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The whole point of non-stick pans is not to need any fat/oil, not even a little bit, though. No matter how often people tell me, stainless steel, carbon steel or cast iron, none are as good and low effort as a simple non-stick pan.


I don't think it's really lower effort if you account for the care with which you need to cook with teflon (no metal utensil), wash it (no dishwasher) and store it (no stacking). Unless you replace it every ~year I suppose.

There's plenty of things you can cook without fat in a stainless steel, too (pretty much all meats).

And fat isn't just for nonstickiness properties, it's a part of making food taste good. If you want/need to avoid fat for health reasons, that's fair.

You also just can't sear in a teflon, as you're not supposed to preheat the pan.

I almost never reach for my teflon for the opposite reason as you: I find it more effort. The one thing I really use it for is fried eggs, or when I really can't be bothered to wait a few mins for the stainless to preheat


I mostly use wooden cookware, and I throw that and non-stick pans in the dishwasher, teflon is so chemically stable that it shouldn't matter. But yes, I just buy a new pan every ~2 years, sometimes 3.


Why do you feel a need to buy a new pan? If something about the coating has degraded, where do you think the offed material has ended up?


Yeah it's degrading. Half in the food, half down the sink I'd say?

But what is it gonna do? The teflon isn't gonna do anything, maybe the binders/glue, but aslong as there's no new discoveries...


Teflon is known to not interact when it is in its stable long polymer state. But if we accept that it is breaking away from that state, we know it is not stable, and is potentially reactive.

Personally, a touch of avocado oil in a coast iron is much (much) lower risk (and price) than taking bets on whether this particular PFAS matrix will see the same fate as all the prior (now banned) ones or if we have somehow finally solved PFAS once and for all.

Not to mention all the known-bad environmental PFAS’s the manufacture and disposal of these 2 year pans creates.


I’m find it troublesome to fry without oil or butter on any pan and I only had Teflon ones.




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