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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Just don't use plastic for cooking.

Metal spatulas aren't an option for most, either, as they scratch pans. So what's the suggested realistic alternative? Wood?

Edit: wasn't trying to be snarky or anything. Honestly concerned for my family's health and trying to figure out the best path. Wood spatulas it is. Replacing all our PTFE pans with much more expensive cast iron pans isn't an option for our budget right now. Plus I haven't seen convincing scientific evidence that PTFE is as harmful as people here seem to imply. My understanding could be outdated though.

Nonstick pans are covered with plastic; that’s what PTFE is.

The answer is wood and metal tools with stainless steel, carbon steel, cast iron, glass, stoneware, and enameled cast iron cookware and bakeware. Aluminum bakeware is also great once you put a layer of seasoning on it to protect the aluminum from corrosion.

Wood spatulas are great. They are also cheap. If you have a fireplace, you can even burn them at the end of life so very little waste!

Burning wood in your fireplace is much more certain to harm you than using plastic in your cookware, and the harm is more severe.

burning garbage doesn't create any waste? You could just put it in your organics/composting...

I've been a fan of using stainless steel spatulas on cast iron for years now and it doesn't seem to scratch or degrade the "seasoning" on the cast iron in any apparently meaningful way.

Seasoning isn't that precious either. I accidentally left my cast iron on the stove and burned off most of the seasoning, took it as an opportunity to smooth out the surface with sandpaper, gave it a couple of coats of canola and put it back into service. Within a couple of days it was basically where it was before.

I also do 70% of my cooking in that pan!

I've been cooking exclusively with Le Creuset cast iron pans. I use to care about seasoning and never using soap to clean but I've gotten way more relaxed as of late. I still take care of the pans and "season them" when it looks pretty bare, but I haven't really noticed much of a difference between seasoned and nonseasoned as an amateur chef.

I make up for the lack of seasoning by using more butter or oil.

The true reason why I use these cast iron pans is that they have a very long lifecycle (going 12 years now for some of my pans) and they sear way better than other cookware.

> Le Creuset cast iron pans

Those are wrapped with enamel. Pretty hard to notice seasoning with that.

Worth pointing out that this is also true of the Le Creuset "cast iron" skillets and frying pans with the black cooking surface. That surface is (annoyingly) enamelled too.

Yes, the bottom has enamel but inside the pan is cast iron. I prefer this TBH, make it easier to clean when spills happen.

It's just black enamel. There is cast iron in the middle.

huh, TIL. There's a Le Creuset outlet store near me and when I bought 2 more it never really clicked how different they were from my Lodge pans (outside of the enamel bottom).

It didn't clue in for me either for a while! Can't remember how I learned.

Just another plus one for cast-iron pans and wooden spatulas. We’ve been using those for over a decade, 20 bucks each, never needs replacing, works for everything.

We switched from gas stove to induction and now they work even better since the handle doesn’t get as hot and it’s easier to control the temperature.

The whole seasoning thing is extra credit, the only failure mode I’ve seen is trying to fry an egg on a completely unseasoned pan, which just means some extra soaking and scrubbing is needed. The pan seasons itself after a few uses. Hand wash the pan instead of sticking it in the dishwasher, done.

Yeah, eggs can be hard. What I do is have a smaller cast iron pan strictly for a single egg. I just make sure to use more butter and clean after right after.

Either that or use a stainless steel pan.

>never using soap to clean

That doesn't sound (and isn't) healthy.

I think it is healthy. There is basically nothing to be worried about that dealt killed by water or heat. A hot pan is twice the temperature of a medical autoclave.

Soap is more of a cleaning aid for removing flavor than a safety control.

A little mentioned downside to cast iron is that it's porous enough that it will absolutely absorb certain things like turmeric that will only come out once you cook something else in it, no amount of washing or soap seems to make a difference past a certain point. Kind of a non issue to me, just a quirk of the tool.

Humm, Ive never had a problem. I would think that the polymer layer would seal out the tumeric.

That said, I usually use tumeric in liquid dishes with a stainless pot. What are you cooking?

You hear this sometimes from cast iron owners that think using some soap will "ruin" the seasoning. It's a myth, you can absolutely use soap. My preferred method is chainmail + coarse salt + small drop of dawn.

Yes, I use a little bit of Dawn when the pan is really greasy or crusty. Hot water in the pan, a little bit of Dawn, let it sit for a few minutes, scrub. Dawn is not agressive enough to remove the seasoning, it will just emulsify the liquid grease/oil in the pan.

Do not put them in the dishwasher though, or you'll have to re-season them.

Dawn kinda smells tho, especially when the pan is heated again for the first time. Whatever it pyrolyzes to, I'm not sure I want to smell or eat it. The store brand dishwasher detergent seems to not smell as much but if there's no debris from the food I avoid soap or use it very sparingly.

Good tip with the coarse salt, I'll have to try that sometime.

They are talking about iron pans not a living being

I do almost all my cooking on cast iron—no philosophical reason, it just works well and once I figured out how to use it I found that I pretty much always reach for a cast iron pan over stainless steel or non-stick. (Except non-stick for omelettes and stainless steel for anything where I want the find.)

My big realization was that there’s a lot of macho information there about the care of cast iron, and it’s pretty much all pointless because the stuff is indestructible and the seasoning doesn’t matter much. Every time I make tortillas in a pan the seasoning gets wrecked, and it’s just not a problem. So long as you get the pan to the right temp and have enough fat, nothing sticks regardless of the quality of the seasoning. Skimp on the oil or set the temp too low, and stuff sticks no matter how good the seasoning.

I wash the pans with soap and water (and not too much scrubbing), I never season them deliberately, and they work wonderfully. It’s a very forgiving cooking surface.

When i went home to visit my dad, I cooked an egg on his decades old cast iron. He scrapes the absolute bejeezus out of it, has no idea what seasoning is, uses soap. It cooked wonderfully. That was my eye opener moment.

it's all about the angle, wood utensils are usually softer and rounder so they are safer.

I accidentally removed a little of the "seasoning" of a cast iron and in the following uses it started to come out around the scratch.

Where I live there's another plus to wood utensils, I can help the people that make them locally

(reply really meant for @arrowleaf)

Man, I'm so turned off by the entire cast iron hype cult. I've tried so hard to make it work for me, and it just doesn't, and everyone's advice is totally different so it's impossible to know what to do. Wash it. Don't wash it. Scrub the shit out of it. Just remove the chunks and leave the rest.

The reply will inevitably be "it's simple, just...." where the words following "just" are different from anything ever written on the topic before.

I think the reason there is so much conflicting advise on the topic is because it's such a forgiving cooking medium, but people swear by their method as the one true method.

It's a piece of iron. It's cheap. It just works™

I cook on cast iron multiple times a week. Have for years, using a very antique pan from a dead relative. My rules are fairly straightforward. I don't do any other maintenance or cleaning than this after-care routine:

* Let the pan cool (if I'm lazy or it's late, possibly this is overnight and then I do the rest in the morning).

* Scrape out any easy solid waste (burnt food bits, etc) with a wood spatula edge and throw the waste in the trash.

* Toss a healthy amount of salt into the pan and scrub the pan using the salt, with your hands/fingers. The salt is a great abrasive, like sand, but I don't want sand ground into my cookware, while salt is fine for food.

* Rinse out the dirty-salt-mess with plain water from the sink.

* Occasionally, if stuck-on things are particularly stubborn, repeat some of the above steps as necessary until the pan surface is smooth and clean.

* Wipe off most of the remaining wetness with a paper towel (the towel will probably look pretty dirty, that's ok).

* Throw the pan back on the cooktop, pour a few tbsp of cheap olive oil in the middle, and turn the burner on as high as it goes. Wait a few minutes for the oil to thin, spread, and smoke. Once it's smoking pretty well, shut off the fire and leave the pan to cool again.

* Later when it's cooled off again (possibly overnight or hours later, whatever), gently wipe off any excess liquid oil with a paper towel and store the pan back in the cabinet, ready for next use.

Where is the hype cult if it "just" works for tons of people?

People use them for cooking different things, so the advice is bound to be different. Maybe they don't work for your cooking, and thats OK.

it's simple, just use stainless steel and preheat it to where water droplets bounce instead of evaporate before putting the oil on

If your cooking utensils are gouging or pulling up 'seasoning', it's not 'seasoning'. Seasoning is a micrometer-thin layer of polymerized oil. What you're describing is carbon build-up from a poorly cleaned pan.

At least once a week I give my vintage cast iron a good scrub with Dawn powerwash and chainmail, dry on the stovetop, apply a layer of Crisco, and then wipe it all off as if I put it on by mistake.

Yes, wood is one. Why not wood?

Wood food working implements get stained, develop cracks and chips that may retain bacteria, can't go through the dishwasher, may have finishes we'll all be concerned about later, etc.

They're my least favorite to clean and most likely to throw away because I can't get them cleaned.

My mantra is that anything is dishwasher safe if you care little enough about it.

I put my unfinished wooden cooking utinsels through the dishwasher literally every day. They’ve been fine for 10+ years

Hmm, have you actually used wood? I've been using it for decades.

>Wood food working implements get stained, develop cracks and chips that may retain bacteria

This happens after years of use ... buy a new one? They're like 1 dollar. Lol.

Wood is quite antimicrobial. You can look at studies on plastic/silicon cutting boards vs wood for a bit more peace of mind.

Food-safe wood conditioner (or just beeswax, or coconut oil, etc.) is basically free, and you should be taking care of everything wooden in the kitchen on a semi-regular basis. If your wooden cookware is degrading, I'd be more worried about the state of your wooden cutting boards.

One thing that's helped me is to every-so-often oil my wood utensils the same way I oil my wood cutting board. It's helps protect the wood and retain moisture so it doesn't crack. Also, at least some (if not all) woods have anti-microbial properties.

I put my wood cooking spoons in the dishwasher. They're the cheap kind and now they're quite bleached but they still work.

Glue e.g. in bamboo spatulas, porosity and bacteria, hardness for scraping etc.

Usually you would use different materials for different tasks.

the scratch non-stick pans, which also are horrible for your health.

cast iron, stainless steel.

Lodge cast iron pans are like $20 and will outlast your grandchildren. You can get a set of them for < $100. Carbon steel are more expensive, but are easier to handle and I think are worth investing in at least one for daily use. They'll also last generations.

+1 for carbon steel over cast iron. They heat much faster and my wife wife doesn't need my help to lift them.

Cool, appreciate the tip! I'll check them out.

Metal. I haven't noticed scratches, and have been using exclusively my whole adult life. I suspect my pans are covered in superficial scratches, but I don't notice.

Presumably you’re not using Teflon pans then, because there’s no way you wouldn’t notice the non-stick surface getting destroyed by metal utensils.

There’s also a potential health argument against cooking with Teflon pans to begin with, but people do and those people shouldn’t be using metal if they want their pans to stay non-stick for any reasonable length of time.

I've had my share of non-stick pans, including higher quality ones. They all degrade to the point where I need to use oil.

I switched to carbon steel as a daily driver two years ago and it is is trivialy non-stick with a little maintenance. The non-stick properties are infinitely refresha le, unlike "non-stick" pans.

I also have cast iron and stainless pans for other uses.

Preaching to the choir here - I love carbon steel and cast iron.

Unfortunately try as we might to get people to switch, the fact is that undamaged Teflon is more non-stick than anything else and most people don’t want to put the effort into seasoning their pans.

Teflon is popular, and Teflon owners could do with utensils that don’t destroy their pans or give them cancer.

They only scratch nonstick pans. Just use stainless steel, it's not that hard to clean.

It's not about cleaning. It's about the increased amount of oil needed to prevent delicate foods like eggs and fish from sticking. That adds cost and calories.

Carbon steel solves this issue. You can get nonstick eggs and fish with a very minimal amount of oil. You can also do this with stainless steel but it takes more practice to get the temperature control down.

Maybe one day we’ll all have affordable temperature controlled induction ranges similar to the Breville/Sage control freak. If you have the ability to preheat your pan to an exact temperature then getting nonstick results with tiny amounts of oil or butter becomes rather trivial.

The Control Freak is fantastic, but it doesn’t work all that well with some cast iron pans. I think there are a couple reasons:

1. Too much thermal mass and too little thermal conductivity. This causes poor feedback and unnecessarily high delay between heat being added and the measurement reflecting it.

2. Manufacturers love to cast their logo right in the bottom center, which means that the sensor doesn’t make good contact with the pan.

I wonder if someone makes a nice stainless-aluminum-carbon steel clad pan.

I wonder if someone makes a nice stainless-aluminum-carbon steel clad pan

This pan exists! It's made by an American company called Strata. Stainless steel on the bottom/outside, carbon steel on the inside/cooking surface, and aluminum sandwiched in between. It came out this year. I've seen a few cookware YouTube channels do some first looks, unboxing, seasoning, and first cook tests but no long-term reviews so far.

Cast iron is definitely the most challenging cookware material to use with any flat-top cooking appliance. Whether induction or traditional ceramic, flat-top ranges tend to be quite poor at creating even heating in cast iron. Gas on the other hand works quite well because of the natural upward draft produced by the hot combustion gases which wrap around the sides of the pan, enveloping it in a blanket of heat from below.

I think eggs and certain fish recipes are the primary use of non stick. But there are also ways to cook those without non stick.

For scrambled eggs you can use a double boiler (you’ll never have had fluffier eggs). An extremely well seasoned carbon steal pan will also work wonders (basically what fry cooks use)

For fish, cooking fish whole on a grill is amazing. Another technique with stainless pans is to get the pan searing hot first. Then add a tiny amount of oil and cook the fish and don’t touch it. This should set the surface protein quickly and create a crust that prevents sticking (requires a little practice but not too hard)

After flame-grilling and steaming I'd never go back to frying fish. Steamed with green onions, ginger and some soy sauce is, like amazing.

I only use non-stick with low heat and for items like eggs and fish. Stainless steel for everything else. Don't let perfect be the enemy of better.

Counter-intuitively, it doesn't really add calories.

What a lot of people don't realize is -- in non-stick, virtually all the oil winds up in the food. Since it doesn't stick to the pan. With steel/iron, most of the cooking oil stays in the pan.

So yes you will end up using 3x or more oil. But you're not consuming 3x oil calories. It probably isn't any extra calories at all.

I don't have SS cookware, but cast iron is basically non-stick. A teaspoon of oil isn't going to break the bank.

Why not silicone ?

Yes, exactly. I can’t believe how little mention of silicon and wood there is here.

Silicon is much more resistant to heat and chemicals. I believe the polymers are also more tightly bound.

I also think people cook too much on nonstick. Non stick has a place in the kitchen for specific dishes. But for the most part you can cook most things in a combination of high quality stainless steel pans and cast iron. Some food sticking in stainless is a good thing (Maillard reaction), deglaze the pan and scrape it up with a good wood spatula.

Use cast iron pans. I used to love my non-stick pans but I would never go back.

Where I'm from wooden are norm for stirring while cooking. Plastic are used as well but after the food is already cooked.

Using non-stick pans and worrying about plastic spatulas is wild, imo.

How do you find a non-Teflon waffle iron?

I have a cast-iron waffle maker from like the 20s that works very well and is very fun to use. Added bonus, you can bring it on a camping trip and make waffles in the woods.

I did not pay $400 for it, but it looks like this: https://www.hardmill.com/products/griswold-8-waffle-iron-wit...

We have a reconditioned electric waffle iron from like the 40s. There are folks out there who specialize in taking them apart and replacing all the electrical components with modern stuff.

It also works very well, and as an added bonus it makes much better waffles than the modern Teflon ones do. You just can't get the same crispy outside out of a nonstick surface.

A superficial web search reveals a handful of options; I'm sure if you spent a little time, like 10-15 minutes, you'd find dozens. If you only look at what's on offer in stores, and aren't in a place with a lot of variety, then you're not going to have many options.

what will "kill" us faster: buying local, or deeply-involved research projects to buy $600 waffle makers that are shipped across the globe?

Shipping something that weighs only a few pounds and can be shipped along with tens of thousands of shipping containers (i.e., is not needed at the destination in a day or two) costs almost no CO2 emissions.

It costs as much as shipping just one container. Just because you can distribute the emissions over more people doesn’t make it less bad for the environment. Not ordering something from overseas is the only solution.

If you're really and truly concerned about this, you have to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, "what's more important to me, my health or waffles?"

It might be time to look for a johnnycake recipe, and that's OK.

Sadly, because I answered that question for myself, I have not had a waffle in years.

Has nothing to do with toxins. My old belly just can't handle waffle/pancake batter stuff.

I miss waffles...

There exist truly exceptional gluten free waffle recipes^, might be worth a shot at least.

The bone broth waffle here would be a good search root (you’ll pardon the colorful menu, I hope): https://coffeedose.cafe/pages/flagship-menu

^ I’m not even gluten free typically

Thanks!

As far as I know, I don't have gluten sensitivity, but it may be something that could make a difference.

Whenever I have anything made with pancake batter, I feel bloated and uncomfortable. I understand that gluten-sensitive people have much more ... adverse ... reactions.

Funny, though. I can usually eat most cookies, no problem. There's something about pancake batter that does it.

There’s a spectrum of insensitivity, all the way from “I’ll die” (celiac), to “I get migraines/etc.” (classically insensitive), to “if I have a lot I feel real bad” (perhaps more folks than they realize).

Pancake batter is characterized by lots of flour and baking soda, if it’s not one it’s likely the other.

it's hard to reconcile a menu like this with statements like "Gen-z will never be able to afford a house"

Care to elaborate? I don’t see any connection between the two.

Try almond or oat flour waffles.

I mentioned it because it was an issue for my family growing up. My mother is an oncologist and has long been concerned about any plastic cookware. However, we were never able to do anything about the waffle iron, and family waffle mornings were a pretty important fixture in my family.

The waffles and syrup are likely to do more damage than the teflon.

If you go after buying the waffle iron THE RIGHT WAY, spending few days researching, reading reviews etc., you'll see that it's hard to buy a good one that still uses teflon.

Or if you're lazy, copy me and get Åviken Elegance.

https://www.pieiron.com/products/old-fashioned-waffle-iron-o...

Look— simply. People were making waffles in the Iron Age.

ah yes, the good ole iron age where castings were likely to have large amounts of arsenic/beryllium/copper/bronze contamination. much better than 'black plastic'.

I get your point , waffle irons are plentiful and available throughout history -- but finding some antique is pretty likely to just swap your contamination from one to another.

I mean this in jest but this is the least compelling unironic retort that I can imagine here. How important are waffles in your diet?

is silicone ok?

Get enough researchers to train their metaphorical microscopes on it and it's interaction with any dimension of human biology for long enough and I have to think the answer will eventually be no.

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