Lars Klove for The New York Times
THE STICK TEST The enameled cast-iron pan by Le Creuset, above, performed the best and was easy to clean, too.
J. Carrier for The New York Times
The carbon-steel skillet by De Buyer, above, cooked most foods well.
Posted on 06/09/2006 8:55:29 PM PDT by neverdem
LIKE many home cooks, I have sent my nonstick skillets to the moldy recesses of my basement, where they have joined the 1950's aluminum pots and the Dru casseroles (Dutch enamel coated cast iron, now eBay collectibles).
What led to this step were unsettling reports that an overheated Teflon-coated pan may release toxic gases. DuPont, the manufacturer of Teflon, says that its pans are safe and that their surfaces won't decompose, possibly releasing the gas, until the pan's temperature reaches 680 degrees. Some scientists say that an empty pan left on a burner set on high reaches 700 degrees in as little as three minutes. All pans with nonstick coatings are subject to the same problems, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental research and advocacy organization.
I banished the skillets last year and spent months dithering over what to buy while making do with the pans I had left: a large Revere Ware skillet with a concave bottom; a small, warped hand-me-down from my mother; and a medium All-Clad in fine shape.
A few passes at online pot sellers made matters worse: there are too many choices. Finally, after consulting the ratings from Consumer Reports and Cook's Illustrated and calling several experts, I decided to do a test of my own, using the most highly recommended pans, along with a few of my own choices.
While Teflon lets manufacturers make inexpensive pans usable, uncoated cheap pans have hot spots, so cheaper pans — other than cast iron — were never considered.
--snip--
There were eight pans in the test, most of them 12 inches in diameter: All-Clad with an aluminum core, All-Clad with a copper core, Bourgeat copper; De Buyer carbon steel; Calphalon anodized aluminum; seasoned and unseasoned Lodge cast iron and Le Creuset enameled cast iron.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yum!
I've smelled overheated teflon. Not very pleasant.
nice, now something else to worry about.
Without reading the argument IMO, Aluminum is garbage except for making throwaway dishes for people you don't care about. Iron is an age old standard.
I saw a piece on tv with a story how cooking with Teflon killed pet birds. The woman profiled lost a gorgeous bird that way.
I've owned my All-Clad since 1979. IMO, they are the best.
I wanted to "multitask" by showering while boiling a pot of water. I went to bed after the shower. I woke up 6-7 hours later to a burning, metallic, toxic smell. I grabbed the deformed pot off of the glowing stovetop and the molten liquid dripped all over the floor. Now I had a ruined pot, burner, and kitchen floor. Not one of my brighter moments.
If you don't want food to stick all you have to do is make sure that is adequately heated with a small amount of oil. This will work with almost all foods, except maybe eggs.
Birds will also die quickly if exposed to the fumes of cooking fats raised to similar temperatures; birds and kitchens don't mix unless you're cooking the birds :-).
Fortunately, mammals such as dogs, cats, and humans are not affected by the vapors from Teflon at temperatures too low to make it smell. If you are a cook watchful enough not to let the pan get hot enough to incinerate your food, you won't be harmed by Teflon vapors.
> I've smelled overheated teflon. Not very pleasant.
Particularly if you are a bird - rapidly fatal.
Most parrot owners refuse to have teflon in the house.
Detrimental health effects on humans are less certain,
but certainly not rapidly fatal.
With care, and a duct-vented hood, teflon cookware is
probably still a net benefit, particularly compared to
cooking oil in an overheated pan. Many flash fires have
killed people.
Learn the risks and benefits. Make your choices.
You're lucky your house didn't burn down. I've left pots on the stove myself and it really rattled me when I realised it but nothing that serious. Glad it worked out for you.
Guess you forgot you wanted to eat some macaroni before bed eh.
Back when I was a bachellor I fell asleep with SPAM! cooking on the skillet. I woke up about 6 hours later to an incredible stench. Believe it or not, SPAM! smells like fish if you burn it long enough!
Wouldn't trade my decades aged cast iron pans for any other type.
ROTFLOL. We had turkey tonight. YUM!
Teflon is good for frying IN oil. I do stir-fries over a red hot electric burner in the bottom of a "convenience" grade teflon coated stock pot. It works as well as a wok, the high sides catch almost all the spattering grease, nothing burns onto the bottom (good when deglazing does not make sense, as when the recipe calls for pouring in a cornstarch liquid at the end), and none of the Teflon has flaked off yet. But I never, ever let the oil get past the mildly smoking point.
The best material is cast iron. It's the most flavorful and easiest to clean (cast iron builds up a natural non-stick surface). The cast iron pans in the review are heavy. A better solution is a lightweight cast iron wok.
I cook omelettes in a 14", 3 pound wok (the shape makes it function like an "adjustable" omelette pan). We use it for EVERYTHING. It's the only pan we use.
Check it out--> http://www.eleanorhoh.com
Speaking of iron... I bought a cast iron skillet a while back, the rectangular kind one puts on a stove burner. One side has the flat surface, the reverse has the grooves.
No matter how much I spray it, whenever I grill a steak, it always sticks and the steaks literally tear when I turn them.
Any advice?
Alot of these ideas are based on parts-per-billion type analysis. Remember the Alar scare?
If somebody tries to, say, dry-roast bell peppers in a Teflon pan, they'll flirt with fumes. In an earlier age, nobody would get a pan that hot because it would have either water or oil based contents.
There's nothing wrong with teflon pans. It's the cook.
Never use soap on it. I have a steel wok made in India. Always good to get some high temp type oil (like a good Wok oil, put some in the pan, and heat it up till it comes close to smoking.
Then let it cool, discard the oil, and wipe it clean with a paper towel or some such.
After a few cycles of this, you should have a good patina on the pan.
Also, when you cook with it, heat the pan up (but not too much) before you add anything in it.
"mammals such as dogs, cats, and humans are not affected by the vapors from Teflon"
Is it the vapors or that teflon decomposes when it reaches a certain temperature?
Does teflon decompose into a gas or does it start a decomposition process till it starts to peel?
Are decomposistion and vapors related?
The porous iron pan is now absorbing your Pam spray. Stop that by 'seasoning' the pan.
Anoint the iron pan heavily all over with a heat resistant fat (e.g. peanut or canola) and bake in oven at about 400 Fahrenheit for a couple hours (with foil lined cookie pan below to catch any loose grease) till a hard coating forms. Wipe away excess grease. As long as you don't stew water based liquid on it or wash with detergent, the pan should be good to go.
Thanks djf!!!
There are essentially none. The vapor pressure of the polymer is ~10-8torr and the polymer is completely nontoxic. HF comes from the decomposition of the polymer at ~550oC. At lower temps the decomposition doesn't occur. Some polymers with lower levels of flourination can decompose around 400oC
Aluminum kinda sucks, but if it is heavy enough it works reasonably well -- I am not a purist. It moves heat far too easily, so it really does benefit from teflon coatings (evil chemical blah blah blah notwithstanding) and I will admit to having some heavy aluminum cookware with a teflon liner that is very useful, though I do not use high heat with those. Seasoned iron (or steel) makes an excellent cooking surface but takes a longer to heat up, which can be a nuisance some times if you are engaged in serious kitchen-fu.
The great thing about kitchenware is that if you buy really good basics, it will last you a lifetime.
If I remember correctly, this pan was already "seasoned" when I bought it. But I will try what you said anyway!
Thanks a bunch.
I put a pyrex cake pan on top of a burner I thought I had turned off. I didn't quite get it to click to the off position.
The burner went red hot as I turned my back to serve my kids some dinner.
In moments the pan exploded and shot hot glass all over the kitchen.
During clean up I stabbed a small rice sized piece into my hand. In two days it was completely infected.
Surgery was performed to save a finger and I did one full week of IV antibiotics. It was about an 8,000 dollar hospital bill. Most expensive garlic bread I ever made.
Well, I love to cook and people have said I'm pretty dam good at it!
But to do it right, you gotta go all the way. Last time I made lasagna, I made my own sauces (one spicy with meat, the other less so), cooked all the noodles (3 boxes worth), and layered and filled the pans.
Five lasagnas! Sixty bucks worth.
And they were gooooooooooooooddddd........!!!!!
It decomposes and releases gaseous chemical compounds of fluorine, hydrogen, and carbon. Which, because fluorine is tightly bonded to the carbon atoms and limits their reactivity, are about as poisonous to people and birds as a Freon leak from the refrigerator would be (near zilch first case, fatal second case). The stuff left behind would be brittle and flake and peel easily.
Hmmm, JUST HF? that is an insanely corrosive acid. It would not be ignored by any carbon based life form. I always thought fluorocarbons.
You're using to much soap and scrubbing. That takes the "curing" off the surface of the pan. That's the black film of oil on the pan. Use the pan only for frying. No cooking with water and only use a mild scub to clean off the rough stuff.
"Teflon has been around for 40 years. It's been used millions (probably billions) of times to cook all sorts of food"
But many of those first Teflon users from 40 years ago are dead now, so we should be wary or many of us could be dead 40 years from now.
That's aluminum oxide scouring, or polishing powder. Bab O is one name. It's kithcen cleanser w/o the bleach.
Bar "Keepers" Friend. It's a powdered cleanser usually stocked with the Ajax and Comet. If you cannot find it, Zud is a similar formula.
But try this first, fill pan with ammonia and enclose it overnight in a tightly sealed garbage bag. When you remove pan, watch out so ammonia fumes don't knock you over like a punch from a boxer :-). Scrub with a brush in the sink, and probably the grease residue will be all gone without need for any other cleanser.
I blew up a pyrex pan, too, but I didn't need medical attention afterward! That was a crazy story. But you never told us... how the garlic bread tasted!
When dealing with glass break messes, vacuum cleaners are your friend....
The only flourocarbons are at the level given in the above post and they're completely nontoxic. That's what would be present in an excellent vacuum. It's the decomp that matters and the major toxic thermal decomposition product is HF. The concentration is still pretty low though unless one stuck their nose in and took a deep breath, it wouldn't matter much to most folks. If it was a regular occurance, folks could develope flourosis. It's the F- that has the effect and the gas from one burnt pan dispersed in the kitchen would be like swallowing a part of a tube of toothpaste. The aldehydes and acids from the burnt carbon once the HF strips off are what cause the fierce, pungent smell.
Which, on another important note, is why ethanol is not so good as a motor fuel.
I'll take your word for the levels of it. HF from my college chemistry is scary stuff, F2 scarier. HF is in Whink brand liquid rust removal cleaner, which warns ominously of delayed action burns if it gets on skin. But maybe if you gargled it you would never get tooth cavities for the rest of your life. (Just kidding)
(and more litany from http://www.ewg.org/reports/toxicteflon/chemicals.php, an alarmist looking environmental website)
They also say that the particles released from the hot teflon (smoke) seem to have a lot to do with the ill effects in rat tests. Getting the toxic gases into the lungs and keeping them there, like dust or smoke particles do with radon. I wonder if burned food would prove equally noxious.
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