A General Post About Cookware

Some years ago, nonstick cookware was all the rage.  It continues to be popular among people stuck with cooking duties with which they're unfamiliar!

After all, nobody wants to be stuck cleaning burnt-on food off the bottom of a fry pan.  (Unfortunately, non-stick coatings are made out of a type of plastic that does not react with anything, which is why it is nonstick.  But they're impossible to destroy—well, hard to, anyway—which means they stay in landfills for hundreds of years, which is an alarming thing, and considered a biohazard.  Dupont is vilified for inventing Teflon, and justly so.)  There are ways to avoid burnt-on food, and with modern equipment, and a Little know how, you can avoid the need for Teflon coatings. 

• Avoid very high cooking temperatures.  Only a very few cooking procedures actually need super-hot pans, and only for a brief period of time—searing a steak, for instance.  Even boiling water can be done with moderate heat; using the highest available temperature does not boil the water faster. 
• Using low temperatures makes the pan heat more uniform across the base, which makes super-hot 'hot spots' less likely.  Those hot-spots are the places where food burns. 
• Cooking newbies (or 'noobs' which are usually guys) are often in a hurry, and so use super high temperatures, to get food cooked quickly!  That often gets food burned, which in turn gets the frustrated cook interested in nonstick.  If the cook uses low temperatures, then cast iron or ceramic-coated cookware works perfectly well. 
• If you do use cast-iron cookware, many of the recipes you use—but not all—can be completed in the oven.  That's an expert-level procedure. 

ARch