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tmnvix

...and take the opportunity to ditch the teflon pans while you're at it. They're toxic.

https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluor...

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> They're toxic

* When heated to high temperatures

Below 450F or so they don't react with anything. PTFE won't react with your egg you're frying, or the inside of your knee. (PTFE is used in surgical implants, among other things that can safely go inside your body)

When you scratch them, and bits PTFE come loose, and you eat those bits, will they simply bee excreted, or will your body absorb (some of) it and never excrete it?

Many medical implants are made of PTFE because of how inert it is.

It'll slide through your intestines smoother than basically anything else you could possibly swallow :-)

This myth needs to die. Teflon is only an issue at temperatures you're just not going to encounter in a kitchen.

And if you did encounter such temperature, and you had oil on the pan - well you've poisoned yourself more than the Teflon would!

Unfortunately it's quite easy to overheat a teflon pan on an induction stove.

The question is not the temperature if you forget the pan on the fire, the question is which is worse: High Temperature Teflon, or High Temperature Oil?

The answer is that Teflon is safer.

Genuine question: why?

I thought people in many long-living cultures often cook with high temperature oil, and not just the street food wok cooking. There is bad chemistry that can happen with other food components at high temperatures but what is the problem with oil itself?

At too high a temperature oil will smoke and burn, leaving toxic components in both the oil and in the air.

My point is that the temperature necessary to cause this oil toxicity, is lower than what you need to make Teflon toxic. Teflon becomes toxic at temperature FAR above any cooking process (unless you eat charcoal).

i.e. if you cook normally and don't burn things Teflon is obviously fine, if you do burn things you have bigger things to worry about than the Teflon, since the other stuff will kill you first.

I get your point, but what I am saying is that if you are not careful, you can easily overheat empty teflon-coated pan on an induction stove and create toxic fumes, no oil required.

And you don't even have to forget about the pan. Just setting the stove to high temperature when the pan is cold can quickly create superheated spots due to the way induction works (the temperature sensor is hidden and so it "lags" a bit).

Obviously, if you're careful, always start with a low power, wait for the pan (and stove top) to heat up, then gradually increase power, you'll be fine.

With a stainless stell pan, the worse that could happen is the bottom of the pan might warp. But there is no toxic hazard.

It's completely unnecessary to heat as cautiously as you describe. Even the worst performing induction burner is not going to heat the pan hot enough unless you do it deliberately, or just completely forget it.

Also, maybe you do it differently, but I put the oil in before heating - so if I had stainless, with oil, heated in your "unsafe" manner I would have toxic smoke in the air long before I would have fumes from Teflon. Meaning avoiding Teflon isn't helping you in any way at all.

Of course in actuality there's simply no issue, induction does not perform as badly as you describe. Go ahead and heat at full power and simply cook, it will work fine and not overheat.

I think you vastly underestimate the power of induction burners. They quickly concentrate a lot of energy in a small space. Mine came with a warning to always start at 60% power at most, so that's why I am so adamant about it.

I fully understand that this may just be the manufacturer covering his, um, behind. But I am not going to risk it.

So that would mean you can't put in oil either before heating the pan and checking the temperature. Are you then advocating for people not to cook with oil?

> Teflon becomes toxic at temperature FAR above any cooking process (unless you eat charcoal)

Teflon begins to decompose above 260°C which can be reached by heating an empty pan, but yes you wouldn't want to be cooking at that temperature.

The risks of both high temperature PTFE and high temperature cooking oils are poorly understood. I wouldn't say with confidence either is safer. I personally avoid both.

Most consumer PTFE coatings are declared to be safe up to 450°F. It is trivially easy to heat a pan beyond that temperature on modern gas, electric, and induction ranges in less than ten minutes. The margin of safety is demonstrably nonexistent and it’s wild to me that we just accept this risk constantly, everywhere, anytime we eat food (whether at home or from a restaurant).

So you replace the Teflon with oil, and now your risk is even higher. What did you accomplish?

It’s not super clear what you’re getting at here. The choice isn’t teflon or oil. Everyone uses fat to sear food in a pan, whether or not it’s a nonstick pan. Cooking with a high-smoke-point oil which is low in saturated fat, such as avocado oil, with stainless steel, is strictly better than cooking with teflon pans by every measurable health metric.

Source?

Searing food in a PTFE pan almost certainly involves overheating it. Depending on what you're cooking you don't necessarily need oil (e.g. you don't need it for cooking eggs), although you might want to use some at moderate temperature for flavor. And for some foods oil is necessary to avoid overheating the pan, because it improves heat transfer from the pan to the food. Check with an IR thermometer every time you cook something new.

It's easy to learn how your cooking setup responds using a cheap IR thermometer. You can check it's working correctly by boiling water in the pan and confirming the temperature is close enough to the expected boiling point for your local air pressure. The risk depends greatly on both the construction of the pan (poor heat conductivity means hot spots from uneven heating) and cooking technique. Using high heat, heating empty pans, and neglecting stirring are all dangerous. Leaving heated pans unattended is especially dangerous, and anecdotally appears to be responsible for most severe overheating events. With correct technique I believe the risk is negligible and well worth the greater convenience of non-stick pans. But I don't trust third parties to use correct technique.

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