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Just clean your cookware people
I use Greenpan, a ceramic nonstick pan
I was shopping around for nonstick pans some months ago, and exhaustively looking to see if any of them were free of pfas and other toxins. By the end I was nearly pulling my hair out because they pretty much are all bad, including Greenpan. I no longer have the variety of sources I found back then, but here’s one source on them (mind you I wouldn’t necessarily trust this site’s recommendations either).
https://www.leafscore.com/eco-friendly-kitchen-products/why-we-no-longer-recommend-greenpan/
All real nonstick cookware is Teflon or chemically related to it. I almost always use cast iron or carbon steel but they are not nonstick, you have to control heat and acidity for them to release well. You can even see in nonstick pans that liquids will tend to bead up and not spread out because of the surface, versus in any other pan you’ll only see water bead up when you hit certain temps. I can only achieve something like a French omelette in a nonstick pan, carbon steel has always been a disaster, because of that me and a lot of other people keep a nonstick around just for certain egg and crepe recipes.
you’ll only see water bead up when you hit certain temps.
Basically If you FIRST heat up your stainless steel cookware to the point that when you drip some water on it, it “beads up” instead of immediately boiling away, your cookware becomes temporarily non-stick. Just don’t want to go a lot hotter than that, or you’ll do things like burn butter (unless using Ghee butter or something with a higher “smoke point”)
These non-stick pans are usually cheaper then stainless steel and cast iron, so people with lower income are more prone to buy it. Consequently, considering that low education is associated with poverty, poor people are buying more of this type of pans and not using it “properly” so getting exposed to possibly more harm and not knowing about it.
Also, " just discard the pan if flocking occurs", is everything that this industry wants: you’ll continue in an indefinitely loop of trowing away pans and buying new ones for the maximization of their profits. Thus is expected that flocking will occur more soon than ever.
Wikipedia makes it sound like not all Teflon pans require PFOA, which is the actual problem here (not that the article describes it clearly).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-stick_surface
PFOA/PFOS is in lots of other household shit though, like raincoats
hashtag not all pans
I hate how we allowed these ghouls to make the word “nonstick” synonymous with teflon/PFAS. It makes it sound like if you use a regular pan, you constantly have to scrape off burnt food or something. That’s just not true, a well-seasoned regular pan can be just as “nonstick” as one with a PFAS coating. It’s a fake non-problem that was invented to sell this garbage that poisons us and the environment. If it was up to me, the executives at dupont and anyone else responsible for this psyop would be sent off to labor camps (with humane working conditions of course)
Can’t really cook this way oil-free though. I roast my food in a toaster oven, on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Took some getting used to, but I find it more convenient too.
You might actually not be better off with parchment paper, it is nonadhesive thanks to fluorinated compounds (PFAS) or silicone in most cases
This is what I get:
Why would you want to cook without any oil?
Heart disease and diabetes are very prevalent in my family, so I generally try to keep my diet in the direction of the Esselstyn guidelines. I’m currently not entirely strict about it, it’s a work in progress.
Admittedly the science of added oil vs no oil is very much an open question still, and much more studies need to be done to see if Esselstyn’s relatively extreme restrictions truly make a real difference. Still, it’s a safe diet, it’s designed by heart specialist specifically for treating heart disease, and from what I’ve seen it appears to be the most promising option out there. Also, if it ever does become proven that atherosclerosis can be reversed - particularly through lifestyle interventions - I think that’s really cool and exciting.
As a sidenote, for general populations, Harvard currently has the strongest evidence supporting the idea that a little oil is fine, as long as you’re choosing the right ones.
I’m sorry that is something that you have to deal with while cooking.
I’m glad that you have a plan and stuff to mitigate it.
Thanks, but I wouldn’t say it’s something unique to me. If you look at the top 10-15 causes of death, Heart disease is generally number one. On top of that, many of the other top causes are diet-related diseases as well. In other words, diet is arguably the number one cause of death and disease in industrialized nations. I just think it’s sad that so many people suffer their whole lives and die prematurely from causes that are so very preventable.
And you don’t even have to use a cast iron. I’ve been cooking on stainless steel for a decade. I chuck it in the dishwasher when I’m done.
And as long as it’s oiled and hot, nothing sticks; not even eggs or fish. Especially if you use butter. But oil’s just fine.
“And as long as it’s oiled and hot, nothing sticks; not even eggs or fish. Especially if you use butter. But oil’s just fine”
My wife the pot and pan murderer would like a word.
what oil do you use for steel? I find that if I have to make steel hot enough for it to be non-stick, as soon as I put oil on it it starts smoking if it is plant oil or burning if it is fat.
Whatever I have on hand or fit’s the dish.
Mostly rapeseed oil, sometimes olive oil. When I first started (before I was able to just guess), I put a drop of water in the pan. As soon as the water started to boil, I added the oil and was ready to go.
Nothing stuck for quite a while. But if it did, sometimes it was enough to wait a bit for everything to release by itself.
Aside from that: butter. Butter does some magic.
doesn’t the oil burn when you put it on a very hot steel pan or do you have a trick? I guess rapeseed oil burning point is higher but if I put butter on a very hot pan it immediately turns brown and then burns in a matter of seconds.
Maybe you’re just getting the pan too hot? I know that sounds silly but it might be as simple as turning the heat down some and cooking whatever for a little longer.
Or at least that’s like my cardinal cooking sin, I’m always getting the pan too hot and burning shit unless I’m very careful to think about it.
but you are supposed to heat the steel pans until water kind of jumps in it (to make it nonstick) and that much heat generally already burns the oil I am using…
And if you heat any oil too much it starts producing carcinogenes. Butter is especially prone to do that even in relatively lower heat if it’s not ghee. So it becomes toxic in a similar way as teflon is.
Issues with food sticking to either a stainless, carbon steel, or cast iron pan, largely come down to technique and maintenance.
So if you’re going out to buy a teflon pan you’re admitting that either you’re a bad cook, or you’re lazy…. Or both.
If it was up to me, I would make it legal to ship them off to North Korea.
Cast iron ftw!
Carbon steel is lovely too.
Doesn’t work too well with induction stoves in my experience. Difficult to season, since it doesn’t get heated evenly. Fine if you have a gas stove tho!
Then season it in the oven.
What a ridiculous world we live in. The board members should be facing prison sentences, the company’s liquidated and the money back to the people.
The money should be put into a cancer fund to pay for research and people’s medical bills from the cancer all this shit causes.
Just use cast iron and stainless steel. I don’t own anything else.
Don’t forget carbon steel!
And enamel cookware. It’s lasting forever.
What is the enamel? Same as ceramic? I’ve got ceramic pans that now stick like crazy and I went back to steel
“Ceramic” is just different proprietary PFAS chemicals that are not Teflon and so haven’t been proven to cause cancer (yet).
Enamel is a baked on paint like you’d put on pottery. Kind of glassy.
Do you have a reference for that bit about ceramic coating? My understanding was that enamel was a glass coating, and ceramic was a, well, ceramic coating.
I got some Belgium made enamel cast iron. It’s fantastic.
Keep in mind that nonstick cookware is still very safe when handled correctly. The problem lies in the manufacturing of these needed chemicals. When these chemicals get into the environment, because of improper safety management, it will stay there for hundreds of years, taking it’s toll on flora and fauna.
very safe when handled correctly
Too many people are not educated about that.
The problem lies in the manufacturing of these needed chemicals. When these chemicals get into the environment, because of improper safety managemen
Which is one of the reasons for that law, see:
Dubbed “Amara’s Law” after 20-year-old cancer victim Amara Strande, who in 2023 succumbed to a rare type of liver cancer linked to PFAS after growing up near a Minnesota-based 3M plant that dumped them into the local water supply, the new regulation bans the chemicals and any items made with them from being sold within the state.
Too many people are not educated about that.
I’ve never met the sort of idiots who put an empty pan on some turbo heat or use metal with nonstick, but I know they’re out there.
I have never seen a teflon pan that didnt have scratches after a few years.
I have a few. From IKEA. But most don’t last very long yeah
I was that idiot once. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you
*pushes all the nonstick pans into a cupboard to keep them safe*
You’ve never known anyone to forget a pan on the stove? I know several and even did it once myself
You’ve never kept a nonstick pan despite visible damage to the coating “it looks ok…”?
You’ve never kept a “good” non-stick pan past its recommended life expectancy?
What about the broiler? Even though I should know better, it was just this year when I finally made the connection that I’ve been using a non-stick baking sheet under the broiler for decades.
No, no, don’t know, not sure what that means
You can find online a lot of surprisingly short life expectancies for non-stick pans. Most commonly you should replace after 5-7 years or any visible sign of damage to the coating. Do you make sure to replace all your pans by then?
PFOA was legal until I think 2012. That’s not only a failure of the government to establish safe standards, but all too many people kept that cookware years past when it was no longer used, perhaps even until today.
Non-stick cookware can off-gas toxic fumes when used too hot. A common broiler can do that: you should not use non-stick pans under a broiler. However most bakeware is non-stick. An actual broiler pan uses a ceramic coating to withstand the higher temperatures: you should not just use any bakeware of the right shape.
If my pans start breaking then ofc I will replace them.
PFOA was legal until I think 2012. That’s not only a failure of the government to establish safe standards, but all too many people kept that cookware years past when it was no longer used, perhaps even until today.
I thought cookware wasn’t really a concern here, more the plants making it and it getting into drinking water, being used in food packaging, that sort of stuff. “Overall, PTFE cookware is considered an insignificant exposure pathway to PFOA.”
Non-stick cookware can off-gas toxic fumes when used too hot. A common broiler can do that: you should not use non-stick pans under a broiler. However most bakeware is non-stick. An actual broiler pan uses a ceramic coating to withstand the higher temperatures: you should not just use any bakeware of the right shape.
You need to heat it up to 260’C which is quite hot. I haven’t had the heat limit be an issue personally.
Cookware isn’t a major vector for pfoa anymore
By 2007, studies showed that the concentration of PFOA in a sample of the U.S. population’s bloodstream (collected in 2003-2004) was 25 percent less than that in samples collected in 1999-2000
Normal cooking appliances can be hot enough both on stovetop (such as with a dry pan left on a burner) and in the broiler to damage non-stick coatings
Teflon and other coatings can begin to break down when the temperature reaches 500˚F
Yeah I guess that converts to 260°C but the point is that ovens do get this hot
You’re lucky then. I have had multiple flatmates who don’t understand what a nonstick pan is, scraped the pans up, and continued to use them. Despite warning.
Finns must be particularly smart folk hah
Spoken like somebody who did not marry a person that is even more careless and ADHD than themselves, lol.
That sucks
Fortunately we only have one tiny nonstick pan that she uses for occasional eggs. And I’m the only one that uses the carbon steel wok or occasionally cast iron.
For everything else, stainless steel with an internal aluminum layer, and a nice black circle in the center of the pans, haha.
And how do you dispose of it correctly? Cookware shouldn’t need to come with an MSDS sheet
Put it in the metal recycling bin in my case. But depends on your local recycling/waste management system.
Yeah I think you’re in the minority which your teflon recycling. Mine doesn’t even do paper
We have I think 6 bins in the front, with plastic being the newest addition.
Does Teflon even break down into PFAS at all? From what I read I think it doesn’t.
PTFE and chemicals used in its production are some of the best-known and widely applied PFAS
Wait, it’s not the material on the Pans?
It is the material on the pans, but the only case where the companies making the stuff were successfully sued was when they were caught for dumping intermediates of the chemical in to a tributary of Ohio river.
It’s hard to pin down how impactful the coatings on the pans are because of how many other sources of these kinds of fluorocarbons are in house hold items, and in the environment due to large companies disposing of them recklessly. We know for a fact that basically everyone has some level of these compounds in them due to their ubiquity.
The pans are just one potential source and a particularly notable one because they’re in contact with food.
That’s the first part, used correctly it’s a non issue so just use your nonstick correctly.
recent studies have stated that the pans offgas from manufacturing for weeks after you’ve bought them, no heating needed, so no, that’s not correct. and it was known that they offgas at only 325ºF years ago. https://www.ewg.org/research/canaries-kitchen
so no, teflon pans are bad no matter how you use them, they’re bad for the environment, they’re bad for your health, they’re bad for animals, they’re bad for babies that haven’t been born yet.
Using nonstick correctly: Dont use anything but silicone spatulas on it, do not use more than 50% of your stoves power or gas stove or you will get cancer and die. Buy a new one every 5 years anyway since it somehow became stick pan.
Using stainless pan: Find it from some junk metal pile, discover it was manufactured in the roman empire, give it a good scrub. Use it on any source imaginable and when hawk thuah slides around instead of sizzles, it’s good to go.
Please don’t hawk tuah your pans while cooking
Using nonstick correctly: Don’t use metal and don’t heat it over 260 °C
Source on the pan giving you cancer?
Yes, non-stick becomes stick because the teflon coating comes off, it’s really hard to make teflon stick to anything. Using metal utensils will hasten this but afaik simply using heat will help loosen the teflon coating.
I don’t mind buying a new non-stick pan about every 5 years (last one lasted 7), I usuall stick to the cheapest ones, they serve a specific service to me that stainless ones can’t do.
Are you really asking “provide proofs of a pan I am warned to not heat up too much as the vapours will cause flu like symptoms and kill pet avians is bad for my health.” is bad for you? It is. Why do you think you need to buy new pans every x years? Cause the non-stick layer wears off. Do bits of coating that contain top tier carciogens which are considered safe unless ingested magically vanish into the void? Yes. Except the void is your body.
I have been relying on my teflons less and less the more I get good with the stainless. I’ve now been making crepes and japanese omlets with less sticking than my few years old teflons.
Afaik the coating is not a carcinogen only under certain circumstances like high heat can it produce something unsafe but even there it’s just potential, not yet proved to be carcinogenic but feel free to prove me wrong.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html It says it ssafe since it’s tightly bound to the pan. I guess its true, its completely 100% safe. After all, there is no reason for anyone who owns a non stick pan to ever buy a new one since they keep being nonstick for generations, right? Surely even if you treat your pan just as they say, it means the coating doesn’t wear off, right? And us educated people we know once something wears via abrasion it means it leaves behind no residue, right?
Heating non-stick pans beyond recommended temperatures can cause the coating to degrade, potentially releasing toxic fumes. Cooking on high heat or using metal utensils can compromise the integrity of the coating, increasing the risk of harmful substances leaching into food.
The part you quoted says nothing about cancer, article only mentions potential risks with no evidence and no article cited. I’m sorry but articles like these are why people believe chocolate cures cancer or sitting down is as bad as smoking.
I don’t claim there’s no connection but so far I’ve seen no evidence.
I don’r know why you’re downvoted. That’s not an unfair assessment of the article. I offered it more as inference that the release of toxins when overheating the material is releasing potentially carcinogenic toxins. I take the view that what effectively amounts to burning many materials releases carcinogens and toxins, particularly man-made materials.
I bought a cheap stainless pan about 20 years ago. Don’t have issues with food sticking, don’t have to worry abouy coatings coming off, and if the handle breaks I can make a new one.
Coating breaks down, stainless doesn’t.
I have a mix of stainless steel and cast iron. I’m not terribly worried about consuming small amounts of either of those.
A bonus is that because it’s all metal I can use most of it in ovens or while cooking outdoors.
Sticking isn’t really that much of an issue if you’re careful. I feel like non-stick would’ve never taken off if people knew how toxic it was in 1970.
In other words don’t do what I did and put half a litre into a $6 pot on your new induction cooktop and set it to 2kW to see how long it takes to boil.
It boils quick.
It then boils more enthusiastically than you’ve ever seen before, and a cancerous stench fills the air as the coating breaks down and the pot deforms.
Like throw it away every 6 months.
Edit: or 1 or 2 years, it was hyperbole. Instead of like never throwing it out?
The nonstick pans I’ve using are several years old now without any signs of deteriorating nonstick surfaces. Use cookware out of wood or plastic to not scrape off the coating.
I have 1 big nonstick and 1 small nonstick. They never saw high heat, they never saw ANY metal instruments, when stored they are protected by felt so nothing hard touches them, they never seen a steel sponge and they still became regular stick pans 2 years into their lifespan. Before you say “skill issue buying the pan” they were mid level (expensive pans for no cooks) pans from a reputable company. I have been a pro chef as well. Nonsticks are a wear item even if you treat them like shit on a stick. My oldest stainless is like 40 years old, has a huge dent on the side and works the same as it did on day one. I dug it out of someones fishing shed.
I have a kitchen full of nonstick pans. They’ve been in use since my grandma’s mom.
Got them from grandma.
Don’t freak out but cast iron was the OG nonstick, right?
I have been a pro chef as well.
Doubt
All it takes to become a chef is to accept the back breaking underpaid labour of working in a kitchen and following instructions. There are no preliminary requirements, only time invested.
I’ve had mine for 2 years now. It’s still non stick and I cook extremely regularly. Eg. 90% of my meals are cooked by me. I think some non stick pans are shit though because one of the ones I own started deteriorating after a year.
how much cancer do you have?
All the cancer
If you use it incorrectly then yeah. You might as well stop making food as well because clearly you don’t know what you’re doing.
What are you even talking about?
Are you le grand anti-adhesive chef?
Carbon steel or cast iron all the way.
Stainless steel! Neither of those is something you want to use to simmer a tomato sauce.
Sure, or enamelled cast iron.
Why’s that? I’ve never owned any of the 3, all pans have been some form of nonstick.
Carbon steel and cast iron cookware have reactive metal surfaces that will rust if left exposed to moisture and air, especially when heated. To use these materials of cookware you need to season them which involves washing the surface clean and applying a very thin layer of oil which you then heat up to a high temperature (usually past the smoke point, but not strictly necessary).
The heating of oil in contact with the metal causes the oil molecules to polymerize and bond to the metal surface. Done properly, this gives your cast iron and carbon steel cookware a smooth, glassy, slightly brown protective polymer layer which prevents rust and helps foods release (though not as well as nonstick pans). The seasoning process can be repeated as many times as you like and it builds up more and more layers which darken over time. A well seasoned piece of cast iron or carbon steel cookware will look shiny and jet black, though this is not necessary for cooking.
The downside of these materials is that acidic or basic foods can damage the polymer layer and dissolve it right off the pan with enough heat and cooking time. Tomato sauce is a classic example of an acidic food that will eat away at the seasoning of a cast iron or carbon steel pan. A well seasoned pan can still be used to cook a tomato sauce, but not one you plan to be simmering for hours and hours (like some Sunday meat sauce like you’d see in Goodfellas).
Stainless steel (as well as enameled or porcelain coated) cookware is nonreactive so you can use it to cook acidic or basic foods no problem!
Ohh right, I didn’t think about how acidic tomatoes are. I love tomatoes, but some of the people around me get absolutely horrible stomach pains apparently.
Anyway, we make tomato based sauces at home, but never have we simmered anything for several hours like that cooking scene in Goodfellas. Should I? Would it be significantly better?
It depends what you’re going for. There are a lot of classic long simmered tomato sauces, they are a different thing than fast cooked ones though. Long cooked ones tend to be more mellow and complex, but lose some of the acidic zing, adding a bit of vinegar or wine at the end can bring that back though.
Just don’t make them in a cast iron, not only will the strip the seasoning, they will also absorb some iron, great if you have an iron deficiency, but it can make the sauce taste a bit metal-y.
Oh you’ve got no idea how good tomato sauce can get then! It’s also great for making huge batches so you freeze most of it for later.
Hmmmm I have some bad ideas now, thanks!
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I thought there, who on earth makes tomato sauce in a non-stick pan 😅
Nice writeup btw!
So my stainless steel/inox Lagostina pan is non reactive? What would be the benefit from having a carbon steel one (I have used cast iron a lot but it’s so heavy)?
Any community you’d recommend?
Carbon steel is lighter but this also has less thermal mass, so it heats up and cools down faster, also tends to have less even heating.
So, searing something quickly on a preheated pan is a bit harder since the pan will cool off faster as the food leaches the heat out. Important for stuff like stir fry’s or steaks where you want short periods of intense heat for good searing at the surface but not over cooking in the interior.
Exactly that: weight. Some people will give you other reasons why they like carbon steel but the most important is that it works like cast iron only lighter
A well seasoned carbon steel is pretty much non-stick while in a stainless you usually want some sticking to have something to deglaze for sauces.
Mine sticks enough for a nice sauce :-) !
I don’t want to cause a panic, but acids like tomato juice, ascorbic, citric and vinegar can attack stainless steel and dissolved chrome in the process.
But don’t think of it as extra chrome in your diet. After all, we get iron rich water from our cast iron pipes and fittings. Nah, think of it as that extra cancer you’re gonna be getting! Iron never gave you cancer, that’s a lousy metal. But chrome is pretty good!
But don’t think of it as extra chrome in your diet.
Aw man…
https://theproperkitchen.com/do-stainless-steel-pans-leach-into-food/
Yes and no, apparently.
Basically go to goodwill and have a look at their used stainless pans and then compare that to what you see at the store. Its not magic material. You put some tomatoes paste or salty beans or vinegar on it and you’ll be getting some chrome dissolved on to your food. Great! Its just a little right? Wrong! What else do you see? Scratches! Every time you use a metal spoon or steel wool to grab food or clean the pan, you create brand new unreacted leachable metal chrome…pans are probably grade 18 or 316 stainless steel, so 18% of whatever shavings you made becomes happy trivalent Cr-3 ions floating around with your tasty Na and CL lol. Look at pans that got overheated or pans where you accidentally left a spoon before going on vacation for a week…they’re black where some food was left on the surface due to oxygen depletion. Stainless steel is by no means the savior. Its the magic bullet, along with plastic in the food processing business! Processed foods pass thru churning mechanisms…metal rubbing and shedding stuff on to the food.
This is why I sleep at night. I’m basically a walking FEMA disaster zone, yet, I still somehow get to my 8hr enslavement work and then back to my rest of the day 2-3 hours worth of family disfunctions just fine.
I just use a aluminum pan. It doesn’t really matter if it heats evenly since you are making a liquid.
Aluminum is reactive too. But it tends to hold onto a seasoning really well!
Not necessarily. You can by pans with a polished surface.
If there is exposed aluminum, it will dissolve readily in to acidic food, polishing or not, and unlike dissolved iron which tastes off but might actually be good if you don’t get enough iron in your diet, aluminum has some toxicity to it, not a huge worry but something to be aware of.
A bit ironic that a group labeling themselves the “Cookware Sustainability Alliance” is fighting to continue making unsustainable cookware.
Both the fact that they have a voice that influences politicians more than their actual voters and that they’re allowed to call themselves that name is really a perfect representation of society.
Available at a thrift store near you, with no carbon cost!
Used cast iron is usually better than a lot of new stuff. Back in the day, it was common for the pitted surfaces to be ground smooth.
Now you can only get that with some “premium brands” that are willing to take a grinder to a pan before throwing it in the box.
Got a few inherited from my grand and great grand parents, they’re amazing and perfect. Even got a cast iron muffin tin which is great for making Yorkshire puddings.
SO THAT IS WHY MY FRYING PAN IS ANNOYING!
I just thought it was going to be naturally ground down over time…
Damn it, now I gotta find a thrift store.
Or you can season the shit out of it. That will also smooth out the surface. Seasoning basically makes non-stick layers on your pan using burned oil.
Preferably outdoors wipe a thin film of cooking oil on the pan and heat it up till it smokes, leaves smokey for a bit, cool down and repeat.
It’d probably be smart to read real instructions somewhere else, but that’s the jist of it.
You can still get vintage Wagner cast iron for a decent price on eBay or FB marketplace, but over the past 15 years people have started to catch on to what I just mentioned. So it’s not as dirt cheap as it once was.
These days I generally know how to cook on a pitted lodge without it sticking, but smooth cast iron is more forgiving.
The difference is what part is more forgiving
- a smooth well seasoned surface is most forgiving for your food not sticking
- a rough sandcast surface is most forgiving of poor cleaning habits. The seasoning is usually good enough and it is more likely to remain adhered
Season it with Flax seed oil. Worth the $10 for the bottle, and time.
Cooks Country came up with Flax seed oil after a lot of testing.
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/how...d=26897&frtk=u3VJqn8v17q3E4m0demcX4pjog35T4sL
My experience with flaxseed oil was less than stellar. It works real nice at first, you get a good strong non stick seasoning, but after a few uses it starts flaking off. My guess is that it forms too hard of a coating, so when the pan expands and contracts through use, it starts to separate from the seasoning. Avocado oil works pretty well, and so does normal vegetable or canola oil. The surface isn’t as nice as a fresh flaxseed oil coating, but it’s a lot more forgiving through use.
Oops, that link is expired!
It starts getting better after 10 or so years when the seaaoning has built up to fill the surface roughness.
Or you sand it down to be smooth and reseason it.
Buying thrift store cast iron is risky, it may have been used to melt lead.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would you use it to melt lead?
Sigh, just when I thought I found a way to get a smooth frying pan, look in my comments, I litterarly just posted here…
Why would people melt lead in a frying pan?
Most often to make their own bullets.
Ah, but why in a frying pan?
Cheap, commonly available, convenient.
Fair, but you can get a lead testing kit for around $10 USD.
Enameled cast iron is also great
Is this the ceramic coated ones?
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It’s unfortunate - I thought it was a fairly comprehensive and readable overview of the differences between enamel and ceramic coated
Costly but good
Cast iron is cheap at the second hand store.
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You really should read the rest of the article
Is it really that bad? Sure it might be linked to cancer but so are lots of other things.
I personally just use normal cookware plus some vision stuff. All you need to do is salute some onions ahead of adding other things. The juice from the onions acts as a natural non stick.
It’s perfectly fine so long as none of the coating gets in your body, but given you’re making food with it, there’s a high chance it will.
If it get’s too hot it will off gas, if it gets scratched with something harder than it (like a metal spatula, or salt grains) it will flake off. So you should use plastic or wood utensils when cooking in one, and the black plastic utensils have their own issues with often being made from recycled plastics that have fire retardants mixed in, which can leach out.
You can be safe with them but it requires you be careful and deliberate with use. Personally, I think it’s easier just to use something else, even if that means taking the time to learn about how to use them well.
I never use anything but wood and plastic so it is probably fine
Can’t even use a Teflon pan if you have a budgie or the fumes will kill it.
So I think it is probably quite bad.
In reality no one can say for certain, but a lot of research is pointing to long term exposure being bad. The problem is that the research to determine how bad will take decades (and has been going on for decades at this point). Right now it’s being used as the boogeyman for every sort of ill from causing cancer, infertility, issues with lactation, liver failure, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, and auto-immune disorders. Basically the preliminary research says that it at least in part impacts all of these things, we just don’t know how much.
On the flip side bacon also causes cancer and high cholesterol at some level. That’s not to make light of the situation, but it does give some credence to your earlier statement.
The thing people are missing in these discussions is what are they willing to live without if we don’t use these chemicals. Going without non-stick cookware is literally the tip of the iceberg. How do we feel about cars, furniture, and mattresses being more flammable because they don’t have the fire retarding forever chemicals? How do we feel about stain resistance, oil resistance, water resistance, and slip resistance in everything including shoes, umbrellas, clothes, oven mitts, jackets, and more? How do we feel about needing to clean everything including clothes, appliances, and floors more often. How about in industry where it’s used as a fume suppressant so smelly chemicals don’t waft as far or fire fighting foams the next time an electric car catches on fire? This stuff is even in the wrapping of your food so the it doesn’t go through the packaging and cause a mess as easily.
Dupont coined the phrase “Better Living Through Chemistry” and that chemistry is PFAS. It’s in your clothes when you buy them, it’s in your detergent when you clean them, it’s in the cleaner that you wipe your washer off with, it’s in the floor sealant of the laundry room that washer is in, it’s in the gloves you wear while cleaning that laundry room, it’s in the carpet in the room next to the laundry room, and the list goes on and on.
Dropping PFAS chemicals fully would probably send us back to the 1960’s or we’ll end up replacing it with something just as bad that we don’t know the effects of yet.
How do we feel about having 8g of plastic in our brain. Each of us. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cef0/fd3b2409e2ef92182d9fc42e4308d5fe1b2b.pdf
It’s not just the use itself, but also how irresponsibly it is produced. Exposing pregnant workers to high levels, dumping it in community water supplies, on farmland etc.
Also the EU did ban them last september (effective in 2026) for essentially all of the uses you outlined, most of which I dont think are such a big deal and just minor inconveniences. It’s not like the 60s were terrible in terms of living conditions.
We also used to use asbestos for a lot of the uses you outlined and we got rid of that without too much inconvenience, but you could have made similar arguments about it back then.
And any reduction is a good thing, it’s not an all or nothing thing. DDT was banned, but can and is still used where there’s no better alternative. And just categorically saying any alternative must be just as bad is just a non-sequitur, there’s no reason that should be true. Cookware is a good example, cast iron works just as well, is not as bad, the only downside compared to teflon is weight. But it’s not like sending us back to the stone age or anything…
It’s in the rain and every freshwater fish or lake water has it, such that even once per year fish consumption is not recommended. Safe level is 4.4ng per kg body weight/week. 300ng for adult male. Half kilo of fish will be 4800ng. Technically that is 3 fish portions per year, but you will get enough smaller amounts every day to breech limit with freshwater fish.
You have a point that it may still be needed for some stuff.
Source for once per year fish consumption? I couldn’t find that.
You can’t have it needed in some stuff and critically dangerous if it’s a bio-accumulating chemical that virtually never breaks down. To reduce it enough to not be a hazard world wide you would functionally have to stop using it everywhere.
I haven’t seen any definitive results on dangerous health levels, 4.4 ng/kg might be it, but then other studies show people with mg/L of blood concentration. Overall the effects of exposure seem to depend on more than just the concentration, such as health status, exposure duration, magnitude of exposure, and how lucky you got with the genetic lottery. Even then we are fairly certain it is bad, we just don’t know what or how specifically. I would also throw caution at any study using ng as a serious measurement here, especially over prolonged exposure. The problem with measuring on such a low level is that you have far too much uncertainty to claim any true accuracy, at best these studies are guessing when they throw out numbers. Hell, the EPA just came out with a standardized method for analyzing PFAS last year.
At those levels of exposure you’re probably getting it just from eating commercially grown fruits and vegetables, because it can bio-accumulate in those as well.
other studies show people with mg/L of blood concentration
4.4ng/kg per week was the result from google “safe pfas levels”. 46 weeks gets to 1 mg.
🧅 🧅 🫡
I also want to salute my fellow onions 🫡🫡
You made me laugh, have an updoot
The updoot-to-text ratio is off the charts with this comment, lol.
Doing god’s work
I mean when there’s a fun little joke to be made, and I can post emoji-only rather than the usual text-only and my fellow nerds will like it, AND we’re in nottheonion which I didn’t notice until afterwards, how can I resist?
in the produce section thank you for your service
How we start the day off under this roof
Yes. Get as far away from that shit as you can.
This article is horrible. Anyway…
Teflon has a melting point of 327°C, that can happen on a stove.
IMO It’s fine, just don’t burn your pan. Not sure about scratching it, but don’t do that either.
using a pan means you have to construct that pan, in a factory that pollutes massive amount of PFAS directly into the soil and water table.
it seems like the primary concern of the article is the waste from producing it, not its usage
I’m not sure you need to melt it for the PFAS to leech out. There was a study recently about smart watch bands and they found that the PFAS exposure from wearing them was way above safe limits and they weren’t being heated to 327C.
Admittedly frypan coatings and watch bands are not the same materials, but still…
So, just don’t do the two things that happen to every non-stick pan ever. Gotcha.
Yeah has no one seen the horror show that is the used pan section of a thrift store? More flaking than a millennial get-together.
Capitalists furious at suggestion they value human life over money
ftfy
yeah it’s a day ending in Y
I think distinctions matter
How about the suggestions that they are selling a product that should last for several lifetimes but instead lasts for 5 years if you treat it very well?
I moved to using cast iron and steel pans, I found even hand washing non-stick pans they eventually just get scuffed up after years.
I’d rather just use a few more drops of oil on a regular pan.
I’ve got a few dishes that want a non stick surface and have a dinner in a tomato sauce. I keep the non stick for those, and for house guests who don’t understand carbon steel.
I don’t. The flat iron skillet (comal) is nonstick enough at this point that even my kids never complain about making eggs on it, they release well. Tomato sauce does fine in stainless steel. Though I also haven’t made guests cook for themselves yet. Had one nonstick pan in the early 1990s and that was enough to sour me on them.
I also keep a couple non-stick skillets around for guests.
However it’s incredible (in a bad way) just how ubiquitous these coatings have become. It’s going to take years to get through them all. I just got stainless cookie sheets but all my bakeware is non-stick (blind spot: I used to use a baking sheet for the broiler without connecting the dots on excessive heat vs teflon).
Next step (by frequency of use) really needs to be my rice cooker
I highly recommend picking up a Japanese induction rice cooker. We’ve had a Zojirushi for a year and even at altitude it makes perfect rice every time.
I nixed the Zojirushi because of the PTFE coating, but I love having a non-stick rice cooker. Ended up getting a GreenPan induction rice cooker with an insert that has a ceramic coating to make it nonstick, and I love it.
I use our instant pot pressure cooker to make rice, and it’s stainless inside.
I’m not suggesting it matches an actual Japanese rice cooker, but I think the results are pretty good.
I love our zoji, but the inside is definitely non-stick. (Relevant to the conversation)
That brand does have an outstanding reputation and I have considered splurging on it, however I only see non-stick pans. Whereas I can get a cheap Aroma or similar with a stainless pan.
I guess we’ll have to see how tedious it is to clean rice from stainless, but the goal is to reduce ptfe from my diet
I make tomato sauces on both my cast iron and carbon steel. Sure, they get a bit bad afterwards, but oil+heat fixes that.
I have an enamel coated cast iron Dutch oven which does tomato dishes just fine as well.
Personally I don’t give a damn about a pan whose entire life is spent slowly scraping away the carciogen on it and ingesting it with every meal you make. I am however not going to be scammed by the teflon pan manufacturers into buying a new overpriced pan every few years. Every other non non-stick pan outlasts multible generations of humans. A non stick in a professional kitchen won’t even make it to 1 year old.
If we didn’t live in capitalist plutocracies masquerading as “democracy”, every non-stick pan ever sold would be blatant false advertising and they wouldn’t be profitable to sell anymore.
Lifetime guarantee my ass. None last more than a couple years of daily use regardless of how meticulously they’re cared for.
You’ll find that lifetime guarantee almost always means for production errors. Not wear and tear.
GenX was basically told that “Teflon is inert, it can’t hurt you.”
Well fuck me.
It is chemically inert. It just becomes a problem when you physically abrade it into billions of microparticles that become embedded in your tissues…
So, asbestos 2.0?
Likely, if we’re being honest.
Health agencies haven’t done that much investigation (wheeeee regulatory capture) into wtf microplastics do in nuance to all of our various biological systems, but we do know that microplastics basically pervade everything at every level of the food chain at this point. So it’s more about answering the question of “how much did we fuck ourselves” now.
Has there been any evidence to point out that PFTE is not inert?
This article seems to be about the production of PFTE, which is well-known to be quite harmful, but the end product is as far as I know not unsafe to use.
Some, yes. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-02/is-non-stick-cookware-safe/104160814 Heating pans too hot can partially release harmful chemicals. There’s not enough study on ingesting the particles from scraping a pan. I quit using them over a decade ago and replaced them with cast iron. It’s a different way of cooking but once you learn works really well.
That article basically confirms my understanding of the safety implications of PTFE. Don’t overheat, and discard once flaking, but ingesting flakes is unlikely to be harmful.
I’ve started favouring other types of cookware as well - my personal favourite is enameled cast iron - but I’m really not keen on using neither cast iron nor carbon steel. I feel like proponents downplay the increased maintenance that comes with that type of cookware.
I do have one ceramic non-stick pan that is pretty good, but once it goes bad I’m probably going to try to find an enameled cast iron replacement for it.
I love my cast iron specifically because it requires extremely little maintenance. The only inconveniece compared to stainless steel pans is that after I wash it, I have to dry it by hand or toss it on the stove until it dries to avoid rust.
Other than that, I never manually season it (just cooking with it does that for me), I only use metal or wood utensils (I scrape foods vigorously, especially smashburgers, and the seasoning is totally fine).
IMO if the seasoning isn’t good enough to handle my abuse, then it isn’t good enough to be on the pan.
Been using 'em for years and they still look brand new. Also what they say about seasoning being non-stick is true. It’s crazy how I can grill chicken breast without any oil and it barely sticks at all. The sear you can get on a cast iron due to heat retention is also second to none.
My problem with enameled cast iron is that once the enamel cracks or chips, that cookware is essentially garbage (similar to PTFE cookware in that eay). The enamel is essentially glass, and you don’t want to eat microshards of glass. You can’t put it through the kind of abuse that I like to put my cookware through.
Enameled cookware is great for acidic sauces, though, as one comment mentioned above. My recommendation for enameled cookware is to only use wood utensils. I just cook tomato sauce in my regular cast iron, though, and so long as I clean it right after, I never have any issues, but if I want to cook a tomato sauce for hours, I’ll use a stainless steel pot.
Stainless steel is just as durable, but doesn’t have the seasoning that makes it non-stick, and it doesn’t hold anywhere near as much heat as a cast iron (unless you get the really expensive ones with a fuckton of copper in it), meaning it’s harder to get a sear for foods that need it. Fantastic for basically anything that you don’t need a sear on, like sauces, pasta, etc. A good rule is the heavier the pan, the more heat it holds.
IMO if the seasoning isn’t good enough to handle my abuse, then it isn’t good enough to be on the pan.
This is true, and something that I discovered myself recently. I tried babying one of my cast iron pans for while, seasoning with flaxseed oil, avoiding metal utensils, and only cleaning with a damp sponge or paper towel. I built up a seasoning quickly, but it was incredibly brittle, and actually began flaking off into my food. I haven’t used that pan since, haven’t gotten around to stripping and reasoning it.
Since then I’ve had the same mindset as you to great success: if this layer of seasoning can’t handle my abuse now, then it’s not fit to be the foundation for the next layer of seasoning. I almost exclusively use metal utensils now, clean with a copper scratch pad, and ditched the hard-but-brittle flax seed oil for whatever I happened to be cooking with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not aggressive with the pan, I let the weight of the utensil or pad do all the work, but I’m not letting weak seasoning get seasoned over. If it’s weak enough that the copper pad takes it off, then it wasn’t a good seasoning anyway.
Hell, I scrape hard, scrub hard with a stainless steel scrubber and dish soap, stack cast irons for storage, etc.
It’s a massive hunk of iron. I treat it as such.
The problem with ceramic non-stick is it apparently has an even shorter lifetime than ptfe. Sure it’s an improvement on what you’re putting into your body, but every other type of cookware is also much more durable.
I expect my current cast iron and stainless steel to be the last cookware I have to buy
What’s “too hot” in this case?
Edit: the news link actually works and doesn’t assail me with popups. Here’s the salient part:
When these pans are heated above 260 degrees Celsius, their PTFE coating can begin to deteriorate. But the coating does not significantly degrade until temperatures reach 349C, Professor Jones says.
"So, unless your oil starts smoking, you’re not getting to that temperature and even then, you need continued exposure to see any effects, which are usually minor in humans.
“And that’s assuming you weren’t using an extractor fan or other form of ventilation while cooking.”
I always use a ventilator fan, so this is apparently not a problem for me beyond the non-stick coating wearing to the point where shit sticks and I have to buy a new one.
Previous formulations were also claimed to be inert and non-toxic, but were later found not to be. Current ptfe seems to be safe so far but at this point I’m really cynical about safety of these chemicals, industry willingness to inflict them on us and ineffectiveness of governments safety regulations. They’re forever chemicals. Even if they are safe, they will be in the environment, in ever increasing doses, forever. They are accumulating in you, your food, everything you ingest, forever. That doesn’t seem prudent.
What are you going to do if a toxic pattern emerges, but you’ve already incorporated ptfe into your body? even if the the end product is safe, manufacturing chemicals are not: do you accept your part in these toxic forever chemicals?
There’s not much an individual can do, but I can replace non-stick with other materials as they grow older. I have cast iron, stainless, glass, or ceramic as appropriate, that we know lasts longer and will not have a problem.
