Wife wants to dump coin on pot...whats ur experience?

well knock yourself out , I'll stay with my stainless cookware!!

 

If you eat dirt,as a kid,almost no possiblilty of

oh no i use my stainless mostly! but no sense knocking the rest

 

My wife is an excellent cook, she puts many "chefs" to shame. Her take is use the Teflon coated pots, but when the Teflon starts coming off, retire them. She's noticed that quality Teflon coated pans will hold onto the Teflon a lot longer than pans used to. We're also big fans of the Le creuset porcelain coated cast iron. Those are very good, but very expensive.

Traditional cast iron pots are great, for many things, but they are work to get and keep seasoned.

 

Me too.... wait, I know a chit load. Great chefs, good food, they know what works. I'll ask.

 

I just went through this with my wife. I’m a huge fan of cast iron, but it does require additional work and my wife hates using cast iron so I bought a pretty expensive set of Teflon coated pots/pans several years ago. They worked pretty well, but I CAN NOT get my wife to stop using metal spatulas and spoons in them so the coating started coming off in less than a year.

We replaced them with ceramic coated pans and I’ll never go back to Teflon. The non-stick works better than Teflon and while metal utensils is still not recommended, the ceramic is holding up MUCH better to it than the Teflon did. Cleaning them is a lot easier as well, my wife has a tendency to leave the cooktop on after serving our food so I have a lot of experience cleaning baked food off both types of cookware!!

 

Thanks all and keepem coming. I wish she would use my cast iron but she is ocd and arthritic...can't get the cast clean enough and don't want the work to keep them seasoned perfectly on top of that she can't move them or lift them. Makes me cry a little bit when I see them all covered in dust in the basement.

 

For the ceramic/porcelain ones, if hot and run under water will the coating "pop" off or crack? Do you have to use much oil or grease? What can you use on them metal, wood, plastic? What are good brands? Teflon people what brands does the teflon stick to the pan and not scrape up? My wife cooks on gas and way too hot. I don't have issues with sticking in the stainless steel set we now have but she can weld food to it like nothing. She is a good cook but not a Pyro maniac like me and doesn't have the ability to communicate with the flame. We cook on gas and I love it her not so much.

 

I mentioned earlier that my wife often leaves a pan on the hot cooktop for hours after she's done cooking, the other thing she does is take a pan off of a cooktop on high, dump it in the sink and run cold water over it. So far the ceramic has not popped or cracked.

Usage of oil/grease seems about the same as teflon, and less than cast iron.

You're supposed to use wood and plastic in them just like with Teflon, but ceramic is harder than Teflon so you can get away with using metal for awhile. I'm sure eventually it'll be scratched but we have a 12" ceramic pan my wife uses 3-4 times a week for 2 years and it's going strong so far.

I have no idea what brand ours is, she saw it at Meijer (they're just like a Wal-Mart) for $40 and bought it. It's white with a neon green TPE covered handle so it certainly doesn't look like premium cookware. It's also dishwasher safe which is pretty awesome when I'm tired and don't want to wash it by hand (in my house my wife cooks and I clean up afterwards).

I just realized that 12" is the only ceramic pan we have, my wife also bought a set of smaller pans that have a coating like Teflon but it's non-toxic. I'm pretty impressed so far with how easily they clean up, but I'm sure she'll ruin them eventually with that darned metal spatula!

 

Just to clarify.....Walmart is just like Meijer. Meijer began back in 1934, and Wally's in '62.
As for the pans, I've had a LOT of Teflon, and yes, they do scratch and the Teflon flakes off. I'm sure I've eaten my share of it. Not dead.....yet.
I've got a couple nice ceramic coated dutch ovens I use to bake "no knead" bread, and they're very easy to clean.
I don't use metal utensils in any of our pots/pans, but some can't seem to understand that doing so is bound to ruin the Teflon coating.
We bought a good set of Calphalon a few years ago that's made of Aluminum with some kind of black coating (I'm pretty sure it's not Teflon), that's also seen the use of way too many metal utensils. I won't use Aluminum anymore. I made spaghetti sauce in one a long time ago, and the acid pitted the metal.
Again, not sure I like the idea of eating that.

 

They make replacement body parts out of teflon. It's a very stable substance - until you overheat it. You probably shouldn't eat burnt blackened food that has approached a charcoal state because not is there a small possibility that the teflon has started to break down but that blackened food is full of cancer causing substances too. I don't think your stomach acids can break it down it is that stable.
Overheated teflon stinks - bad. If you get the 'smoke' in your lungs you'll be sick as the proverbial dog and any pet birds will too and probably die. Ventilate the room stat if you burn an empty pan. Probably best to throw the pan out too.

My beef with cheap low mass coated pans is cheap thin pans suck to cook with and can overheat real quick.
They can be horrible to try to cook with.

 

I vote to buy her whatever the hell she wants. Did she tell you which chainsaw to buy?

Last thing I would want to do is spend big $ on pans that she hates...and have it be your fault. It would be all and stuff.

 

Those are very wise words!! Before I got married I had a set of Victorinox kitchen knives. They're pretty decent knives, but myself being into cutlery it always bothered me that they were just stamped steel. So I bought a really nice set of forged JA Henckels thinking my wife would prefer to use nicer knives as often as she cooks.

Turns out she doesn't. She grew up using a cheap set of dull stamped knives from Sears, and she happy using cheap stamped dull knives. So those poor Henckels get abused cutting on metal and glass surfaces, then get tossed in the sink and are chipped up and are painfully dull. And my wife threatens to stab me whenever I offer to sharpen them for her!!! She's terrified of sharp knives and cuts herself every single time she uses one!

 

Get them what they want, leave it at that. Then get what you want for when you cook. Every one is happy then. Don't forget, you need to clean your pans after, or the wife may just ruin the surface. i.e. put them in the dishwasher. My wife has a few of those copper ones you see advertised on tv. We don't put them in the dishwasher or use any metal on them. After several months after daily use, they are still as good as when we got them. I have read some bad reviews but I have to think the owners are abusive to their pans.

 

yep same here, converted our house to NG a few years after I bought it. Love cooking with it..FYI I did not put in a NG fireplace but everything else is NG

 

in yer tummy duuhhh...unless you spit it out

 

See link below for by far the best cookware on the planet if you ask me, but I'm not an expert. I have cheap stuff, expensive stuff, ceramic, Teflon, aluminum, lots of cast iron (which I like also of course!).... but the best stuff is this German made Titanium non-stick stuff. I will foreworn you, it is VERY expensive. I first saw it at a boat show and the demo they do was pretty amazing. They take maple syrup and other nasty stuff and burn on for 20 minutes on a red hot stove, they burn everything on it. And then just slide it off. Good stuff, non toxic....

ScaleDown| Titanium Nonstick Cookware, Titanium Cookware Gansevoort NY




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I have one of those copper thingies. Good as new after about a year of everyday use. Nothing really sticks to it much.

As for Teflon, can't be good for you to eat but it's not very high on my concern list.

Same could be said about cast iron. Nothing good comes from the oils used to season after being heated. Pretty sure it turns to a plastic like substance any way. Might as well be teflon. Not high on my concern list either.

I have a ceramic griddle that has seen a lot of bacon. Works pretty good and seems pretty durable.

The copper pan is best imho.