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Over my years I've owned many types of non-stick pans. Judge me as you see fit, but I've owned Teflon, stainless steel, ceramic, and cast iron pans, but none of them seem to stay "non-stick" for more than a few years. I've had the best luck with cast iron, but my wife doesn't like to use them because they're heavy. I hand wash them all with soap and water, but they all seem to lose their ability to shed off what I cook in them. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good non-stick pan?

EDIT: It seems like the consensus is on cast iron, or ceramic steel. I just looked it up, and there are "slim" cast iron pans, so maybe that'll be a happy medium. Thanks for all the anecdotes and suggestions folks.

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[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 42 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Ok, Teflon is the only one of those that can wear off over time, and it wears off into your food so consider that.

Stainless steel and cast iron are essentially indestructible and will give you the same performance on day one and 20 years later, if yours are acting different in such a short time frame they're either not stainless steel/cast iron or you're not taking proper care of them.

Stainless steel is almost impossible to ruin, unless you're cleaning them with industrial level sanding equipment I'm going to assume that's not the issue. However stainless steel is tricky to use, you need to preheat over MEDIUM-LOW heat until the pan is UNIFORMLY heated enough that it can levitate a large bead of water all over the surface. Then you need to coat it with some form of fat like cooking oil, and you need to WAIT for the oil to heat properly (just a few seconds, but it's not immediate). The words I capitalized are where I think most people make mistakes, they heat with high heat and so they have some parts that are very hot and others that aren't, then they put oil and immediately add the thing they're trying to cook, if the pan is not evenly hot enough cold spots can cause food to stick.

Cast iron is a different beast, they rely on a thin layer of polimerized oil to become non-stick. While this is resistant enough to survive most things it does wear down over time if you're not taking proper care of it. If your cast iron pan is not as non-stick as it used to be it needs to be seasoned, so do the following:

  • Clean it thoroughly with water and dish soap
  • Dry it well (I tend to put it over the fire again until it's dry, then you will let it cool down)
  • Put a tiny amount of oil on it
  • Grab a paper towel and spread it over the whole surface of the pan, it should look glossy
  • Grab a new dry paper towel and dry the excess of oil, it will still look glossy but should not have any pools of drops of oil anywhere.
  • Turn your oven to something like 200C/250C (it depends on the oil you used, look for seasoning temperature).
  • Once the oven is hot you will put your pan upside down there and let it sit for at least one hour, but feel free to let it stay longer.

That should recreate the layer on the pan and make it good as new. You might need to do that periodically, maybe once a year or so depending on how you treat your pans. However after having the initial seasoning you can keep building it over time to avoid having to go through the whole process again. This is done by essentially taking good care of your pan, which means:

  • Wash it after use (don't let it sink with water for hours). Contrary to popular belief you can use regular soap here.ñ, the advice is from an era where soap had much heavier chemicals.
  • Dry it after wash (you can do so with a towel, I like to put it in the fire again to ensure its thoroughly dried)
  • Apply a small layer of oil like you did for seasoning before putting it away.

If you do that every use it will be good as new indefinitely. If at some point you feel it's sticking or not acting as before you can resason it. Sometimes you might do wrong things like cutting stuff directly on the pan repitedly, or cook tomatoes or acidic food in it (the acid undoes some of the seasoning and leaves a metallic after-taste) which will require you to resason it, but as a general rule just cooking with it should keep increasing the petiquia (name of the coating created by the seasoning process).

Hope this helps, glad to answer anything else. I'm by no means an expert but I do like the few pans I have and like to cook so I've geeked over this for a while.

[–] thericofactor@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

What's the Lemmy equivalent for /r/angryupvote ? Hahahaha

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Here's so far the best seasoning method for cast iron that I've found after having tried multiple ones and not having too great of a success. It can't be overstated how important it is to remove all excess oil. It doesn't take much to ruin the results.

  • Wash with soap and hot water.
  • Dry thoroughly.
  • Immediately into a 100 degrees C oven for 20 minutes.
  • Heavy coat of oil. Canola oil works fine.
  • Wipe ALL of it off. First with a cloth, then with a paper towel.
  • Put back into the oven and let it warm up to 150 degrees C. Then take out and wipe with a paper towel once more.
  • Back into the oven and let it heat up and bake at 250 degrees C for an hour.
  • Let it fully cool before next layer.
  • For the first treatment, at least 3 layers are needed. Five is even better.
[–] yakko@feddit.uk 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is one of those internet comments that are just a complete and perfect download of lore that should rightfully change thousands of people's lives. It's all there.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

What can I say, I love my pans and have geeked out over that for a while.

[–] chillpanzee@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

you need to preheat over MEDIUM-LOW heat until the pan is UNIFORMLY heated enough that it can levitate a large bead of water all over the surface.

There is no single skillet surface temp that's right for a stainless pan. Leidenfrost gives you a visual clue as to surface temperature, but that's all it does. It doesn't mean that specific temp is right for any particular cook. Just as an example, you can cook a perfect over easy egg in a stainless skillet, but you cannot do it with a pan that hot.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sure, that's a generalized explanation but you can use a stainless steel pan in several other ways, for example boiling pasta. But if you want it to be non-stick like OP asked that's the way. And sure, you don't need to rely on the Leidenfrost effect, you can use a surface thermometer or after you've used the same pan enough just your feeling of it, but for a generalized way to tell people how to measure the temperature it's a great marker.

BTW, I make my eggs over easy using that exact same set of steps, so it absolutely can be done. In fact if you don't do that the egg will stick to the pan and you won't be able to flip it, and if you can't flip it it's not over. Also if the pan is not hot enough the yolk will cook, the pan needs to be hot enough to sear it and cook it on the outside without giving time to cook the inside thoroughly.

The more I think about this, the worse that example looks. The steps I outlined are exactly what's needed to make an over easy egg on a stainless steel pan.

[–] chillpanzee@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But if you want it to be non-stick like OP asked that’s the way.

It one way, not the way.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Would love to know about other ways