[rdli]

We've worked to reduce plastics & chemicals in our house. Some things we do:

* We use silk dental floss (we use Radius)

* We use glass storage containers instead of Tupperware

* For cooking, we use All-Clad.

* If a recipe calls for non-stick (e.g., pancakes) I use a braiser from Le Creuset, which works reasonably well.

(Edited: formatting)

[stephencanon]

A plain cast-iron skillet works flawlessly for pancakes and crepes, FWIW.

[Miraste]

Cast-iron is a huge pain to maintain in my experience, but ceramic pans are a good non-carcinogenic alternative.

[JPws_Prntr_Fngr]

I feel compelled to back you up on this one. You mention your experience with cast iron, and 20 semi-pro internet chefs jump all over you to gaslight you with "you just didn't season it properly bro"

No. I polymerized it with the grapeseed oil. I tried it with sunflower oil. I polymerized until my apartment swirled with smoke. I wiped it down with nothing besides a paper towel and water. I followed youtube guides.

Nothing worked, and that goddamn pan would lose slickness in the heavily-used center every other day. Plus, I'd leave it unused for a few weeks while traveling, and upon returning, it'd be covered in rust! This happened with at least 3 different pans from 2 different manufacturers.

Low-maintenance my ass.

[omnicognate]

You almost certainly left way too much oil on it. If your apartment is "swirling with smoke" you're doing it wrong. Most youtube videos and online tutorials fail to make this point clearly (or are outright wrong, debating what kind of oil to incinerate half a bottle of in their pans).

You oil it (with any cooking oil) and then wipe it all off. It needs to look and feel like it hasn't been oiled. Any visible oil or stickiness will burn to black shit that isn't seasoning. There is still oil there. The invisible, microscopic residue is what you want. When you heat it (in the oven around 180C) it will generate a faint smell around the cooker, not fill your home with burning oil smoke. Do the whole thing 3-5 times.

But for a skillet this is just a kick start. It is neither necessary nor sufficient. The real seasoning comes from use and is way better than anything you can do by explicit seasoning. Use it frequently. Fry in it. FREQUENTLY. And when you do use use oil, ffs. While it's newish, clean it promptly, dry it thoroughly and give it a thin wipe of oil before you put it away to prevent rust and help it season.

(If you're the sort that thinks never letting a single fat molecule enter your digestive system is a virtue, don't buy cast iron. It won't work for you. It'll rust and stick. Use teflon. It's the only thing you'll ever be able make a "fried" egg on. It might give you cancer but at least you won't accidentally ingest some butter. Also, if you cook once every 6 months, don't use cast iron. It needs use. Weekly at least, if not daily.)

One of our four cast skillets spent last night in the sink, full of water (see my other comment). We treat them how we please, scrubbing and washing them with detergent if needed, leaving them dirty if we want. They cook wonderfully, don't stick and will probably survive the death of the sun.

[bagacrap]

I bought a $25 pre seasoned lodge cast iron and it's been very easy and low maintenance.

I bought a couple carbon steel pans I had to season myself and they're a constant nightmare.

You may want to try again with a different brand.

[mint2]

Welp the method that doesn’t slowly poison our environment or kill our parrots is less convenient, guess we have no choice but to layer on the forever Chemicals.

[BugsJustFindMe]

Stainless steel doesn't poison the environment, easily fries sunny-side-up eggs without sticking if you let it get hot first, and can go in the dishwasher.

[modzu]

once cast iron is properly seasoned it maintains very well, and can last for generations! and they are dirt cheap to boot. but yes there is a little learning curve. they are heavy, so use two hands when handling. it must be seasoned (many come preseasoned) and never put it in a dishwasher for example -- but when properly seasoned the nonstick properties are so effective food just rinses off. i encourage everyone who cooks to try one!

[coffeebeqn]

I also got a high carbon steel pan which is not as thick and heavy but has all the other properties of cast iron.

I had a few “ceramic” pans but inevitably they become scratched (and useless) after a year or two in everyday use

[stephencanon]

If you don’t mind the rather extreme cost, the Sanjo Special Cast pans are delightful. Cast iron, but about the weight of a “normal” pan.

[m463]

You know it is REALLY HARD to figure out if a non-stick coating is free of teflon-and-friends. Lots of things called "ceramic" might not be free of pfoa/pfte/etc

(this is a pain when you have parrots, because one overheated pan, and all birds in the house - big and small - will die)

As one example, I bought some hexclad pans. They had very strong wording about their use of teflon:

https://hexclad.com/blogs/posts/pfoa-free

when you try to figure out what their coating is, you are told:

"We’ve used a high-grade non-toxic Japanese coating infused with diamond dust for extra toughness." (https://hexclad.com/pages/hexclad-science)

and... well keep digging.

Finally you can find this:

Q: Are your pans free of PTFE?

A: Our pans are PFOA free but contain some PTFE. PTFE is in over 95% of all nonstick cookware including our ceramic-based nonstick. PTFE is safe and inert. In fact, it is used in surgical matches meshes, dental implants and heart stents which are all implanted in the body. We do not use PFOA chemicals and other chemicals that gave many other nonstick pans a bad name. Why do we use some PTFE? Sadly, non-PTFE nonstick cookware does not work well for long periods of time. In fact, in our tests, the largest non-PTFE nonstick in the world only held up for 45 minutes of consecutive use.

https://hexcladcommercial.com/pages/frequently-asked-questio...

What's especially ridiculous is that the "good" hexclad sets you can get at costco also put this coating on the BOTTOM of the pan, against the flame or burner! High temperature is the achilles heel for these chemicals.

took them back.

EDIT: also https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/y...

[autoexec]

Carbon steel pans aren't as much work as cast iron, but still extremely durable. They're lighter, often come pre-seasoned but are easier to season than cast iron, are naturally non-stick, heats very quickly, and cleans easy.

The only downside is that you have to wash them right away, dry them thoroughly. Cooking with a lot of acidic sauces will mean you'll likely have season them again.

[stephencanon]

If you’re cooking pancakes, you just wipe it off with some soap and rinse while it’s still warm, and don’t need to do anything else. For other cooking you sometimes need a quick pass with a nylon scraper or something, but it’s still pretty quick and easy.

People mostly really get into trouble when they try to stew tomatoes or something like that (I just keep a steel pan around for really acidic stuff).

[dontlaugh]

You might prefer carbon steel to cast iron.

[bradgessler]

Cast iron is easy if you only clean with warm water and chainmail, which can be purchased on Amazon for under $10.

I only see people struggle with cast iron when they think it must be cleaned with soap until it’s shiny. That’s an invitation for rust and problems.

[omnicognate]

Cast iron skillets just take a bit of getting used and are then zero maintenance and last for ever. The problems people have with them are usually due to trying to season them and doing it so badly (due to abundant online misinformation) they'd have been better off not doing it at all.

[basisword]

How would you suggest seasoning and maintaining cast iron?

[omnicognate]

The typical cooking uses to which a skillet is put season it automatically, because it spends its life being oily. The polymer coating known as "seasoning" forms naturally from long contact with oil (even without heat). So the idea of seasoning being something you have to put on the pan and then maintain is wrong. You can explicitly "season the pan" as a sort of bootstrapping to get that layer started off quicker and protect it from rust in the early days, but it's optional and doesn't need maintaining afterwards. An alternative to protect it from rust (and encourage the formation of the polymer) when it's new is to brush it with oil before putting it away. Once it's broken in (you'll know) it doesn't require special care. You can scrub it, use washing up liquid, whatever.

If you do season the pan, the most important thing is to wipe off all the oil after applying it. You brush the oil on and then wipe it completely dry. It should be dry to the touch and matt, not shiny. You should not be able to see ANY oil. The microscopic invisible bit of oil left is all you want. Only then do you heat it. The temperature doesn't matter much. 180 C or so in an oven is what I've used. The kind of oil used also doesn't matter. For best results do the whole thing 3 or more times. If you bake a visible layer of oil onto your pan you're not seasoning it, you're just covering it in burnt crap.

And it's optional!

Note that the above is for skillets, which self-season because they're used for frying. (Hence "seasoning" - i.e. using them for a while.) The story is very different for some other things. For example, we have a dutch oven used for baking bread, which is not an oily process. For that you really do have to season. Ours came pre-seasoned but it rusted after an unfortunate baking mishap and I had to electrolyse it and then give it 5 rounds of oven seasoning (as described above), after which it has been a zero-maintenance workhorse.

Griddles are absolute fucking bastards and will ruin your life.

If you ever do electrolyse any cast iron (it's great fun and will restore anything), A) pay a few quid for graphite electrodes (overgrown pencil leads, available on Amazon), rather than using an old stainless steel knife and producing hexavalent chromium (Erin Brockovich's favourite chemical) and B) use a bench power supply because nobody sells the kind of car battery charger all the online tutorials tell you to use any more (they're all pulsed ones now, completely useless for electrolysis).

[JadoJodo]

I have several now in various sizes that are in a great place now, seasoning-wise. After each use, I rinse the pan with warm water and a small amount of soap. I use a Lodge scrubbing tool if there are things stuck on.

I then dry it with a towel, heat up the pan with Avocado or Bacon grease until it almost starts smoking. I then use a paper towel to wipe out the pan and it stays on the stove until the next use.

Of the pans I have now (bought over the past 2 years), 3 are seasoned well enough that they’re effectively non-stick.

[krisroadruck]

Literally just cook with it. The main thing with everything except for teflon pans is you need to bring them up to temp before cooking, and you need to use some fat of some kind (olive oil, butter, whatever). The oil itself will provide the "non stick" until it's seasoned, and it'll also do the seasoning. You can waste a bunch of time doing seasoning as a separate step (light coating of oil, bring up to smoke point, let cool, repeat) but this is mostly just a giant waste of time. Just cook on the dang thing, and don't be afraid to toss in a chunk of butter or some oil. It won't kill ya :-)

[JPws_Prntr_Fngr]

> Literally just cook with it.

Lmao. Hapless beginner follows your advice, decides to scramble some eggs on day 1 with his badly-factory-seasoned Lodge pan. Egg glue now encrusts his shiny new pan. What do? Wash with soap? BAD NOOB - that's bad for the seasoning. Scrape it off with steel wool? BAD NOOB - that's even worse for the seasoning.

(If you do this, fellow noob, I think oil + a scrubber sponge got me out of the predicament)

[miloandmilk]

I just use mine, always with some oil. I never season it as a separate process.

Eggs pancakes, fish, no problems.

[juujian]

Thinking about buying one. Would I be wrong in assuming it was just a matter of the order: (really) heat the pan, add the oil, and then whatever you need to cook?

[throwaway173738]

Care is a big component as well. The real power of cast iron is that you can renew the coating when it wears off by re-seasoning the pan. Using a drying oil like flax, you coat the pan and heat the oil until it starts smoking, then wait for it to stop smoking. Repeat this process a couple of times and you have a durable non-stick surface again.

If you ever have the surface roughen up you can also strip the old seasoning by covering it in oven cleaner and heating it to cleaning temperature. The easiest way to do this is to stick it in an oven on high.

I’ve had the same frying pan for 10 years now and this is how I keep it non-stick.

[shrx]

It's kind of funny that heating up the oil to the point of smoking is considered a healthy alternative to teflon coated pans. When oil is heated up to the point of smoking it produces carcinogenic compounds.

[zukzuk]

Comparing the misc acrylamide and other byproducts of seasoning a cast iron skillet to the PFAS and other byproducts of teflon production is nonsense.

Yes, complex hydrocarbons are not good for you, but PFOAs and their ilk are really really really bad for you and the environment. It's like comparing spent nuclear rods with brazil nuts. Yes, both are radioactive, but there is zero equivalence.

[shrx]

If you don't scratch the surface the teflon coating is at least as safe as the cast iron.

[arrosenberg]

Not significant. You aren't burning the oil or keeping it at high temp for a long time, you are just getting hot enough to smoke, then you cut the heat. That polymerizes the oil into a non-polar coating. Can't get non-stick without some kind of polymer that things don't stick to.

[tobr]

Consider butter instead of oil for pancakes. The water content of the butter boils between the pancake and the pan. The escaping water vapor pushes them apart, which helps prevent the pancake from sticking.

[hammock]

I don’t use oil at all for pancakes. Just cook them in a dry pan. That’s the only way to get the perfect even golden brown

[sergiomattei]

Butter also adds awesome taste to them :)

[givemeethekeys]

Don't overthink it. Look up America's Test Kitchen videos on cast iron pans. They probably have one to recommend the best one for the $$ and how to take care of it.

I have an old school cast iron skillet and pot. I wish I'd watched videos because newer types of cast iron apparently has a smooth finish and is thinner and lighter. When new, I washed it with soap and water, dried it, added a nice and thin layer of olive oil all around wiped it with a kitchen towel to take off the excess, then baked it for half an hour. Let it cool. Repeated that once or twice. You can even just heat it on a stove top.

Once I'm done cooking something, I rinse scrub and rinse with warm water to get all the food off and add a touch of oil. A little goes a long way.

That's all, really. It isn't complicated or particularly laborious. It just weighs a fair bit - it'll take your hands a couple of weeks to get stronger and then you won't care.

[hedora]

You don't want to get it super hot (the oil/butter should not smoke). Medium heat is fine. They do take a long time to warm up to a uniform steady state temperature though (this is both an advantage and a disadvantage, since it means the temperature stays stable as you cook).

For instance, when making pancakes, my first step is putting the griddle on the range. Next, I start making the batter.

Of course, you can set the range to high and heat it up really fast, but then you end up risking overheating it.

[tastyfreeze]

Animal fats. Not vegetable oils. Vegetable oils polymerize to a sticky substance. Animal fats carbonize and protect the metal. Also using a metal spatula is a must in cast iron. The metal spatula keeps the surface smooth which enhances the non-stick property. Also wash after use and spread a little fat in it to prevent rusting. Don't scour. Just wash with soap and water.

[dotancohen]

So cast iron can not be used by vegetarians? I live with two vegetarians.

[tastyfreeze]

You can use vegetable oils but it will be difficult to clean. Deglazing doesn't work well on polymerized oil. Baking soda will dissolve the sticky goo.

[dotancohen]

Thank you.

[cptaj]

In my experience all non-stick strategies are a hoax, including teflon XD

[tmaly]

blue steel is good for crepes

[kbos87]

I switched to carbon steel a few years ago. There's a definite learning curve when it comes to getting them seasoned properly and a lot of people give up. But once they are seasoned, nothing sticks to them, and they need almost no maintenance. I'm never giving them up!

[coffeebeqn]

The great thing about them is that if you really mess them up you can just sand them down and re-season

[anamexis]

They're not cheap, but Scanpan makes great non-stick pans. PFAS-free, dishwashable, metal utensil safe.

https://www.scanpan.com/haptiq-8-inch-fry-pan-40141-configur...

[rdli]

I don't think Scanpan is PFA free: https://www.scanpan.com/chemical-components.

[anamexis]

Oh, huh. It certainly seems not. That is disappointing.

[AnonCoward42]

Honest question: Why do you try to replace Tupperware?

Plastic has a bad reputation because of its longevity, but that also makes it a good material for containers. That - in turn - makes it bad for throwaway packaging of course. I might have missed something, that's why I ask.

[rdli]

There's definite leaching of plastic compounds into food, which gets exacerbated when heated. My concern is the number of unknown unknowns. BPA became a big part of the consciousness a few years ago, and now it's PFAs, but what else?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/are-plastic-...

My general view is that glass is super-durable, microwave-safe (I would never microwave Tupperware), and the cost tradeoff is minor, so it seems worthwhile. That said, if I order takeout and it comes in a plastic container that's hot ... I still eat it :).

[AnonCoward42]

> There's definite leaching of plastic compounds into food, which gets exacerbated when heated. My concern is the number of unknown unknowns. BPA became a big part of the consciousness a few years ago, and now it's PFAs, but what else?

PFAS and BPA are not used for (multi-use) food containers I think. Don't get me wrong! Avoiding throwaway packaging, where possible, absolutely makes sense. I specifically mean to find the culprit with Tupperware (or multi-use plastic food containers in general).

> My general view is that glass is super-durable, microwave-safe (I would never microwave Tupperware), and the cost tradeoff is minor, so it seems worthwhile.

Glass breaks faster than plastic containers (usually). I still use glass containers, but I am always aware that they break relatively easily.

Regarding microwave-use I am with you. Not a fan of microwaving plastic, even if it is safe for many plastic materials (the term plastic is vague I admit).

[phil21]

> Glass breaks faster than plastic containers (usually). I still use glass containers, but I am always aware that they break relatively easily.

I have maybe 60-70 or so glass food containers that get very regular use from being used for leftovers, to being put in the deep freezer for 6mo and then warmed up.

We handle at least half a dozen of these a day on average from filling/cleaning/removing portions and putting back into the fridge.

I've broken dozens of the plastic lids for them. I can't remember a single case (although I'm sure it's happened) of breaking a glass container in the past decade. They have survived more than a few rather large drops. These are the Pyrex brand glassware with the new glass that is more drop but less heat shock resistant.

Luckily Snapware also sells lids, since the glass containers far outlast the plastic lids and we end up replacing 3-4 of those a year as wear items. That doesn't bother me much since very little food gets in contact with them.

I expect my Snapware/Pyrex food storage sets to largely outlast my lifetime, but without lids to match once they stop manufacturing them.

[JPws_Prntr_Fngr]

> Glass breaks faster than plastic containers (usually)

The plastic lids always break way more quickly than the glass containers IME. Can't remember the last time I broke a glass one, actually. Plus, they actually stay in good condition. An abused plastic container will cloud, warp, gouge, and release god knows what into your food the whole time.

[thevagrant]

I tend to buy ones with glass lids by a french company named O'cuisine. The glassware has held up over the years and didn't cost very much

[waif]

Also, "microwave safe" does not mean it's safe for people... it only means the container won't melt in the microwave. If you're going to reheat leftovers, definitely don't keep it inside a plastic container.

I also switched to glass containers and stainless steel everything, about 20 years ago, out of distrust for reasons like in this article.

[MarkMarine]

Same here, additionally reducing plastic packaging in our food purchases has been a constant effort. Glass milk jugs, baby bottles, etc. It's probably only touching the margins, but we're trying.

[thaumasiotes]

> If a recipe calls for non-stick (e.g., pancakes)

My dad has made pancakes for my entire life without ever using, or owning, a non-stick pan.

[notatoad]

A great alternative to a non-stick pan is a stainless steel pan with a sheet of parchment paper in it