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Comment by acomjean | Hacker News Reader

We've been using carbon steel pan. Its like cast iron but much lighter (not light though). They look kinda narly, but you get used to it.

You "season" from time to time (oil high heat) but we haven't in at least 6 months and use that thing at least 6 times a week. Easy to clean too.

This article kinda give the details. (you have to dodge a modal and click "read more"...sorry)

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/1623-12-i...

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You don't really have to do much of anything to maintain a cast iron seasoning either, unless you are cooking in it in ways that strip what's there.

I probably don't do anything at all 29 out of 30 uses or more. The other 1 gets a thin swipe of oil while drying under heat and that's it.

+1 for carbon steel! We switched our teflon pans to carbon steel about 5 years ago. Mostly because I was tired of replacing scratched Teflon every so many years (cost and waste) on top of the health implications. We own cast iron too, but the carbon steel and stainless steel pans do the bulk of our cooking just because they're lighter.

It's one of my fav kitchen purchases. The only annoyance was getting the beeswax off the pans on the first day.

The trick seems to be too use several carbon steel pans when necessary. One thing you can do in teflon that you can't do in steel is fry up yer veggies and yer meat in the pan, then crack the eggs in, stick-free.

So, use two pans, one foot the fillings and a fresh one for the eggs, adding the fillings once the eggs hit the oiled pan. Afterwards, neither needs more than a rinse out.

Carbon steel works great! The first time I used it I was kind of shocked that such a simple solution isn't the standard way it's done. Cast iron can be a little bit inconvenient due to the weight but carbon steel is literally no different from cooking in a teflon pan, you just clean it different.

cast iron is better at searing in my experience. I mostly use my hexclad for stuff that requires up to medium heat, but for searing and blackening stuff, nothing works like my cast iron skillet that I preheat in the oven to 450 for the sear.

What toxic chemicals are produced by heating oils at high heat for seasoning?

Epoxides and aldehydes mainly.

Aren’t most common vegetable cooking oils already toxic due to the source product being soaked in solvents during manufacturing process?

My understanding is that you want to buy cold expressed oils to avoid these nasties.

Idk what it is but clicking 'read more' doesn't show the results of their testing; it's still blurred.

The testing results are hidden, but there is more info on the pans generally. They’re a subscription site, and mine lapsed. I have their cookbooks though.

Totally unrelated, but a Firefox extension called bypass paywalls clean is great for avoiding this

Does Firefox filter BPA and PFOA/PFAS? - sweet!

yep, and it works on Android with Firefox nightly

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