Kitchen Gadgetry

Yeah. I’ve got 8" and 10" nonstick skillets – use the former almost exclusively for eggs, the latter frequently for fish since my partner likes that a lot, or when I make a bigger omelet. There’s a 12" nonstick, but tbh, I haven’t touched it in months. For these purposes, though, they are perfect. There’s also a small 1qt nonstick saucepan that I slightly prefer for stuff like oatmeal and grits, since I like both on the thicker, long-cooked side of things, and scraping the excess bits off of my stainless steel pots sucks butts. The skillets are nice All-Clad induction-compatible models, and the last set lasted about 4 years of not-very-good care; the new set are about a year old and still looking great now that I’m being more mindful about them.

Got my sizable 12" Lodge cast iron, which is great for everything from hash browns to burgers to searing off chicken or steak, and big enough that I can do a few different things at once if need be, but it’s so fuckin’ heavy and large that any kind of moving or cleaning it is just an absolute hassle.

Then a set of stainless steel saucepans (1, 1.5, and 2.5qt, I think) that handle a lot of rice-making and sometimes small servings of beans (like reheating canned) or red sauce, a high-walled stainless steel skillet that I admittedly almost never use (the cast iron does almost all the same things just about as well), and a couple of big stainless dutch ovens that I use constantly for everything from curry to red beans to chili.

Like Jon, I’ve got a ceramic+cast iron Lodge dutch oven, but like the skillet, it’s just absurdly heavy (and, to be fair, I am a weak milkbaby soyboy) and thus an utter bear to clean out, so I virtually never use it unless I’m making three big-pot-requiring things at once (very common at holidays or when cooking for a crowd) and just need the extra vessel.

Technically there’s also an 8" carbon steel long-handled pan, but I fucked up the initial seasoning and it got rusty in several spots and just really hideous and unevenly colored, and I never felt like bothering to fix it just for the sake of “a lil egg pan that’s just worse than my nonstick, albeit more durable.”

Our wok’s nonstick, too – a great huge Joyce Chen number – but since I don’t have gas, it doesn’t really do much more than a big skillet for most purposes; I just kinda like how it looks :)

I find my carbon steel pan is great as a sous vide finisher, when I don’t need the full on sear of the cast iron but want a bit of maillard.

I did a bunch of research the last time I bought non-stick stuff because I didn’t want it to fail quickly over time and eventually settled on the Kitchen-Aid hard anodized stuff. Up to that point I had only used Calphalon pans. I’ve been really happy with the set and other than a nick in the large skillet that I think one of my kids did, they’re still 100% perfect.

They’re no longer available, but here’s the links…

My non-stick go to pan is a calphalon, and it has been bulletproof since we recieved it 5 years ago as a wedding present.

They’re really good, but they were slipping a little when I got these in 2016 and the recommendation was the ones up above.

My one non-stick pan is a Blue Diamond. Ceramic coating. Works just fine.

Ph.D. chemist here, so weighing in on something that is being vastly misreported and likely mis-legislated by legislatures wanting to look good.

A LOT of talk about PFAS chemicals. Basically, there are some low molecular chemicals that are indeed bad for living things as they are bio-accumulative - they never leave your body and thus build up. Some of them have negative health effects.

However, they’re really going overboard. If you read some sites, the the CDC site, they say they are banning fluorinated polymers (like Teflon.) There is a fluorinated polymer we use in our products and our customers are in a panic. The data, over 50 years plus, is that the polymer is 100% safe, inert, if you eat it your body just passes it through, it is non-bioaccumulative, can not pass through cell walls, if it gets into water it just drops (it’s called low transport) and doesn’t travel, and if you degrade it, it is chemically impossible to degrade into any PFAS chemical.

Yet, states are considering “Fluorine” bans. I’m on several national committees and we’ve been talking to the Maine legislature who want a total fluorine ban. We asked, does that include fluorinated water? They looked at us with blank looks. Oh, don’t know but if we have to. We explained that just because there are fluorinated PFAS chemicals that are bad actors, it doesn’t mean everything with a C-F bond is bad. In the same way that chlorine gas in poisonous, vinyl chloride monomer can be dangerous if mishandled, but sodium chloride is table salt.

ANYWAY the point is, if you hear about PFAS bans, don’t let if fool you into thinking your Teflon pans are dangerous.

But won’t you think of the CHILDREN?!

Did you ask them if they were going to address my concerns about the “forever chemical” dihydrogen monoxide?!

Our committee (most of us have children and grandchildren and care very much about the environment) has commented that we should not file briefs to prevent Maine from passing a complete ban. Once they do that and no one can have non-stick pans, all of the machinery and equipment that uses Teflon (or other fluoropolymer) on Teflon in areas to have low friction and low wear, all of the pumps off all types, small and huge, that use Teflon washers and pieces, even things as simple as no more Teflon tape - the number of instances where fluoropolymers are used are innumerable, and there is no true replacements - once Maine demonstrates the economic impact of such a poorly advised wide ban, other states will listen to the real science.

And juries will use real evidence and logic to make decisions. Pipe dreams, all.

Plumber sees what you did there.

One thing I’ve learned, to my great chagrin, is teflon tape is not optional!

The experiment continues! I made a sandwich and dropped some cheese shreds on the pan, they burned to a black crisp but still popped off with a very light spatula scrape. So I cleaned the pan again, it had some oil so I wiped it with a paper towel to nothing more than what the towel would no longer pick up, and burned a piece of cheese onto it. What do you call those little fried discs of cheese you get with a fancy Caesar salad? It turned into that. The wacky thing is it self-released from an essentially dry, unseasoned, metal-showing-through pan. This is getting interesting. I might do a bare oiling/wiping and burn some molasses onto it, see what that does. That’s the worst case I can think of, suggestions welcome.

Google Photos

Please drill tiny holes in it.

Frico. Delicious crispy frico.

image

Frico can be molded like tuille. So, let’s say, crispy cheese taco shells are not out of the question. And many other lovely things.

I think I respect my drillbits more than I do my pan, to be honest. Cast iron is pretty damned hard.

Keep in mind, the cheese has oil in it.

Molasses ain’t gonna do the same thing, I don’t think.

Yeah. I’ve made frico in a dry stainless steel pan. Lifts right out. Of course YMMV.