Non-stick pan recommendations

kl8ton

HeavyG said:

Botch said:

It just occurred to me Bed, Bath & Beyond may be having a sale...

Go now if you're thinking of going. I heard on the news last night that the window for folks with gift cards and the like only had a week or two to use them and that most of their stores will be closed by June. Might be some good deals to be had, maybe.

Go and hide the items you want somewhere in the store. Come back when everything is 80 percent off!   

fishlessman

kl8ton said:

HeavyG said:

Botch said:

It just occurred to me Bed, Bath & Beyond may be having a sale...

Go now if you're thinking of going. I heard on the news last night that the window for folks with gift cards and the like only had a week or two to use them and that most of their stores will be closed by June. Might be some good deals to be had, maybe.

Go and hide the items you want somewhere in the store. Come back when everything is 80 percent off!   

was in the bed bath a few weeks ago for a dish drying rack and the shelves were pretty bare, walked out empty handed

HeavyG

fishlessman said:

kl8ton said:

HeavyG said:

Botch said:

It just occurred to me Bed, Bath & Beyond may be having a sale...

Go now if you're thinking of going. I heard on the news last night that the window for folks with gift cards and the like only had a week or two to use them and that most of their stores will be closed by June. Might be some good deals to be had, maybe.

Go and hide the items you want somewhere in the store. Come back when everything is 80 percent off!   

was in the bed bath a few weeks ago for a dish drying rack and the shelves were pretty bare, walked out empty handed

I would imagine that most BB&B stores are rather bare. It's not as if this bankruptcy just came out of the blue.

BigreenGreg

Calphalon is holding up alright. Honestly I mostly use the cast iron.

GrateEggspectations

I did not read the above comments and may already have commented myself, but I would say that any pan is non-stick if you maintain it properly. 

This household uses only two kinds of pan - cast iron and carbon steel. Both are non-stick here and I could not imagine wanting for anything else. Just made eggs in the CS for my son. They slid around like Jabba the Hut on a Wet Banana. 

No shade on anyone who is seeking non-stick coatings. But based on my experience with CI and CS and on reports of potential health hazards with non-stick, I have never even ventured there and don’t feel I need to. 

GrateEggspectations

jdMyers said:

Depends.  T-Fal killed my S. American Parrots with the chemical by fumes.  So I'm particularly picky.  Also almost every pan is non stick if it gets hot enuff.  🔥 

Just catching up and saw this. Correct in my experience. Season your pans and add ingredients at the right temps (crucial with something like eggs) and you can avoid a lot of sticking. 

Wooderson

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

GrateEggspectations

alaskanassasin said:

I can’t get into cooking hot. Everyone says you have to get stainless or carbon screaming hot, that’s just not my style especially in the coffee stage of
the day.

Yes and no. There is great nuance to this. 

A CI pan at medium heat is much, much hotter after 5 mins than it is after 2. And it’s much, much hotter after 10 mins than it is after 5. In my experience, pans need to be given time for temps to stabilize before you add food. 

I would NEVER use a fully heated cast iron pan at max stove output. Only time the pan might see high heat would be for a quick dry post-washing. That’s just far too intense for my purposes. For the perfect fried egg, for example, I’ll heat a cast iron pan on 4 (out of 10). But I’d give it 10 or even 15 mins to get there before adding any oil or food. That much time on 4 does get it pretty screaming hot, and keeps temps consistent throughout your cook. 

If you want to make better friends with your pans, there are really only three things to consider:
i) give your pans sufficient time to come up to temp and stabilize before adding food;
ii) use enough oil when cooking. Add your oil late if cooking hot. Otherwise, it’ll polymerize and smoke. A hot pan and oil added too early leaves you with food sticking to your pan. 

iii) maintain your pans properly. Never leave them wet. Dry them on stove anytime they’ve seen liquids other than fats. Keep them oiled. Season them as required. 

Ozzie_Isaac

GrateEggspectations said:

alaskanassasin said:

I can’t get into cooking hot. Everyone says you have to get stainless or carbon screaming hot, that’s just not my style especially in the coffee stage of
the day.

Yes and no. There is great nuance to this. 

A CI pan at medium heat is much, much hotter after 5 mins than it is after 2. And it’s much, much hotter after 10 mins than it is after 5. In my experience, pans need to be given time for temps to stabilize before you add food. 

I would NEVER use a fully heated cast iron pan at max stove output. Only time the pan might see high heat would be for a quick dry post-washing. That’s just far too intense for my purposes. For the perfect fried egg, for example, I’ll heat a cast iron pan on 4 (out of 10). But I’d give it 10 or even 15 mins to get there before adding any oil or food. That much time on 4 does get it pretty screaming hot, and keeps temps consistent throughout your cook. 

If you want to make better friends with your pans, there are really only three things to consider:
i) give your pans sufficient time to come up to temp and stabilize before adding food;
ii) use enough oil when cooking. Add your oil late if cooking hot. Otherwise, it’ll polymerize and smoke. A hot pan and oil added too early leaves you with food sticking to your pan. 

iii) maintain your pans properly. Never leave them wet. Dry them on stove anytime they’ve seen liquids other than fats. Keep them oiled. Season them as required. 

Sorry, are these pan or relationship instructions?

HeavyG

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

fishlessman

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

You are supposed to season your stainless. Good luck convincing people to do that

fishlessman

Ozzie_Isaac said:

GrateEggspectations said:

alaskanassasin said:

I can’t get into cooking hot. Everyone says you have to get stainless or carbon screaming hot, that’s just not my style especially in the coffee stage of
the day.

Yes and no. There is great nuance to this. 

A CI pan at medium heat is much, much hotter after 5 mins than it is after 2. And it’s much, much hotter after 10 mins than it is after 5. In my experience, pans need to be given time for temps to stabilize before you add food. 

I would NEVER use a fully heated cast iron pan at max stove output. Only time the pan might see high heat would be for a quick dry post-washing. That’s just far too intense for my purposes. For the perfect fried egg, for example, I’ll heat a cast iron pan on 4 (out of 10). But I’d give it 10 or even 15 mins to get there before adding any oil or food. That much time on 4 does get it pretty screaming hot, and keeps temps consistent throughout your cook. 

If you want to make better friends with your pans, there are really only three things to consider:
i) give your pans sufficient time to come up to temp and stabilize before adding food;
ii) use enough oil when cooking. Add your oil late if cooking hot. Otherwise, it’ll polymerize and smoke. A hot pan and oil added too early leaves you with food sticking to your pan. 

iii) maintain your pans properly. Never leave them wet. Dry them on stove anytime they’ve seen liquids other than fats. Keep them oiled. Season them as required. 

Sorry, are these pan or relationship instructions?

Shmbo throws it at you.....if you need instructions.....duck

loco_engr

sometimes with a little scrubbing with Bar Keepers Friend can help

GrateEggspectations

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

You certainly give a very wide berth to the term “fad”. 

Cast iron cookware dates back to at least around 220 A.D. Carbon steel to about 500 A.D. Both are still staples in professional kitchens. 

alaskanassasin

GrateEggspectations said:

alaskanassasin said:

I can’t get into cooking hot. Everyone says you have to get stainless or carbon screaming hot, that’s just not my style especially in the coffee stage of
the day.

Yes and no. There is great nuance to this. 

A CI pan at medium heat is much, much hotter after 5 mins than it is after 2. And it’s much, much hotter after 10 mins than it is after 5. In my experience, pans need to be given time for temps to stabilize before you add food. 

I would NEVER use a fully heated cast iron pan at max stove output. Only time the pan might see high heat would be for a quick dry post-washing. That’s just far too intense for my purposes. For the perfect fried egg, for example, I’ll heat a cast iron pan on 4 (out of 10). But I’d give it 10 or even 15 mins to get there before adding any oil or food. That much time on 4 does get it pretty screaming hot, and keeps temps consistent throughout your cook. 

If you want to make better friends with your pans, there are really only three things to consider:
i) give your pans sufficient time to come up to temp and stabilize before adding food;
ii) use enough oil when cooking. Add your oil late if cooking hot. Otherwise, it’ll polymerize and smoke. A hot pan and oil added too early leaves you with food sticking to your pan. 

iii) maintain your pans properly. Never leave them wet. Dry them on stove anytime they’ve seen liquids other than fats. Keep them oiled. Season them as required. 

The only thing I cook on a non stick pan is eggs, low and slow, salt and pepper, white flapping butter grease… 

buzd504

NDG said:

Go cheap - replace often. T-Fal and OXO good choice.
I once bought high end SCAN PAN non stick . . nice but after a few years it seems to fail regardless of quality.  

I've had a SCAN PAN for years and beat the crap out of it and it is still holding up great.

fishlessman

Screaming hot cast iron, drop heat to medium low and add bacon. When done, crack eggs and toss grease on top while cooking, keep yolk runny, edges of whites crispy. That's the way I like them

Botch

GrateEggspectations said:
Season your pans and add ingredients at the right temps (crucial with something like eggs) and you can avoid a lot of sticking. 

Does anyone here have the ability to make, say, a french omelette (where the eggs have to be constantly stirred, over fairly low heat, and roll out with no scraping whatsoever) in a CI or CS pan?  I have two heavy CI pans (have never tried to cook eggs in them) and a thin iron wok (well-seasoned) that I cannot scramble eggs in without sticking (although I've only tried a couple of times).  
 
The other advantage to a non-stick frypan is they're made of aluminum, that are very responsive to heat changes.  CI/SS pans are not, my wok is but not as much as aluminum.  Just something simple like my usual morning breakfast (bacon from cold to med to low, eggs from low, then up to med when the cheese is added).  I know I could cook everything by adding "enough oil" to any pan, but I prefer to cook the bacon, pour off all the grease except what stays in the pan, and cook my eggs in that, so they don't taste greasy (whether fried, scrambled, or made into an omelette).  I can't do that in a steel pan.   

GrateEggspectations

@Botch

You are correct on that point. I find that fried eggs can be pulled off relatively easily, but scrambled is nearly impossible. I did say you could avoid “a lot of sticking”. 🙃

caliking

alaskanassasin said:

GrateEggspectations said:

alaskanassasin said:

I can’t get into cooking hot. Everyone says you have to get stainless or carbon screaming hot, that’s just not my style especially in the coffee stage of
the day.

Yes and no. There is great nuance to this. 

A CI pan at medium heat is much, much hotter after 5 mins than it is after 2. And it’s much, much hotter after 10 mins than it is after 5. In my experience, pans need to be given time for temps to stabilize before you add food. 

I would NEVER use a fully heated cast iron pan at max stove output. Only time the pan might see high heat would be for a quick dry post-washing. That’s just far too intense for my purposes. For the perfect fried egg, for example, I’ll heat a cast iron pan on 4 (out of 10). But I’d give it 10 or even 15 mins to get there before adding any oil or food. That much time on 4 does get it pretty screaming hot, and keeps temps consistent throughout your cook. 

If you want to make better friends with your pans, there are really only three things to consider:
i) give your pans sufficient time to come up to temp and stabilize before adding food;
ii) use enough oil when cooking. Add your oil late if cooking hot. Otherwise, it’ll polymerize and smoke. A hot pan and oil added too early leaves you with food sticking to your pan. 

iii) maintain your pans properly. Never leave them wet. Dry them on stove anytime they’ve seen liquids other than fats. Keep them oiled. Season them as required. 

The only thing I cook on a non stick pan is eggs, low and slow, salt and pepper, white flapping butter grease… 

food porn

HeavyG

GrateEggspectations said:

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

You certainly give a very wide berth to the term “fad”. 

Cast iron cookware dates back to at least around 220 A.D. Carbon steel to about 500 A.D. Both are still staples in professional kitchens. 

Well obviously cast iron dates back to somewhere around the start of...I don't know...the Iron Age. And the main reason that it has been around for so long is because cast iron cookware is easy and cheap to make and lasted a long time. Ditto for carbon steel - cheap, easy to make, lasts a long time.

However, it really has been only in the last 15-20 years that there has been this renewed interest/revival of cast iron pots and pans. That's pretty obvious just by the number of boutique manufacturers that have popped up in the last 5-10 years. Thirty years ago you could probably count on one hand the U.S.  manufacturers of cast iron skillets. Today you'd need at least two hands (and maybe even a foot).

Same thing has happened with carbon steel. Certainly carbon steel pans have been around forever and used by many but just like cast iron the user base was pretty static. From what I have seen over the last few years it seems like many of the newborn cast iron aficionados have perhaps gotten bored and started looking for (apologies to Steve Jobs) "the next big thing" and now there has been similar renewed/enlarged interest in carbon steel pans. Again, as with cast iron, we have seen quite a few boutique carbon steel makers popup. Even Lodge has started making carbon steel pans (in 2011).

Neither CI or CS are going away. All I'm saying is that "the next big thing" will be a renewed interest in stainless steel, or maybe titanium, or maybe copper - Alex the French Cooking Guy sold out of all of his bespoke Salut! copper pots in less than a day a few weeks ago.

Wooderson

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

Heavy G, I think you may need to read up on what teflon, aka PTFE is.  I'm not saying I'm in the clear with avoiding all PFAS with not using non stick pans,  but your statement is wrong. 

HeavyG

Wooderson said:

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

Heavy G, I think you may need to read up on what teflon, aka PTFE is.  I'm not saying I'm in the clear with avoiding all PFAS with not using non stick pans,  but your statement is wrong. 

I've tried to keep up with the literature regarding Teflon/PTFE's over the years but I could certainly be out of date and have missed something of importance.

They removed the particularly hazardous "forever chemical" PFOA from Teflon a decade ago. Teflon, as is used in pans today is very inert and most information indicates that swallowing a flake of Teflon will not harm you as it just passes right thru you. Breathing in fumes from an improperly used pan is a different matter though and caution is in order.

A recent article had this to say:

"That’s about the firmest answer you’re going to get regarding the safety of nonstick cookware. “In no study has it been shown that people who use nonstick pans have higher levels” of PFAS, says Jane Hoppin, a North Carolina State University epidemiologist and a member of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee studying PFAS. But she also told me that, with regard to the broader research on PFAS-related health risks, “I haven’t seen anybody say it’s safe to use.”

Certainly, more research could be done on PFAS, given the lack of relevant studies. There is no research, for example, showing that people who use nonstick pans are more likely to get sick. The one study on exposure from nonstick pans mentioned in the report that Hoppin and others published last year found inconclusive results after measuring gaseous PFAS released from heated nonstick pans, though the researchers tested only a few pans. Another study in which scientists used nonstick pans to cook beef and pork—and an assortment of more glamorous meats including chicken nuggets—and then measured the PFAS levels likewise failed to reach a conclusion, because too few meat samples were used.

More scientists could probably be convinced to pursue rigorous research in this field if PFAS exposure came only from nonstick pans. Investigating the risks would be tough, perhaps impossible: Designing a rigorous study to test the risks of PFAS exposure would likely involve forcing unwitting test subjects to breathe in PFAS fumes or eat from flaking pans. But given that we are exposed to PFAS in so many other ways—drinking water being chief among them—what would be the point? “They’re in dental floss, and they’re in your Gore-Tex jacket, and they’re in your shoes,” Hoppin said. “The relative contribution of any one of those things is minor.”

Link to the article itself - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/02/so-are-nonstick-pans-safe-or-what/672965/

I certainly understand why some people have concerns and may want to act on those concerns. We live in a world where the vast majority of humans globally (and >95% in the U.S.) have PFAS in their bodies and given the ubiquity of PFAS chemicals in our daily lives it's almost impossible to completely avoid exposure to them but I agree it doesn't hurt to try and eliminate whatever potential sources we can.

Mr_D

Costco 
Tramontina Professional 8" , 10" or 12" Restaurant Fry Pan, Nonstick Aluminum, 2 pk

Best deal on the internet. 

Ozzie_Isaac

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

HeavyG said:

Wooderson said:

We used to go the non stick route.   We purchased all stainless steel a year ago and haven't looked back.   I'm not keen on ingesting forever chemicals.   Cancer will do that to a guy. 

You don't get "forever chemicals" in you from Teflon pans. You get them from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and other stuff all around you.

That said, stainless steel pans are a wise choice. Can be almost as nonstick as any other pan, far less maintenance, dishwasher ready - what more can one ask for? Once this whole cast iron/carbon steel fad runs its course more people will come back to stainless. Or titanium, those are kind of neat.

Heavy G, I think you may need to read up on what teflon, aka PTFE is.  I'm not saying I'm in the clear with avoiding all PFAS with not using non stick pans,  but your statement is wrong. 

I've tried to keep up with the literature regarding Teflon/PTFE's over the years but I could certainly be out of date and have missed something of importance.

They removed the particularly hazardous "forever chemical" PFOA from Teflon a decade ago. Teflon, as is used in pans today is very inert and most information indicates that swallowing a flake of Teflon will not harm you as it just passes right thru you. Breathing in fumes from an improperly used pan is a different matter though and caution is in order.

A recent article had this to say:

"That’s about the firmest answer you’re going to get regarding the safety of nonstick cookware. “In no study has it been shown that people who use nonstick pans have higher levels” of PFAS, says Jane Hoppin, a North Carolina State University epidemiologist and a member of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee studying PFAS. But she also told me that, with regard to the broader research on PFAS-related health risks, “I haven’t seen anybody say it’s safe to use.”

Certainly, more research could be done on PFAS, given the lack of relevant studies. There is no research, for example, showing that people who use nonstick pans are more likely to get sick. The one study on exposure from nonstick pans mentioned in the report that Hoppin and others published last year found inconclusive results after measuring gaseous PFAS released from heated nonstick pans, though the researchers tested only a few pans. Another study in which scientists used nonstick pans to cook beef and pork—and an assortment of more glamorous meats including chicken nuggets—and then measured the PFAS levels likewise failed to reach a conclusion, because too few meat samples were used.

More scientists could probably be convinced to pursue rigorous research in this field if PFAS exposure came only from nonstick pans. Investigating the risks would be tough, perhaps impossible: Designing a rigorous study to test the risks of PFAS exposure would likely involve forcing unwitting test subjects to breathe in PFAS fumes or eat from flaking pans. But given that we are exposed to PFAS in so many other ways—drinking water being chief among them—what would be the point? “They’re in dental floss, and they’re in your Gore-Tex jacket, and they’re in your shoes,” Hoppin said. “The relative contribution of any one of those things is minor.”

Link to the article itself - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/02/so-are-nonstick-pans-safe-or-what/672965/

I certainly understand why some people have concerns and may want to act on those concerns. We live in a world where the vast majority of humans globally (and >95% in the U.S.) have PFAS in their bodies and given the ubiquity of PFAS chemicals in our daily lives it's almost impossible to completely avoid exposure to them but I agree it doesn't hurt to try and eliminate whatever potential sources we can.

But I don't use my shoes as a pan, or eat my jacket.

danv23

https://www.cnet.com/home/kitchen-and-household/best-nonstick-frying-pans-tested-and-reviewed/

nolaegghead

You can’t go wrong buying the Costco, Sam’s Club or RD cheap commercial aluminum nonstick pans.  

HeavyG

nolaegghead said:

You can’t go wrong buying the Costco, Sam’s Club or RD cheap commercial aluminum nonstick pans.  

Unless you have an induction stove of course.
  
Almost none of those commercial style have that builtin steel plate that some aluminum skillets have so they can be used on induction. You'd have to use a "helper plate" with those all aluminum pans.

nolaegghead

Right.  I didn’t see any mention of that restriction on the OP, but that’s absolutely the first characteristic one with an inductive range would use to filter candidates 

TechsasJim

Ended up getting some Analon pans.   Seems like most say all non-stick don't last that long (which has been my experience) so why pay more than needed if I'll toss them in a couple years.   $40 got me a 12" and 10".