You can get a nice carbon steel or cast iron pan nonstick enough to do things like classical omelets through seasoning alone. (Though the shape of cast iron generally makes it impractical in that particular example.) All the French old timers did. But they need to only be used for that and most home cooks aren't willing to have a pan they only use for one thing. Also, most home cooks-- even the ones that really think they do-- just don't have the kind of pan/utensil handling and heat management experience to make that happen because it's super fussy. Even thin light fishes can be totally fine with enough fat. I wouldn't consider making a sole meuniere in a nonstick pan because you can't build a fond... but most home cooks won't use that much fat either. I never worked in a professional kitchen that used nonstick for anything other than eggs, and they were ONLY used for eggs, and most of the cooks brought their own egg pans when they needed them. All the fish went into regular aluminum skillets or carbon steel pans. At the temperatures required to cook eggs, there's like zero danger using a modern teflon coated pan. It's the people cranking those pans up to smoking temperatures that you have to worry about. That shit is nasty.

I think that's a fair point.

I don't cook anything that causes me a problem using stainless steel but I accept there may be cases where non-stick is essential.

My earlier point could be expanded to:

Make stainless steel your primary cookware and only fall back to a non-stick option when absolutely necessary. In doing so, you're risking far less exposure than someone who uses that stuff for everything they cook.

> it's not like frying eggs is ever any easier in cast iron than it is in stainles

It’s significantly easier to fry eggs on seasoned cast iron vs stainless. I routinely use both.

> Eggs overeasy without breaking the yolk is really hard though.

This is strange to hear from a professional chef. I cook eggs overeasy on my cast iron all the time. What works for me is preheating the pan on moderate heat for a minute or two, putting in a bit of butter, and using a metal spatula. Haven't had a broken egg in forever.

I've certainly found you need less oil to prevent sticking on a well-seasoned cast iron compared to others. It really is a semi-nonstick layer. I've made eggs on mine with no butter just to test it out and with the right heat they didn't stick.

But I guess if you have other tools that are easier for the same result, there's not much reason to learn the harder one. Personally I like having a small collection of cast iron I can do anything with, one part saving space and one part just having a thing for cast iron.

I discovered a trick to use a sanding attachment for a drill to progressively polish my stainless steel frying pans to a mirror finish.

If you then put fish / eggs in it after heating up a generous amount of oil to >boiling, it effectively acts nearly as good as a brand new nonstick pan.

Mirrored finish is worse for some things (browning vegetables) but great for delicate tasks like French omelettes.

How tf do I do stainless sunny-side up without them sticking all over the bottom of the pan? I can do scrambled perfectly with no sticking at all[0], but sunny side up is a mystery. Can't get the whites cooked through without cooking most of the yolk/overcooking bottoms of whites. I cook eggs every morning.

[0] the trick is getting the pan hot enough for a water flick to jump and dance before putting oil or butter in.

not a professional, but i do love to cook. eggs for me are 100x easier on cast iron vs. steel. i only use steel for sauces and veggies, everything else cast iron.

> if you have hard water, you get some calcium buildup and things stick like crazy.

Anyone using stainless cookware should be using Bar Keepers Friend, it's like magic on stainless steel.

The oxalic acid in it removes calcium buildup and helps passivate the stainless steel, the surfactant in it somehow dissolves browned oil stains (even the nasty burned in ones on the bottom of the pot) and the feldspar dust in it provides a bit of abrasive action. Smells funny though. And wear gloves.

The only extra work is it really needs to thoroughly rinsed off or the feldspar dust leaves white residue when it dries.

But seriously it makes stainless look like new.

Can you recommend a brand?

I bought some of those too, but I can't help but wonder if they have their own untested harmful chemicals

I agree - I wonder what the relative risk is between getting liver cancer from PFAS exposure in teflon vs carcinogenic risk in the seasoning layers on cast iron pans or smoking oil in stainless pans?

Any time there is incomplete combustion of carbon compounds like cooking oil, carcinogenic molecules like benzo-a-pyrene are formed, which appears to cause or contribute to skin, lung, and bladder cancer.

Is this true of all oils? I thought some (e.g. olive) are much better than others (cheap seed oils). I also thought risk increases with temperature, so unless you're smoking it on medium-high heat and consuming large amounts regularly it's probably not worth worrying about given that alternatives to cooking for yourself are mostly much worse.

Could be wrong.

cooking oil is not bad for you if you use canola or olive oil, just stop cranking your burner up to high and you'll be fine.

nyc restauranteur frank prisinzano explains it well on his instagram highlights (a kind of mini, continuous cooking course). start with learning his crispy egg technique

I cook with stainless steel, including eggs (probably the most challenging food here, IMO). For an over-easy egg, it's sufficient to simply pre-heat the skillet until butter will sizzle and quickly melt (but not brown) when added. For scrambled eggs I do the same, but also continuously rotate the eggs off/on heat. This not only cooks the eggs to a beautiful custard type texture, but also mostly if not entirely prevents sticking.

Almost everything else doesn't require particular consideration on stainless steel IMO. Potatoes can be more difficult than others though. Hash browns are easy, but little stir-fried potato cubes tend to stick.

With meat, generally, the food will unstick when it's sufficiently cooked, which is a handy coincidence if you ask me.

I'd love to get any pointers, too.

Pans that aren't non-stick can be made far less sticky by not adding anything (except maybe some fat—oil, grease, lard, butter [ghee especially], et c.) until after they're hot. I think it causes phase-changing water in whatever you added to kind of push the food off the pan. You can see this in action by dripping water onto the pan—when it's hot enough, the water will ball up and kinda dance on the pan, while lightly sizzling (that's the lowest point at which it's OK to add food and it probably won't stick much—hotter and the water will sizzle aggressively and may evaporate too fast to really evaluate its behavior, of course, and for most purposes this is too hot to add food anyway, as it'll instantly burn the parts that touch first)

This makes very low-temp or delicate cooking in non-teflon pans a lot tougher, of course. Or anything for which starting from a low temp and slowly increasing is a nice thing to be able to do (tempering chocolate, for example)

[EDIT] Basically the value prop of teflon pans is that they can do just about everything at least well-enough (if not always being the best possible option) with just one type of pan, and that they are much more forgiving of lazy/untrained use or mistakes than stainless or cast iron. They can't do much that's impossible elsewhere, but it may require better technique and closer attention, and maybe having multiple types of pan, if you don't have a teflon option available. The above is one of the ways in which you have to apply some extra care and technique to avoid bad results, which can be all but totally ignored if you're using (undamaged) teflon.

Their main down-side (any health concerns aside) is that they are easily damaged by hard tools. With stainless and cast iron you can scramble your eggs with a metal fork, in a pinch, and it'll probably be entirely fine. Do that in teflon and you'll ruin the finish before long.

unhygienic cast iron isn't necessary, stainless steel and heat control and steel wool are enough

Cast iron pans are great but no matter the level of seasoning it will it never be as good as a new nonstick.

I've seen well-seasoned cast iron that was nonstick if you treat it the same way as stainless: get it hot before adding anything, and put quite a bit of fat (oil, butter, grease, whatever) in first.

I've not seen any that were nonstick at low temp and with no fat in it, as teflon pans are. I can cold-start eggs in a bare teflon pan with no butter or bacon fat whatsoever, and make totally fine scrambled eggs while keeping the temp very low the entire time. I've seen some extremely well-seasoned cast iron pans (and they are damn nice, and quite nonstick, compared to steel or new cast iron) but they couldn't do that. Not without leaving a mess to clean up after and losing half your eggs to sticking. You could cook eggs in them and nothing would stick, but you had to start fairly hot and add a layer of fat first.

They also leach flavors into everything, which really comes through if you cook anything delicately-flavored in them, and even well-seasoned ones are vulnerable to anything acidic and will leach a ton of unwanted flavors if you cook with e.g. tomato sauce.

I still like them for lots of things, but they're not magic. Teflon... kinda is magic.