(sorry in advance for all who want to suggest iron skillets. I can't make them work in daily use.)
It's not that I don't believe you. It just doesn't work that way in my pan on my stove with my food at my skill level, at all. I gave up and buy nonstick pans and replace them every other year or so.
This process went fine, but I always had to baby the pan (had to be very careful cleaning it with said chainmail, very careful with what/how I cooked in it) and had to re-do the initial seasoning several times when it got too troublesome.
This process would leave the pan at a dark brown, and for a while I blamed this on not removing rust well enough before seasoning or not babying it well enough for it to build up to a ~normal black coat.
At some point during the early pandemic I tired of this. I decided to do something similar on the stovetop where I could observe/iterate better. Apply a coat, wait for it to stop smoking, and repeat until it was black. (plus a few for good luck; I didn't keep track; this took maybe dozens of rounds?)
I've had a much better time since then. The most ~babying I've done is applying a few fresh coats if I don't use it for a while or water doesn't bead when I rinse it.
I suspect it has to do with electric vs gas and being able to get and maintain a stable temp with gas. But that could just be a poor craftsman blaming his tools.
I bought a nice new range right before I discovered the air-fryer, and it now functions mostly as a device for holding up the air-fryer.
Plus, many people who are learning do not have the privilege of an experienced teacher. Relying on instructions, videos, and trial & error takes more time and energy for most people. I agree with you that it's worth the effort though.
It's similar to how my partner has a stainless steel pan that I avoid using because I have not had the bandwidth to internalize the right ratio of heat, time, and oil to cook things on it without burning/sticking, whereas they have no issue with it. It's a good reminder not to take internalized skill for granted.
The trick to not sticking on steel pan is just preheating it properly. A drop of water should dance on a properly heated steel pan and things won't stick. Just let it get hot enough.
In that case I'm not sure what the exact mechanism was. But I know that after others have used/cleaned a seemingly well-seasoned pan I've had to deal with chips, flakes, and/or rust and had to go back through the whole annoying seasoning process. And of course it's entirely possible that despite carefully following instructions that I've done the seasoning wrong -- chemistry is the only class I ever flunked.
> A drop of water should dance on a properly heated steel pan and things won't stick.
My partner made a similar recommendation. It sounds trivially easy but for whatever reason I have not managed to make it work. Given that cast iron (generally) works fine for me I've had minimal motivation to learn the idiosyncrasies of another material, though I would like to give it another shot at some point.
I've talked to multiple experienced and home chefs about this disconnect and they've admitted two things:
1) cooking on a screaming hot pan is possible of course. It's how all professional kitchens work. But it's way harder! You have to pay close attention & the timing for error is very small. Cooking at lower heat on Teflon lets you make more adjustments.
2) After doing everything perfectly, and seasoning perfectly, for the same heat you ABSOLUTELY still need more of some oil or butter on a cast iron or stainless steel then you would for an equivalent Teflon pan. This is non-negotiable.
I say that partially as a joke but also it does sort of sound a bit absurd, in the sense that your cooking techniques are just sort of wrong if you are repeatedly burning food to your non-non-stick pan. You need an oil or fat on your pan to provide a buffer or to bathe the food in liquid.
Again this might be a balancing act of the negative effects of teflon consumption and consuming too much fat via oil.
You can cook a lot of things on a "non stick" telfon pan without an oil or fat.
You can cook far fewer things on a "non stick" cast iron without an oil or fat.
But the cast iron crowd will gaslight the rest of us, and claim that we are just seasoning it wrong but otherwise it is indistinguishable and only superior.
It's like manual transmission.
Now, I do think some of them are coming coated in silicone-based coatings. The consensus I get asking "are these carcinogenic?" is "probably not?"
But the other problem is determining what a particular pan is coated with: I have not seen a single manufacturer label their pan with anything more informative than that it is coated in "magic science stuff".