The amount of stickiness perceived is 99% a skill / procedural issue.
Cast iron is good too but takes longer to heat the pan.
You only have to look in any professional kitchen - they don't use non-stick pans.
Strata makes them, they're priced competitively with standard carbon steel pans.
Chris Young turned me onto them in his video about a $4,200 silver frying pan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdORIBH3R88
I've recently tossed all my coated pans (my favourite were the Anolon, but those too shed) and moved to stainless steel, save for a cast iron and carbon steel pan.
In the journey here the best I could find was a Hestan nanobond pan, which unfortunately laminated and has shown some pits after few months of use. They refunded me but titaniums isn't yet where stainless steel is.
Now I'm using a mix of Demeyere, De Buyer, and Made In.
It takes a bit of time to get used cooking in them without a ton of fat.
Look up Leidenfrost effect on youtube and you'll learn pretty quickly how to use stainless steel and do not let anything stick even fish.
Okay for a steak, not great for eggs!
Frying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYpYK1DV_SU
Scrambled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFtkmInrlWw
The trick I found is to take the pan off the heat after the droplets start jumping and add a bunch of butter and then add the eggs and put it back on low heat.
Chris young has a great comparison of the physical differences between various metals used in pans. [0]. Maybe if you're on the right side of the AI bubble, you could spring for a solid silver version[1]
I do mostly cook in ghee, beef tallow and coconut oil.
If you're ok with refined/seed oils there's plenty more you can use.
cdemer•1h ago
- For each piece of cookware, we purchased and tested three separate units
- Before taking the “new” measurement, each unit was washed three times with dish soap and rinsed with isopropyl alcohol
- Oil blanks and uncoated cookware were included as controls
- We did not chemically identify the particles that were released
- This investigation measured particle release, not toxicity or health risk
vaylian•42m ago
> For consumers who wish to minimize potential exposure to PTFE coating particles, the simplest approach may be to treat nonstick cookware as a specialized tool rather than a default choice. Instead, reach for uncoated cookware, such as stainless steel, cast iron, carbon steel, or glass, whenever practical.
If we follow that advice: For which type of food/dishes does it make sense to use nonstick cookware?
formerly_proven•40m ago
dfxm12•34m ago
On the otherhand, cooking eggs in nonstick might be easier/require less fat than working with stainless steel.
Nonstick also generally has a lower rated max temp, so avoid using it in the broiler...
All this is to say, it's a trade-off for convenience. With the right technique, or if you want to spend time to rebuild seasoning, you can pretty much use whatever pans you want to cook whatever you want. These types of non-stick pans are relatively new in the world of cooking.
stronglikedan•18m ago
I don't understand why anyone would want to cook eggs with less fat to begin with.