Do you cook with teflon/what do you use?

[Strat]

I'm assuming it's awful but I haven't looked into it. I thought this is a good topic for Avalon.

As far back as I can remember my family has been using non-stick/teflon cookware. We do have some stainless steel items but they don't get used often. I tried frying an egg on the steel pan and failed miserably and instantly.

I want to change my ways though and use something that won't potentially poison me everyday. If I'm educated on why teflon may be harmful then I'm more likely to switch to something else like cast iron, SS or copper.

Also I'm genuinely curious what you folks use to cook with?

[norman]

As I understand it, Teflon pans are safe and ok when they are brand new and shiny. ( which is how they are under test by the industry ).

In this imperfect world they sooner or later lose that shine and become a broken and shedding surface that is spilling poison.

In use they get knocked about, scratched and foolishly even scrubbed.

My advice is take a good look at it. If it doesn't look in perfect new condition, don't use it.

[Bill Ryan]

Stainless steel, cast iron or oven-proof glass... nothing else. :thumbsup:

[Ben]

Ceramic coated ones are good - perfect fried eggs every time. Cheap too.

[Ernie Nemeth]

I invested in a set of stainless cookware years ago during one of Sears' yearly half-price sales. (does Sears even exist still?)

But I also have a small teflon pan for my eggies...don't change it near often enough though - my bad.

[Ravenlocke]

I’m like Bill, stainless, cast iron and oven proof glass. I love my stainless I cook all stews, sauces, roux, etc. I cook over easy eggs in my stainless, it’s a learning curve but I found that I just heat the pan first on low to medium heat, (I have electric stove) so I had to learn to manage heat different from gas cooktop. With electric the stove top stays hotter longer so you have to watch that your pan doesn’t get too hot before putting eggs in it. You can always remove the pan from the heat till it cools a little then drop the eggs in. I also use a little oil with butter for egg cooking, the oil keeps the butter from burning.
Cleaning the stainless is a breeze really with baking soda, even removes the dullness.

The cast iron pan is great too for stove top or oven but again you have to watch the heat, and you have to use a little more cooking oil than you would nonstick.

The oven proof glass dishes are great for baking casseroles, even bake a cake, or pies. You can get Pyrex or anchor brands from the store. I also have a bunch of Corningware, the old stuff though not their new stuff. You can still find the old bakeware in thrift shops or second hand shops. The old stuff is now even expensive as it’s been “discovered”, in demand.

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck!

[wondering]

I like cast iron. I have a 10" skillet with low sides, and I like it for grilled sandwiches. I also, I confess, have a couple of older skillets that I use - one is a chicken fryer size and one is quite small, and I also use those, complete with non stick finish! 😱😱😱

[Isserley]

Professional cooks do not use teflon. Teflon is made from one of a group of chemicals known as PFOA which are well known to cause cancer, disrupt hormones and have other negative health impacts.


PFOA has come under scrutiny by the EPA because the chemical has shown up in samples of people’s blood. This concerns the EPA because PFOA lasts a long time in both people and the surrounding environment.[4]

This chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has been linked to cancer in laboratory animals, and possibly linked to elevated cholesterol, thyroid disease, and reduced fertility in people.[4]

Some of the same nonstick chemicals added to popcorn bags also hide out in many nonstick pots and pans. A recent study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found women with higher levels of hormone-disrupting perfluorinated compounds like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in their blood were more likely to have the autoimmune disease osteoarthritis.[2]

PFOA has been shown to cause cancer, low birth weight and a suppressed immune system in laboratory animals exposed to high doses of PFOA. Studies have shown the chemical to be present at low levels in the bloodstream of 9 out of 10 Americans, and in the blood of most newborns. And although the effects of PFOA at lower doses in humans are disputed, there does seem to be a link between PFOA and raised levels of cholesterol.[6][7]

It's worth noting that people also get exposure to PFOA in other ways.


PFOA has been used in other products besides Teflon, including waterproof clothing or fabric protectors, fire-resistant casings and tubing, and sealing tapes. PFOA may have ended up in the environment through many different avenues, researchers say.[4]

Making it, then manufacturing items with it (plus other industrial uses like using it as a fire-fighting foam) has led to massive amounts of contamination across the world.

What else can you use? If you find cast iron too cumbersome/heavy, check out carbon steel fry pans. (Google it, lots of demos out there). You treat it like cast iron, but it’s maybe half the weight and quite inexpensive. And with a very simple seasoning process behind you, you’ll find you don’t need teflon to have a stick-proof surface.

[Dennis Leahy]

Teflon is a fluoride compound. Fluoride is a neurotoxin, and there is no need for fluoride in human nutrition. I recommend to throw away all your Teflon-coated pans (so you'll never be tempted to cook in them.)

Throw away all aluminum pans, or keep them for crafts - like candlemaking.

Cast iron is great for cooked-in-oil or cooked-with oil foods, and not so good for water-based foods and especially acidic water-based foods (like tomato.)

Stainless steel can be great, but single-layer, thin stainless steel doesn't spread the heat out well and can spot burn food right above the heat source, and be tough to clean. The breakthrough in ss pans came when the pan bottom was made of multiple layers of metals. The stainless steel / aluminum / stainless steel bottom works great. The aluminum layer spreads the heat out across the entire bottom, and is trapped between layers of stainless steel, so there is no aluminum contact with food. (One brand name is Calphalon's "Tri-Ply Stainless") When you do get any food stuck on stainless steel, put water in the pan and put on a low boil for 5 minutes, and then everything comes out easy.

For a "frying pan" style, or more specifically, an egg pan, the ceramic coated pans work well. They too are porous, and oil can get down in the pores and when cooked-in, can change a slick pan into a kinda sticky one. They are for medium to medium-high heat, not high - they are really not "frying pans." On high heat, the oil in the pores turns to tar.

Glass: I'm not a fan of glass pans, except for watery food (like soup) - they are too hard to clean if oil cooks onto them.

Oil:
When cooking with oil in a pan, you want a high temperature (high flash point) oil. Avocado oil is amazing - high temp, and imparts very little taste. If you want the taste of olive oil, you can either start the cooking with avocado oil, and in the last couple of minutes, add olive oil. - or - use a mixture of avocado oil (~75%) and olive oil (~25%) to cook. Coconut oil is good for high temps, but imparts some flavor and some folks don't like the smell when cooking with it. Sesame oil is high temp, imparts a great taste to Asian foods, but is expensive. I usually mix some of it with avocado oil. Hemp seed oil has the "perfect" balance of Omega 3 to Omega 6, but due to the Omega 3, it stinks as if you are cooking fish (maybe it's the perfect oil for cooking fish? haha)

Don't be tempted to use canola oil (just because it is high temp, little flavor, and lots cheaper than avocado oil.) Canola ("rapeseed") oil is considered toxic by alternative (https://www.****cancer.org/canolaoilhealthrisks/) nutrition experts, and of course, given the green light by corporate medical and food "authorities." Throw that crap out.)

[Ravenlocke]

Cast iron pans are also great for dry roasting veggies on the stove, no oil, like tomatoes or onions etc, when you need just a few.
I also make my own flour tortillas with my recipe from King Arthur baking and cook them in a shallow cast iron pan, no oil, and medium high heat, they roast in 30 seconds on each side. They’re great for when I don’t want or have bread, go well with salads, soups and stews.

Enamel coated cast iron cookware are versatile for on the stove or oven cooking but they are quite heavy and expensive. They are another alternative to stainless steel cookware for some cooking, including acidy recipes. My personal preference for pasta sauce is still the stainless because I don’t leave the sauce in the pan, it goes in a ceramic dish or platter for serving as soon as it’s cooked.

Glassware has a big role in my cooking world because cooking doesn’t just include stove top or oven but other uses. Prepping and storage are very important for me and I use glass a lot. ( Even mason jars come in handy, I can store flours, nuts, in the fridge and freezer in the large jars to keep the freshness longer, etc., also great for dried fruit etc, but storage is another topic).
Glass bowls come in handy whether to proof a bread dough, make a salad dressing, using a hand mixer to make a batter for cake, cookies, biscuit, muffins, etc, except egg whites my preference is a metal bowl like my kitchenaid mixer bowl. I also like glass bowls with a lip makes it easier for pouring liquids such as when I make pancake mix and need to pour that onto a pan in small amounts. Prep and pour all in one.
I also like stainless steel utensils from measuring spoons, cups to spatulas, whisks , sieves etc they all have their place of use in the kitchen.

[DeDukshyn]

 
Not only are Teflon pans generally bad for your kidneys, they can't take high heat, they can't take any metal, glass or even hard plastic utensils, despite the grandiose promises made by the producers, they only ever last a couple months before the start scratching and leaching crap into your food, and washing them with soap wears them out.

Several years back, I got sick of buying new cookware every few months and ponied up some big bucks for a good, heavy reinforced bottom surgical stainless set, and, found an old rusted out cast iron pan that I restored to its glory. That was about 10 years ago.

The cast iron pan is now so well seasoned that its bottom is like black glass, and almost nothing ever sticks - if something does stick, you just go about your business to finish cooking and when the pan cools there's nothing stuck anymore, you just wipe it out with a paper towel and that's all the cleaning it ever needs. The only time I "clean" it, (with just water and a cloth scrubber - no soap ever) is if it stinks, which almost never.

A properly used cast iron fry pan needs as little maintenance as teflon pans, but will last 500 years, be durable as can be imagined, and just get better with age. The problem with them is that proper care is fully counter-intuitive, so most people never get the actual benefit from them by using them "properly". Proper care means not worrying about it, not cleaning it, and keeping oil on it. For example: leave some bacon grease in it after cooking bacon and just cook next food in that grease, and so on. Just wipe it occasionally with paper towel or a clean cloth. If anything gets stuck a bit after cooking, just leave it and cook the next thing, and it'll all come off in the next cooking and extra flavour to whatever you cook.

Never cook acidic foods (tomato sauce), or dishes with lots of water in it, use lots of oil / grease, and neglect it between cookings, until it stinks, then clean lightly with water and a cloth scrubber, coat with a thin layer of oil after cleaning.

So easy.

[rgray222]

Stainless steel is really all you need but you need to do these three things
1. Get a good quality pan
2. You must season it properly
3. You need to learn how to heat the pan just right before you cook on it. It takes a lot of practice (it did for me) and a lot of ruined food but once you get it, it is a life time achievement.

Heating Pan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-SCA1reqE

Seasoning pan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXEt-fhyCis

[Inversion]

Blue Diamond pans work great and are reasonably priced. Their base metal is aluminum and they're infused with millions of diamonds. They're lightweight and easy to clean. IMO cast iron is good but heavy and take too long to heat.

prudentreviews (https://prudentreviews.com/blue-diamond-pan-review/)

[c0di]

i used to be a crazed magnetized stainless steel guy for with a dash of cast iron...

the ultimate is pure ceramic. non-stick naturally. holds heat. even cooking temperature and surface. made from the earth. it is not the $40 pan you may have heard about at bed bath n beyond. each pan is roughly $100-$400+ it beats everything out there on all fronts/tests/leaching/etc. the brand i use is Xtrema... i was told about it by a few friends that are world class chefs that are in a league of their own. i spend my most money on shoes, bed, cooking, water... these items i feel should always be of the absolute highest quality as i think of my body as a temple beyond the normal view held. hope this helps!

[Dennis Leahy]

I'm assuming it's awful but I haven't looked into it. ...

...

I want to change my ways though and use something that won't potentially poison me everyday. If I'm educated on why teflon may be harmful then I'm more likely to switch to something else like cast iron, SS or copper.

Fluoride and fluoride compounds are not only neurotoxins, but the blood-brain barrier is easily breached by fluoride compounds. We are helpless - our main defense system for our brain is subverted by fluoride. A study I saw concluded that the main place in the body that fluoride is eventually deposited is our pineal gland. Our pineal gland! (Second was the growth ends of the bones of young people - and causes bone cancer.) You do not want a molecule of any fluoride compound to get into your body. Don't put the Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) pans back in the cabinet. Throw them away. You don't want a molecule of Polytetrafluoroethylene in your body, or any of your loved ones that are going to use the pan later because they don't know this information.

You can replace them with stainless steel pans from a thrift store for $5 - to $10, clean and then season the pan (as per rgray222.)

(Strat, this is a more direct attempt to answer your first question. :~)

[Spiral]

Today, all Teflon products are PFOA-free. Therefore, the health effects of PFOA exposure are no longer a cause for concern.

However, PFOA was used in the production of Teflon until 2013.

Different formula now...
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nonstick-cookware-safety#teflon-and-pfoa

There are many brands of non-stick cookware out there & they always say what they are free of (dangerous chemical wise) on the label.