You Should Know

“a stainless… steel… WOK.”

I’m going to need a supercut of this guy saying “WOK”.

Bought a carbon steel pan - never looked back, it is excellent and lasts forever!

my seasoning flaked off and it became metallic appearance. I was struggling with obtaining stable seasoning, but found a reddit post that suggesting Blueing process. You heat-up your clean wok a lot with no-oil the iron reacts with oxygen to form magnetite Fe3O4 which holds seasoning much better. After you blue your wok, you season it by heating up some oil, but generally it seasons itself diring usage. If something starts sticking, more oil and more heat usually does the job.

Wok with Tak is an awesome channel. It's one of those "Bob Ross" style channels that show up every now and then. Full of good information and some decent recipes.

For the majority of cooking? Yes, you don't need a non-stick pan. A properly used steel (or even aluminum) pan will work. Cast Iron is obviously loved but Carbon Steel is actually what most people want and has almost all of the same properties. But properly oiling your pan (and I actually love cooking sprays for dishes where I am using a neutral oil. Glug of "real" oil, get it up to temp, and then give a quick spritz just to make sure EVERYTHING is coated) and cooking at a high enough heat that your proteins can properly react and not "stick" to the pan will get you almost the entire way.

That said? Eggs and fish. Eggs very much are in that "nobody ever complained about too much butter" category but there is a lot to be said about a quick egg without any additional fats. And if you are cooking eggs these days, you can afford a 20 dollar specialty pan.... And fish in particular is the kind of food where it is very easy to overcook it while waiting for all the appropriate reactions to occur so you can cleanly flip it.

If I were to downsize my kitchen (which I hopefully will be doing in a few months...)? That shit goes in the appropriate bin. But if you have the space? A 20-ish dollar restaurant supply store non-stick pan is AMAZING. And cheap enough that you can afford to get rid of it the moment you see any scratching.

I never used teflon because I read somewhere that you mustn’t heat it up to a certain point. I just used stainless steel all my life until I got a cast iron skillet.

Still use the stainless steel pan for 97% of cooking

What's the consensus on ceramic pots? They seem to be easier for nonstick and I don't think they have the same issues as Teflon.

I just use butter to cook my eggs. I also pay attention to the bonds that the bottom of the egg form with the pan. By using a stainless turner on a stainless pan you can get between the egg and the bonds it's forming with the pan. The more often you manipulate it and make sure those bonds don't form, the more "non-stick" the egg is.

I usually pan flip single eggs cooked with this method because the egg slides around the pan easily.

My wife has a problem doing the same though, so I buy a couple of the disposable Teflon junk pans on a recurring basis.

I've been looking at the pirotech pans which are supposed to be nonstick and fully recyclable, but I've been unable to find a lot of reviews on them.

Controversial:

Im okay occasionally scrubbing the pans a bit harder. Sometimes it sticks - sonetimes it doesnt 🤷‍♂️

In addition to the tips in this thread: Parchment paper rounds that fit inside the pan and work great for really really sticky stuff

Does he actually show the spot seasoning process in this video? Or is it in a different vid?

I didn't know about this technique, thanks!

You can also season the whole pan once and the nonstick effect will last a very long time.