I ditched them a while ago as well. I only use cast iron or stainless steel and it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with non-stick before.
Because they are incredibly useful when it comes to certain kinds of food, especially eggs and fish.
I find all the "self-congratulatory" posts on the topic of non-stick pans, and demonization of people that use them, of the "thou doth protest too much" quality. Tons of renowned chefs, like Jacques Pepin, have spoken of the benefits of non-stick. There are ways to get closer to the quality of non-stick with other techniques (e.g. a meticulously cared for and seasoned cast iron pan), but it takes a lot more work and is still finicky.
I totally get it if you don't want to use a non-stick pan because of health or environmental concerns (I find there isn't much to be concerned about if you're not using too high heat on the pan), but this pretending that non-stick pans aren't super useful is silly. I'd challenge anyone to make a perfectly light and golden French omelette with, say, just butter on a non-nonstick pan (it can obviously be done, it's just way harder).
And my first attempt was just on a cheap pre-seasoned Lodge pan and it worked like a dream. It's not particularly finicky and didn't require meticulous labor — the seasoning is way less physically delicate than nonstick coatings.
In general I would recommend buying pre-seasoned pans — the initial seasoning is the laborious part, but with pre-seasoned pans you just skip all of that. Maintaining seasoning is pretty easy, it's basically just "use the pan" and "don't put the pan in the dishwasher." If it looks like it's getting old or messed up, just wipe a tiny bit of oil on it and cook at high heat.
Personally I also think carbon steel (or Solidteknics "wrought iron") are better than cast iron — they're lighter, heat up faster and more evenly, and they're still pretty durable. But they're a bit more expensive, and they all are similarly not-sticky.
I wanted to add, regarding cast iron, you can always sand the pan down a bit to smooth out the surface.
On of the biggest benefits to iron or steel cookwear is that you can easily remove and re-apply the non-stick coating. Lodge has the directions on their website. Just make sure you buy pans that have oven safe handles as you bake them repeatedly with a thin layer of oil to build up the seasoning.
Behold my l33t level 10 cookware maintenance skillz:
We got it on sale for like $20, new, but then I accidentally left outside for a few years, which created some rust spots.
I fixed it by hitting it with a stainless steel pot scrubber and dawn for about 120 seconds, then put it in the oven at 350F with some canola oil on it for about an hour.
These days, I scrub it with a nylon brush (no soap) or wipe it out with a paper towel.
I've never been able to do a decent crepe or egg in non stick, due to uneven heating.
shrug
The exception is for eggs, we have a dedicated pan we only use for them, and although I've just read the other comments here about how easy it is to fry an egg in other pans, I find it goes much better in nonstick. And only frying eggs + using a plastic spatula seems to pretty much eliminate any wear on the coating.
Not sure why, but using a little butter instead of oil seemed to be the key.
Cooking eggs on a stainless pain isn't particularly difficult, you just need to change your technique and use quite a bit more preheating along with more oil or butter than you traditionally would for a non-stick pan. So, it's useful in that sense, but it's not as if we wanted for pan fried eggs before non-stick existed.
Basically, yes, it's certainly possible to get non-stick properties with a well-seasoned, very well-maintained pan. But even someone like Pepin, who has more than enough knowledge and experience to keep a pan in good working order, went the route of "that's too finicky, nonstick is just easier."
Which means you're trading one health benefit for another.
However, the jury is still out (rightfully, IMO) on saturated fats, and there is plenty of good science that says to be wary of them (yet, still not as open-and-shut as is often reported in the health media). I think this article gives a good, fair overview: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-abo.... It references this meta-analysis, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20071648/, that found that saturated fat did not lead to greater heart or cardiovascular disease, but there are some fair criticisms of their methodology, e.g. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/92/2/458/4597393
But, in any case, yes, for decades the nutrition experts in this country recommended replacing fats with carbohydrates and that was just horrible advice that wasn't supported by the science.
(To be clear, I'm really interested in what the issue is. This isn't meant to be asking a question as a form of sarcasm.)
Your stainless steel, high carbon steel, and cast iron pans require using a small amount of oil/butter to have nonstick cooking properties.
Non-stick was popular well before the early 2000s, its popularity is not due to any “war on natural fats” that occurred at that time. (And the early ’00s is late for that, anyway.)
Non-stick is (and has been for a long time) most popular for particular forms of cooking that use natural fats, whereas particular steel designs (sometimes referred to as “waterless” because of their properties in other applications) were specifically promoted (including in the early 2000s, though they were around before and remain on the market now) as eliminating the need to use fats as one would with conventional and non-stick cookware.
Saturated fats were and remain to be generally thought unhealthy (if we say things like 'all' or 'always', we're almost certainly spreading misinformation; the world doesn't work that way). Other fats (polyunsaturates and monounsaturates) are believed to be healthy or neutral. There is ongoing uncertainty and debate; the degrees and nuances change; we don't get sure, hyperbolic answers.
https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/well/fda-healthy-food.htm...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/good-fats-bad-fats.h...
I'm not a grammar and spelling critic, but I'm going to be a style critic here (sorry to the parent; lots of people write this way): Hyperbole commonly leads to misinformation. 'War', 'all fat', 'nutritionists declared', 'bad' etc. divert us to an emotional, adversarial contest with a strawperson enemy, rather than into the pursuit of truth, whose object is always nuanced and whose pursuit is difficult enough as it is.
No, it's pushing hyperbole. It tells the world your emotional position - you think it was a war. Let's try something more factual, that reveals the underlying issues - if we know the facts.
Low fat and fat free is still a big selling point. Look at the NYT article on the FDA's plans, for example.
The first paragraph of the introduction, in case you don't have access:
> Since medical research first established a potential link between dietary fat intake, obesity, and cardiovascular disease [1], multiple components of the public health continuum have waged war on dietary fat. That war has generally been successful, not necessarily at preventing obesity or heart disease but at convincing Americans that dietary fat is bad for us.
Don't you see the impact of the Internet and its dialog on our society? Let's do something better.
It doesn't read as if they're describing their own position, emotional or not. It's a characterization of the public messaging surrounding dietary fat.
Low fat and fat free is still a big selling point
Yes, that's mainly because of aforementioned public messaging.
> It's a characterization of the public messaging surrounding dietary fat.
Hyperbole is characterization, reflecting the author's emotional state.
If I had to have a single pan, I’d probably go high carbon steel.
Canola oil looks like a superfood when you swap butter for it in the literature.
We knew that in the early 2000s, too. And in the early 1990s, which is more when when the war on fats was actually happening; by the early ’00s, the diet trend had focused on low-carb diets, reversing the war on fats.
Perhaps it's only a reminder how much the zeitgeist may be divorced from science, or how little impact the latter actually has on the former unless it's convenient. Though that's for another discussion.
Scotch pancakes is still the one thing I can't cook without non-stick.
If anybody has any tips that doesn't include half a kilo of lard, then I am very interested.
A carbon steel wok is my favourite cooking implement of all.
Non-stick is not for people who know how to cook.