The nonstick surface?
Yes! I’ve tried all the others, ceramic included… nothing beats cared-for cast iron. Yes, you use more oil. Yes, you’ve gotta reseason it once every few years.
I always rolled my eyes at the cast iron zealots on Reddit, but with pets in the house, and cooking a lot, it just works.
‘but with pets in the house, and cooking a lot, it just works.’
Could you explain this bit please? I’m at a loss to see how this involves my cat.
Edit, I have some cast iron, but my wife can’t lift it. And NGL as I age it’s getting a bit heavier for me and I can see a point where I’ll not be too happy lugging it from cupboard to stove.
I think carbon steel may come to my rescue there - just cannot afford it at the moment. My Christmas list is stuck between a pressure washer and a carbon steel pan that was mentioned on here a short while ago. A German brand.
From one of the manufacturers: https://support.farberwarecookware.com/support/solutions/articles/65000168119-is-nonstick-cookware-harmful-to-my-pets-
Long story short, accidentally burning a PTFE coated pan will release chemicals that are bad for you and your pet. No matter how that manufacturer softballed the answer, it’s right there: the fumes of overheated plastic are harmful.
You weigh much more than your pet, so the time it takes for the resulting toxins to approach LD50 for a human are quite long.
Zipping a smaller, faster breathing pet’s blood levels up to fatal are unfortunately much easier, almost by an order of magnitude depending on the pet. That article references birds as most sensitive (see: canaries in coal mines), but dogs and such being close to the floor will also get a lot of exposure to the heavy gas particles.
Also, carbon steel, stainless steel. That’s right–stainless steel is nonstick if you just use it correctly. You don’t need special “non-stick” cookware. We’ve had it all this time.
tl;dr: silicone with little tiny PFAS tips. Supposedly the single molecule is safer than the long chains in Teflon.
You’re going to make me read the article aren’t you……
Fine.
Ok I read it. This is…. A reasonable tldr. I was hoping for more on the manufacturing. As I understood it, the real issue with teflon was the manufacturing, and the resulting product was largely not a big deal, the molecules are too big for our body’s to do much with
I thought teflon being long is what made it safe. It’s the smaller molecules used in the process of making the long Teflon that are bad.
I heard teflon is delicious and nutritious
“cutting use” in this context meaning “limiting use” rather than “eliminating use”. Great job no notes
…until someone figures out what’s wrong with it…
The safest nonstick cookware is: Cast Iron, Carbon Steel, and Stainless Steel. However, you need to learn/develop those skills to make use of those nonstick properties. If you are lazy, you can use coated (aka Teflon) cookware and halve or more your lifetime. It’s your choice.
Stainless Steel is just straight up not non stick.
It’s not designed to build up a patina.
Also, why everyone always leaving out coated cast iron - it’s not fully non stick but it’s stick resistant at least and doesn’t have to be babied like cast iron.
