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Why Some Professional Chefs Hate Nonstick Pans

Teflon is more polarizing than you’d think

Matthew MacDonald
Heated
Published in
5 min readNov 5, 2019

Photo by Lebazele via Getty Images

For the last 50 years, the most popular type of pan has had some sort of nonstick coating, and the most desired characteristic of cookware has been keeping your food from clinging to its cooking surface. I don’t know what trauma triggered this obsession — perhaps burnt and shredded chicken thighs, or one too many broken egg yolks. But I do know that it’s a shame. First, because nonstick cookware is a distinctly mediocre choice for most cooking. Second, because surviving without nonstick cookware isn’t even that difficult.

I fell out of love with nonstick when caramelizing onions. Have you ever caramelized onions? Did you succeed? If you didn’t, maybe you were using a nonstick pan.

Perfect caramelized onions — along with properly seared steaks — can’t happen without a bit of stickiness. As you cook them, the fond forms at the bottom of the pan. The fond is the sticky brown glaze and tiny particles of browned food that form when the sugars in your food break down. Caramelization turns the simple sugar molecules in an onion into more than a hundred smaller and more interesting compounds, including molecules that give you nutty, toasty, bitter, and even rum-like flavors. Nonstick means no fond, and a plate of steamed onions. Don’t bring those near…

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Heated
Heated

Published in Heated

Food from every angle: A publication from Medium x Mark Bittman

Matthew MacDonald
Matthew MacDonald

Written by Matthew MacDonald

Teacher, coder, long-ago Microsoft MVP. Author of heavy books. Join Young Coder for a creative take on science and technology. Queries: matthew@prosetech.com

Responses (16)

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They are an utter con: they generally come with a 10, 15 or 20 year guarantee so buyers think yay that’ll last forever — then they are useless after 2–3 years tops, but of course you’ve misplaced or thrown away the purchase receipt by then so you…

12

One of the guys I camp with a couple of times a year is a professional chef, now teaching commercial culinary skills in a high-school vocational program. Our Saturday breakfast egg king, he ALWAYS has a couple of nonstick pans going. When I asked…

10

Great piece! We love our cast iron pans and skillets!

4