— Havelock Nelson

So I've gone through many years of doing different kinds of, uh, non-stick pans and for years the quality standard was Teflon, which is like a spray coating that they put on the inside of a pan. Um, but the problem is that after use on those pans for a while, the Teflon starts to come off and it's actually a carcinogen, which is not great. That's why for years I've always told people if you see scratches on the inside of your, uh, your, your pans that are Teflon, if you see scratches, it's time to get rid of them and just get a new one. And because of that, I never spent a lot of money on non-stick pans. Um, because everyone that I tried from, you know, the, like all kinds of different ones always scratched and I knew I had to throw them out and replace them. So I always got them from a restaurant supply store. Um, and uh, kind of left it at that. Um, recently I bought some really nice, uh, pans that they're the non-stick ones, they're the hex clad pans, which is a different kind of a technology. They used to be Teflon underneath it, but they just switched to ceramic. And that's one of the reasons I switched to 'em because I always liked the green pans that were ceramic pans as well. But they also had the same problem of kind of scratching off. The nice thing is that the ceramic was not a carcinogen, so at least it was a better step in the right direction. Now the hex clads are nice because what they they do is they have the ceramic basically at a lower level and then they, uh, the stainless steel is kind of raised on a hexagon pattern on the inside now from, you know, I've just gotten them kind of recently so I'm still early in kind of testing them out. But so far they've been fantastic. The downside is they're very expensive. Um, you know, so I'm hoping that that will be kind of the last non-stick pan I have to buy. Um, but if I start getting scratches on them, I'm gonna have to look at 'em again and go back to the restaurant supply store and buy my 15 to $20 pan, get my one or two years use out of it and have to replace it again as well. Um, so up until I got these pans, I was very much an advocate of saying, don't spend a lot of money on non-stick pans. Just use steel, um, or uh, you know, the cast iron pans, um, you know, and cast iron in a great way. You can keep that in non-stick if you're cooking with oil. Um, you know, it typically is going to have the, the seasoning on it, which is typically oil for vegetarians. Um, so if you're not doing that, non-stick is kind of the way to go. And I always tell people just don't spend a lot of money on them. Look for the, you know, a good quality one that you can get a restaurant supply store if you're heating it and it smells, um, that's probably not a good sign, which I have had those happen before too. Like I think we needed, had a cooking gig and somebody forgot a small pan, so we got one at a grocery store, but as soon as we heated it, you could smell it. That was, we absolutely just threw the pan out right away 'cause you're not looking for that. So, um, that's kinda my answer for you is look at a restaurant supply store. It's what they use in professional restaurants, right? So that's usually a good place to look. They're usually only about 20 bucks. Um, and if not, if you wanna go to a higher uh, level than that, uh, the hex clad and there are other, you know, kind of brands that look in the same way or that work in that same way, um, work really well but that expect to pay a kind of top quality top dollar on those. Hope that helps a little bit. That was, uh, a little bit vague of an answer and not at all sponsored by hcl. Uh, just found a good deal, um, on a couple of 'em and picked 'em up just 'cause I wanted to be able to test them out.