I’m the founder of RTINGS.com. A few notes about this investigation:

- For each piece of cookware, we purchased and tested three separate units

- Before taking the “new” measurement, each unit was washed three times with dish soap and rinsed with isopropyl alcohol

- Oil blanks and uncoated cookware were included as controls

- We did not chemically identify the particles that were released

- This investigation measured particle release, not toxicity or health risk

Thank you for doing this. The conclusion from the text is:

> For consumers who wish to minimize potential exposure to PTFE coating particles, the simplest approach may be to treat nonstick cookware as a specialized tool rather than a default choice. Instead, reach for uncoated cookware, such as stainless steel, cast iron, carbon steel, or glass, whenever practical.

If we follow that advice: For which type of food/dishes does it make sense to use nonstick cookware?

I stopped cooking with nonstick pans over 15 years ago, and the only thing I've found that can consistently be a bit tricky is eggs, but really only if the pan isn't hot enough yet when you add the butter or oil, you don't use enough butter/oil, you try to scramble the eggs in the pan, or you try to lift the eggs too soon. So arguably it takes a little more attention to detail to cook eggs on stainless steel, but in general I really don't think there is anything that requires nonstick. But even for the limited list of items that are easier to prepare on nonstick, it's usually just a matter of learning how to adjust your technique to match the cookware.

I made the switch to stainless steel and cast iron pretty much on a whim after I first read about Robert Bilott's lawsuits against DuPont, at which point I discovered it made almost no difference to my quality of life at all to avoid nonstick. To such an extent that I have never been even slightly tempted to switch back, despite honestly not feeling a particularly strong motivation to avoid nonstick in the first place. I've just always figured cooking with steel is an entirely painless way to reduce my potential exposure to dangerous chemicals, so even if it ends up being pointless, I haven't lost anything of value anyway.

Eggs stick if the pan temperature isn't right or if there's not enough lube. User error or skill issue. Here's how to do it: buy good pans, turn on pan to ~medium, add oil and rub in with cloth, add more oil (or butter, butter is better with eggs), when pan is hot add eggs. This works with good quality (all clad) or heavy (cast iron) pans.

Personal opinion - deep fried eggs are goated. It's either runny scrambled (pretty hard on cast iron/stainless) or deep fried. Anything in-between is incompetence.

Runny scrambled (French omelet) isn't too bad on carbon steel IME. And certainly possible on cast iron, since that was the type of pan used when Carême wrote his cookbook. By Escoffier's time carbon steel was more common. Neither of them is famous for having invented a time machine, both predate non-stick cookware, and they're the most famous French chefs in history.

French omelet is completely different thing. I do use my cast iron for this, it's okay if you go hard with silicone spatula. But still, more work than nonstick. I keep meaning to get carbon steel!

By "runny scrambled" I mean a folded omelette with a runny center, just-set exterior, and no browning. Classic French style, not just slop on a plate.

> Add oil and rub in with cloth

Do what now?

My wife and I started doing this about 5 years ago or so. Since then, we gradually acquired more carbon steel, stainless steel, cast iron, and enameled cookware. Initially we were reaching for the non-stick for all the typical reasons, e.g. making eggs, but over time we found ourselves reaching for the non-stick less and less. It turns out that the "seasoning" on the cast iron and carbon steel improves their non-stick properties over time, which at this point is good-enough for anything... I can cook eggs, pancakes, a piece of salmon without breaking the delicate skin or shredding the fish, and so on. As I see it, non-stick pans have two benefits: they require less maintenance (you can stack them in the sink and deal with them whenever, which you shouldn't with uncoated metal pans after cooking anything liquid/acidic) and you can cook more easily without using any fat. For us, neither matter much, so about 2 years or so ago when our last non-stick pan needed to be replaced we decided not to get a new one and just get rid of it.

I think the advice is to avoid using it as a daily driver. If you only have nonstick and carbon steel pans, you might not want to cook something acidic in the carbon steel as it will kill the seasoning. If you have nonstick and stainless steel, you can use the SS for that.

On the otherhand, cooking eggs in nonstick might be easier/require less fat than working with stainless steel.

Nonstick also generally has a lower rated max temp, so avoid using it in the broiler...

All this is to say, it's a trade-off for convenience. With the right technique, or if you want to spend time to rebuild seasoning, you can pretty much use whatever pans you want to cook whatever you want. These types of non-stick pans are relatively new in the world of cooking.

> cooking eggs in nonstick might be easier/require less fat

I don't understand why anyone would want to cook eggs with less fat to begin with.

The usual health reasons I guess. And when I cook eggs in butter, most of the butter is discarded; I guess some could perceive this as wasteful.

I can cook an over-easy egg with less than a teaspoon of oil on a non-stick.

If I do it on cast-iron, it's easily twice that. That adds up to a lot of oil being throw away in a year. And while I love butter on bread, I don't want the taste of it with my eggs.

Maybe you could use less butter? When I cook eggs, the butter is basically all absorbed by the end. It took a few tries to dial in the perfect amount though.

Anything that's high in protein, and you don't want to brown appreciably or use much fat. So mostly french omelette and pancakes. The upside is that these also require basically no tool manipulation in the pan and are low heat anyway and probably not something you're daily driving.

> specialized tool

Thing is, I don't even have need for this tool. Other for perfect scrambled eggs (creamy french style, that nobody really appreciates so it's a moot) I don't have a need for it.

Especially if you upgrade to induction, cast iron + stainless are absolute goats. They are indestructible and zero maintenance. Non brainer.

My conclusion for teflon pans existence is the shitty electric cooktops. Replace them with induction. It costs like $400-600 if it's in built in (idk why US are so reluctant on built-in one). Your existing electrical line probably can support it. It's a 15 minute DIY job.

I do French-style omelets in a carbon steel pan, on an electric cooktop. Mine's an 8.5" omelet pan, perfect for two egg omelets. I treat it a lot like a wok: heat up until a bit of water dropped in shows the Leidenfrost effect, dump out the water, dump in oil, let it smoke for a few seconds, dump out the oil, then reduce heat, add butter, and drop in the (pre-scrambled & strained) eggs & start mixing while moving the pan back & forth. As the eggs start cooking through, begin rolling by folding up the side & back over, once fully rolled slide onto plate.

This takes practice. I made an omelet a day for a bit over a month to get it to the point I could make one perfect every time. The first few were garbage, after about a week I got a decent result, and the rest was just refining my heat control to get it correct reliably.

I got a stainless steel skillet out of curiosity after yet another painful experience with nonstick: Bacon grease sticks very well to nonstick and can be almost impossible to clean off. Picked stainless steel after reading about the different types because it seemed to take the least effort to handle and last the longest, turned out really easy to clean after bacon/sausage as well.

Eggs. Chef says don’t touch my omelet pan on pain of death.

Appreciated your VPN testing. Organizations like yours improve my life every time I'm going to buy something.

Thanks! That's exactly why we do this work. Feedback on what we could improve is always welcome.

Thank you for RTINGS, it’s an absolute gold mine for picky comparison shoppers.

I don't have any nonstick. It's not that hard to cook anything or to clean stainless or cast iron. For cast iron/carbon steel 99% of the time I run it under water and rub it with my hand and it comes clean in 30 seconds. Rarely I use some soap.

Stainless comes clean easiest right after you use it. Especially if you pour a little water on it while it's still hot. I do occasionally use an SOS on stainless.

There's nothing I'm unable to cook with my pans. I make french omelettes in stainless steel pans and they come out perfect.

I use all stainless steel now too. When I first got a stainless steel frying pan (a good thick one with some kind of impressive layering system that I’ve long forgotten about) I just assumed that things would stick to it, but I’ve never had any problems that didn’t come off with at most a basic sponge and moderate effort. Mostly food just rinses right off. I’ve had that pan for something like 15 years now. As far as I can tell, non-stick is just a ploy to get people to keep buying new pans as it wears off.

> As far as I can tell, non-stick is just a ploy to get people to keep buying new pans as it wears off.

This is one of the biggest reasons my wife and I switched away from non-stick too. We moved from replacing non-stick pans after a year of use to our carbon steel pans working better after 5 years of use than when we got them... or buying 80 year old cast irons from a thrift store for 5 bucks. We have more types of cookware now, but none of them have an expiration date

Cast iron & eggs: if all that's going in are eggs (and fat), I have less clean-up with cast-iron than Teflon.

Heat pan on medium-low, add oil, add slightly-stirred eggs, turn heat off or minimum, mix with a silicone spatula. Perfect eggs in about a minute. The heat retention of the iron transfers at just the right rate to the eggs, the oil (olive, butter, avocado) prevents sticking.

My usual "scramble" has a bunch of ingredients (onions, garlic, sausage, peppers, tomatoes, spinach, seasoning, eggs), and there's more adhesion, but a 10--15 minute soak (whilst eating) hot water + detergent, and a quick scrub, and it's all good.

The only thing that I need a nonstick for is a French omellete or French-style scrambled eggs. Because with stainless steel, carbon steel, or cast iron you need heat in order to prevent sticking.

Apparently it's possible but hard to do in stainless steel:

https://reddit.com/r/cookware/comments/1ove4wy/finally_a_non...

I just make them fast and I add a little slurry of potato starch and water or milk to the eggs. Around a teaspoon to 2 or 3 eggs.

I just get the pan hot, add oil, dump in the eggs, shake the pan with the fork agitating, but not touching the bottom, take off the heat or reduce to low depending on how it's going, switch to a rubber spatula, add filling, fold and plate in the traditional way.

if you struggle with sticking it might not be just your pan...

yeah, a good stainless is more than non stick enough for anything. But something that doesn't get enough attention with these kinds of statements is the role of the cooktop.

stainless is easy when you have a cooktop that can maintain the proper temp. that just a hair over "medium" (i havent temped it but i suspect its about 350-375, right around the smoke point of peanut oil)

if your pan is too hot/too cold stuff will stick waaay more (or burn before it would release naturally)

id never been able to get stainless to perform properly on cheap gas burners. heat was too uneven and the hotspots on edges or center would make it not work. no way to get it dialed just right. switching to induction made all the difference. now i can do anything with no fear of sticking.

pan to burner size ratio matters a lot also.

I no longer have any nonstick or cast iron. I almost never manage to clean my cast iron pan in 30 seconds; it’s more like 3–4 minutes. Stainless steel is all I use now. It goes in the dishwasher, so literally two seconds to put it in and two seconds to remove it when the dishwasher is done.

It's much easier with non-stick and I'm not the only one that cooks in my house.

Thank you for these tests!

I've recently tossed all my coated pans (my favourite were the Anolon, but those too shed) and moved to stainless steel, save for a cast iron and carbon steel pan.

In the journey here the best I could find was a Hestan nanobond pan, which unfortunately laminated and has shown some pits after few months of use. They refunded me but titaniums isn't yet where stainless steel is.

Now I'm using a mix of Demeyere, De Buyer, and Made In.

It takes a bit of time to get used cooking in them without a ton of fat.

Look up Leidenfrost effect on youtube and you'll learn pretty quickly how to use stainless steel and do not let anything stick even fish.

Rare (but not outlandish) warning - A friend's entire family had ongoing symptoms of fatigue and upset stomach. They ran blood panels and found that everyone had off the charts iron levels. They had switched to cast iron only in the kitchen a few years back, and switching to stainless pans solved the problem.

I wonder if they were scouring the cast iron every time they cleaned it? Normally a layer of carbon "seasoning" develops and I would think that would limit the direct contact of food and iron.

I clean my cast iron pans with hot water and a brush or scraper only. No detergent (or maybe a small amount to break up oil if I cooked something really greasy). No scouring.

It really doesn't take much exposure to make a difference:

https://www.joghr.org/article/11950-testing-the-efficacy-of-...

https://luckyironlife.com/products/lucky-iron-fish

If you cook with extra virgin olive oil, having the pan temperature reach the Leidenfrost effect will lead to the oil smoking.

Yes, EVO smokes at ~190C, and you need 200C-230C for Leidenfrost. Heating up good EVO is a waste anyways.

I do mostly cook in ghee, beef tallow and coconut oil.

If you're ok with refined/seed oils there's plenty more you can use.

Avocado oil is good, it has a high smoke point.

Simple fix: don't cook with extra virgin olive oil on high heat. The smoke point is one reason. Flavor is another. Cost is a third (less expensive fats are better suited for this task)

> Leidenfrost effect

Okay for a steak, not great for eggs!

Maybe not for creamy scrambled eggs, but for most eggs that's entirely doable.

Frying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYpYK1DV_SU

Scrambled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFtkmInrlWw

I want to call something out here so people don't have to click / don't just gloss over it, because his videos are what made me go "hey, wait a minute..."

Most tutorials on stainless steel completely fail to mention turning the heat down or adding oil/butter. If you've been using stainless steel for a while these are probably "well duh" things, but coming from nonstick these were both surprising.

With nonstick, you can just leave the heat at medium the whole time, and usually need to to maintain the heat. The pan heats up a lot slower and doesn't get as hot. And because of the nonstick surface, oil/butter is unnecessary - I never used it the whole time I was on nonstick. But stainless steel heats up a lot better, so leaving it at medium it'll just keep heating up and burn your food (mentioned in the video), and the leidenfrost effect doesn't really work on some substances without oil/butter to act as an intermediary (I couldn't explain the physics of it, just that my pancake batter was burned to the skillet on one side and liquid on the other - it was so extreme I was concerned I just couldn't make pancakes with it, while adding butter the next attempt was like magic).

Scrolling around the comments here on HN, a lot of people are mentioning how good stainless steel can be at not sticking, in a thread about nonstick surfaces, without mentioning any of the additional steps.

I switched primarily to stainless steel seven or eight years ago, and it only took me a week to get used to frying my morning eggs without sticking.

If you cannot cook eggs that do not stick in stainless steel you are doing it wrong. I never have an issue. Over easy, non-stick, every time.

The trick I found is to take the pan off the heat after the droplets start jumping and add a bunch of butter and then add the eggs and put it back on low heat.

Yep! And I don't even bother taking it off or lowering the heat! As soon as the water drops bounce, I throw everything in the pan and it works every time. I make sunny side up and scrambled (and poached, but obviously that doesn't apply here).

Thanks! I’m getting into cooking and have basic teflon pans (Rachel ray pans given to us by my MIL) and I’m looking to get nice ones and be done with it

My observations from experience: - Nonstick helps, but don't use it instead of a fat.

- Ceramic works well enough that I'm shocked Teflon nonstick still exists. No reason to risk it.

- Use real food. Real butter, real olive for most things, real peanut oil for high temp.

- If you don't overeat or or eat junk or indulgences too often, you can eat anything you want, just not every day.

- Variety and exploration inherently limits bad habits.

- Nobody has time to scratch cook every meal. Cook batches and freeze them. If you use occasions when you have time to do this, you'll build up a variety in your freezer that you won't hate anything before you run out of it. OTOH 16 chicken burritos is at least five too many. Trust me.

- All of this is much easier if you're cooking for yourself or for like-minded people.

The thing about “ceramic” is that it’s not actually defined or regulated as a term so it could still be some kind of PTFE.

Sometimes I wonder if we discover that "ceramic" is also bad for health. As I understand it is really not meaningfully defined. And I also think about having heard that it is sometimes sacrificial that is that it wears out... Meaning it might leech something to food.

I've definitely seen brands of cookware that obfuscate their use of PTFE nonstick. The brands that use Kyocera ceramic coatings often specify that by name. Even cheap brands like Green Pan play it straight. So you have to do a little bit of due diligence, but it's pretty easy to avoid the hidden PTFE. Some kind of trustworthy certification would be an improvement no doubt.

I’d like to think it was actually some kind of neutral, non-harmful clay, but I guess the problem with clay is it can be made of whatever is in rocks, which is basically anything.

Do you have the same concerns about glass? And one thing you are certain not to find in ceramic non-stick coatings are floridated hydrocarbons.

PTFE is not the only way to get "nonstick" cookware.

The amount of stickiness perceived is 99% a skill / procedural issue.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OFaFgg4P6QI

Indeed I don't see much talk about non-PTFE non-stick: I have a set of enamel pans which work for me just fine, and for the eggs a granite pan (which I have no idea how's actually made). I must say that as nice the cast iron might be when cooking, I didn't like the cleaning part so I ditched them (also the "seasoning" sounded yuck), and for the love of me I couldn't get the stainless steel to not awfully stick.

Looking at alternatives (and I already have both cast-iron and aluminium fry pans which I prefer using), what are people's experiences with ceramic cookware?

I've started seeing these, suspect it's relatively non-stick, should be metabolically benign, but also hear that surfaces are subject to scratching and chipping. (Our storage situation is ... less than ideal.) Prices seem somewhat spendy, but doable.

(And I see <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071016> immediately on submitting this ;-)

I have a greenpan it works well enough although it degrades in nonstick over the years. The only thing I need it for is unbrowned eggs. And those are some of the hardest things for non-stick.

If you cook properly at the right temperatures, you will be better off with stainless or cast iron because they will give better browning. So nonstick is effectively used as a crutch by most cooks to allow them to cook at a temperature which will make their food worse, or forgoe fat which I didn't even consider as an option because it's so foreign to me (the comment you linked reminded me).

Fish is stickyest food ime but it tells you when you've cooked it enough by releasing from the pan so I always use cast iron or stainless for fish.

I used to switch coated (teflon, ceramic, other fancy gadgets) pans every 1-2 years after eventually wearing them out. This seems so wasteful! I wish somebody had given me the following advice earlier: get 1-2 good uncoated steel pans. They build up a coating from cooking oils that works just as well. I've had mine for over 12 years now, and it's pristine and just a joy to use. I will probably never need another one.

Isn't Teflon (PTFE) inert biologically?

(the precursor PFOAS are nasty forever chemicals that people should go to jail over dumping them in water, but once they're inert they're inert)

Supposedly, yes, but other studies have shown that teflon pans continue to off gas after construction for a long time so it’s not just PTFE you have to worry about, but PFOA as well. And in addition, purchasing Teflon pans increases the amount of these chemicals making it into the soil and water streams so it doesn’t really matter how inert they are when they make it into your food, since you’re consuming them other ways and also destroying the environment at the same time!

> Isn't Teflon (PTFE) inert biologically?

Either way, it will be 'bad' forever with some people, like MSG and other things

They are, which is why this pearl clutching over particles from cookware is a bit silly.

Coincidentally just saw an ad for this https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/barecookware/everpan

Not affiliated in any way.

But looks promising

Not really useful. Others have made titanium coated stuff, and it's not really significantly better for non-stick than just a nitrated steel pan.

They claim to have added small dimples that trap the oil and make it less sticky

Others have done it even further, and done titanium with the hex-clad style pattern, and it just doesn't work well.

Look at the reviews for this thing online, they're not good:

https://fromourplace.com/products/titanium-always-pan-pro?va...

Good to know!

How are you suppose to cook an over easy egg on anything other than non-stick? Only thing I keep my non-stick around for.

I use my well seasoned carbon steel, but with a very nice metal spatula with a fairly 'sharp' edge. It really is necessary to scrape under the egg in a quick motion. Works great even without too much oil. You do have to use some oil.

If you watch the videos, folks use a very generous amount of oil and butter. They basically "shallow"-fry their eggs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49070419

It's possible apparently. The types described should be harder than over easy.

A well seasoned cast iron and butter.

https://ask.metafilter.com/376998/Scrambling-eggs-without-no...

https://reddit.com/r/cookware/comments/1ove4wy/finally_a_non...

I beg to differ: over-easy is more difficult because the egg whites stick more readily because there's no fat there. And you really can't mess up scrambled eggs.

Everyone here seems to drown their over-easy eggs in oil to make them not stick to the pan.

Yeah, cooking without enough oil is not gonna get you far without nonstick no matter what food.

Buy a good metal spatula with a sharp edge and a slightly flexible business end. This is my favorite spatula by far: https://products.radacutlery.com/collections/kitchen-utensil...

I’m convinced that 90% of people’s problems is they don’t have a good spatula that they can really scrape the pan with. Metal pans deserve metal spatulas.

On my cast irons, I only need to use a tiny pat of butter. In stainless, I use a bit more, or add some oil. Don’t overheat the pan.

Excepting when the egg comes out broken, my success rate is essentially 100%.

is there info anywhere about the effects of ingesting PTFE particles over time?

Yuck, get some cast iron. At yard sale if necessary, their useful lifetimes are measured in (human) generations.

Chris young has a great comparison of the physical differences between various metals used in pans. [0]. Maybe if you're on the right side of the AI bubble, you could spring for a solid silver version[1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdORIBH3R88

[1] https://duparquet.com/products/solid-silver-cookware

When I was a teenager, I saw a commercial for Visions Cookware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visions_(cookware)

I got really excited and I purchased a complete set for my mother on her birthday.

And she took one look and was unable to share my enthusiasm. She said it was all completely different from the vessels she normally used, and so it was a rubbish gift, and she stashed them all in a drawer, and never used them at all.

I wonder how this compares to this new "no coating" nonstick they are hyping up: https://fromourplace.com/blogs/care-use/a-new-kind-of-nonsti...

It's worse. Non-stick PTFE is basically always the best. All these alternative "non-stick" coatings want you to use a little bit of oil. PTFE needs 0 oil to work.

If you're looking to switch, difficulty around cooking technique for stainless steel, carbon steel & cast iron is overblown. Same with seasoning/cleaning the latter two. Trust me, if I can figure it out, you can too.

Carbon steel is amazing - durable self repairing non-stick surface that after the inital seasoning is trivial to maintain: wash the pan with a brush when its still hot without any detergent - cleans in seconds.

Cast iron is good too but takes longer to heat the pan.

You only have to look in any professional kitchen - they don't use non-stick pans.

My current favorite pan is the best of all worlds - stainless clad outer layer, aluminum internal layer for efficiency in spreading heat and a carbon steel interior to develop non-stick seasoning with use.

Strata makes them, they're priced competitively with standard carbon steel pans.

Chris Young turned me onto them in his video about a $4,200 silver frying pan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdORIBH3R88

I feel stainless steel is the simplest, most versatile option that lasts forever. I've never actually tried carbon steel, though. I've had cast iron in the past but I just don't get the hype. They're heavy and require a lot of maintenance. I'm not saying they are bad, of course, it's whatever floats your boat!

Carbon steal will be similar surface to cast iron but lighter and quicker. Downside is that it's light and quick for searing meats.

I would say cast iron will have the best longevity of all.

I like his videos but they are all also advertisements which is unfortunate.

I wanted to get that pan but it was sold out. I'll have to check again.

You really like yours? It seems they're back in stock.

Iirc the advantage compared to cast iron is gonna be the evener heat spreading and lightness.

It's basically lived on my stovetop since arriving. It weighs nothing compared to my previous favorites (carbon steel skillets from Made In) while basically performing like a Ducati on my induction range.

I have seen non-stick pans for eggs.

yea, eggs in a busy kitchen or when you haven't been out of bed for more than 5m is risky.

> You only have to look in any professional kitchen - they don't use non-stick pans.

That's definitely not true.

The cast iron is a pain to maintain though

I wash mine after use. Most frequent task: scrambling eggs. Also baking (bread, rolls, pizza), frying, saute.

Wash: a few drops of detergent and hot water immediately after cooking. Let sit while I eat. Scrub out with a brush, invert to dry.

Wipe with oil (I prefer flax, there are many other options).

Store on lower oven rack when not in use, inverted. Seasons whilst baking generally.

Once a month or two, or when the finish is looking grotty, I'll give it a good oil rub all over, and park it in the oven at 230C / 450F for 60--90 minutes, and allow to cool for 30--60 minutes after (depending on whether I need to use the oven). Like new.

Teflon is the best it'll ever be the day you get it from the shop. Cast iron only improves with age. My oldest pan is ~70 years old (a family hand-me-down), the newest has a few decades on it. All will undoubtedly outlast me.

Ok but you described a lot of work for a pan that gets used 3 times a day (in terms of time). I do have a cast iron,but we prefer the stainless steel because of how much work is the cast iron.

That’s way more than I do with mine: hot water, nylon brush, throw it on the heat till dry, wipe with paper towel already oiled from constantly doing this.

First use is always over easy egg, which doesn’t really even dirty the pan enough to worry about if I’m going to just cook again later.

That's what I do. Still a lot of effort, but it's more acceptable, we kept using it (forgive me, when it comes to cleaning the kitchen I'm clearly the laziest)

The only work that's added over any of aluminium, stainless, or teflon, is the oil wipe, which takes a few seconds. For daily use.

Again, once a month or so, usually when I'm baking something else, I'll add a coat and leave the pans in the oven whilst I'm making bread, rolls, pizza, etc.

The benefit: a utensil which only improves with age, over decades if not centuries.

If stainless works for you, have at it. What I've described works very well for me.

It really isn't. I stopped trying to keep it looking perfectly seasoned and it performs just as well.

That was my breakthrough with both carbon steel and cast iron. Even if the seasoning is imperfect, it'll perform just fine if you preheat it thoroughly and oil it before use.

I stopped being precious about mine after stripping and reseasoning some real gnarly ones from thrift stores. Knowing that I can always start fresh from zero made me worry less, and ironically worrying less has led to better seasoning over time.

Where does the hexclad fall in this regard?