stainless steel vs teflon

[brassnuts]

What are the advantages/disadvantages for each types of cookware?

[RunDownHouse]

Avoid tephlon. Get cookware with which you can use metal cooking utensils (and steel wool). You'll pay more for it (especially if you're getting something like Calphalon), but its way worth it. The food cooks better, the cookware is higher quality, etc.

I'm just very anti-teflon. A good friend of mine went to the CIA (great culinary school, not spy v. spy government agency), and he sold me on avoiding the teflon cheapo stuff.

[lucas9000]

get stainless steel...clean it with barkeeper's friend.

[AncientPC]

I bought teflon before I knew any better.

The stuff scratches off pretty easily if you use metal utensils when preparing food. Plus teflon is supposed to be cancerous or something. If you take it up past 500ºF the stuff melts right off and it's bad for you. I burnt some oil once by accident in a teflon pan and it melted the stuff right off.

Definately go with stainless steel.

[fishsauce]

[ QUOTE ]
I bought teflon before I knew any better.

The stuff scratches off pretty easily if you use metal utensils when preparing food. Plus teflon is supposed to be cancerous or something. If you take it up past 500ºF the stuff melts right off and it's bad for you. I burnt some oil once by accident in a teflon pan and it melted the stuff right off.

Definately go with stainless steel.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with everything said above. This month's Cook's Illustrated even has a little blurb about heating teflon coated pans up too high before adding oil or food. Stainless steel is the shiznit.

BTW, nice avatar Ancient [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[AncientPC]

Oh sh*t another sushi avatar! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Yeah I had decided to pan sear a big chunk of chuck before using it in a pot roast. Stuck the pan on the grill on high for a minute or so (this was at a new apartment so I didn't realise how hot high really was), poured in some vegatable oil and the damn oil just lit up.

So I just stood there for about 5 minutes holding the pan and waiting for the oil to burn out.

How do you put out an oil fire anyhow? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] It's not like I had sand or anything to smother it out. The fire extinguisher didn't even cross my mind, but the last thing I wanted to do was to spray water / foam on the pan and have the burning oil fly everywhere.

[Enon]

I just recently purchased a Myers parrot and was warned that heating a teflon pan releases gas into the air that can quickly kill most birds.

[InchoateHand]

You ever finish pan-searing/frying something, but there is a thirty/forty minute wait for other people to get ready to eat it?

With stainless steel you throw it in the oven. Like others said, teflon sucks, except for making eggs when you are lazy.

[mason55]

you can do this with stainless? are you sure you're not thinking of cast iron?

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]
Avoid tephlon. Get cookware with which you can use metal cooking utensils (and steel wool). You'll pay more for it (especially if you're getting something like Calphalon), but its way worth it. The food cooks better, the cookware is higher quality, etc.

I'm just very anti-teflon. A good friend of mine went to the CIA (great culinary school, not spy v. spy government agency), and he sold me on avoiding the teflon cheapo stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]

Scrubette bought me calphalon pans for christmas. They are orders of magnitude better than the teflon pans I used to use.

scrub