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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

I bought this non-stick pan on Amazon and it was one of my best purchases of last year. The trick with non-sticks is to buy cheap enough cookware to affordably replace regularly as they wear out. My previous non-stick pan cost four times as much, wore out, and is now just hanging from a rack, looking fabulous. With the new one, I plan to toss it in another year and buy another.

https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS-Professional-R...

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I don't see the point in non stick cookware. A simple stainless steel skillet with some oil in it will perform just as well and last longer for most uses (and you still need to add oil to a non stick skillet to get proper browning anyway, but it pools because of the non stick coating and doesn't work as well).

And a seasoned carbon steel or cast iron pan will be non stick for when you're cooking fragile stuff like eggs or fish, as well as being far superior for searing meat and allowing you to use metal utensils.

Not to mention all of those alternatives will likely allow you to raise the temperature much higher without damaging the pan than you would with a non stick one.

The worst I've seen recently is non stick saucepans! Why on earth would that tradeoff be worth it?

> A simple stainless steel skillet with some oil in it will perform just as well.

I've got a stainless skillet. Every single time I fry eggs like that, without > 1T of fat per egg, it burns to the bottom. So you must have a better technique. I'm willing to switch to a more forgiving option rather than keep scraping off my mistakes. Every time.

Make sure the pan is pretty hot before you put the eggs in, if it's too cold they will probably stick even with lots of oil.

Also, don't be afraid to use however much fat you need, it's not like you're actually going to eat it all - there's probably only going to be about 1/2 teaspoon of it left on the egg after cooking regardless of how much you put in the pan and that's (probably?) pretty negligible health-wise.

If the pan is hotter than medium heat butter will burn. Does not using non-stick mean you don't cook in butter?

Ideally the fat is just a transfer medium for the heat. If you cook correctly, the fat doesn't reach the temperature of the pan, so it doesn't burn even when you use a hot pan, and even if you use butter.

The key is adding fat just moments before adding the food, and adding just the right amount of fat (which is more than people realize).

I cook eggs on high temperature in butter and steaks on high temperature in olive oil, and I never burn my fat. You can only do this for one portion though, if I use the same pan to prepare multiple batches, I switch to lard instead of butter/olive oil. I still like to finish my steaks in butter though, but I just do that as an extra step at the end.

As an unrelated note, I very much prefer lard or duck fat, or if they are unavailable then coconut oil or some other kind of saturated (?) fat, to vegetable oil. Not because of taste (lard is good though), but because the surface tension is different for these solid (at room temperature) fats and these fats coat the pan much better than any kind of vegetable oil. They coat the pan instead of pooling up.

So regular pans take more skill and attention to use without scortching. That's a pretty good reason to go with non-stick.

Erm, no. If you don't want to use butter or olive oil, don't use butter or olive oil. This has nothing to do with non-stick vs regular pan.

In fact, butter and olive oil are more difficult to use, and more prone to scorching with non-stick pans because of lower thermal mass, which makes it much harder to regulate temperature.

The temperature of the pan needs to be the same, regardless whether it's non-stick or not, in order to produce good results. If you start with a cold non-stick pan, the food won't stick, but it will be of far less quality than if you had started with the proper temperature.

So I guess that non-stick pans allow you to more easily make bad food without making a mess, but that's not a metric that I care about. If you care about the quality of food, non-stick pans are more difficult to use because temperature control is harder, they can't get as hot, and generally you can't put them in the oven.

I find that olive oil combined with a bit of butter works pretty well in non-nonstick pans. I start with maybe a teaspoon or so of olive oil in the center of the pan and let that heat up a bit, then add a small amount of butter and wait for it to melt and bubble, then crack the egg directly over the puddle of oil/butter. This has worked well for me, even in otherwise testy pans like worn-out nonsticks, iron skillets, etc.

I hate non stick pots and pans, they are awful, and as you said, the olden alternatives are better.

But I love my non stick saucepan for heating milk. Nothing comes close to that.

Non stick pans have always seemed to me like the classic marketing thing of selling what uninformed consumers think they need, rather than what is actually more useful.

I'll have to try one for milk though, that does usually require vigorous constant stirring in a regular pot if you want to do it at higher temps.

Washing, washing, and washing. When you cook every day you save a lot of time. Cast irons are also super heavy.

My carbon steel and cast iron pans aren't any more difficult to wash than my roommates non stick pans?

Second shout out to that particular item, which I bought July 17, 2017, and have used about once a day in the 18 months since, on a gas stove. One of the best nonstick skillets I have owned. Even heat distribution, and no issues with peeling coating. Strong construction, but as lightweight as it could be given that. (I’m superstitious, and generally hand wash.)

Thirded. I scramble eggs in it most days and put it in the dishwasher. Nothing ever sticks. I've only had it for 8 months but it still works like new.

Kind of wasteful, no? I prefer to buy stuff that lasts, even if it costs more.

I have spent lots more for non-stick pans that were supposed to last. My last one was a Le Creuset for $120. The previous one was a Calphalon for about the same. Both wore out in about two years, and only lasted that long because I didn't want to give up on such an investment. My current $30 pan has lasted about a year with a slicker surface than any of the others, so it's already a better value.

I'm willing to fall for some credible marketing that convinces me I could spend a few hundred on a non-stick pan I could hand down to the grand kids, as with cast iron. But it doesn't seem to exist at the moment.

Given the additional soap and water, I wonder if it would be greener to scrape and scrub my eggs off of a sticky pan instead. It'd be better exercise.

Actually a properly seasoned cast iron pan is about as non-stick as it gets, but it’s heavy and people worry about dealing with it. For getting crusty stuff off pans though, nothing beats a thick layer of bicarbonate of soda, sprayed liberally all over with white vinegar and left for 5 minutes. Very little doesn’t wipe right off after that!

Mostly though I agree with your point that it makes little sense to spend big money on an omelette pan. The coating is going to be pitted within a year or two, and that’s that. A good guide to how you should buy these things is found in the restaurant industry which does what you do now; buy them and toss them.

That also leads to the best advic I can give here... buy your pots and pans from restaurant surplus stores or closing sales! I bought half a dozen omelette pans from one of those for $35 bucks, and I just swap them out every two years.

> Actually a properly seasoned cast iron pan is about as non-stick as it gets

I've spent a lifetime hearing this and not being able to achieve anything close to it on cast iron. Either it's false or a skill that's beyond me. Either way I've quit worrying about advanced semi mythic forms of cast iron seasoning and just use non-stick.

I use a very seasoned cast iron pan regularly to sear meat ... and a little piece of chainmail to scrape off the clingons.

That’s fair, and as someone who has used cast iron for a long time, I won’t blow a load of smoke up your pants by claiming it’s “super easy!” I mean... it’s not complicated, but it’s also not hard to screw up and that’s a form of difficulty I think. Basically you can’t scrape it too much, can’t use soap, and unless the seasoning is very thick you want to be careful with very acidic foods. If you’re like me and like to sear steaks a certain way, it’s worth it, but even I’m not bothering with cast iron just for a fried egg. Cast iron shines most when you need to retain a lot of heat in the pan, otherwise it’s just a lot of effort for no good reason.

Non-stick caught on for a reason!

Even a (preheated) stainless steel pan with some fat in it will stop eggs from sticking. If eggs are sticking your pan is probably not hot enough.

Uh, I have non-stick pans last 4+ years. It sounds like you are getting them too hot, which wears out the teflon--or worse--causes it to leach carcinogens into your food.

I’ve had the same tefal skillet for 5 years bought at target for less than 20 bucks and it’s stoll going fine...

Of course it makes a big difference how often you use it. I use mine about 12x per week. You?

Around the same, ~9 times a week (once every weekday and twice every weekend day).

Maybe I just got lucky with the one I bought :-)

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