed as "granite" with a speckled pattern where just PTFE coated aluminium, is this something different?
  • namdnay 3y ago
    I think “granite pans” (which aren’t) are basically enamel, like a Le Creuset
  • 542458 3y ago
    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.
  • amluto 3y ago
    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: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6d/25/ca/9ff2bbd58a12d1/US7879449.pdf https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6d/25/ca/9ff2bbd... 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: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorohexanoic_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorohexanoic_acid edit: some brands of “ceramic” nonstick pans are quite explicit about being PFAS-free, and CA AB1200 really ought to help here.
• Mistletoe 3y ago
  The point was to sell Teflon pans to you repeatedly.
• teekert 3y ago
  I use steel or iron where possible but fish… it’s just impossible. I have some nice greenpans for that but those are also controversial.
• ahoka 3y ago
  Iron pans are heavy and work horribly on anything but gas, which is even worse for the lungs.
  • thatcherc 3y ago
    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.
  • alwayslikethis 3y ago
    They work just fine. If anything, the high heat capacity makes the heating more even if your heat source is unstable.
• nobodyandproud 3y ago
  Cast iron wares are heavy. 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.
  • axpy 3y ago
    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.
• tdeck 3y ago
  I have one of these "marble" pans. https://www.amazon.com/Ceramic-Marble-Coated-Aluminium-KW/dp/B0049KFR5A https://www.amazon.com/Ceramic-Marble-Coated-Aluminium-KW/dp... 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.
• numpad0 3y ago
  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.
• cesaref 3y ago
  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).