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Comment by projektfu | Hacker News Reader

I use stainless steel and it works fine.

I hate frying eggs on cast iron. I need to wait so long for it to come up to a reasonable temperature, it always seems to overcook the whites and leaves the yolks cold. Every time I mention having trouble with cast iron, people jump out to tell me I'm holding it wrong and it's so easy, but it's really a finicky way to cook.

However, a seasoned stainless steel skillet is a lot like an aluminum teflon skillet except that it doesn't care if you heat it too hot, in my opinion.

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The 15" version of this pan is magic. It is super easy to season (apply some oil / butter, get it really hot a few times, wipe it off with a rag, repeat) and is very non stick with just a light coating of oil. Of course never clean it with soap. Water only if necessary. Afterwards I always just pour some oil on and wipe it clean with a paper towel.

https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/carbon-steel-pan?sku=C...

> never clean it with soap.

This is a myth. I was struggling with getting a good non-stick-ability on my Lodge, until someone pointed out the 'patina' is really just burnt carbon and does nothing for non-stick. The non-stick seasoning comes from polymerized oils, which aren't affected by lye-free soaps. I haven't had any sticking issues since I've started washing my pan with soap after a messy meal and leaving a microscopic film of Crisco on after drying.

It was years before I understood this and got a good patina on mine. Give the pan a good clean and do a lot of gentle frying dishes in a row.

The soap myth harkens back to the day when soaps were actually pretty caustic - they were lye based formulas that you had to use gloves to wash dishes with. That stuff would eat through enamel.

If you care about your health, you wouldn’t use a cast iron. Normally seasoned with unsaturated vegetable fats which produce polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at high heat which is required for the seasoning process. These compounds are carcinogenic.

But to what level? The seasoning usually don't go into the food. Once the process is done, it should stick to the pan as a polymer, not as something you eat like overcooked food.

And from what I've seen, while charred food is carcinogenic, eating an entire course of badly charred food is like an order of magnitude less carcinogenic than smoking a single cigarette.

Teflon pans are also mostly harmless unless you overheat them by a lot (i.e. forget it on the stove, empty and on high heat), it is the large scale accumulation of manufacturing byproducts in nature that is the problem.

Pre-heating is essential for cast iron. I primarily cook with it for everything these days on an induction cooktop. Induction is pretty fast at heating the pan and has excellent temperature control.

Cast iron on the gas stove is fine (by me). Cast iron on the electric with a cast iron tops is PITA for making something fast-and-once like fried/scrambled eggs. With something which takes a long time to make (like a stack of pancakes) you manage, mostly because they are made at the max t° anyway, but quick things suffer.

I feel like ceramic enamel cookware is underrated.

Non stick, easy to clean, durable, good temperature properties.

Ceramic micro-fractures over time. So while it can stay pretty easy to clean, but the non-stick degrades drastically over time. Especially the ceramic on steel or copper - metals that want to expand under heat.

I have this enameled cast iron pot that I cook just about everything in - but it just destroys eggs.

I mean there’s a reason commercial kitchens use stainless steel (or aluminum)

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