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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, I’m keen to dispose of our Teflon frying pan. Does anyone have a good recommendation for an alternative, ideally one that doesn’t take too much “maintenance”?

We also have a Teflon milk pan but that is never used at a high tempriture so I’m less concerned about that.

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Nothing beats cast iron. They aren't hard to take care of.(In spite of the rhetoric.) Actually easier, once you get a good surface on them. Pots, frying pans, woks, etc. They work very well. The most important thing is to give them time to heat up. Once they are, they hold the heat very well, so can cook at any temperature.

I prefer carbon steel more. They heat up faster and are smooth (unlike a lot of cast iron pans which are rough).

But both works well enough.

its just because they don't bother polishing them or turning them on a lathe. iron it pretty soft, you can sand down the rough ones without much trouble (or just buy an old Griswold!)

Second carbon steel. Excellent pans, I don’t worry about seasoning too much - hit with steel wool and hit water when necessary.

Still very little sticks if you use them enough.

Third that, the 360 ones from ikea are excellent. I use that, and a cast iron pan from costco for fish/meat/nabe

Also heft. Cast iron pans are thick and heavy, and can kind of be a hassle to move.

For any purpose benefitting from sloped sides, carbon steel beats cast iron. They’re otherwise pretty much the same.

Geez https://www.solidteknics.com/

They make some nice stainless and iron gear :) no joints either so nothing to break over time.

https://www.dartointernational.com/

Darto makes decent carbon steel that won’t exactly break the bank :)

Nothing but the bank.

Do you have recommendations for seasoning them without a thermostat or a suitable thermometer? I successfully burned my new cast-iron skillet clean, but even after four thin coats of poppyseed and flaxseed oil, each heated up for an hour or so to a temperature that chars garlic skin after a few minutes, eggs still stick if I try to cook them on it without oil.

(I'm a fan of teflon but I like cast iron even more.)

I’m not sure you’ll ever get to cooking with no oil on cast iron. I have very well seasoned pans and I cook with oil, even then eggs will stick a little occasionally. My advice is to cook regularly and whenever you see the surface dry out a bit, apply oil (I find almost any oil or grease works) with some paper towel. I never clean it with soap, there is no need. When more involved cleaning is necessary, I’ll put water in it and let sit, and then wipe clean. If there’s lots of crap stuck to it, sometimes I’ll heat the water to a simmer, although this tends to ruin the seasoning somewhat.

Think of it kind of like a barbecue surface (more accurately like a griddle), which people generally don’t soak in soapy water. I never do the “oil and then bake it” stuff, I don’t think it’s necessary.

I’m torn right now because I also just replaced my nonstick pants with a high quality $70 new nonstick pan, and then came across all these articles about PFAS. I usually only use nonstick for eggs and other delicate items but I’m paranoid now. I’m curious if anyone knows what percentage of exposure is via cookware compared to other environmental sources?

I tried many different methods and nothing really worked, then I finally came across this:

- heat it up so it's warm in the oven

- coat it generously with vegetable oil (it's what I had, but basically any oil will do)

- wipe the excess with a paper towel so it's still shiny but not runny

- put it in the oven for an hour just above the smoke point of the oil

(I'm not really a fan of cast iron, as they are too heavy for my liking and have too much thermal mass to react quickly to temperature changes)

How do you get it to be just above the smoke point of the oil without a thermostat or a suitable thermometer? The knob on my oven just varies the amount of gas going to the burner.

Oven thermometers are cheap, but barring that, use inexpensive canola or vegetable oil sparingly; just enough to make it shiny, and turn the knob to 350F (or whatever setting you use by default when baking or cooking).

If the coating turns white, recoat with oil and try a lower temperature or less time. Cast iron is an extremely old technology, and was common back in the days of wood stoves. It doesn’t require precision instruments to maintain it.

If you somehow ruin the seasoning, you can always scrape it with steel wool and try again. I once forgot a mini skillet in a frequentLy used propane grill for ~ 3 years, then left it outdoors with a burnt off coating for winter or two. I spent 5 minutes scrubbing rust off it in the sink, then oiled and seasoned it. We use it for sunny side up eggs these days.

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

In my country everyone has an electric oven, so you can set an exact temperature.

Just use a little butter, olive oil, or lard (bacon is good) whenever you cook with them.

Interesting, I'd heard that those saturated fats basically can't be oxidatively cross-linked to form a seasoning?

Do people cook eggs without oil? Do you use butter or something?

You can definitely fry eggs on teflon without butter or oil or anything. I have this vague memory that I used to be able to do this on cast iron when I lived in the US, with maybe the occasional bit sticking.

You can do this to a brand new, high quality teflon pan, but it will gradually become less and less possible as you use it more.

But why.

Well, if one really wants to taste the subtle tastes of an egg, cooking sans oil does that.

By subtle, I mean similar to the difference between veggie oil and olive or canola oil. These all have a distinct taste to me, and I dislike canola enough to notice when it's been used.

The egg by itself has flavors that get dominated by the oil flavors.

To some people it matters. Simple as that.

Many people abhor chicken fried in canola oil.

Great! I can't blame them. It is terrible.

It depends on what you're worried about and what you want out of a pan. If you use wooden cooking utensils (spatula, chopsticks etc.), then just keep using the Teflon pan. It's fine as is and you won't scratch the coating.

If you want to use metal cookware, go for cast iron (heavy) or carbon steel (light). There's a lot online about how to season or maintain them -- you can safely ignore all of this advice. These are pans you can abuse. They're not as nonstick as Teflon so you still want to use some cooking oil, but that's about it. Both kinds may rust if there's humidity, but that's fine -- just wash before (instead of after) cooking and a bit of leftover rust is just a tad extra iron in your diet ;)

I bought a couple of SolidTeknics[1] wrought iron pans, and I love them. You have to season them first, which essentially involves blackening them by burning good cooking oils onto them. I used rice bran oil for that. It's a bit of a mission, but you only do it once.

They are great because you can get them really hot and they have excellent heat inertia. You can put them in the oven if needed. And cleanup is simple: just hot water & a brush. No chemicals. I've often got the pan clean and back in the cupboard while my protein is resting.

But if it's not protein that your cooking on your pan, but instead perhaps its an acidic sauce, then I would recommend a stainless steel pan for that.

For pots I would go with stainless also. Or copper if you can afford it.

[1] https://www.solidteknics.com/

Big fan of solidteknics gear. Slowly going to migrate all my pans to their products.

Also geez flax seed oil for seasoning. It gives a near glass like finish.

tbh i've never gone wrong with lodge and it's a much better budget option if u don't have the cash for that. used it for years and works great.

Get a lodge and scrub it with steel wool to clean. It'll be super smooth in a few months in my experience

That is what we did. The lodge pan is a good performer for the price.

Cast iron or enameled cast iron.

Cast iron really doesn't require much maintenance. You can season it and never wash it and be delicate with it like a fancy chef, or you can abuse the hell out of it and it doesn't matter because it's basically indestructible. The only thing you can't do is let it sit in water or run it through the dishwasher. I mean, you can, but it rusts… which also isn't that difficult to clean if it happens.

Cast iron and a green scotchbrite pad or a stainless steel scouring pad and you are good. You can use hot water and soap to clean it. It will deteriorate any "seasoning" but so what. Clean after use, dry and store away. Takes maybe two minutes. If you want to get it seasoned so it has some non-stick to it you can, but you don't have to.

If you simmer a half inch of water in a cast iron or enameled cast iron pan, you can scrape almost anything away with a soft spatula. Like new in no time. No soap needed.

Much faster than scrubbing.

There are a few thing that are still a pain though, like eggs and fish.

Demeyere brand skillets are fantastic. They're fairly nonstick - I can scramble eggs with only a little sticking, hamburgers or sausages will leave residue, but it's easily cleanable. They aren't super cheap, but they won't break the bank and they're a lot of value for the money.

An aluminum skillet from a restaurant supply store is cheap and low-maintenance. I use this one [0] for omelets and scrambled eggs, and it's probably my favorite pan. The thickness means that the heat is incredibly even, and there's enough mass that it won't cool down much when adding food to a preheated pan.

[0] https://www.foodservicedirect.com/alegacy-eagleware-the-poin...

Depends on what worries you. Stainless steel is the least reactive, but higher maintenance. Cast iron, carbon steel and aluminum are all reactive with acidic foods and will leech metals -- plus the acidic food will strip all the seasoning off. I cook with lots of tomatoes, so that rules out all of these for me. Cast iron and carbon steel (to a lesser extent) need to be seasoned to not stick like crazy and to not rust, which involves polymerizing cooking oil onto the surface. The health effects of this polymerized oil is unknown and the oil smoke is not great for indoor air quality. Digesting regular amounts of rust is also another unknown health effect, though iron can accumulate in people with certain genetic disorders.

I think the safest option is stainless steel, and funny enough, Teflon. They are both inert and Teflon is only toxic if you cook on high heat. I keep a Teflon around solely for scrambled eggs and fish on low heat, but they are very doable in a well oiled stainless fry pan as well.

I switched to stainless steel, it is more to maintain, but it's not horrible. I also use a ceramic pan on very low temperatures to cook really stick stuff like scrambled eggs.

The majority of things labeled ceramic are teflon on top.

Definitely a possibility, the other alternative is to not scramble eggs

I cook scrambled eggs in cast iron a few times a week without issue.

I bought a cast iron thinking it would be a pain. its really not. they have came a long way. you can treat it like any other pan (besides being heavy) - you can use soap to clean it. - Dont get me wrong. treating it correctly will make it last a life time. i just store mine in the oven when ive finished washing it.

I’m not sure about general treatment, but one thing that you can’t do is let water sit in there, as it’ll rust.

Crystallized citric acid is cheap. Couple of tablespoons in a suitable container and give the offending piece a bath. Wash away the rust. Bake in the oven with one layer of oil to season.

Having rust is fine though, it's just oxidized iron. Sure it won't look pretty but it's largely harmless in food.

The main caveat I've seen is when making acidic foods with iron cookware (cast iron or carbon steel) it may affect the taste ever so slightly as some of the acid is reacted and takes off the top layer so you end up with a "stain" that looks like the food. Still just cosmetic only though.

Worse is it'll stain your cabinet / storage or anything it touches.

If its super well seasoned it won't rust even with soaking for two days in dish soap.

I guess my brand new cast iron pans weren’t then

I’m using hard anodized aluminum pan. I know there’s a lot of stigma around aluminum, but not sure if it’s real or not

High temperatures do not bother Teflon, there's no reason to dispose of it because of that.

According to the EPA Teflon frying pans do not leech any PFOA into food, that's not where people are exposed.

I've noticed that for some reason a ton of people think they get exposure to PFOA from cookware, and that's simply not true. PFOA exposure mainly comes from waterproofing coatings, slippery coatings (like the bottom of skis), and firefighting foam.

Paper dishes (plates, straws, etc) are a big source of exposure because they need to make them waterproof. Make sure to ask for plastic.

I don't know what's released from Teflon pans at high heat, but Teflon kills birds. I know this because I killed two birds by forgetting about a pan I was warming up. Wasn't enough to make the pan look any different; was enough to instantly kill the birds.

https://www.teflon.com/en/consumers/teflon-coatings-cookware...

I believe that the chemical primarily responsible for bird toxicity from PTFE pyrolysis is perfluoroisobutene:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluoroisobutene

Although acutely toxic, this substance is not a persistent "forever chemical" because there are multiple mechanisms that rapidly degrade it in the environment:

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Perfluoroisobutyle...

While that's fair your link suggests it's found its way into schedule 2 of the chemical weapons convention.

> Perfluoroisobutene is quite toxic with an LCt = 880 mg⋅min⋅m−3 (mice).[1] It is a Schedule 2 substance of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

I don't know about you but I try and keep my ricin away from my breakfast foods. It is however reassuring that it'll be degraded in the environment.

> I don't know about you but I try and keep my ricin away from my breakfast foods.

To cause Teflon to degrade you have to heat the pan to over 500F / 260C.

No one cooks at those temperatures, even ovens don't go so high. You basically have to forget the pan on a high flame for a long time.

And the toxic chemicals you get from overheating oil are far worse, somehow everyone forgets about those.

My gas hob burns at >450C and we’ve had several instances of a forgotten teflon pan that made a terrible smell.

I’d say it’s pretty easy to get teflon to degrade at home.

It's true that those temperatures are too hot to cook at, but overheated oil at 260 or 270 degrees is a great deal more conspicuous than teflon pyrolysis at those temperatures. This makes the overheated oil safer, in the same way that silane is safer than hydrogen sulfide even though its lethal dose is lower.

Still, I like cooking on teflon.

Every oven I’ve ever had goes to 500 degrees. I have no idea why you are making this claim. Anecdotally I know I can get pans hotter than this on my gas stovetop, just judging on searing and smoke production, and a quick google for how hot pans can get on a stovetop gives results > 600 degrees.

> Every oven I’ve ever had goes to 500 degrees.

And plenty of recipes are cooked at 450 degrees. I don't even believe there's a full-sized (i.e. not a toaster) oven that doesn't go to 500 degrees, but I'm willing to be corrected.

That's because birds are extremely sensitive to the air; it's how the phrase "canary in the coalmine", or just "canary", originated. The dosage required to kill a bird is a tiny fraction of that needed to cause a human to perceive anything.

That said, pyrolysis of fluorinated compounds does release very toxic substances, HF among one of them. On the other hand, the tradeoff is that below those temperatures at which they start degrading, they are extremely inert.

My family learned this after replacing a stove with one that had a non-stick interior a couple decades ago. That was a pretty major bummer.

I googled, and I could not find any ovens with Teflon in them.

On top of that you have to heat the Teflon over 500F / 260C, and ovens temperatures don't go so high (except in self cleaning but a non-stick oven would not have self cleaning).

I suspect something else happened to your birds - probably simple smoke from food residue, which kills birds much easier than overheated Teflon does.

Interesting. IIRC the only thing that changed before and after was the oven was replaced. Ah well.

This person has been saying all over the thread that "ovens don't go to 500F" and here finally add the actual caveat "except self cleaning". At least half the ovens listed in Lowes's online inventory list self cleaning as a feature, and it's even a feature in my bargain basement level apartment oven, which happily goes up to 550F, which is great for cooking pizza.

I don't know whether they're being intellectually dishonest, or genuinely don't realize they're spreading useless info.

They're claim that nobody gets a pan hot enough to degrade teflon while cooking is slightly more reasonable, except plenty of recipes start with "heat an empty, dry pan until it is searing hot" and that leaves a lot of room to screw up your pan.

Hot oil also kills birds, and at a lower temperature than Teflon.

So if you had been using oil with your pan the birds would have still died, and earlier than they did with the Teflon.

Do you have a reference for this?

edit: I know for a fact that these birds smelled a lot of food cooking and lived. Teflon killed them in the next room.

edit2: I should really bow out of this discussion. The fact that Teflon.com thinks that Teflon is a special worry if you have birds is enough for me. Judging by the content of their page on the subject, I'm going to assume that they decided that comparisons to burning mystery oils were spurious.

Just a cursory google for Teflon killing birds yields numerous results including this one … from teflon.com - https://www.teflon.com/en/consumers/teflon-coatings-cookware...

When the product itself is actually publicly fessing up to being acutely toxic in some way, it’s a pretty safe bet it is.

There’s no reason to doubt the account here of the birds dying and this being the likely cause.

Condolences. Had you had them long?

No, it's even more awful. I was visiting my mother and little sister (tween at the time) on vacation from work (we lived in different states), and I was going to make them breakfast. Spaced out on the pan while trying to sort out the ingredients. Everybody tried to make me feel better (because no one else had ever heard that Teflon kills birds either), but little sister was distraught.

I'm so sorry. I'm a fan of teflon but I'm spacey enough that I wouldn't cook on it if I had birds.

How long ago was this? I'm guessing that the relevant knowledge maybe still isn't widespread.

Probably 10-15 years ago at this point, but I still feel shitty about it.

> High temperatures do not bother Teflon,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever

Seems totally healthy to me!

Leaching isn't the worry with non-stick coatings, flaking is. Everyone's seen pans flake off teflon into food.

Teflon is very non-reactive and any small pieces you ingest should pass through unchanged pretty quickly. You likely ingest a lot more plastic from other sources.

On the other hand, visible flakes of plastic in my food are kind of a bummer.

Cast iron is low maintenance, just don't over think the seasoning thing and don't cook overly acidic things. Cook with oil, clean with soap and hot water (use a plastic scraper if you need to...), dry on the stove and once dry wipe with a paper towel you put a little drop of oil on. Wait until the oil just smokes and turn it off. Done. Takes 1min tops. You can use steel utensils, just don't go scratching at it when cleaning with a wire brush.

Just get used to the imperfect surface, its not going to be perfect, it may get to be smooth and black one day, but even my nearly hundred year old skillet I've gotten through my family sometimes gets a scratch or a flake off. Its self correcting the more you use it.

If that's still too much "maintenance" try a nice enameled cast iron skillet or pot from le creuset. Don't cheap out. These are fantastic, aren't bothered by acidic foods, and still have the same nice heat holding properties of seasoned iron. Really love these. Don't use steel utensils or bang them around the edges with sticks and they last forever, or at least long enough you feel the cost was well worth it. My mother in law had hers, used, for nearly 25 years before the enamel flaked, and she didn't bother treating it nice (scrubbed, used metal utensils, etc).

I scrape the heck out of my cast iron pan using a bit of chain mail I keep by the sink in order to clean it. I do reapply oil and heat as you suggest. Do you reckon I'm missing out on some benefits of cast iron because I scrape it so relentlessly?

You’re probably stopping the seasoning from building up, and making it more sticky. Hot water and a soft nylon brush should be enough for 90% of your cooking, the occasional sticky burger just needs a 5m hot water bath to let go.

Yum, everyone needs to consume more nylon. I use a small cheese knife that looks like a mini meat cleaver as a scraper. The pans have enough seasoning that they're similar to Teflon as far as stickiness goes.

The benefits of additional iron in your food?

I finally made the switch to triple clad stainless and i couldn't be happier. Kinda like a cast iron but a little less heavy for the larger pans (still much heavier than a cheapo set of steel pots), fast to heat up too and cooks really evenly with the thickened walls. They only get things stuck to them if you screw up your technique. Just a sponge and dish soap is all it needs most of the time.

I've found Green Pan's pans to be wonderful replacements for Teflon pans: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B074CVZ7MM

Class action lawsuit: https://www.johnsonbecker.com/firm-news/greenpan-class-actio...

It should be obvious to anyone at this point that anything that promises to be a "healthy" alternative to teflon and is not stainless steel / cast-iron / carbon steel is most probably a scam.

Have they won the lawsuit? Perhaps consider witholding judgement?

Cast iron is fine once you get the hang of it, but I find myself just using my stainless steel pans exclusively. I also wonder how healthy the polymerized surface really is (would love to hear from anyone who knows).

You can effectively make stainless steel non-stick with correct use of a neutral oil and either cooking at a slightly lower heat and/or keeping the contents moving. Have to be ok with some oil though, for most foods it shouldn't be a problem.

It's not teflon, but I haven't come across anything that sticks to the pan in a consequential manner. Scrub with stainless steel scrubber to clean, done.

Cast iron works as a non-stick with a bit of practice.

You could get a new pan with 'ceramic' coating. It's just like teflon in basically every way.

A friend of mine bought a "ceramic" coated pan which turns out to be PFAS.

For an overview of "real" ceramic pans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G21f_ny_lxs

A lot of cookware sold online (especially places like amazon) are outright lying about what they are made with. "PFAS free" is more or less a meaningless marketing term at this point. The FDA is doing nothing to stop people from making false claims about these types of products.

Because it is Teflon on top of an anodized aluminum layer.

I got a couple different “ceramic” coated skillets and they were the stickiest things I’ve ever used. They went straight to the recycler.

They need to be _hot_ to work.

> It's just like teflon in basically every way.

Hopefully not in the bad ways? Is the "ceramic coating" proven to not be harmful?

Ceramic itself is safe. Ultimately for a coating, the safety depends on what's underneath if/when it wears through.

In materials science "ceramic" means basically any inorganic, nonmetallic solid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fundamental_aspects_o.... This includes perfectly safe materials like alumina, mullite, and silicon nitride, as well as things you definitely do not want in your food like lead oxide, lead zirconate titanate, barium titanate, uranium oxide, and beryllia.

So it is not accurate to say, "Ceramic itself is safe".

(I have no idea what is used in the surfaces of "ceramic" pans but it is unlikely to be any of the substances I listed above; they all have high surface energy.)

Ceramics can be glazed with lead. It can also end up in ceramics that are used in cookware[1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/12/08/563808879/ca...

Is it really ceramic or something they call "ceramic" that has other additives like a metamaterial?

What bad ways? Teflon is not harmful. Teflon is not the same as PFAS, and Teflon cookware does not leech any PFAS into food. See my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515717

And to answer your question, ceramics sometimes have heavy metals to get bright colors (cadmium mostly). Make sure to buy from a reputable manufacturer.

My Teflon pans are all slightly scratched. When they scratch some material comes loose and is removed from the pan.

Where is that material?

You ate it, and it won't hurt you in the slightest. Teflon is utterly inert in the body.

You probably know what you are talking about but the lack of research doesn't fill me with confidence [1]:

> However, at temperatures above 500°F (260°C), Teflon coatings on nonstick cookware start to break down, releasing toxic chemicals into the air. [...] Polymer fume fever consists of temporary, flu-like symptoms such as chills, fever, headache, and body aches. The onset occurs after 4–10 hours of exposure, and the condition usually resolves within 12–48 hours.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nonstick-cookware-safet...

Maybe you don't realize how hot 500F is - your oven maxes out at 450. At 500 everything in the plan is black charcoal. Any oil in the pan caught fire.

You keep repeating this "ovens don't go to 500F" claim all over the thread and it is just wrong. Looking at lowes.com, around half their oven inventory has a self cleaning option, requiring the oven to be able to get to that high temperature. Even a cheap electric oven will often have a self cleaning feature and a max temp above 500F.

What evidence do you have for this claim?

Turning my burner up to max my carbon steel wok has gotten up to 700. Before I knew better, I had an old non-stick wok and on the first use the coating came off at high temperatures. Never actually cooked in it, threw it out and went for the carbon steel instead.

Many ovens have their top temp at 550F. And when the broiler is on, it can go well above that (although in a smaller more focused area).

Think you mean smoking. Plenty of oils have flash points above 500F and a few have smoke points over 500

Thanks, I guess my point is more like: how do we know this new "ceramic" coating (if it is some metamaterial) is better than Teflon for the environment from the cradle to the grave? Are there worse risks we don't know about?

I would prefer to study and perfect our manufacturing and use of Teflon if there is no alternative to it that is much safer.

Teflon is certainly a perfluoroalkyl substance but it is perfectly safe as long as you aren't thermally decomposing it at temperatures that are too hot to cook at.

Some brands like Our Place[1] and Caraway[2] sell specifically non-toxic cookware

[1]https://fromourplace.co.uk/

[2] https://www.carawayhome.com/

I love my carbon steel pan.

Ceramic enamel coated pans are non stick and non maintenance.

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