Non stick usually implies teflon coating. Throw it out.

I have some cast iron cookware. Fun to use, the end result does feel different, heat disperses well and evenly and keeps warm for longer.

It can be used over nearly any heat source, with similar results, but I do prefer induction. More efficient and less prone no mishaps.

Metal hot. Make food hot.

Think a bit deeper. How quickly is that heat transferred, and at what peak temperatures? Does the metal keep any heat of its own and impart that into the food, or does it just convey the heat from the burner to the food? And how quickly does it do that?

but my wife seems to think cast-iron is necessary for certain things (searing a prime rib roast, for example.).

Look at the thermal mechanics of this.

Take the cast iron pot. You can throw that on the stove and let it get ripping hot, like the metal itself is carrying a ton of heat energy. When you put the prime rib in it, the metal dumps its heat into the meat much faster than a flame alone would. This helps you get a strong sear on the outside, without dumping in too much total quantity of heat to cook the meat on the inside more than you want.

then I gotta figure out gas vs. electric vs. induction vs infrared…

Heat can be transferred 3 ways- conduction (flows between two touching objects), convection (hot object heats air, air blows against cold object, air heats cold object) and radiation (hot object radiates energy through space and it warms cold object).

Electric- coils get hot, the pan touching the coils transfers heat by conduction. Downside is uneven heating- neither the pan nor the coils is perfectly flat so you get hot spots.

Infrared- coils under the glass get hot and radiate heat through the glass. This works pretty well.

Induction- coils under the glass but they don’t get hot. Instead they create a magnetic field modulated at low radio frequencies (15-150 KHz). This fluctuating magnetic field interacts with any ferrous metal close to it, creating small but powerful eddy currents inside the metal and thus heating the metal up. So the stove doesn’t create any heat at all, it’s the pan that actually gets hot. This by the way is neither conduction convection nor radiation, because heat isn’t being transferred, it’s created inside the pot.

Gas- flammable gas (usually propane or natural gas, which is mostly methane) burns creating high temperature exhaust gases that rise against the pot and thus heat the pot. Many chefs like this. Gas stoves should ideally be used with an overhead hood as gas stoves have been proven to drastically reduce indoor air quality.

Of the options- induction is usually the best these days, because it’s the most efficient, cleanest, and also in many cases has the highest output (in terms of watts of heat pumped into the pot).

When cooking, you want a stove capable of very high output. The more output you have, the faster it will boil water for example.

Your wife sounds smart, listen to heerrrrrr.

Also I don’t know, but since hearing about non-stick pans leaking cancer into your food (if you scrape them with a fork, etc), I just like to use a normal pan.

I personally cook with a mix of stainless, high carbon, and cast iron and have moved on from gas to induction, with loving my induction and steel pan combo.

I don’t care for non-stick due to its short lifespan, not great a searing, and having to replace them every couple of years creating waste and chemicals.

I’ve found that cast iron with a properly done seasoning and just a little bit of oil, which come on almost no one is cooking without a little bit of oil, I’ve got a perfectly great non-stick surface that can do eggs, including omurice, and salmon without anything sticking and cleanup is fine, if I get some stuck bits, just take a plastic scraper and then just clean as normal with or without soap depending (yeah, keep it to yourself purists)

My two cents

Some answers here are close.

It depends on what type of person you are.

If you’re the kind of person who has a neat, clean kitchen who does all their dishes after every meal, go cast iron.

If you’re the kind of person who has a messy kitchen and you really only do dishes once or twice a week, go primarily with stainless, a nonstick pan for eggs, and a 10-12 inch cast iron pan for occasional use, like that rib roast.

I like it. I got rid of all my non stick pans. They eventually get scratched and at that point they leak toxins. I have two very old pans and a hundred year old lid that I got for nothing. They were being thrown away from a camper that was being scrapped. They work well and after I finally learned the ins and outs of seasoning them they dont stick, much.

It’s a tool. Like a hammer.

Hammer hit nail, nail go in. But if you look for hammers you’ll quickly find that there’s a dozen or so different hammers available, all of which make nail go in.

Different hammers are for different types of hitting things.

Different cooking pans are for different types of cooking. All of them make food go hot.

Stainless steel make food go hot and also make pan sauce and clean real easy. But food sometimes stick. This is considered a feature, not a flaw.

Non stick make food go hot but food no stick. Doesn’t last very long but it’s very easy to clean. If you really love eggs they’re a necessity.

Cast iron make food go hot and stay hot longer. But they don’t heat very evenly and they’re hard to clean, this is also considered a feature by… Certain people…

For some reason there’s a community of gooners for cast iron. I cook a lot and have long since abandoned 99% of my cast iron cookware. The only things that survived was a burger press and a Dutch oven that has a ceramic glaze on it so it’s easy to keep clean. I find that for just make food go hot, cast iron is not as good at it as stainless steel is. But if I’m making a stew, or bread, or frying something, a really big cast iron vessel really is the best thing. It stays at a temperature longer than anything else does, and that matters in specific applications.

Pan make food hot. But cold food make flimsy lightweight pan less hot too. Food just sort of simmers while sometimes you want scorching.

Cast iron, or heavy bottom stainless steel pan, stays hot while food touches the pan. More energy is stored in hot heavy bottom pan. Food gets scorched and this gives more roasty toasty flavour, which is better in my opinion. If you don’t care for this, don’t.

Also, heavy bottoms spread heat more evenly so everything is cooked at same speed (not the middle of the pan faster like most non-stick pans).

Never buy non-stick unless it’s labeled PFAS-free. PFAS, also called “forever chemicals”, are persistent organic pollutants which are a great way to fuck up the whole ecosystem

Induction > glass ceramic (infrared) > gas > cast iron electric > fire

Why ceramic over gas? Because gas is a bit more responsive but

1. Needs extra infrastructure
2. Safety risk
3. Not sustainable and climate warming

And btw, why is induction still more expensive than ceramic? It’s not that new a tech anymore.

Yes. Cast iron is best. It and high carbon steel are the only real “non stick” because thyre the only ones you can season. Dont use “nonstick” pans they are just pollutants and give you cancer. Seasoning cast iron is easy (really… Do less! Stop reaming it and scrubbing it to death… just get it really hot and wipe it). Cast iron last forever… these other things become garbage in 1-5 yrs

Reddit has a fucking hard-on for cast iron. I’m not really a fan.

I don’t use teflon non-stick but have had good results with ceramic-based non-stick. My second choice would be carbon steel, which has a similar “seasoning” process as cast iron, but I find carbon steel easier to work with compared to cast iron.

It fits the bill of cheap and reliable, but not “modern”*. The heat retention is very useful, and handling the surface of the pan itself is easy when you’re using it to cook constantly.

Non-stick more often than not is going to be cheap and modern, but not reliable because high quality non stick pans are expensive (or people opt for enamel instead because of low quality PTFE/PFAS that both scrapes off easily and can’t handle high heat which is dangerous, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-eBmPSqd4g)

I would argue the “upgrade” to cast iron is carbon steel, which is much more common as a wok material. You get a nice balance between affordable, reliable, and modern.

• *By modern, I just mean the underlying technology. Cast iron is pretty old and has its own flaws you have to deal with, and it lacks some of the nice features of newer materials.

gas vs. electric vs. induction vs infrared…

The tier list is:

• Induction (most responsive heat control)
• Gas (Slightly less responsive heat control
• Infrared (Electric, much slower)
• Electric (direct heating element, as slow as infrared but lacks the heat retention, have not seen these outside bargain basement cheapo units landlords like to put in apartments solely to screw with your ability to cook food normally)

Gas and Induction is always preferable because infrared is slow enough to be at the best annoying and at the worst less forgiving if you mess up the temperature. Induction comes with the great advantage that it doesn’t require a special gas line, and you can actually buy single unit cooktops for pretty cheap, but do keep in mind that induction only works on magnetic metals (won’t work with pure copper or aluminum).

Metal hot. Makes food hot. Yes.

But!!

Cold food makes hot pan cold.

Cast iron has a lot of thermal mass, so when you put a cold piece of meat on it it doesn’t immediately get cold and stop cooking for a bit. Thin pans without it don’t keep hot, hot so they don’t sear long enough and you don’t get the maillard reaction and the tasty brown crust.

My family uses our cast iron skillets daily. We have one that is almost exclusively for eggs, and one for meat.

Cast iron wants to be used often and if you really like cooking, will eventually become your go-to. But not everyone gets there; for a lot of people it is counterintuitive to have a pan that you only scrub any bits off and rinse with plain water. Actually, our egg pan only gets wiped out with paper towels because its so slippery now. I don’t think I’ve scrubbed it in months.

If you really want to use your pans:

1. Best: cast iron
2. Better: stainless steel or enameled
3. Good: high quality nonstick like HexClad
4. Never: cheap non-stick

We use the absolute hell out of our cast iron and our stainless steel. They all get scrubbed with a metal Chore-Boy scrubbee. Only the stainless gets soap.