Earlier quoted context omitted.
For casual home cooks I'd recommend hard anodized aluminum. It's an excellent non-stick surface, easily hand washable, non-toxic, fairly durable, and low cost. Really as long as you aren't constantly gouging it with metal things then it'll hold up for years and years. Cast iron is great too though, don't get me wrong.
I bought this set: http://www.costco.com/Circulon%C2%AE-Premier-Professional-Ha... Not only does the hard anodized surface work well, the lids have small holes where the spout of the pan is so that you don't need to use a colander.
The Teflon Toxin
71–80 of 263 posts
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#72Horrible. This is what's so scary about the free market and our current chemical regulations of innocent until proved guilty. People cover up, even the biggest most "professional" here (DuPont), and the public gets decades of abuse. Why is it that medication requires FDA approval with lots of animal/human tests before you can sell it, but chemicals do not? Here the tests internally done showed prove of issue year aft…
Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Non free markets, although regulated, don't necessarily perform better and can even perform worse in this regard. The FDA is a great example of an agency which often can be seen to work harder to protect the industry than the individual. For example, look up the story of Vioxx. A drug which killed 50k peopl…
I think some of this is related to a certain FDA schizophrenia. My take it that at some point it was decided that it was more efficient / cheaper / better for the FDA to act as a gatekeeper for the public.
I.e A very effectiveness initial scrutiny process for the FDA to say "This is safe, you can sell it to the public" (for drugs at least, and food-related chemicals; I'm admittedly unfamiliar with the tox standards applied to commercial or industrial chemicals) but little done for subsequent discoveries.
Maybe part of that is confirmation bias. "But we ran this chemical through our initial process and it tested as safe. How could it not be safe?"
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
For casual home cooks I'd recommend hard anodized aluminum. It's an excellent non-stick surface, easily hand washable, non-toxic, fairly durable, and low cost. Really as long as you aren't constantly gouging it with metal things then it'll hold up for years and years. Cast iron is great too though, don't get me wrong.
Is that wise? Al cookware has questionable safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Health_concerns These guys recommend stainless or cast Fe. http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=92
From your wikipedia link: Although the use of aluminium cookware has not been shown to lead to aluminium toxicity in general
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#74Horrible. This is what's so scary about the free market and our current chemical regulations of innocent until proved guilty. People cover up, even the biggest most "professional" here (DuPont), and the public gets decades of abuse. Why is it that medication requires FDA approval with lots of animal/human tests before you can sell it, but chemicals do not? Here the tests internally done showed prove of issue year aft…
Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Non free markets, although regulated, don't necessarily perform better and can even perform worse in this regard. The FDA is a great example of an agency which often can be seen to work harder to protect the industry than the individual. For example, look up the story of Vioxx. A drug which killed 50k peopl…
> Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution
Only in limited circumstances. The problem with the property rights approach is that for much pollution there is no way to figure out who was responsible for releasing it.
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#75I've never understood the gravity of Teflon pans. I can never seem to keep them non-stick, whether it be because of using too high of heat or somehow scratch the damn thing. So, I got cast irons. It's trivial to keep them seasoned and thus non-stick, and they can take the beating of very high heat -- searing meats -- and any metal utensils or rough substances.
Teflon pans are cheap, and you don't have to care for them at all. Just throw it in the dishwasher and after a year or so get a new one.
Having said that, I'm really liking the two nonstick ceramic pans I bought a few months ago, and I'm not sure if I'll need to toss them next year, yet.
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#76And the settlement reached was around 0.0086 DuPont's yearly revenue to be provided for education, water treatment facilities and medical expenses of the class action members. Is that really going to deter them from doing it again? Where is the real penalty? http://www.hpcbd.com/Personal-Injury/DuPont-C8/C8-Class-Acti...
> And the settlement reached was around 0.0086 DuPont's yearly revenue to be provided for education, water treatment facilities and medical expenses of the class action members.
> Is that really going to deter them from doing it again? Where is the real penalty?
Stefano Quintarelli, an Italian ISP-owner-turned-ITC-journalist has the nice habit of converting those "huge" fines ("millions of euros!") into equivalent fines for people with normal incomes. In this case he would write
"The equivalent fine for a person with an average income of € 30k per year would had been € 258."
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious Eats has a very comprehensive guide [1]. The short version is rub lightly with canola oil, put in hot oven for about 30 minutes. Take it out and oil again. Repeat 3-5 times. The only thing you need to avoid while cooking is overly acidic foods. If you try to make a tomato sauce in it you will see the seasoning flake off. That's not good, but is very easily fixed by repeating the above steps. To clean it, scou…
Once it's seasoned well, it doesn't seem to flake. I've done tomato based sauces in my cast iron a few times and the seasoning hasn't flaked.
Tomato sauces weaken the non-stick seasoning on my main cast-iron skillet, but frying bacon in it once a week repairs any damage.
My best-seasoned skillet is the one I only use for cornbread, fried eggs, and grilled cheese, since I only cook with oil there.
A good seasoning is something you build up over time: when you first season a grey skillet, it looks unusable for a time, but keep cooking oily foods in it and it will blacken up.
The nice thing is that since it's metal, you can use metal utensils. And if something is badly burned on enough that normal soaking and scouring won't remove it, you can scrape it out with metal tools.
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
We use bacon fat or avocado oil. For cleaning, we use a Lodge plastic scraper if needed. And we never use soap. We wash our cast iron with about 2TBSP of kosher salt. Just dry on the pan, maybe a few drops of water, rub with a paper towel. Removes all the food debris while protecting the seasoning. Rinse the salt out with some water then dry or deglaze immediately.
> And we never use soap. In theory, soap shouldn't be a problem. The non-stick coating is polymerized oil bonded to the metal. It's not soluble by soap. But there are conflicting opinions.
I went back to visit my mother once and discovered that for convenience she had started regularly running her cast iron skillets in the dishwasher.
It certainly damaged the seasoning IMO, but not as much as you might expect.
Not that I would ever do that.
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#79I've never understood the gravity of Teflon pans. I can never seem to keep them non-stick, whether it be because of using too high of heat or somehow scratch the damn thing. So, I got cast irons. It's trivial to keep them seasoned and thus non-stick, and they can take the beating of very high heat -- searing meats -- and any metal utensils or rough substances.
I'd bet the issue is that you did not season the teflon pans (yeah, just about the same way as a cast iron pan...) and that you regularly use the pans at a very high heat which isn't exactly a teflon pan's forte.
Teflon doesn't like high heat or rapid temp changes.
Here's a really good article on use and care from Fine Foods Mag:
http://www.finecooking.com/articles/the-science-of-nonstick-...
Re: The Teflon Toxin
#80Horrible. This is what's so scary about the free market and our current chemical regulations of innocent until proved guilty. People cover up, even the biggest most "professional" here (DuPont), and the public gets decades of abuse. Why is it that medication requires FDA approval with lots of animal/human tests before you can sell it, but chemicals do not? Here the tests internally done showed prove of issue year aft…
Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Non free markets, although regulated, don't necessarily perform better and can even perform worse in this regard. The FDA is a great example of an agency which often can be seen to work harder to protect the industry than the individual. For example, look up the story of Vioxx. A drug which killed 50k peopl…
> Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution.
Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? I don't mean to sound rude/biased but this sounds like one of those cases where the theory is sound but when it meets with reality we get unpredictable(and sometimes disastrous) results.