[chongli]

Carbon steel solves this issue. You can get nonstick eggs and fish with a very minimal amount of oil. You can also do this with stainless steel but it takes more practice to get the temperature control down.

Maybe one day we’ll all have affordable temperature controlled induction ranges similar to the Breville/Sage control freak. If you have the ability to preheat your pan to an exact temperature then getting nonstick results with tiny amounts of oil or butter becomes rather trivial.

[amluto]

The Control Freak is fantastic, but it doesn’t work all that well with some cast iron pans. I think there are a couple reasons:

1. Too much thermal mass and too little thermal conductivity. This causes poor feedback and unnecessarily high delay between heat being added and the measurement reflecting it.

2. Manufacturers love to cast their logo right in the bottom center, which means that the sensor doesn’t make good contact with the pan.

I wonder if someone makes a nice stainless-aluminum-carbon steel clad pan.

[chongli]

I wonder if someone makes a nice stainless-aluminum-carbon steel clad pan

This pan exists! It's made by an American company called Strata. Stainless steel on the bottom/outside, carbon steel on the inside/cooking surface, and aluminum sandwiched in between. It came out this year. I've seen a few cookware YouTube channels do some first looks, unboxing, seasoning, and first cook tests but no long-term reviews so far.

Cast iron is definitely the most challenging cookware material to use with any flat-top cooking appliance. Whether induction or traditional ceramic, flat-top ranges tend to be quite poor at creating even heating in cast iron. Gas on the other hand works quite well because of the natural upward draft produced by the hot combustion gases which wrap around the sides of the pan, enveloping it in a blanket of heat from below.