Podcast 34 – What’s The Best – Nonstick, Stainless, or Cast Iron?

When it comes to cookware, choosing what's best can be intimidating. Whether you're using nonstick, stainless, cast iron, or another type of cookware, there are pros and cons. Here we explore each use cases and discuss which are our favorites. Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/SDuVgqzTsnc Through the years I've been asked repeatedly which type of pans work best. While there are several to choose from, for this discussion we've focused on the "Big 3", cast iron, stainless steel, and non-stick. A pan for every need While I can speak for hours on this topic, in a nutshell, I prefer to have a few different pans on hand depending on the ingredients I'm working with. If I want to get a good sear on chicken thighs and good development of fond (I said it!), I'll use a stainless, whereas if I want to fry a few over-easy eggs, I'll opt for the nonstick. And cast iron has plenty of uses too. It's incredibly durable making it ideal for dishes that start on the stovetop and move to the oven, like a potato frittata. It's great for many other dishes as well, such as cast iron pan pizza, peach blueberry crisps, and many more. But they all have a downside! Cast iron isn't fun to clean or maintain, stainless if not heated properly can cause ingredients to stick, and non-stick pans are far less durable and have shorter lives. In this episode, we take a deep dive into each of these types of pans, as well as others including aluminum and carbon steel, discussing use cases, pros, cons, and more. Resources Assassin's Pasta Recipe Sicilian Pizza Recipe Sunday Sauce Recipe If you enjoyed the Nonstick vs. Stainless vs. Cast Iron Episode, leave us a comment below and let us know!   We love your questions.  Please send them to [e-mail] (remove the 11111 for our contact).  There’s no question not worth asking. If you enjoy our weekly podcast, support us on Patreon and you will get 2 more bonus episodes each month! Thanks for listening! For a complete list of all podcast episodes, visit our podcast episode page.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
- Welcome back to the Sip

(00:01):
and Feast podcast, episode number 34.
Today we're gonna cover non-stick,
stainless cast iron, all the pans.
We're gonna try to get to all them today
and give a little bit of information.
When's the best time touse which particular pan?
Does that sound good, Tara?
- I think that sounds great.
And for a little bit ofbackground here, we decided

(00:24):
to do this episode
because we've gotten a lotof questions about, you know,
when folks should usea cast iron as opposed
to when they should use a non-stick.
So there's so much informationto kind of hash out.
We thought it would begood to just do an entire
episode focused on it. Yeah,
- I agree with that.
We get a ton of questions about that

(00:46):
from whether it's instantmessages on, uh, Instagram
or long emails about it.
And listen, I'm gonna giveyou my general take on it,
and there's a ton of science on this.
Don't really wanna gotoo much into that today,
but do wanna talk aboutwhat is the best use case

(01:08):
for which particular item.
I mean, honestly, I couldend this podcast in a second
and just say, use stainlesssteel all the time,
but we're gonna, uh,
hash it out a little bit more than that.
And many of you might befrustrated with stainless steel,
and you might say, that'swhy I'm using non-stick most
of the time before we get into it.

(01:29):
Non-stick is the mostpurchased pan in America
by home cooks by a landslide.
Really? I didn't know that.Does that that make sense?
- It does make sense. I'm not surprised,
but I didn't, I didn't know that
- Purdy Atlantic, itsaid, I think it said 70%,
but there were about 10 other articles
that were saying the same thing.
I did not see any articles say below 60%.

(01:51):
So that means that all theother pans, other types of pans
are, have, have very smallmarket share compared
to non-stick.
And I'm trying to putmyself in a situation of
a beginning cook or maybefive years of cooking.
Maybe 10 years of cooking. Yeah.
And you'll just seenon-stick pans everywhere.

(02:13):
And there's nothing wrongwith using non-stick pans.
We will go into that later too.
But there are better pans to use
and we'll go into why thereare better pans to use.
- Non-stick certainly seem less expensive.
- They are much cheaper.
People think of them almost as disposable.
I mean, should we just getright into non-stick now

(02:35):
and just Yeah, I thinklet's address that one. All
- Right.
So Jim, let's talk about the pros
and cons of non-stick pans.
- Pros of non-stick pansare definitely, it's
non-stick use.
It's, you can't, or I shouldn't say can't.
It's extremely difficult to cook, say

(02:58):
eggs without sticking
in a stainless or cast iron.
It's even harder to cook,say a piece of fish.
- Mm-Hmm.- . Without it falling apart.
Can it be done? Yes.
- You're talking about consof stainless steel pan?
- No, I'm talking about thepros of non-stick. Okay.

(03:20):
- Okay. But you said you can't cook.
- Yeah. Well but this, okay,
so those are cons of those pans.
But this is a pro ofnon-stick pan. Okay. So,
- So stick to the pros ofnon-stick pan. So again,
- The pro, pro is that it's non-stick.
So you can cook a pieceof fish in there. Mm-Hmm.
. It's verydifficult to cook a piece
of fish without it breakingapart in another type of pan.

(03:40):
So a lot of people like it for that.
A crepe, same thing.
- Omelet. - Omelet. Whenyou're making, um, you know,
when you're making the crepesfor same amount of art.
Mm-Hmm. ,same, same exact thing.
It's, it gets a lot harder
and you don't really get any upside
by using a different type of pan.

(04:01):
You're best to stick to usinga non-stick pan for that.
Mm-Hmm. For those type of applications.
That's the pros of a non-stick.
Another pro of non-stick is its cost.
They are extremely inexpensive. Yeah.
- They're also availablepretty much everywhere.
- They're everywhere. They'rein every home kitchen. Mm-Hmm.
, theycome often included in,

(04:23):
even if you buy like a full10 piece set of cookware,
even if it has some stainless steel in it,
they'll also throw in some non-stick.
It's cheap typically.Well, what is non-stick?
What's it made of? Itis made of a coating.
And most people will think of non-stick
and they'll just call it Teflon
because Teflon, which wascreated I think in the 1940s

(04:47):
is the brand that kindof brought it forward.
Probably had the patents on it.But now all different brands
do make a non, a non-stick pan.
It's typically a coating.
It no longer has the, um,
so actually I'm just gonnaread something to you.
So today's Teflon, which is non-stick,
it's considered safe cookware
because there is no evidence
that it increases therisk of developing cancer.

(05:08):
If you have Teflon pans thatwere manufactured prior to 2013
and you're concerned about thechemicals they may contain,
try to replace them with newer Teflon.
- And it's highly doubtful
that anybody would have anon-stick pan still laying around
from 2012.
- Probably not. Right? I mean, because

(05:28):
- They're not, theydon't, they don't last.
- They're not durable too
- Long.
Exactly. Not too durable. Exactly. Yeah.
- So people get very nervous about this.
- Yeah, I remember that back in,
it must've been in 2012 or so.
I remember them talking about it.
- Yeah. And we discussed,uh, last week, actually,
I think it was last week's episode, we,
we discussed about MSG
and how people are conditioned to Mm-Hmm.

(05:50):
older peopledon't want to use MSG.
It's the actual opposite scenario here.
Older people love non-stick.
Younger people are super conditioned
to reject all non-stick cookwareif they have the financial
means to do so.
Mm-Hmm. , there's kind
of a class thing involved here too.
It's, it's an age thing.

(06:11):
I'm sure there's peoplethat are very wealthy
that can afford to you todo all carbon steel pans
and they'll pass on them'cause they want the ease
and, you know, easyusability of non-stick.
But then there's a contingent,I believe, of younger people
and 'cause we get the commentsall the time where most
of 'em are on the YouTubevideos or whatnot.

(06:31):
They're like, I can't believeyou used a non-stick there.
I mean, there are, there'sjust a contingent of people
that are 100% against non-stick pants.
- Yeah. I think a lot of the comments
that we get though aremore about you using
certain utensils when you'reusing a non-stick pan.
Like if you use a metal spoon
and a non-stick pan, evenif you are very careful

(06:54):
to not scrape the bottom of it.
People always comment on that.
You would never wannatake a metal utensil and
and really scrape the bottom.
But I think in one of theepisodes you were just kind
of like using a spoon to taste.
Yeah. Even the sauce in it.
The simplest thing, peoplewere simplest thing upset
and it seemed like they didn't understand
that you were notscraping the bottom. You,

(07:16):
- I, I think I could make a PA video
and just make it sauce in a pan
and me just taking a spoon in there.
Yeah. And just like, just eatingit without even me talking.
And probably would get
hundreds of comments. You would
- Get infuriate people with that.
Yeah. Um, so thatactually kind of brings me
to mention since I'm, sinceI'm the cleaner ,

(07:38):
- The cleaner,- The cleaner of the pans in,
in the sip and feast household.
Um, I like how easy itis to clean Oh yeah.
A nonstick pan. I mean, whenwe're gonna talk about some
of the others, likestainless and, and cast iron,
and certainly those are a little bit
more nuanced when it comes to cleaning.
- Yeah. We, we will mention them.

(07:59):
We wanna kind of mentionthese one at a time.
I don't want, we willdo a brief mention too.
I don't want you to confuse non-stick the
traditional non-stick.
And by the way, the non-stickcoating is applied to, most
of the time it's aluminumbecause aluminum pans are cheap
and light, but also it can be coated
onto a stainless mm-Hmm.
or an iron.So something much heavier.

(08:21):
But I, that's exceedingly rare.
I don't really know brands that do it.
But in my limited researchhere, I did come across that
hard anodized we'll talk aboutthat's a little different,
which I think Tara might be mistaken.
The one she's cleaning, thinking it's a
kind of a Teflon pan.
But in actuality it is a hard anodized.

(08:43):
We'll save that for after though.
Let's move on to the next one.
- All right. So Jim, seemslike stainless steel is one
of your favorite types of
pans Yeah. To use. Heck
- Yeah.
- Talk to us about the prosand cons of stainless steel.
- So, stainless steel ismy favorite type of pan

(09:04):
to work with.
To use. 95% of the time Iwill use a stainless pan.
It's relatively affordableif you buy certain brands.
I like the TRO Andina brand.
They're very good value forthe money Costco's brand too,
which for all I know could be tro Andina
because they put, justput the Kirkland on there

(09:24):
and then you could go allthe way up to high end,
like all clad.
Which I have never seen adifference between a tro andina
and all clad as as far as use goes.
And I have, you know, I have both.
But the thing about stainlesssteel is it will allow you to
get perfectly even heating in the pan
if it's heated up properly.

(09:45):
It will not stick, it's not non-stick,
but your food won't stick.
- Tell us about that. Okay.
When you say heat it up properly,
because I know what you're talking about,
but I didn't know about this until maybe
a year or two years ago.
So tell us what you mean by that.
- I mean, we get thecomments all the time.

(10:05):
I, I literally think we have
over 2000 comments about this from emails
and everywhere else about Thank you.
Showing me how to use a stainless pan.
I'm not sure if otherchannels are just kind of ggl,
like glossing over it or whatnot.
But it can be confusing
because the first timeI used a stainless pan,
which is probably 30 something years ago,

(10:27):
all my food just stuck toit. Mm-Hmm. .
- Same. Completely- Stuck to it.
And then I can imaginethat trips up people
and they say, I'm never usingthat, using this pan again.
Mm-Hmm. , I'm going into,
I'm going to, uh, non-stick.
Yeah. You know, simplyput, to make it not stick,
you just need to heat upyour pan to medium heat.
90% of the time you wannajust use medium heat

(10:48):
on stainless steel.
You don't need to go higher than that.
You do it to medium heat. Waitthree minutes, set a timer.
Just, just wait. Then whenyou put your oil down,
your oil is gonnaessentially float on the top
of the stainless because the, basically,
this is a little science here.
If you put your oil down rightaway on your cold aluminum

(11:10):
pan, it will go into the pores versus
if you wet the pan heat upand the metal, they expand.
So it's like chemistry.The p the particles get
like wider or whatnot.
Mm-Hmm. it basicallycreates this impenetrable
surf surface and theoil floats on top of it.
Mm-Hmm. yourchicken goes on top of it.
You get a beautiful searwithout sticky, with a lot of,

(11:31):
with a lot of .
Fond. Fond. Yes. And,and, and it's beautiful.
And I do it in all thevideos. I always like to show,
I always like to show how to heat it up.
I like to show the lead inro effects. Well
- Tell folks what the, what that is. So
- The lead inro effect iswhen you put the little bit
of water on there, just takea little bit, a little splash
of water, just wet your hands in the sink

(11:53):
and just go like thislittle balls will form
and it will like dance on the surface.
That's how you know thatyour pan is ready for oil.
- It's really cool actually.
- Yeah. That's all you have to do.
- It's like a Mr. Mr. Wizard. It's a Mr.
- Wizard. Exactly. Yes. That
- Is what it is.
We're showing our age.Yeah. Mr. Wizard. Okay.
- Yeah. .- No, I think that's really good.
And wasn't it the FrugalGourmet who would always say

(12:17):
hot pan Cold oil?
- I don't know. I mean, I had
to learn this I think on my own.
I can't tell you how many,even like pro sites are like
put the oil down Yeah. Into a cold pan.
- I think it, I thinkit was, I think it was
that, I can't remember his name.
Mm-Hmm. But he was the Frugal Gourmet
and I think he alwayssaid Hot pan cold oil.
And then you'll have a non-stick surface.

(12:38):
- Do you know why I think alot of people are glossing it
or not saying it because allthose comments we keep getting
about how and how we solvethe mystery for people.
- Yeah. So maybe it's just not
something that people talk about.
- Yeah. Now, I mean, canyou do it the other way?
Maybe I would always get sticking. So
- That's why I never likedusing stainless steel pans
because anytime I did use it

(12:59):
and I was making something like
chicken probably is what it was.
Yeah. So I think that's whatalways deterred me from using a
non-stick pan because if Iwould use it, it would always
like whatever I was making,like whether it was chicken or
or something else, it wouldjust always stick to it.
And it was

(13:19):
not a good user experience for me.
And then once I learned from you
about the lead in frost effect
and the putting the coldoil on the hot pan, I forgot
what I made, but I was like, this is,
- Are you perfect with it now?
Like, do you ever have problemsor not? Yeah. No. Yeah. No.
So I think people should, it's so

(13:40):
- Easy to, to use it ifyou're using it properly.
Yeah. And it's a reallygood experience. I think
- Now I will say if you go,
if you heat it a little toohigh, then you're gonna start
to run into issues.
So for stainless,
because it does conduct heat,so well, once you know how
to use it, then, then you're set.
The other thing is, as faras durability of a pan, it's,

(14:03):
they're extremely durable.
It's not a stainless pan is not a full,
it's not fully thick stainless steel.
It's a stainless steel ply coating.
And that will come intowhy certain brands,
like all Clad has like their five ply.
Mm-Hmm. andI think there's seven ply.
So supposedly it's a thickercoating which will conduct heat

(14:24):
better than say a tromant,which I think is a three ply.
- I have a question. Yeah.Are all stainless steel
pans oven safe,
- Stainless steel or completely oven safe?
Yeah, completely. So
- All of them no matter whatas opposed to a non-stick pan,
which would never be ovensafe. Is that right? So,
- So non-stick pans are not oven safe,

(14:45):
but they, I mean, I think thereare some pans that are sold
and marketed that they canbe put in the oven though.
I think they are probablyhard anodized pans,
anodized pans instead of the traditional
Teflon, uh, non-stick. Yeah.
- Because there are some likebaking pans that are not,
that seem to be non-stick.
Yeah. That can go in the oven. Yeah.

(15:07):
- Well, we'll go into later,you know, about, about the,
the difference between those.
But you know, bringing itback to stainless steel, it's,
are these gonna last you a lifetime?
I I think they are withproper maintenance. Mm-Hmm.
. And what's your favorite
ingredient to clean them with? Tara
- .
So we're not sponsored by this company,
but they're one of my favorite brands

(15:27):
and it's bar keeper's friend.
I can't tell you how many, like
how many times you have made a pan
look like it's been through the ringer.
Yeah. Like it looked likeit went to war with .
- Just the other day I cooked something.
- Yeah. I can't remember what it was.
And I was like, oh my God,
is the bar keeper's friendgonna work with this?
Sure enough. I mean, itrestores it to brand new. Yeah.

(15:49):
- Spotless.- It looks brand new.
- And we get a lot ofcomments too about that.
They say, how do you getyour pans brand new again?
I mean, a lot of them are accusing me
that I'm switching usinga new pan each time and
- No, we're not. You
- Can actually tell why I'm not using it.
Where, where the rivettis, like the little hole,
you'll see some of theremaining like residue

(16:09):
- Where I- Can't, that's the hardest part to
- Clean the sponge can't get there.
Yeah. We should do avideo maybe like of me
clean .
Does anybody really wannawatch me clean a pot?
Probably not, but we
- Could No people that- Stuff.
But what's good about it, first of all,
if you are gonna use bar keeper's friend,
I recommend using the powder.
Yes. Instead of the liquid.
I think the powder's a little bit better.

(16:31):
Um, I just will sprinkle iton first. I'll wash it. Right.
I'll wash whateverresidue is, is on there.
Then I'll sprinkle thebarkeeper. Sometimes
- You you can wash the panwithout using Barkeeper
- Friend. Yeah, you can. You can.
- But yeah, if you had likea, not a big mess. Yeah.
- But whatever you didto it the other day,
it was just like be Ithought it was beyond repair.
So I would wash it first,
get like whatever oilgrease is is off of it,

(16:52):
and then put it to the side.
Sprinkle the barkeeper friendjust like gently like rub it
in, let it sit for a fewminutes and then yeah.
Wash it with the bar keeper's front.
Wash it again with soap
to get the bar keeper's front off
of it. It's like brand new.
- You wanna remove, obviously remove it.
Well it's the same thing. Youwould wanna remove soap. Yeah.

(17:14):
It's awesome. And you know, as far
as can you damage a stainless steel pan?
You can. So let's say youaren't going to listen to me.
Let's say you don't, you're saying, Jim,
I don't wanna use medium heat.
I'm gonna use screaming hot, like
a million recipe blogs say on their posts,
which all 1 million of them are wrong.

(17:37):
Okay. They're wrong.
But let's say you don't believe
me and you believe the million.
If you do that and you'reheating your pan up
and say you three minutes or two minutes
and then you know, your kid, you know,
calls you in, you gotta change 'em.
Or you know there's an issue going on
and it's 10 minutes laterand you warp your pan.

(17:58):
This is definite thing will happen. Okay.
It's harder to warp an astainless pan than it is say in a
aluminum pan, but it will happen.
Uh, do you know how to fix it again?
And what you'll know when it'swarped is it won't be flat
anymore when you stick it on,
like say like a table likethis here, you'll put it down
and it'll just be like, youknow, a little bit cupped.

(18:20):
- So the warping happensfrom getting it to too hot.
Too hot. So how to fix it? I don't know.
Bang it with a hammer.
- Yes, but not a regular hammer.
I would say a rubber mallet.
- Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't wanna,
- Hey, I've done it before.
I, I had one the other daythat it happened to, and I,
and I was able to bang it out.
- Why did you get it too hot
- Stainless?
Yep. It was a stainless fan. So you,

(18:40):
- You went against your own?
Yeah. Advice. Why?
- I don't even know how that one got out.
It was a brand that, a company
that sent us a whole bunch of pans.
Okay. That whole set wegot. Mm-Hmm. .
I don't wanna mention it becauseI don't wanna like bash the
company, but I was ableto take out the dent.
It wasn't a, it's, it'sa mi it's a minor dent.
So it's essentially, it's, itwas a little bit lower there.

(19:01):
So it would be like no longer flat.
It was like maybe able to rock
by like a quarter degree on each side.
- But it, it dented becauseyou got it too hot. Yes. Okay.
Absolutely. So then it'snot the, it's not the
company's fault, it's your fault.
- Yeah. Well, I don'tknow if I got it. I mean,
I think I still had it on medium though.
Yeah. Okay. I was a little frustrated.
I think it was like the firsttime I used the pan. Mm-Hmm.

(19:22):
. But, but anyway, I fixed it
and I fixed, I fixed otherpans in the past with this.
That's not gonna happen. Ifyou're using a cast iron,
you're not gonna, you'renot gonna misshape it
with a little bit extra heat.
- So Jim, you talked aboutgetting a good sear on different
foods with a stainless,what are some examples of
meals you would cook ina stainless steel pan? So
- This applies not just a stainless,

(19:43):
but this, the same exact principle
would work here with cast iron.
So, you know, you can kind of like,
this will lead into the next one,
but a stainless pan, when youheat your pan up properly,
you put your oil down and yousay you're doing, let's just,
for example, let's just say chicken dyes
and you cook 'em for five minutes.
Undisturbed. What are you developing
on the other side there? Tara? Well,

(20:03):
- Fond. Yes,
- Fond.
Okay. Brown bits fond or brown brown bits.
What's happening is thecaramelization, the proteins,
everything that's hittingthe pan, it actually sticks.
Parts of it stick.
And then those parts get browner,
which essentially gives you your fond.
Okay. Now, when you areusing a aluminum pan, that is

(20:26):
a perfect brand newaluminum pan with a coating,
a non-stick, aluminum pan.
The whole point of thatpan is so nothing sticks.
So you're not gonna be able
to really develop any of those brown bits.
Mm-Hmm. .Okay. Brown bits or fond.
Um, it's on the chicken itself,
if you would use this exact same example,
but the saying goes
that you don't really get likebetter flavor until the fond

(20:49):
that's left on the bottom ofthe stainless actually starts
to really caramelize and gettowards that darker stage.
Obviously if it gets too dark,you might have a burnt sauce.
But what you can do isas you're developing it,
you can just deglaze youcan take that liquid,
you can pull it outta your pan,
and then you can continue withyour next batch of chicken.
Mm-Hmm. .If you're gonna do a
ssr, that's the difference.
That's like supposedlywhat makes it a lot better

(21:12):
to cook in something like this.
It's, for me it's the, theheat distribution is better.
It's a more durable pan.
Obviously you get better brown bits,
you can cook anything in there,
but it's harder to cooka piece of fish than,
than you would in a non-stick pan.
Like, you're not gonna really
be able to make crepes in there.
You're, you're, there's a fewthings you're not gonna be
able to do well in a stainless steel pan.

(21:34):
All right. I think thatpretty much covers it. Mm-Hmm.
. Butstainless is the workhorse
in our kitchen.
It's not the workhorse most
of the time in restaurants,believe it or not.
Before we go into the next one, Tara,
do you know the workhorsein most commercial kitchens?
- Aluminum?- Yeah. Why is that?
- Well, they're light,right? Is that one of them?

(21:55):
They're like, they're notheavy. So they're easy to like
flip I guess when you're making like
pan sauces, things like that.
- Or if you're making, yougotta make a massive thing
of stock and you have a 48 quart
stock. Pott. Wouldn't it be nicer
- To be aluminum?
Oh yeah. I, I wasn'teven thinking of that.
Yeah, I was thinking of likea, like a little frying pan.
Like the one that they use.Like they use so many of them.
Yeah. They're also inexpensive,

(22:16):
- Very inexpensive, very dent.
They get dented warped. Yeah.
And I'm not talking about non-stick,
like I'm not talking about aluminum
with the non-stick coating.
I'm just talking aboutstraight aluminum. Mm-Hmm.
, which straightaluminum is barely ever seen
in house in Homecooked.
Mm-Hmm. kitchens.Mm-Hmm. .
But they're dirt cheap.
You could get 'em at Restaurant Depot
or any restaurant supply store.
Uh, the reason I know that the,

(22:36):
they're the most used inrestaurants from my friend
who owns a restaurant, but also from, um,
web restaurant store.com,which is the largest, uh,
supply store in the United States.
It actually says on the sitesays that, I think it said 60%
of all of all the stuff in the commercial
kitchens are aluminum.
Which, yeah, it's,

(22:58):
I think it's hard if you'rea restaurant owner, you know,
you're not a big restaurant,you're just getting by you.
You gotta, you, you can'tdo the outlay on stainless
or forget about it.
Like, you know, people see these copper
pans and stuff on TikTok.
Those are not regularrestaurants. Those are Mm-Hmm.
, you know,. It's like La Bernard
or something like that, you know?
Yeah. Like the FourSeasons or, or whatever.

(23:19):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah.
- Yeah. Little, little fancy there.
- Yeah. But I used to use aluminum
and I don't really like 'em.
I, I mean, if you have themoney, just use stainless steel.
All right. Let's moveinto the next segment.
- Next is one that I think
is romanticized a bit,and that is cast iron.

(23:40):
What are the pros and consof using a cast iron pan?
- So cast iron pans share alot of the pros of stainless.
They can get an evenbetter sear on a steak.
So that gives them an advantage,
I think over a stainless mm-Hmm.
, it's alarger piece of metal

(24:01):
heat distribution, onceyou get it hot is better.
Like, the idea is it'll behot all around more evenly.
The downsides are you haveto season it, which kind of,
you know, you don'thave to, I really don't
season my cast irons.
I just, I don't reallyYou oil 'em? I, yeah.
I oil, I don't, I don't really care.
You know, I'm like notgoing to be like, some

(24:22):
of these purists willsand the bottom of the pan
to get it like baby, but smooth.
And then they'll do like 12layers of seasoning on it
with the goal of beingable to cook an egg.
Mm-Hmm. with nothing in the pan.
And I've seen it done on some videos,
but, uh, no, I mean, Ilike, I like cast iron.
I just don't find it nearlyas useful as stainless steel.
Like, I can't emulsifypasta with a cast iron pan.

(24:44):
You have to be the Hulk to do it.
You know, like, like, you know,
the thing like a 12inch one weighs like 20
pounds. I mean, forget it.
- Yeah. Though theyare harder to, to wash.
I hate whenever , I likewhen you use the cast iron,
but I, but I also don't like it
because it's, it's heavy, it's bulky, it's
kind of a paint to clean.

(25:05):
- But if there's an intruder in the house
- Yeah.
- Then you have theultimate weapon. That's
- True. Yeah.
- It's, they, they are, Imean, they are really heavy
and, you know, be careful whenyou're, you know, you drop
that thing on your foot,it's game over. Yeah.
- Oh,- Forget it. You drop a stainless
or a aluminum pan, youknow, I mean, you'll
- Be all right.
Well break a toe, but thiswill like smash the bones. This
- Won't cut your toes off.

(25:25):
Yeah. You know, that'sthe thing when they, um,
the metal tipped work boots. Yeah.
- What do they do? Dropa cast iron on them
to test? No, their
- Durability.
Certain companies, dependingon where you're working,
they won't let their workers use 'em.
Because if they're workingwith extremely heavy items
and they hit the steeltipped toes, they will cut.
People have had their wholetoes cut off completely

(25:46):
because the metal itself goes like that.
- Oh. The the shoe itself isactually cutting the toes.
Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. I'mgetting lightheaded. I
- Know, I know.
But whatever, that'snot gonna really apply
to people in the kitchen, but, you know.
Yeah. I mean, cast stallion's good.
It's again, better steak.
They say you can't use acidic foods

(26:06):
or you shouldn't usetoo many acidic foods.
Again, I don't reallycare about that either.
And when we get to common, solike, they're like, oh bro,
you put tomatoes in the, inthe cast iron, it's over.
They're like, game over,bro. I'm like, all right.
It's, it's okay. You know, itwill be all right. .
- I'm gonna go off on a tangent.I think it's so funny that
like the latest wordis bro for everything.

(26:27):
Like, our kids are callingus, bro. I know all the time.
- And girls use it too.Sammy says it. Sammy
- Does it all the time. Yeah. Yeah.
- Yes.- Why, why do you think
that has? How has that evolved?
- You got no Riz.- You got no Riz bro. .
All right. Sorry for the tangent. So,
- I mean, I don't know about what else

(26:48):
to really do with cast iron here.
Oh, cleaning is a littlebit more difficult too.
You don't really wanna put soap in there.
You don't wanna put, you can't use the
bar keeper's friend. That's
- Really just like a sponge. Right. And
- Hot water, they say a lot
of times if you did a messy thing,
just put hot water and bring it to a boil.
- Yeah. You can bring itto a boil. And then I'll,
I'll always, I know it'snot really seasoning it,
but I'll oil it, oil it.

(27:09):
Yeah. With, uh, high heatoil, like avocado oil. Yeah.
I wouldn't oil it
with like an extra virgin oliveoil or anything like that.
- Yeah. I mean, I do put alittle olive oil sometimes.
'cause I know if I'mgonna use it fairly, uh,
quickly if the, the, the thing is,
if you put olive oil and you don't use it,
- It can- Yeah.
If you don't use it for sixmonths, it can go rancid.
- Like rancid. Yeah. Yeah.- Yeah.
It's hard for me to ever recon,

(27:31):
recommend cast iron overstainless steel. What
- About for like fajitas?
- Yeah. I mean, I thinkit's cool to have 'em.
And I actually purchased a couple
because I wanna do avideo, a fajita video.
- That would be cool.Yeah. I love your fajitas.
You've been making those for years.
So I think it's time that you
share that recipe with the world.
- It's nothing special.- It's still, it's still so good.
Um, I, what do I use thecast iron for? I don't know.

(27:56):
- I, I really- Don't know. There's something I make
- Frequently.
Oh yes, yes, yes. Isit frittata? Yes. Yes.
That frittata is reallygood for with the cast iron.
- It is. And I use the 10 inch one
that we have is a 10 or 12 inch
- That is a 12.
I not it's, yeah, it'slike it's an 11. Yeah.
It's an odd number. Okay.
- That's the one I use and I love it.

(28:17):
- Yeah, no, you do use that.
And one other thing aboutcast iron, it's really good
for bread, but not the non enamel ones.
So like the larger castiron dutch ovens. Mm-Hmm.
. Yeah. Sowe'll go on to the next one,
which is aluminum.
And we did briefly talk about it.
So regular aluminum is what?

(28:38):
Non-stick is just a non-stickcoating on top of that.
Regular aluminum, regularaluminum are very inexpensive.
Very inexpensive. And yeah,
you won't find them inlike your standard stores.
You'll have to go to arestaurant supply store
or, or online.
I don't really know whatelse. We already mentioned it,
so I think we can quicklygo into the hard anodized.

(29:00):
- Yeah. And then the carbon steel
- And the carbon steel.
So hard anodized is
what I think you were talking aboutbefore that you like cleaning.
That t file is a hard anodizedthat is not a non-stick.
- Oh really?- That's right.
- The one that we use for like everything.
- Yes. I think that's part
of the reason why it's been so durable.
I didn't know that , it hasn't

(29:21):
gotten Okay. Messed up.
- I always thought that was anon-stick. Okay. Yeah. So the
- My bad and a my bad bro.
It's all right. You still got,
you still got some Bri um, .
- Thanks.- The anodized process is,
it's like changing the metal itself.
So it's not technically acoating. I looked this up.

(29:43):
It doesn't really make sense to me.
Apparently if you takesomething that is say an eighth
of an inch thick or, orwhatnot, when you anodize it,
you're going halfway in
and ch changing theproperties of the metal.
So if you were to remove it, it would have
to be done industrialprocess to remove it.
It would remove half of thethickness of the pan. Hmm.

(30:03):
Versus Teflon pan ortraditional non-stick.
That's a coating on top of it,
which is more easily scratched and ruined.
And that's where all the health, that's
where all the health concernsand everything come in.
So with hard anodized, youcan't really remove the coating.
Okay. That being said, I thinkyou're still not supposed
to use metal utensils on it,but it can go in the oven.

(30:27):
So again, that's the advantagethere. Mm-Hmm. .
So there, I think hardanodize is good. I don't know.
I don't have enough experiencewith it. We do have one pan.
It's that all clad panand it works really well.
I just made a recent recipe, uh,
garlic butter steak bites.I did it in that pan. Oh,
- That's right. Yeah, yeah,
- Yeah.
It's a good pan. It was very cheap too.
They're like, this islike all clads cheap line.

(30:48):
It's sold at Home Goods
and I think we bought the panfor like 20 bucks and Mm-Hmm.
, you know,I like black pans for,
uh, for photos. Right, Tara?
- Yeah. Because they don't reflect.
- They just look so much better. They do.
You get they beautifulcontrast. Yeah. In the photos.
- That's one thing that we always have
to take into consideration Yeah.
Is that the food that we'remaking is being photographed.

(31:09):
- That's it. We trynot to stainless looks,
kinda looks like garbage inphotos because it's too shiny.
Yeah. Shiny is the enemy of, uh,
any food photographer shininess.
So that's why I like platesthat this is like more
of like a stylist thing.
They will always use,uh, matte plates. Mm-Hmm.
insteadof anything with gloss.
And it's very hard to findmatte plates anywhere.
Everything is gloss.

(31:31):
Everything because it'sgloss is easier to clean.
Like food comes off of gloss. Mm-Hmm.
ea easier. Thoseare just a little insight on,
on the photos we go through
because I've been shootingphotos for six years.
All this stuff and the processes, uh,
that I employ have adapted. Yeah.
- Speaking of that, canwe just take a moment
to reflect on that?

(31:51):
It has been six years at this point.
Wasn't this, this waslike the time of year.
It was right after Christmas.
This is the time of year
that you came home with your camera.
- Yeah. It's been, is it,
is it been six or seit's been seven right?
With the camera? 2018.
- 2018. - Okay. So six.Yeah. It's been a long time.
It feels like a long time.

(32:12):
We were actually looking at,I, I look at competitors, uh,
on our website specifically.
And I look at competitors to motivate me
and I actually look atit to what's po like,
to find out what's possible.
So I was looking at one,it's a very popular website.
It's called, uh, spend With Pennies.
And I think she's beendoing it for 15 years.

(32:33):
I think the site's, I alwayscheck how old the website is.
The best comparison isalways for me to see
how many recipes they have versus us.
So we have about 450 on our site now,
and she has 2,500.
So, you know. Yeah. It made mefeel pretty good. It it did.
You know, I mean, it's just, yeah.
She's gonna be more visible that site.

(32:55):
I mean, it's, it's oneof the biggest sites.
I you probably know this site, that site,
Sally's Baking Addiction,Natasha's Kitchen Recipe,
- Tin- Eats Recipe, tin Eats, serious Eats.
These are all very, very large sites.
And that is what we strive to become.
And we will, we willbecome that because of you,

(33:15):
because of you makingour recipes all the time
and leaving comments on thesite, giving it, giving it
to five star ratings, which we adore.
And uh, and we take it, uh, you know,
we take it all seriously.
But no, uh, there arecompetitors in a good way.
I like to see what's possible. Yeah. Yeah.
- It's definitely motivating.Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting.

(33:36):
I wanna get into questions. Yeah. But
before we do that, let's talkabout one more type of pan.
Okay. Carbon steel.
- Carbon steel. Carbon steelare awesome. I don't use 'em.
Um, they're very expensive.
So they're, they're, they're high end.
You can look on, go on Amazon
and just type in any go typein 12 inch carbon steel pan,
which again is what I recommend.
I don't recommend a family,

(33:57):
you know, you're listening to me.
You're probably cooking for your family
or cooking for, you know, you,
you don't want a really small pan.
So a 12 inch pan might be a hundred bucks.
It has all the propertiesof, uh, cast iron,
but much lighter.
So you can pick it up, you can flip.
They're not light, but they're way lighter
than than a cast iron.

(34:19):
Um, they need to be seasoned though.
You have to season themand you have to clean them
and dry when they're wet.
They need to be dried off immediately.
So this is the same thing.
If you have a carbon steel knife,
which you will undoubtedlyknow, if you have one
and you didn't clean it, it will rust.
But if you do get surface ruston your pan when you forgot,

(34:40):
you can buff that off.
And then just make surefrom that point forward,
after you, uh, wash your pan, you dry 'em.
You could even do a vin coatingof oil all over your pan.
Do we have a carbonsteel pan? We have one.
We have one. Yeah.
- Use it. Have I, have I everallowed to clean it? I don't
- Even remember.
No, we don't. I just don't use it.
It's just, it's, it's hard to justify any
of these other pans compared to the easy

(35:04):
use and usefulness ofa stainless steel pan.
It's, in my opinion, it's just my opinion.
Now you might be saying what tower the,
the frustration tower was having
that everything was sticking.
Now that you know how tonot make it stick, go back
and use those stainless pansthat maybe you put in the back
of, of a cabinet.

(35:25):
And I, I think you're gonnalove 'em. Mm-Hmm. .
But if you do use non-stick ifrom, from the limited amount
of research I did, it's not
the, it's not the end of the world.
The problem is though,if you do scratch it,
you really do need to dispose of it
because that's where theysay it can cause some,
some potential health issues.
We do use non-stick,
but the bulk by faris, is stainless steel.

(35:49):
Mm-Hmm. in,in our household. Yep.
And then, you know, wedidn't go into the pots.
The pots we have are theenamel Dutch oven too.
But we wanna stick more topans in this episode. Yeah,
- Yeah.
I mean, we talked a, I feellike we talked a lot about
the Dutch ovens and,
and pans in the Lake CroceCostco episode. Yeah.
- I mean, frequent, frequent

(36:09):
listeners here will know about that.
But you know, if it, if you,if you're a new listener,
then yeah.
You know that. Yeah. We use,we use enamel Dutch ovens.
Mm-Hmm. . Alright,let's go into the questions.
- This is from John inthe video for three meats,
meat lovers New York Sicilian,you're gonna have to take a,
take a trip back in time.
'cause this is an oldvideo. You mentioned not

(36:29):
to use extra virgin oliveoil to oil pizza pans,
just regular olive oil or someother neutral such as canola
or perhaps grape seed oil,
which has a high smoking temperature
or even shortening other than a waste
of money since high heatdestroys the flavor.
Is there any particularreason why one would not
use olive oil?

(36:51):
- Extra virgin, he means,right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
John, you can use extravirgin. You definitely can.
I think now again, if this,
this video is probably threeyears or four years old.
Three years old. I don't really
remember exactly what I said.
Uh, in fact, I don't rememberanything at all about it.
But I, I know that I was, thepoint I was probably trying
to get across was pizzerias in general,

(37:14):
New York pizzerias are notusing extra virgin olive oil.
They're not, there might beoutta the 80,000 pizzerias
that are in this part of the country.
There might be 1% of 'em that do okay.
But it's just not something
that is gonna improve anything for them.
It's gonna hurt theirbottom line substantially

(37:35):
because extra virgin isa lot more expensive.
A lot of these pizzerias areusing vegetable oil Okay.
To oil the pan. 'cause itdoesn't matter in the end
because people are eating the top of it.
They're, they're getting thesauce, the cheese, everything.
So go ahead, use your extra virgin
olive oil if you want,John. It's totally fine.
- So you don't think thehigh heat that you're using

(37:58):
to cook a Sicilian pizza?
No. No. Well, okay.
- I don't think, I don'tthink it would do too much
from what I understand.
I mean, I, extra virgin smokepoint is like four 40 mm-Hmm.
four 40 to four 50,
you're cooking that at four 50.
I don't think it's getting to four 50
at the bottom of that pan there.
So I, I think it's kind of moot.
I, I don't, I mean, ultimately,John, if you test it

(38:21):
both ways, that's really theonly way you're gonna be able
to find out a hundred percent.
And that's typically what I do.
And when I tell people to do it,
because a lot of like tropes
and dogmas online, like I,I, I'll give you an example.
This is different. So there was
America's test kitchen saidyou could take a frozen steak
and like rock hard frozen steak
and it's ju comes outjust as good as, you know,

(38:45):
a completely thought stake.
So I, you know, initially I was like,
there's no way this is gonna work.
I've been doing this along, long time. Okay.
Long time. I've cooked so many steaks.
So I said, you know what, thisis America's test kitchen.
It's gotta be right. Then aYouTuber made a video on it.
And he, I think said it wasgood too. So I did it Tara.

(39:08):
Right. And how was thatstake that I made? It
- Wasn't good.
- No. I mean, I did it.I did it in the pan, the
- Technique. When was this?
- Uh, probably a few months,only a few months ago.
The technique was my, he kept turning it
- Seriously with all the holidays
and all that stuff going like,
- Yeah, no, I definitely,- My memory is just
not, well, what it was, youknow what? That doesn't, it
- Doesn't surprise me thatyou didn't rave about it

(39:28):
because nobody raved about it.
Yeah. But we ate it.
You're supposed to turn itevery minute in the pan.
Um, that supposedly it's likeyou can get the same amount
of brownness on it
and you get even better cooking,they say, because really,
because by it being frozen,it gets a better, uh,
a better level of redness.
Like so evenness inthe whole entire steak.

(39:50):
And no, there's, there's a reason why
America's test kitchen,
that steakhouse don't cookfrozen steaks, , you know,
they cook fresh steaks.
That's why, and even when youput a frozen steak, when you,
once you put beef inthe freezer, it changes
the flavor for the worse.
So that's one downside to it,
but no steakhouses, A lot oftimes they have 'em, they,

(40:11):
they have all their stakesready for that night.
A lot of them I heard noware starting to experiment
with like, so, and
or like kind of a thing thathas a stake almost done.
And then they can justsear the heck out of it,
get it out to the customer quicker.
But I don't think anysteakhouse will ever, ever have,
like, we'll say we'recooking frozen steaks now.

(40:33):
It's just not as good.Yeah. Yeah. But I had to
- Try.
I couldn't imagine it had to try. I
can't imagine it being good.
Yeah. All right. Next question.
This is from Bert, not your dad.
- Is this my dad? No.
- not your dad. Ithink his full name is Norbert.
Oh, not Bertram.
Can I cook pork ribs
or beef stew in mypressure cooker, then add

(40:55):
to my marinara sauce, thusmaking it a sundae sauce if
a yes answer, how should I spice the meat?
Can you give recipes? If no, why not?
- Okay. So you can do anythingyou want, Bert, you can.
All right. There is a reasonwhy you would put the meat

(41:16):
in the sauce from thebeginning is it would
better flavor that sauce.
If you're cooking it in a pressure cooker,
I assume you mean by itself.
And then taking that meat andthen putting it in your sauce.
You're gonna have essentiallylike a clean sauce,
almost like a marinara withpressure cooked meat. Mm-Hmm.

(41:36):
- . So it's not gonna have,
the tomatoes aren't gonnahave that flavor Yeah.
Of the meat cooking andabsorbing into it. Yeah.
So you could do it, but it'sgonna yield inferior results to
making a sundae saucewhere you cooked the meat.
- So you've made enoughSunday sauces in your life.
What is the color of the tomatoeswhen you first put 'em in
the pot versus what isthe color of the sauce?

(41:57):
Eight, eight hours later?
- Yeah. So the color, whenyou put a like, fresh tomato,
it's like the color ofa, of a marinara sauce.
It's a, a bright red,it's almost the same color
as when the tomatoes come out of the can.
But if they've been sittingthere and kind of melding
and meshing with the meat,maybe a little red wine

(42:18):
for hours and hours and hours.
Yep. It's gonna be like a deepbrick red, which I mean, I,
I think is, is great.
I, I personally wouldn't,well, of course you can
marry a marinara sauce
and pressure cookedmeat. I I wouldn't do it
- Now.
Maybe he means that he onlywanted to cook the tomatoes

(42:40):
for like 20 minutes
and then take that pressure cooked meat
to like save a ton of time. That's the
- Only thing.
Like a fast Sunday sauce. Yeah.
- You know what, maybeit's worth exploring, Bert.
I don't know. I I'm gonnasay that in, in some,
some situations, the tried
and true method is the best method.
Uh, I think it is in this case.

(43:01):
So that wraps up our questions today.
Tara and I were discussing this right
before we went on here.
Leave us your commentsin video form. Okay.
Your comments and questions.
Now, depending on your technicalcapabilities will be easy
or difficult, but maybe haveyour son help you, you know,
or, or your daughter or whatnot.
Because if you do do it that way,

(43:22):
then we will throw it uphere during the video.
You know, during the videopodcast, the YouTube portion, uh,
obviously if you're listening on Spotify
or Apple, this doesn't matter
to you at all. But if you are listening,
- What are audio recording?
- Yeah. You, and that'sthe other one you said.
If you are listening on Apple, Spotify,
you will get an audio recording
if you want to hear yourself.
I think both of those are, will be more

(43:46):
getting the audienceinvolved than just having
a question, uh, emailed.
- Yeah. And actuallythis came as a suggestion
from Uncle Bob.
- Yes.- Bob. Love getting his emails. Uncle.
He always makes me laugh. He's
- A real person.
He's not, he is not, not a
- Fake. His name is Bob. Not
- A fake Bob.
- He , I think he, um,

(44:08):
you always reference likea fictional Uncle Bob.
So he just startedcalling himself Uncle Bob
when he sends us emails.
But he did suggest thatmaybe it would be good
to get some more audience engagement
by having them, you know, call.
I think he suggested to callin and leave a recording.
We don't have that type of capability to,
to call and leave a recording. We're

(44:29):
- Not, we're not goinglive here. We're, this is
- Recorded.
This is prerecorded. So if youwant your voice to be heard
on our podcast or you wantto be shown on our video,
send us a video or send us a recording
Yeah. Of your question with,
- There's a lot of ways to do it.
Yeah. You can do it on Instagram.
You can DM me or on Facebook.

(44:50):
You can send the audioor a video of yourself
and then we'll just take it, add it in.
If you don't wanna do either one of those
and you wanna stick to the Tried
and true method, it's
[e-mail] your questions.
Yeah. Or just send the video
or audio part in thatemail too, that Yeah.
Yeah. If you're capable, youknow, capable of doing that,
just attach it in there and get it to us.

(45:10):
There. There's a, there'sa multiple ways to do this,
but, um, we wanna get youmore involved here, more part
of the process than, uh,than you have been before.
And obviously if you area Patreon member, you know
that you are more part ofthe process over there too,
because we have the discordconnected, uh, to the Patreon.
And, you know, there's, there'sa sizable amount of people
that love that like, totalk in that discord now,

(45:32):
which I'm happy about.
I like, I would love to getit to the point, Tara, where
I'm kind of like notinvolved in the conversation
where people are talkingto each other, you know?
'cause that's what Discord is. Mm-Hmm.
, you know, they can
discuss among, amongst themselves.
And there are, there are somepeople that do that now. Yeah.
- Yeah. That's good.- So anyway,
that's a lot of stuff there for you.

(45:53):
Just do anyone that, uh, youknow, suits you. Yeah. Yeah.
Until next time. Thank you. See you.