In my experience, Teflon will always be scratched. Yes, in theory you could "use it correctly", but nobody ever does. So it's better to simply not have them.
Ceramic
Cast iron
Stainless steel
In that order, in my opinion.
I don't buy frying pans, so I take what I can get.
I used to have teflon cookware. It's great in theory. But in practice, I find indestructible stuff that you don't have to baby works much better for me. Of course, if you don't have much upper body strength, other approaches may work better.
Cast Iron or High-Carbon steel for steaks, eggs/pancakes, stir-fries (wok). You will have to maintain a non-stick seasoning and that has a learning curve, most people don't get it right at first. Make sure to always dry them as they can rust.
You can look at enamel or copper if you have the $$$.
The best things to use are cast-iron and cladded stainless steel. With both, you heat the pan more slowly to reach your appropriate temperature (you're looking for leidenfrost) and then you add oil, and cook. If you use healthy oils and heat before adding the oil, cast-iron is effectively non-stick once a seasoning develops and cladded stainless steel won't stick except with specific foods (eggs). But this is definitely a different methodology for cooking than most people are familiar with.
The other benefit of using non-teflon pans is you can use all types of utensils.
Don't give up on winning over your partner's mind. It may take a little while, and you have to be patient, diplomatic, and gentle. People are resistant to change. But it is not hopeless, and it is worth it in the end, because their health is at stake.
That said I wish they'd test the Granitestone Pro as other reviewers have said the Granitestone holds up better than other ceramic pans.
Stainless is durable, but I suspect there are issues with chemical reactions between the food and bare metal.
I think that enamel is the best, being inert and durable, and old technology, though you also don,t want to drop or overheat it.
Cast iron is also good, just unwieldy and difficult to clean if you,re cooking meat, eggs, cheese, basically animal proteins.
My primary use case is high heat wok cooking. A lot of ceramic woks exist, they just don't last long!
Carbon steal is my daily pan now (lighter than iron skillet - it's what chefs usually use). Once you get a good coating of fat built up it's pretty decent non-stickiness, but you have to take a lot more care of it.
I wish teflon was more healthy because it's damn good for cooking with, especially scrambled eggs.
AFAIK this is a non-issue because teflon is inert in its finished form. It's only an health risk during manufacturing and when it's heated too high.
> At normal cooking temperatures, PTFE-coated cookware releases various gases and chemicals that present mild to severe toxicity.
> Only few studies describe the toxicity of PTFE but without solid conclusions.
> There are some reports where PFOA was detected in the gas phase released from the cooking utensils under normal cooking temperatures.
> Due to toxicity concerns, PFOA has been replaced with other chemicals such as GenX, but these new alternatives are also suspected to have similar toxicity.
> The toxicity and fate of ingested PTFE coatings are also not understood.
Source:
PTFE-coated non-stick cookware and toxicity concerns: a perspective
Muhammad Sajid 1, Muhammad Ilyas 2
PMID: 28913736
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-017-0095-y
I don't think it means what you think it means. Reading further into the paper, it says
>At normal use conditions [< 230 °C], total emissions of PFCAs were 4.75 ng per hour
Which seems absolutely tiny. If spread out the emissions across the hour (because the 4.75 ng figure was cumulative emissions), the exposure to the cook would be in the parts per trillion range.
4.75 nanograms may not seem like a lot, but when you consider that, at 414.07g/mol it is 6,908,293,060,000 parts of the stuff, it seems like quite a bit to me. And that's in just one cooking session.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since my chemistry class.
The EPA drinking water standards, the ones watered down by industry influence, are measured in parts per trillion.
Here is a science question for you: If the EPA limit for PFOA in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion, what volume of water would need to be mixed with 4.75 nanograms of PFOA in order to bring that water to within the allowable limit for drinking water?
Now, here is a quote from the EPA:
> These studies indicate that exposure to PFOA and PFOS over certain levels may result in adverse health effects, including developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes). There is limited information identifying health effects from inhalation or dermal exposures to PFOA or PFOS in humans and animals.
Based on this question, do you think there are any "health effects" if exposed to PFOA and PFOS below these "certain levels".
This doesn't prove anything part from molecules being really small. What's more important at what doses do negative health effects materialize.
>And that's in just one cooking session.
I'm not sure about you but 1 hour is an usually long time to be using a frying pan. Unless you're cooking a huge slab of meat, letting anything sit in a 230C degree pan for an hour would result it being burnt/overcooked.
>The EPA drinking water standards, the ones watered down by industry influence, are measured in parts per trillion.
Looking through https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national..., the only one that I can find that's near 1 part per trillion is dioxin, at 0.03 PPT. The rest are well above that. Furthermore, even 1 part per trillion is a high estimate for actual exposure. In addition to being spread out across an hour (3600 seconds), the emissions are also dispersed across the room and vented out. Finally, like I pointed out earlier, what maters more is the toxicity of the compound. Dioxins and PFCAs are both "bad", but it doesn't mean they're equally as toxic. The limit for mercury is orders of magnitude higher at 2 parts per billion.
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking...
Did you get a chance to take a crack at the chemistry math problem I posed?
Once you've solved that one, here is another one for you:
If 4.75 nanograms of the material is aerosoled out into the air, what amount is absorbed directly into the food which is cooking on the pan?