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Cooking and bird safety

teflon.com

181–190 of 231 posts

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of things that become toxic once you burn them is a very long one

Fortunately your stove isn't capable of burning steel. Preheating the empty pan is a basic technique in more than one culinary tradition.

Your stove is capable of burning your oil and your food, which will make carcinogens.

Preheating an empty pan is just not something you should do if you're cooking with Teflon. You'll want to at least put some oil or something in there, or have a temperature control stove. It's a tradition that doesn't apply.

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#182
post #179

Just to birds, of course. We have nothing to worry about until 15 years from now that we learn burning teflon causes some poorly understood conditions the maker knew about all along. Ban it already. https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon-toxin/

What could be a better alternative to non-stick pans?

Regular pans?

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#183
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk to me this sounds like: I hate washing myself or I hate going to the bathroom. Maybe it’s a cultural thing but adults just need to be able to cook in my society. No place for hefty emotions. Just a fact of life. It might be nice to live in a society where not cooking is possible. Probably less healthy though, you have different incentives than people making your food. (Taste [salt levels] and “adictiveness” vs he…

I don't agree. I lived in Thailand where it's common to just buy a plastic bag of food from a street vendor. Most houses apparently don't even have full kitchens.

People in ancient Pompeii didn't either. They bought bread from bakers, or paid for time in public ovens, and bought premade food from pubs or other vendors. Preserved homes very clearly did not typically have the means to prepare food.

It's a statement kind of like insisting that everyone should know how to farm or do animal husbandry, when those were specialist jobs (sometimes serfs' jobs...) since time immemorial. Humans built cities millennia ago and lived in semi-specialized social groups before that.

The outmoded self-sufficiency obsession is very culturally American, due to its relatively recent status as a more or less agrarian colony.

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#184
post #169
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I've had the opposite experience with my lodge cast iron pan. Butter is the only thing that allows my eggs to not stick. Olive oil and vegetable oils in general cause more sticking. Maybe we preheat our pans differently? Do you use very low heat but preheat for a longer time?

Thanks for the replies everyone. I've loved and cooked on my cast iron and carbon steel pans for years but recently life got busy and I went back to non stick for some things (like scrambled eggs or salmon skin). I think we just forget how low maintenance a non stick pan is for normal people who don't care about cooking. To normal folks, the idea of preheating a pan slowly, or wiping some oil on with a piece of paper…

Do you mean just salmon skin? How do you prepare it?

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#185
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few points to demonstrate why your comment might be seen as unpopular: 1) Dietary (exogenous) cholesterol has been shown to have a lesser affect to the total cholesterol levels in the blood (70-80% of all the cholesterol in your body is produced by your body endogenously by your liver and other tissues). 2) Eggs are an affordable source of various fats and proteins that are essential to metabolic health. 3) There a…

I didn’t downvote but 5) we’re talking about pans, not diet. I am well aware that eggs aren’t health food and it comes off as condescending.

[deleted]

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#186
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few points to demonstrate why your comment might be seen as unpopular: 1) Dietary (exogenous) cholesterol has been shown to have a lesser affect to the total cholesterol levels in the blood (70-80% of all the cholesterol in your body is produced by your body endogenously by your liver and other tissues). 2) Eggs are an affordable source of various fats and proteins that are essential to metabolic health. 3) There a…

I didn’t downvote but 5) we’re talking about pans, not diet. I am well aware that eggs aren’t health food and it comes off as condescending.

I wouldn't agree that eggs aren't a health food.

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#187
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straight from the 2015 USDA guidelines: Previously, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 milligrams per day. The 2015 DGAC will not bring forward this recommendation because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC report. Chole…

Straight from the actual current guidelines: "A note on trans fats and dietary cholesterol: The National Academies recommends that trans fat and dietary cholesterol consumption to be as low as possible without compromising the nutritional adequacy of the diet. The USDA Dietary Patterns are limited in trans fats and low in dietary cholesterol. Cholesterol and a small amount of trans fat occur naturally in some animal…

So, I've read the linked report. I think it's important to include the full context. If it wasn't important, it wouldn't be in the report in the first place.

The quote appears on page 44. On the same page, before the quote, there's additional information about saturated fats:

> Healthy U.S.-Style Dietary Pattern include saturated fat. Approximately 5 percent of total calories inherent to the nutrient-dense foods in the Healthy U.S.-Style Dietary Pattern are from saturated fat from sources such as lean meat, poultry, and eggs; nuts and seeds; grains; and saturated fatty acids in oils. As such, there is little room to include additional saturated fat in a healthy dietary pattern while staying within limits for saturated fat and total calories.

Following that, on page 45, there's figure 1-11 called "Top Sources and Average Intakes of Saturated Fat: U.S. Population Ages 1 and Older". It breaks down the average saturated fat consumption by food types. It's summarized on the page 44:

> The main sources of saturated fat in the U.S. diet include sandwiches, including burgers, tacos, and burritos; desserts and sweet snacks; and rice, pasta, and other grain-based mixed dishes.

The Figure 1-11 shows that eggs amount to 3% of the average saturate fat intake; same as starchy vegetables (3%) and slightly less than non-starchy vegetables (4%). The main sources, as mentioned before, are sandwiches (19%) and desserts and snacks (11%).

Right after that there are practical recommendations about limiting saturated fats intake:

> Strategies to lower saturated fat intake include reducing intakes of dessert and sweet snacks by consuming smaller portion sizes and eating these foods less often. Additional strategies include reading food labels to choose packaged foods lower in saturated fats and choosing lower fat forms of foods and beverages (e.g., fat-free or low-fat milk instead of 2 percent or whole milk; lean rather than fatty cuts of meat). When cooking and purchasing meals, select lean meat and lower fat cheese in place of high-fat meats and regular cheese—or replace them with ingredients with oils, such as nuts, seeds, or avocado. Cook and purchase products made with oils higher in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat (e.g., canola, corn, olive, peanut, safflower, soybean, and sunflower) rather than butter, shortening, or coconut or palm oils.

Careful readers will notice eggs don't appear in the above paragraph.

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#188
post #106

Stainless steel with some basic seasoning every once in a while (oil, high heat, it’s easy to do) has done me well for a long time. I do keep a non stick around just for eggs though, hard to beat.

I think carbon steel is better than stainless. It can be seasoned to almost Teflon levels of non-stickness, just by burning some cooking oil, the seasoning is maintained by cooking, often comes pre-seasoned, is cheap (there’s no reason to buy an expensive carbon steel pan! Get one from a restaurant supplier)

I would add that is far better and easier to season, almost as easy to maintain, and much less cantankerous. I use stainless for sauces and such but carbon steel or trust old cast iron is a much better choice for the majority of kitchens. Stainless steel is great for commercial though since it's nearly maintenance free

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#189
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think carbon steel is better than stainless. It can be seasoned to almost Teflon levels of non-stickness, just by burning some cooking oil, the seasoning is maintained by cooking, often comes pre-seasoned, is cheap (there’s no reason to buy an expensive carbon steel pan! Get one from a restaurant supplier)

So you eat burnt oil every time you cook?

only if you don't clean out your pan. Any youtube video on seasoning it will explain it quite well. Seasoning isn't "burnt oil" by any stretch or chemistry.

Re: Cooking and bird safety

#190
post #179

Just to birds, of course. We have nothing to worry about until 15 years from now that we learn burning teflon causes some poorly understood conditions the maker knew about all along. Ban it already. https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon-toxin/

What could be a better alternative to non-stick pans?

Cast iron perhaps? With an enamel coating?
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