Tiny chance I'll be able to convert her to stainless for most things, but we're never not going to have one teflon pan for eggs and crepes and such.
Basically, remove the beeswax layer, then rub a layer of oil on the pan and heat it until it fully smokes off. You can do it on a burner or in the oven at 450F. You'll do that a maybe 3-5 times on a new pan, up to you. They tell you not to do carbon steel in the oven because of the material of the handle, but I've done it before and it worked out fine. I generally just use the stove top because it's easier.
You clean the pan with soap and water as you would any other pan, and then towel dry since you don't want rust forming on the metal. You'll need to re-season it every so often depending on how much use the pan gets, but that's usually only every couple years.
[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-season-carbon-steel-pans
Like, the backup is there to save your ass when you don’t do things correctly. If the backup needs you to exert more effort and do things correctly, then it’s most likely to be broken when you need it the most.
Just add a dash of oil and cook on medium low-heat with a lid.
I never spend more than five seconds cleaning because the eggs never stick.
No denying that it's a lot easier to make eggs or pancakes or whatever on teflon, while distracted by also trying to get the kids dressed and such, without ruining the food or making a mess, than it is on other materials. Even if you know what to do with other pans, you still have to do it, and that takes more attention and care than teflon.
If it comes out that teflon pans are, in fact, a major source of ingested or inhaled PFAS, I'll probably kick up my efforts to convert her. In the meantime I suspect a lot more of it comes from other household materials (clothes, carpet, furniture—plus stuff in cars) that've been treated for fire and stain resistance, so I'm not super worried about the pans.
Would she be willing to use a timer? She can just set it for 10 - 15 minutes after turning the burner on, and avoid putting anything in the pan until after the timer is done.
I've certainly ruined my fair share of eggs by rushing, but having the patience to let it get up to temperature is pretty much the only "hard" part of using cast iron.
Unless you’re trying to avoid using oil for some reason, there is no time savings.
This isn't my experience. Low heat (which is how you should be using them) and soft utensils (I prefer to use those anyway) should be enough to keep it going - I have no scratches or wear on mine that I've noticed, though I did just replace them. They're quite cheap so replacing isn't really onerous either.
> Unless you’re trying to avoid using oil for some reason
I don't want my eggs to be particularly oily, or if I'm explicitly making a buttery french scrambled eggs I want to use butter and I want to add it in later, not use it for lubrication/ stick. You'll need much more for the cast iron.
For me: dash of oil, medium-low heat, and a lid.
You don't even have to clean the cast iron because the eggs don't stick.
But, I usually make scrambled, and you need tight, lowish temp control for those, which is one thing teflon really excels at (cast iron and stainless need higher temps to prevent sticking)
I do cook on cast iron, but even the absolute very best cast iron pan I've ever cooked on (not mine—I get the cheap stuff, this was one of those perfectly-smooth beautiful hundred-plus-year-old pieces that'd been cared for quite well and was seasoned better than I've ever managed to get any of mine, despite trying every method that can be found online) wasn't as easy to cook on or to clean as teflon.
They beat teflon at searing and toasting (e.g. nuts or whole spices), mostly because teflon can't safely be heated to temps needed for those, but anything else? Very best case I've ever experienced, almost as easy to cook with and clean as teflon, worst case, way, way worse. Plus you've gotta keep acid away from the cast iron if you don't want your food to taste of iron and/or old polymerized fat, which really limits its utility.
[EDIT] It occurs to me—maybe people who find cast iron about as easy as teflon just cook extremely-different cuisine from what I do? I tend to do a lot of one-pan and sauce-and-starch-in-skillet stuff that's often hell in cast iron, if not just wholly inappropriate for it due to the acid levels. If way more of my cooking were steak-and-hard-vegetables dishes, say, I might wonder why people bother with teflon.
The other trend was Nixon pushing low fat diets. By the time actual scientific results debunked that, a generation of Americans had adjusted recipes to avoid using as much fat as you need to cook optimally in cast iron and it’s still common to find people using techniques which pretty much require non-stick.
I live in a place with extremely strong water pressure and a very deep sink, plus the faucet is one of those rope ones that can be held arbitrarily. It rips through anything on the cast iron, leaving it clean in under a minute. Cleaning is, in general, much much much faster in my new place - plus I have a dish washer so dishes don't pile up, only the cast iron (or some specialty knives, maybe) generally needs to be washed in the sink.
I cook a lot of sauces in the pan and it's all good now that I have the room and tools to clean it off.
It's heavy.
It rusts.
No dishwasher.
Recall, I do use cast iron, my wife's the one who finds it to be too much.
The truth is that the non-stick is the most non-stick of the bunch when compared across all things you could cook in a pan. Sometimes I just want to reheat my pasta quickly and uses a quick splash of water and a paper towel to totally clean the pan.
I am a total nazi though about making sure metal never touches the non-stick. It always gets cleaned and put away in its special spot immediately after using it.
[EDIT] Oh, googling, yes, we do also have a ceramic-coated steel(?) fry pan still kicking around, though I almost never use it because the non-stick was never great and got worse fast. Teflon better if I need non-stick, stainless better if I don't and also don't want to have to baby the pan.