— Ellen Hohenfeldt

So that's an interesting question because on the platform for Rouxbe for a classes. We typically show the non-- or we usually show the no oil saute done in a stainless steel Pan. And the reason we do that is because we want to be able to show the Mercury effect with the little bit of water in the pan to be able to kind of float around in that. Now, that's great and it works fine. But personally I actually typically use a nonstick pan to do that same process. Now. I've been doing it long enough that I actually know when my pan is hot enough to be able to do that. No oil saute. So there's definitely a little bit of expertise and a little bit of practice. It kind of goes along with that. Now that being said I also use stainless steel when I can. I use non-stick depending on what it is that I'm cooking if I know I'm gonna have a lot of things that might stick into it. I'll typically use a nonstick pan more often than not I use a nonstick pan as kind of a general pan, but I do have a couple rules around my nonstick pants. And the biggest one is if there are any scratches in the bottom of the pan. I instantly get rid of it because any of the chemicals that are used in nonstick pens. I don't want to have those in my food now along with that same thing. My other rule with non-stick pans is never use any kind of metal you to you know spatulas or any kind of metal spoons inside of a nonstick pin because that could end up scratching the surface of the pan. And making those scratches on it. So along with those first two things, I don't buy expensive non-stick pans because of that same reason because if I get a scratch on one, I don't want to feel like oh man. I just, you know bought this really expensive pan and I'm not gonna get rid of it because it has one little scratch in the you know in the coating on it. And some people might argue that to say well the more expensive pains have better coating on them, but we're not talking about a huge difference between them. They might have a little bit. So what I do is I usually buy, you know, a non-stick saute pan from a restaurant supply store. So it's something like 20, maybe 30 dollars the nonstick pan, and then they last me a year to usually about two years and sometimes longer because I'm careful with them and If anything does get scratched, it's usually from somebody else being in my kitchen on them. And that's fine. But I also don't feel bad about you know, if I have to afterward recycle them or, you know, get rid of them. As I can replace it with another 20 to 30 dollar pan from the same restaurant supply store. So that's pretty much what I do personally on stainless steel versus nonstick. Again, most of the time I'm using non-stick pan for simple sautés. But if I'm doing other, you know soups things like that. And stainless or sauces, I'll do those in stainless. But yeah, it kind of depends on what I'm doing for each one, but typically my you know sautés that I'll do like a tofu scramble or something and I'll typically use a nonstick. I do use a wok. A lot of the times just not neither of those but that's a whole different thing. But yeah, so there we go.