[nonrandomstring]

Learning to "proof" steel is something worth spending time on.

I was taught by a Chinese room-mate at college who showed me how to prepare a wok.

- 1. Heat the thing up as HIGH as it will go, till parts of the base glow red if you can. Gas is better than electric heat.

- 2. splash a little vegetable oil in and swill it around to cover all the surface. It may ignite, ignore the short lived flames, but brush it around with a paper towel so that the carbonised film covers the surface with a black layer.

- 3. Add some fine salt. Use the paper towel to rub it around until a shiny and slightly bluish and rainbow colour carbon later coats the surface.

This will be as good as any teflon for a few cookings.

[Robotbeat]

Heating edible oils to very high heats does tend to produce harmful chemicals as well.

EDIT: For example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4029104/

[buildbot]

Right, but unlike fluorinated compounds those toxins can be broken down by your body and flushed out (I could be wrong?). For example, alcohol is pretty toxic to us.

[lr4444lr]

Aren't they polymerized into the metal, though? I don't think they come off that easily, barring steel wool or something extremely abrasive.

[sa1]

I don't think chemicals in Teflon come off any easier, but they still do.

[nfhshy68]

Reckons main issue is that it degassed the chemicals into the air. With most range hoods just recirculating the air you're basically getting a face full of it every time you cook.

[sa1]

Isn't it the same issue with oils and high heat during cooking and seasoning?

[lr4444lr]

Doesn't Teflon degrade due to the high Temps? I really don't know that much about it, but it's just the opposite with cast iron seasoning: heat hardens.

[sa1]

We were talking about scrubbing. For heating, lots of carcinogenic compounds are released during the process of seasoning, and I don't see why the same wouldn't continue to happen at high heats afterwards(happy to be corrected). Hardening and releasing dangerous compounds aren't mutually exclusive.

[fencepost]

I believe the seasoning instructions for Matfer carbon steel pans involve cooking a mixture of potato peels and salt with a bit of oil until crispy (while moving constantly), which seems to do a pretty nice job of starting the seasoning on those.