Aluminum has much better thermal conductivity, but is a terrible surface to cook on (soft, oxidizes, imparts flavors to acidic foods). The best compromise is a clad pan with aluminum sandwitched between layers of stainless. I switched from cooking on cast iron to cooking on clad and it makes a huge difference.
This guy took a bunch of IR camera shots demonstrating the effect: https://www.centurylife.org/is-all-clad-worth-it-is-it-still...
> it's a nonstick pan without the carcinogens.
Strictly speaking, this is false. The seasoning on a cast iron pan is burnt oil. It is without question mildly carcinogenic. Not so much that I've thrown away my cast iron - I still use it occasionally - but I wouldn't tout it as having health benefits (except maybe a tiny increase in iron consumption).
FWIW the newer ceramic nonstick pans are incredible and nearly indestructible. Clad is still my go-to, but I use the henckles granitium pans from costco for anything with egg in it. Two years later they still work like new.
Woks are great, but you wouldn't pan-fry a steak in a wok.
If you're talking about pure stainless pans, I've never seen one. I've seen pure stainless steel stock pots (though even then, most have a clad base). The thing about stock pots is that they're full of liquid, which convects and makes thermal conductivity of the hardware pretty much irrelevant. Never buy expensive stock pots.
Isn’t it completely opposite? Teflon is incredibly inert and nobody knows what really happens in cast seasoning other than - it’s burned food!?
No lol that's the whole point
> without the carcinogens.
I'll take that trade, I'm not going to spend my 30s sitting around waiting for pans to heat up because there's some very small probability a pan will harm me.
De Buyers are more expensive than your regular cast iron, but they’ll last a lifetime.
"The raw material in Ultra Light Original is exactly the same as for our traditional cast iron. The difference is that with the new technique, the pans are less porous. This explains why the pans responds much quicker to changes in the stove’s power effect, and why they heat up and cool down faster than traditional cast iron cookware."
https://ronnebybruk.us/blogs/cookware/ultralight-original
It isn't near-feather-light like some pans I've picked up in the store for sure. It's just light enough to be a noticeable difference from other cast iron pans I've tried, like being much more comfortable to hold one-handed.
Cast iron pans are actually not great at heat transfer, which is why you see pans like all clad where there's aluminum or copper clad in steel. They are really good at holding heat though, so when you put something cool into them they don't immediately get cold.
Most people really don't care about this though. If you're a foodie, you're probably not going to be satisfied with the $5 wal mart nonstick pan, because it's a thing you care about. For everyone else who doesn't care, they either have a completely different definition of what 'good performance' is (and buy accordingly) or they don't cook anyway.
Mise en place helps immensely!
I just want to eat and I want to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. For a nice meal, I'll go to a restaurant. I'm not interested in learning how to prepare my own food better, and all of these comments and the OP seems to forget that.
In any high-dimensional space, most samples are far from the median on at least one axis. You have cooking, I have coffee, programming, and looking at birds.
My cast iron usage most days isn't anything fancy, it's just cooking breakfast for the family. The "other cooking related tasks" means:
* Crack the eggs into the bowl
* Season and beat them
* Start the oatmeal water boiling
* Set the table
By then the cast iron is ready for the eggs. You don't have to be making a fancy meal to have other things you can be doing while the pan heats up, and it doesn't take that long even on our slow glasstop stove.
> You have cooking, I have coffee, programming, and looking at birds.
I used to be like this, eat as quickly as I could and whatever was quick enough that filled the hole in my stomach. You will likely pay for this later, and will have discussions with your dr about food freshness, processed foods and how horrible the food at even “heath food” restaurants is for you. Unless you want to live your life with gastrointestinal issues, change your attitude about cooking.
This strikes me as particularly ironic in the current context. How much time have you spent so far today arguing about pans on HN? How many times could you have heated up a cast iron skillet during that time?
I use cast iron pan because everything I cook comes out 10 times better on a cast iron pan. You can properly sear meat on them. Things don't get cooked on the outside and stay raw on the inside.
I thought I was shit at cooking before getting a cast iron pan - I just had the wrong tools. I'm definitely not a chef and I don't cook for pleasure, I just throw chicken, steaks, eggs on the pan and eat when it's safe to do so.
Most chefs on youtube are using cast iron pans, you won't get the same results following instructions made for another pan.
In regards to heating up, I never noticed the pan taking too long to heat up.
Maintenance takes more time, but it's nothing more than rubbing oil on it and throwing it in the oven. You can also get away with not doing it for a long time (you can wait until food starts sticking to it)
Pots yes. Pans not so sure.