Just use cast iron and stainless steel. I don’t own anything else.
Don’t forget carbon steel!
Those who cannot cook use not stick.
What a ridiculous world we live in. The board members should be facing prison sentences, the company’s liquidated and the money back to the people.
Is it really that bad? Sure it might be linked to cancer but so are lots of other things.
I personally just use normal cookware plus some vision stuff. All you need to do is salute some onions ahead of adding other things. The juice from the onions acts as a natural non stick.
🧅 🧅 🫡
Doing god’s work
I mean when there’s a fun little joke to be made, and I can post emoji-only rather than the usual text-only and my fellow nerds will like it, AND we’re in nottheonion which I didn’t notice until afterwards, how can I resist?
Never really had any issue with Teflon (and Teflon substitute) pans, but I’ve been impressed with the non-stickiness of my dirt cheap “ceramic” wok.
Ya know I finally got myself a cast iron pan and it works great!
Keep in mind that nonstick cookware is still very safe when handled correctly. The problem lies in the manufacturing of these needed chemicals. When these chemicals get into the environment, because of improper safety management, it will stay there for hundreds of years, taking it’s toll on flora and fauna.
And how do you dispose of it correctly? Cookware shouldn’t need to come with an MSDS sheet
Put it in the metal recycling bin in my case. But depends on your local recycling/waste management system.
very safe when handled correctly
Too many people are not educated about that.
The problem lies in the manufacturing of these needed chemicals. When these chemicals get into the environment, because of improper safety managemen
Which is one of the reasons for that law, see:
Dubbed “Amara’s Law” after 20-year-old cancer victim Amara Strande, who in 2023 succumbed to a rare type of liver cancer linked to PFAS after growing up near a Minnesota-based 3M plant that dumped them into the local water supply, the new regulation bans the chemicals and any items made with them from being sold within the state.
Too many people are not educated about that.
I’ve never met the sort of idiots who put an empty pan on some turbo heat or use metal with nonstick, but I know they’re out there.
Spoken like somebody who did not marry a person that is even more careless and ADHD than themselves, lol.
Wait, it’s not the material on the Pans?
That’s the first part, used correctly it’s a non issue so just use your nonstick correctly.
Using nonstick correctly: Dont use anything but silicone spatulas on it, do not use more than 50% of your stoves power or gas stove or you will get cancer and die. Buy a new one every 5 years anyway since it somehow became stick pan.
Using stainless pan: Find it from some junk metal pile, discover it was manufactured in the roman empire, give it a good scrub. Use it on any source imaginable and when hawk thuah slides around instead of sizzles, it’s good to go.
Please don’t hawk tuah your pans while cooking
Using nonstick correctly: Don’t use metal and don’t heat it over 260 °C
Source on the pan giving you cancer?
Yes, non-stick becomes stick because the teflon coating comes off, it’s really hard to make teflon stick to anything. Using metal utensils will hasten this but afaik simply using heat will help loosen the teflon coating.
I don’t mind buying a new non-stick pan about every 5 years (last one lasted 7), I usuall stick to the cheapest ones, they serve a specific service to me that stainless ones can’t do.
Are you really asking “provide proofs of a pan I am warned to not heat up too much as the vapours will cause flu like symptoms and kill pet avians is bad for my health.” is bad for you? It is. Why do you think you need to buy new pans every x years? Cause the non-stick layer wears off. Do bits of coating that contain top tier carciogens which are considered safe unless ingested magically vanish into the void? Yes. Except the void is your body.
I have been relying on my teflons less and less the more I get good with the stainless. I’ve now been making crepes and japanese omlets with less sticking than my few years old teflons.
Afaik the coating is not a carcinogen only under certain circumstances like high heat can it produce something unsafe but even there it’s just potential, not yet proved to be carcinogenic but feel free to prove me wrong.
Heating non-stick pans beyond recommended temperatures can cause the coating to degrade, potentially releasing toxic fumes. Cooking on high heat or using metal utensils can compromise the integrity of the coating, increasing the risk of harmful substances leaching into food.
The part you quoted says nothing about cancer, article only mentions potential risks with no evidence and no article cited. I’m sorry but articles like these are why people believe chocolate cures cancer or sitting down is as bad as smoking.
I don’t claim there’s no connection but so far I’ve seen no evidence.
I bought a cheap stainless pan about 20 years ago. Don’t have issues with food sticking, don’t have to worry abouy coatings coming off, and if the handle breaks I can make a new one.
Coating breaks down, stainless doesn’t.
I have a mix of stainless steel and cast iron. I’m not terribly worried about consuming small amounts of either of those.
A bonus is that because it’s all metal I can use most of it in ovens or while cooking outdoors.
Sticking isn’t really that much of an issue if you’re careful. I feel like non-stick would’ve never taken off if people knew how toxic it was in 1970.
In other words don’t do what I did and put half a litre into a $6 pot on your new induction cooktop and set it to 2kW to see how long it takes to boil.
It boils quick.
It then boils more enthusiastically than you’ve ever seen before, and a cancerous stench fills the air as the coating breaks down and the pot deforms.
Like throw it away every 6 months.
Edit: or 1 or 2 years, it was hyperbole. Instead of like never throwing it out?
The nonstick pans I’ve using are several years old now without any signs of deteriorating nonstick surfaces. Use cookware out of wood or plastic to not scrape off the coating.
I have 1 big nonstick and 1 small nonstick. They never saw high heat, they never saw ANY metal instruments, when stored they are protected by felt so nothing hard touches them, they never seen a steel sponge and they still became regular stick pans 2 years into their lifespan. Before you say “skill issue buying the pan” they were mid level (expensive pans for no cooks) pans from a reputable company. I have been a pro chef as well. Nonsticks are a wear item even if you treat them like shit on a stick. My oldest stainless is like 40 years old, has a huge dent on the side and works the same as it did on day one. I dug it out of someones fishing shed.
I have a kitchen full of nonstick pans. They’ve been in use since my grandma’s mom.
Got them from grandma.
Don’t freak out but cast iron was the OG nonstick, right?
I have been a pro chef as well.
Doubt
All it takes to become a chef is to accept the back breaking underpaid labour of working in a kitchen and following instructions. There are no preliminary requirements, only time invested.
I’ve had mine for 2 years now. It’s still non stick and I cook extremely regularly. Eg. 90% of my meals are cooked by me. I think some non stick pans are shit though because one of the ones I own started deteriorating after a year.
If you use it incorrectly then yeah. You might as well stop making food as well because clearly you don’t know what you’re doing.
What are you even talking about?
Are you le grand anti-adhesive chef?
How about the suggestions that they are selling a product that should last for several lifetimes but instead lasts for 5 years if you treat it very well?
Personally I don’t give a damn about a pan whose entire life is spent slowly scraping away the carciogen on it and ingesting it with every meal you make. I am however not going to be scammed by the teflon pan manufacturers into buying a new overpriced pan every few years. Every other non non-stick pan outlasts multible generations of humans. A non stick in a professional kitchen won’t even make it to 1 year old.
If we didn’t live in capitalist plutocracies masquerading as “democracy”, every non-stick pan ever sold would be blatant false advertising and they wouldn’t be profitable to sell anymore.
Lifetime guarantee my ass. None last more than a couple years of daily use regardless of how meticulously they’re cared for.
You’ll find that lifetime guarantee almost always means for production errors. Not wear and tear.
I moved to using cast iron and steel pans, I found even hand washing non-stick pans they eventually just get scuffed up after years.
I’d rather just use a few more drops of oil on a regular pan.
I’ve got a few dishes that want a non stick surface and have a dinner in a tomato sauce. I keep the non stick for those, and for house guests who don’t understand carbon steel.
I don’t. The flat iron skillet (comal) is nonstick enough at this point that even my kids never complain about making eggs on it, they release well. Tomato sauce does fine in stainless steel. Though I also haven’t made guests cook for themselves yet. Had one nonstick pan in the early 1990s and that was enough to sour me on them.
I also keep a couple non-stick skillets around for guests.
However it’s incredible (in a bad way) just how ubiquitous these coatings have become. It’s going to take years to get through them all. I just got stainless cookie sheets but all my bakeware is non-stick (blind spot: I used to use a baking sheet for the broiler without connecting the dots on excessive heat vs teflon).
Next step (by frequency of use) really needs to be my rice cooker
I highly recommend picking up a Japanese induction rice cooker. We’ve had a Zojirushi for a year and even at altitude it makes perfect rice every time.
I use our instant pot pressure cooker to make rice, and it’s stainless inside.
I’m not suggesting it matches an actual Japanese rice cooker, but I think the results are pretty good.
That brand does have an outstanding reputation and I have considered splurging on it, however I only see non-stick pans. Whereas I can get a cheap Aroma or similar with a stainless pan.
I guess we’ll have to see how tedious it is to clean rice from stainless, but the goal is to reduce ptfe from my diet
I love our zoji, but the inside is definitely non-stick. (Relevant to the conversation)
I make tomato sauces on both my cast iron and carbon steel. Sure, they get a bit bad afterwards, but oil+heat fixes that.
Capitalists furious at suggestion they value human life over money
ftfy
yeah it’s a day ending in Y
I think distinctions matter
Carbon steel or cast iron all the way.
Costly but good
A bit ironic that a group labeling themselves the “Cookware Sustainability Alliance” is fighting to continue making unsustainable cookware.
Both the fact that they have a voice that influences politicians more than their actual voters and that they’re allowed to call themselves that name is really a perfect representation of society.
Stainless steel! Neither of those is something you want to use to simmer a tomato sauce.
I just use a aluminum pan. It doesn’t really matter if it heats evenly since you are making a liquid.
Aluminum is reactive too. But it tends to hold onto a seasoning really well!
Sure, or enamelled cast iron.
Why’s that? I’ve never owned any of the 3, all pans have been some form of nonstick.
Carbon steel and cast iron cookware have reactive metal surfaces that will rust if left exposed to moisture and air, especially when heated. To use these materials of cookware you need to season them which involves washing the surface clean and applying a very thin layer of oil which you then heat up to a high temperature (usually past the smoke point, but not strictly necessary).
The heating of oil in contact with the metal causes the oil molecules to polymerize and bond to the metal surface. Done properly, this gives your cast iron and carbon steel cookware a smooth, glassy, slightly brown protective polymer layer which prevents rust and helps foods release (though not as well as nonstick pans). The seasoning process can be repeated as many times as you like and it builds up more and more layers which darken over time. A well seasoned piece of cast iron or carbon steel cookware will look shiny and jet black, though this is not necessary for cooking.
The downside of these materials is that acidic or basic foods can damage the polymer layer and dissolve it right off the pan with enough heat and cooking time. Tomato sauce is a classic example of an acidic food that will eat away at the seasoning of a cast iron or carbon steel pan. A well seasoned pan can still be used to cook a tomato sauce, but not one you plan to be simmering for hours and hours (like some Sunday meat sauce like you’d see in Goodfellas).
Stainless steel (as well as enameled or porcelain coated) cookware is nonreactive so you can use it to cook acidic or basic foods no problem!
I thought there, who on earth makes tomato sauce in a non-stick pan 😅
Nice writeup btw!
So my stainless steel/inox Lagostina pan is non reactive? What would be the benefit from having a carbon steel one (I have used cast iron a lot but it’s so heavy)?
Any community you’d recommend?
Exactly that: weight. Some people will give you other reasons why they like carbon steel but the most important is that it works like cast iron only lighter
A well seasoned carbon steel is pretty much non-stick while in a stainless you usually want some sticking to have something to deglaze for sauces.
Mine sticks enough for a nice sauce :-) !
Ohh right, I didn’t think about how acidic tomatoes are. I love tomatoes, but some of the people around me get absolutely horrible stomach pains apparently.
Anyway, we make tomato based sauces at home, but never have we simmered anything for several hours like that cooking scene in Goodfellas. Should I? Would it be significantly better?
Oh you’ve got no idea how good tomato sauce can get then! It’s also great for making huge batches so you freeze most of it for later.
Hmmmm I have some bad ideas now, thanks!
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I don’t want to cause a panic, but acids like tomato juice, ascorbic, citric and vinegar can attack stainless steel and dissolved chrome in the process.
But don’t think of it as extra chrome in your diet. After all, we get iron rich water from our cast iron pipes and fittings. Nah, think of it as that extra cancer you’re gonna be getting! Iron never gave you cancer, that’s a lousy metal. But chrome is pretty good!
But don’t think of it as extra chrome in your diet.
Aw man…
https://theproperkitchen.com/do-stainless-steel-pans-leach-into-food/
Yes and no, apparently.
Basically go to goodwill and have a look at their used stainless pans and then compare that to what you see at the store. Its not magic material. You put some tomatoes paste or salty beans or vinegar on it and you’ll be getting some chrome dissolved on to your food. Great! Its just a little right? Wrong! What else do you see? Scratches! Every time you use a metal spoon or steel wool to grab food or clean the pan, you create brand new unreacted leachable metal chrome…pans are probably grade 18 or 316 stainless steel, so 18% of whatever shavings you made becomes happy trivalent Cr-3 ions floating around with your tasty Na and CL lol. Look at pans that got overheated or pans where you accidentally left a spoon before going on vacation for a week…they’re black where some food was left on the surface due to oxygen depletion. Stainless steel is by no means the savior. Its the magic bullet, along with plastic in the food processing business! Processed foods pass thru churning mechanisms…metal rubbing and shedding stuff on to the food.
This is why I sleep at night. I’m basically a walking FEMA disaster zone, yet, I still somehow get to my 8hr enslavement work and then back to my rest of the day 2-3 hours worth of family disfunctions just fine.
Enameled cast iron is also great
Is this the ceramic coated ones?
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I guess they don’t want our traffic then.
It’s unfortunate - I thought it was a fairly comprehensive and readable overview of the differences between enamel and ceramic coated
Available at a thrift store near you, with no carbon cost!
Used cast iron is usually better than a lot of new stuff. Back in the day, it was common for the pitted surfaces to be ground smooth.
Now you can only get that with some “premium brands” that are willing to take a grinder to a pan before throwing it in the box.
SO THAT IS WHY MY FRYING PAN IS ANNOYING!
I just thought it was going to be naturally ground down over time…
Damn it, now I gotta find a thrift store.
Or you can season the shit out of it. That will also smooth out the surface. Seasoning basically makes non-stick layers on your pan using burned oil.
Preferably outdoors wipe a thin film of cooking oil on the pan and heat it up till it smokes, leaves smokey for a bit, cool down and repeat.
It’d probably be smart to read real instructions somewhere else, but that’s the jist of it.
You can still get vintage Wagner cast iron for a decent price on eBay or FB marketplace, but over the past 15 years people have started to catch on to what I just mentioned. So it’s not as dirt cheap as it once was.
These days I generally know how to cook on a pitted lodge without it sticking, but smooth cast iron is more forgiving.
Season it with Flax seed oil. Worth the $10 for the bottle, and time.
Cooks Country came up with Flax seed oil after a lot of testing.
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/how...d=26897&frtk=u3VJqn8v17q3E4m0demcX4pjog35T4sL
Oops, that link is expired!
It starts getting better after 10 or so years when the seaaoning has built up to fill the surface roughness.
Or you sand it down to be smooth and reseason it.
Buying thrift store cast iron is risky, it may have been used to melt lead.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would you use it to melt lead?
Sigh, just when I thought I found a way to get a smooth frying pan, look in my comments, I litterarly just posted here…
Why would people melt lead in a frying pan?
Most often to make their own bullets.
Ah, but why in a frying pan?
Cheap, commonly available, convenient.
Fair, but you can get a lead testing kit for around $10 USD.
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You really should read the rest of the article
GenX was basically told that “Teflon is inert, it can’t hurt you.”
Well fuck me.
It is chemically inert. It just becomes a problem when you physically abrade it into billions of microparticles that become embedded in your tissues…
So, asbestos 2.0?
Likely, if we’re being honest.
Health agencies haven’t done that much investigation (wheeeee regulatory capture) into wtf microplastics do in nuance to all of our various biological systems, but we do know that microplastics basically pervade everything at every level of the food chain at this point. So it’s more about answering the question of “how much did we fuck ourselves” now.
Has there been any evidence to point out that PFTE is not inert?
This article seems to be about the production of PFTE, which is well-known to be quite harmful, but the end product is as far as I know not unsafe to use.
Previous formulations were also claimed to be inert and non-toxic, but were later found not to be. Current ptfe seems to be safe so far but at this point I’m really cynical about safety of these chemicals, industry willingness to inflict them on us and ineffectiveness of governments safety regulations. They’re forever chemicals. Even if they are safe, they will be in the environment, in ever increasing doses, forever. They are accumulating in you, your food, everything you ingest, forever. That doesn’t seem prudent.
What are you going to do if a toxic pattern emerges, but you’ve already incorporated ptfe into your body? even if the the end product is safe, manufacturing chemicals are not: do you accept your part in these toxic forever chemicals?
There’s not much an individual can do, but I can replace non-stick with other materials as they grow older. I have cast iron, stainless, glass, or ceramic as appropriate, that we know lasts longer and will not have a problem.
Some, yes. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-02/is-non-stick-cookware-safe/104160814 Heating pans too hot can partially release harmful chemicals. There’s not enough study on ingesting the particles from scraping a pan. I quit using them over a decade ago and replaced them with cast iron. It’s a different way of cooking but once you learn works really well.
That article basically confirms my understanding of the safety implications of PTFE. Don’t overheat, and discard once flaking, but ingesting flakes is unlikely to be harmful.
I’ve started favouring other types of cookware as well - my personal favourite is enameled cast iron - but I’m really not keen on using neither cast iron nor carbon steel. I feel like proponents downplay the increased maintenance that comes with that type of cookware.
I do have one ceramic non-stick pan that is pretty good, but once it goes bad I’m probably going to try to find an enameled cast iron replacement for it.
I love my cast iron specifically because it requires extremely little maintenance. The only inconveniece compared to stainless steel pans is that after I wash it, I have to dry it by hand or toss it on the stove until it dries to avoid rust.
Other than that, I never manually season it (just cooking with it does that for me), I only use metal or wood utensils (I scrape foods vigorously, especially smashburgers, and the seasoning is totally fine).
IMO if the seasoning isn’t good enough to handle my abuse, then it isn’t good enough to be on the pan.
Been using 'em for years and they still look brand new. Also what they say about seasoning being non-stick is true. It’s crazy how I can grill chicken breast without any oil and it barely sticks at all. The sear you can get on a cast iron due to heat retention is also second to none.
My problem with enameled cast iron is that once the enamel cracks or chips, that cookware is essentially garbage (similar to PTFE cookware in that eay). The enamel is essentially glass, and you don’t want to eat microshards of glass. You can’t put it through the kind of abuse that I like to put my cookware through.
Enameled cookware is great for acidic sauces, though, as one comment mentioned above. My recommendation for enameled cookware is to only use wood utensils. I just cook tomato sauce in my regular cast iron, though, and so long as I clean it right after, I never have any issues, but if I want to cook a tomato sauce for hours, I’ll use a stainless steel pot.
Stainless steel is just as durable, but doesn’t have the seasoning that makes it non-stick, and it doesn’t hold anywhere near as much heat as a cast iron (unless you get the really expensive ones with a fuckton of copper in it), meaning it’s harder to get a sear for foods that need it. Fantastic for basically anything that you don’t need a sear on, like sauces, pasta, etc. A good rule is the heavier the pan, the more heat it holds.
IMO if the seasoning isn’t good enough to handle my abuse, then it isn’t good enough to be on the pan.
This is true, and something that I discovered myself recently. I tried babying one of my cast iron pans for while, seasoning with flaxseed oil, avoiding metal utensils, and only cleaning with a damp sponge or paper towel. I built up a seasoning quickly, but it was incredibly brittle, and actually began flaking off into my food. I haven’t used that pan since, haven’t gotten around to stripping and reasoning it.
Since then I’ve had the same mindset as you to great success: if this layer of seasoning can’t handle my abuse now, then it’s not fit to be the foundation for the next layer of seasoning. I almost exclusively use metal utensils now, clean with a copper scratch pad, and ditched the hard-but-brittle flax seed oil for whatever I happened to be cooking with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not aggressive with the pan, I let the weight of the utensil or pad do all the work, but I’m not letting weak seasoning get seasoned over. If it’s weak enough that the copper pad takes it off, then it wasn’t a good seasoning anyway.
What’s “too hot” in this case?
Edit: the news link actually works and doesn’t assail me with popups. Here’s the salient part:
When these pans are heated above 260 degrees Celsius, their PTFE coating can begin to deteriorate. But the coating does not significantly degrade until temperatures reach 349C, Professor Jones says.
"So, unless your oil starts smoking, you’re not getting to that temperature and even then, you need continued exposure to see any effects, which are usually minor in humans.
“And that’s assuming you weren’t using an extractor fan or other form of ventilation while cooking.”
I always use a ventilator fan, so this is apparently not a problem for me beyond the non-stick coating wearing to the point where shit sticks and I have to buy a new one.
My mom has like “chemophobia” is is constantly afraid medications or “GMO”. Well looks like she got this part right tho, she was always afraid of a non stick stuff chipping off and hate any “non stick” cookware. Broken clock, twice a day, ya know.
Medications
Sometimes worse side effects than the thing it’s trying to cure. Sometimes used to cure something that better diet and more exercise could take care of. Made by companies more concerned with money than your health outcomes. What’s to be afraid of?
GMO
Nothing wrong with GMO itself, but every company using GMO doesn’t use it to make food higher quality or taste better. They use it to engineer pesticides into your food, increase crop yields, and patent our seeds, for, you guessed it, money! Insecticides specifically can be neurotoxic to humans. What’s to be afraid of?
Maybe you should listen to your mom instead of badmouthing her to strangers on the Internet.
I haven’t seen anything that actually links GMOs to something that is a concrete negative. There are so many claims that “artificial” and GMOs are somehow bad but yet people can’t seem to quantify why or how.
I think it is mostly just marketing fluff. What’s worse is that the so called “organic” produce is almost certainly worse for the environment. Also some of the “natural” pesticides are worse for humans if actually consumed.
Yeah I agree organic pesticides are just as dumb. Bioengineering pesticides into your food takes the cake though, you can’t even wash it off. Not all organic growers use organic pesticides. I know several organic farmers and none of them use any pesticide, they accept the lower crop yield for higher quality food.
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