All I want is one saucepan and one 10 inch frying pan that is reasonably nonstick. People kept telling me to get Calphalon but I did and despite never using metal utensils and never scrubbing it I found that the coating started to wear away within a year. I do have one dedicated egg pan that I think still has Teflon that I only use for eggs and it is nonstick but I need something for regular use. I’m talking simple things like making rice or pasta, sautéing proteins etc. I just want something where the coating is not peeling off and I don’t feel like I am ingesting the coating along with my food. I do have some of the Pyrex glass pots but everything sticks to them and they are a pain to clean. Is there a good brand I should be looking into? (And I do know that professional chefs don’t use nonstick so they can build up a fond etc but they also use tons of butter so things don’t stick as much).
I have All Clad pans, and they’ve done very well for almost ten years now. I can see no damage to the coating at all.
It wasn’t cheap, I think about $500 for a ten piece set (six pans, four lids).
I think the equivalent is now $769, which I would consider very reasonable today. I use them regularly, but not every day. My daughter used them more when she was home. As a learning cook she found non-stick more forgiving.
I do have a few of their stainless pans which I use more. We cook three meals a day most days.
We purchased a ten piece Circulon set a few months ago. Not sure how well they’ll hold up, but they seem well made.
Not that they are definitive, but check out America’s Test Kitchen’s reviews of non-stick cookware on YouTube. They do various kinds of pretty rigorous testing, and they include the ceramic non-stick as well as the teflon kind.
As for other ways of getting stuff to not stick, what chefs build up on their cast iron or carbon steel pans is seasoning, not fond (fond is the brown bits of cooked food that you scrape up to add flavor to your sauces). Seasoning is not difficult to learn or to do, you just need to be sure that everyone who uses the pan understands how to keep the seasoning going. I believe it will always require some small amount of oil or butter, but much less than (say) stainless steel pans. The pans last basically forever, and you can use metal utensils. ATK also has done testing of these kinds of pans.
We’ve been using an Oxo non-stick (I can provide model if interested) and just assume we will replace every ~3 years. In those 3 years it works fine.
I have Greenpan and love them. They are ceramic non-stick.
While maybe not as non-stick as Teflon they can handle high heat no problem (which is bad for Teflon and puts out harmful gasses if you do).
The pans are well built with metal handles (so can be put in an oven).
They are pretty non-stick. Again, Teflon will be a bit better there but I think these are 90-95% as good. With their other benefits I will use them all day.
Also, you can use metal utensils with them. More resistant to scratching than Teflon is. (I still try to keep that at a minimum but haven’t had a problem after years of use.)
I’ve used my cast-iron skillet long enough that it has developed a somewhat non-stick coating as well (this is how they work but they do take a bit more effort to maintain…will last generations if a little reasonable care is taken and they are comparatively cheap.)
Seconded. Oxo 5218 (I think it says?) 10”. Aluminum- so it heats fast, used for eggs, crepes, etc. It’s withstood an accidental overheat, still as good as new. I dont use metal utensils, obviously, and it’s hung up away from other pans. Not ceramic.
I just purchased a new set of nonstick skillets a couple of weeks ago. I checked reviews on America’s Test Kitchen, Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, and several other sites. While they didn’t all agree, most rated All Clad at or near the top. I think the D3 line is considered the top, but it’s very expensive. Nonstick skillets, even very good ones, don’t last forever, unlike cast iron or stainless steel, so I decided it wasn’t worth paying that much for a temporary product. I eventually decided on this set of All Clad. Obviously I don’t yet have personal experience with their longevity, but they seems very well made and sturdy, and the surface is great.
Ditto. I’ve been using these for years. They are adverised to be dishwasher safe and I can confirm that they hold up very well when cleaned in a dishwasher.
If you are dead set on getting non-stick (as opposed to properly seasoned carbon steel or cast iron which are “low-stick”), you basically have two options: One, an expensive set that that has a superior coating. It will eventually become scratched nevertheless, but some (e.g. some lines of Calphalon) have a lifetime warranty where you essentially keep replacing the pans with a new one as they wear out. Your second option is to just treat them as essentially disposable items, buying cheap pans that you will need to replace every couple years. In either case, no matter how well you treat them, the coating will eventually wear out and scratch off.
I have a set of TFal non stick skillets
There is a ten inch, and eight inch and a six inch. They work really well until they don’t. On the good side they are very inexpensive at thirty dollars and after a year or two I toss them and get another set
I will say again…the BIG problem with Teflon pans is high heat. They are actually bad. They can off-gas toxic fumes.
Get a ceramic non-stick and no problems. High heat is trivial for them. Or work with cast iron (which is a fuss to make work but cheap and last forever).
Yes, one option is to buy cheap non-stick skillets and replace them as they wear out. My skillet is from OXO and I thought it was Teflon and cost under thirty bucks but looking at my Amazon order history, it may be this one that has a “ceramic” non-stick coating. And it’s more expensive than I remember at a list price of $80 for the 10-inch pan.
I never use metal on it; mostly silicone or plastic tools. The one thing I do that you’re not supposed to do is I use Pam spray oil and that’s supposed to be a bad thing.
Why is that a “bad” thing? A bit of oil in the pan is what you want to do. Is it that Pam spray is bad for you or that it hurts the pan itself?
I considered ceramic, but from what I’ve read, ceramic is inferior to PTFE coating in most ways. America’s Test Kitchen says
In general, we’ve found that ceramic nonstick isn’t quite as nonstick or as durable as traditional nonstick and gets even less nonstick and durable over time. Ceramic surfaces are brittle by nature and thus more likely to develop microscopic surface cracks during everyday use than PTFE nonstick coatings are. It’s a problem that quickly goes from bad to worse: The rougher a cooking surface becomes, the more likely food is to stick to it, and scrubbing off that stuck-on food can cause further degradation.
I watch ATK all the time and I disagree. But, I take good care of my pots and pans. YMMV.
PTFE is BAD bad when using high heat which is limiting in the kitchen so, to me, that is the deal-breaker right there. Also, my ceramic pans seem faaar more durable than the Teflon ones over time but again, maybe I am more careful than ATK. Or maybe they bought cheap, shitty pans. I dunno.
I would recommend you (general “you”) get a ceramic pan and give it a try. See how it goes.
I do agree they are less non-stick than Teflon but they are very good. A tiny bit of oil and zero stick problems. Which is why I keep a stainless steel pan as well because sometimes I want that fond which I can’t get from those pans.
Supposedly the propellant used in some spray oils is left behind and leaves a film that degrades the nonstickiness.
We use Swiss Diamond nonstick. Hard to find locally and moderately expensive, but they last forever with proper care. We use a 12" grill pan and a wok for most everything, although we also have smaller Calphalon and Cuisinart pans.
Proper care means never use PAM. Apparently it doesn’t scrub off completely and builds up over time. [Or what Dewey said.] Some marinaded items require a small amount of oil for easier clean-up, but real vegetable oil is best.
I guess you’re talking about it emitting toxic fumes when overheated? That happens when heated above 450 C (842 F). If you’re heating your pans to over 840 degrees, you are doing something very wrong (and you have some kind of amazing stove).
Much lower:
While PTFE is celebrated for its non-stick properties, it’s important to consider its stability and safety under high temperatures. PTFE coatings are stable and safe up to a certain point; however, when heated above 260°C (500°F), PTFE begins to degrade, releasing fumes that can be harmful if inhaled. It’s crucial for you to use PTFE-coated cookware within safe temperature ranges to avoid these risks. - SOURCE
Studies so far have shown that PTFE is non-toxic and inert when used as a coating. However, when cooking temperatures are greater than 260 °C, PTFE can start to produce fumes. Such temperatures can be reached when pans are pre-heated empty for too long, i.e. more than a few minutes. When pans are overheated beyond 350 °C, the coating begins to break down to release harmful gases that can even be lethal in extreme cases. - SOURCE
Also:
Numerous case studies in the 1900s have documented flu-like symptoms after inhalation of PTFE fumes by workers in PTFE-using factories and by people overheating non-stick pans in the kitchen. This condition is called polymer fume fever, or “Teflon flu”, and presents with temporary, intense, but not serious symptoms such as fever, shivering, sore throat and coughing. These cases of Teflon flu are due to acute (short-term) exposures to PTFE fumes; no studies have been done looking at the long-term effects of brief, repeated PTFE-fume exposure, as would be the case in cooking using non-stick pans for a lifetime. - SOURCE