Sunday, February 20, 2011

Before you buy that non-stick pan...

I mentioned on another blog that Kulani bought me a very nice non-stick pan for Christmas. A year later, and the non-stick is starting wear off. I've been extra careful with it, I promise. I've used plastic, not metal, spatulas when flipping eggs or pancakes. Sadly, however, more and more of the non-stick has worn off.

"What gives?" I thought. Kulani and I were both under the impression that expensive non-stick pans last forever.

And then we tuned into America's Test Kitchen on Saturday. America's Test Kitchen is a program on PBS, and if you've missed it, you're really missing out on one of the best things your tax dollars have going for you. America's Test Kitchen is a half hour program where they cook about three tried-and-true recipes, and show you the best techniques and ways to cook some American classics, as well as other well-known recipes.

In the middle of the program they test different kitchen gadgets. On the episode we watched on Saturday, they tested different non-stick pans. Right up front they acknowledged that no matter how expensive the non-stick pan, it will eventually lose its effectiveness for non-sticking.

So they tested the whole gammit of non-stick pans. To save you time from having to google it and watch the whole episode yourself, I'll tell you that their favorite non-stick pan was the T-Fal pan, and it costs around $35. Compare that to the All-Clad $160 pan, and you can see that you can buy five T-Fal pans to replace the one All-Clad pan that will also eventually lose its non-stickery.

File that in your "good-stuff-to-know" folder.

1 comment:

Angela said...

Good to know. I have went through so many different frying pans for the same reason. The one I still have is my T-Fall which my husband had before we were married (over 15 years). It doesn't look very nice since I tried to put it through the dishwasher, but it still has more non-stick stuff left on it than any of my others, including my Steel-on and Calphalon. Thanks for sharing.