What type of pan is best for lazy cookers?

So essentially I want to buy one pan, I don’t want to care about what utensils I use in it (metal, plastic, or wood), or what I cook in it, and I want to clean it easily by just putting some soap on it, using the rough side of a sponge and drying it off and tossing it back in the cupboard.

Ideally, I’d also like this pan to last longer than 2-3 years.

So overall I am thinking I want enameled cast iron because it seems like it could take all of that but then I recently read how you don’t want to cook something like eggs or fish in it because they’ll stick.

The other bit I’ve seen is just buying a coated non-stick pan of any sort but be prepared to throw them away in 1-3 years and don’t use anything metal in them.

Should I just buy enameled cast iron and cook whatever I want in it? Should I buy multiple types and cook different things in them? Should I just stick with non-stick?

Overall, I am a very novice cooker who simply cooks for a family of 4. Typically using something like everyplate. I’m not looking for fancy but I am looking for “buy it once then use it until I die with low maintenance.” I essentially want the Toyota Camry of cookware. Reliable, low maintenance, not going to win any cooking contests.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

azerial, (edited )

Okay hear me out.

How lazy are you?

  • Can you let something sit on the pan for a few days?
  • are you okay with buying a chainmail scrubber that is maybe 4 bucks? Not required but useful
  • Sometimes you can just use a napkin to clean it

If you properly take care of a cast iron pan, it will last you a lifetime and it’s super easy to clean. A lot of people might say Teflon. I say no. You have to replace it frequently, even in the restaurant i work in, it’s no bueno.

If you take the 3 seconds of time to wipe out the pan, the cast iron pan will do what you need and then you can give it to your kids lol

The critical part of all these pans (NOT TEFLON) is it heat it up first before you cook.

  • with cast iron i place my hand near the pan and feel the heat. You’ll get a feel for it. When it’s close you add the oil and wait until it shimmers
  • with stainless, no oil, heat it up and then take a drop off water and throw it in the pan. It should “skate” across the pan as if it wants to get out. Only then is it ready. If you don’t do this IT WILL STICK.

edit: re: stainless: once it’s hot, add oil and then quickly get to business.

MJBrune,

I went with a carbon steel wok to try it out. I’ve only cooked a few eggs in it but it already feels far easier to deal with than cast iron or stainless steel. It’s generally about the same as cast iron but heats up quicker, gives better results because I can control the heat better and cleaning is generally the same.

amio,

I'd want the nonstick and stainless/cast iron, personally. Each does things the others don't, and since you're cooking for four, having more than one pan is a good idea anyway: side dishes or whatever. You may not need nonstick, but it does make a lot of things very convenient. Stainless or cast iron for most other cooking - anything high heat at least, anything where you want a pan sauce. That way the nonstick pan gets a break and a longer lifespan, arguably less maintenance overall.

If not: stainless. Lower maintenance than cast iron, will do mostly the same things and stand up to almost anything.

Edit: I think you could learn to cook eggs and fish almost no matter what you use, but I'm not an expert. Supposedly it has a lot to do with just temperature control and using fat properly.

Anabriated, (edited )

Stainless steel, flat-ish bottom, tall curved (wok-like) sides, all metal. Something like this mf: m.media-amazon.com/…/81O93YXWJ-L.

you can:

  • pan fry
  • stir fry
  • stew
  • throw it in the oven for roasts
  • soup in a pinch
  • use it on every kind of stove top

care:

  • minimal
  • steel wool and scraping is a-okay if it gets nasty!

downsides:

  • you’ll never have a good time frying wet starches like noodles without some serious oil
  • your first 4 attempts at pan fried fish will inevitably result in destruction
  • fried eggs are gonna be tough

quirks:

  • heats and cools very quickly, so you’ll have to break some habits if you ever expand your cookery collection with carbon steel or cast iron
mooncabbage,

Stainless steel, all the coatings are coming out as bad for our health, and non-stick doesn’t last. Enamel can chip and also expose cheap material and that can also be bad for your health. Get bar keepers friend to remove spots or tough stuff, throw it in the dishwasher, it can take a beating especially if you put some money into it. It may not be quite as low maintenance as others but it’s a lot less than cast iron and you can use whatever in it. They heat up beautifully too. Total game changer.

blip,

To me, a pan for a lazy cook means easy to clean, and you don’t need to worry about what you cook in it. I wouldn’t care about what types of utensils you need, because a true lazy person would simply throw out all of ones you can’t use.

With that in mind, I think an oven-safe ceramic nonstick pan is your best bet. The nonstick is great for both cooking and cleanup, and unlike a cast iron you don’t need to worry about acidic foods or reseasoning. If all you own are silicone utensils, the only downside is that you can’t crank the heat up too much. And even then, all that does shorten the lifespan of its nonstick properties, at which point you’re no worse off than a steel pan.

Ilflish,

This is what I use. It’s 30cm to cook everything up to my weekly meal prep, flat sided to make mixing easier at the edges and the a handle to make it a little easier to keep steady.

pickles,
@pickles@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

My vote is for a 10-12" traditional cast iron pan. I’ve used every type of pan out there, and the one I leave sitting out on my stove is my trusty cast iron skillet that was my great great grandparents’. It will oulive me too!

Buying:

I would recommend to not buy new. Buy an old used one that ideally has a smooth surface, not a rough one. (The newer ones have a dimpled surface due to how they’re molded and they take longer to season up in my opinion.) Check the old pan for bulges, cracks, and extreme rust (like the whole thing is orange). If there’s a few rust spots, that can be fixed with a good scrub, a thin coating of oil, and an hour in a 400 degree oven. That’s it! If you are cooking with the same pan a lot, you don’t need to worry about it rusting ever again. Just always coat it in a thin layer of high heat oil. (I prefer avocado or safflower.)

Cooking:

Never put food in a cold pan! Let it warm up first. Put a bead of water in to check if it’s ready, it will sizzle when the pan is hot. If food sticks, add liquid or oil and scrape the bottom good with a metal spatula. You don’t have to be gentle with cast iron!

Cleaning:

After cooking, turn off your burner and immediately remove all the food (do not leave it in the pan to cool! Harder to clean) and run it under blazing HOT tap water (I wear kitchen gloves for this step!) The temp change won’t be high enough to damage your pan. Scrub it out with a copper chore boy or very stiff brush all over, then put back on the still warm burner (if you use electric) or turn the burner on low and wait for the water to evaporate off, it’ll only take a minute or two. Then rub the pan lightly ALL OVER, every bit, with a high heat cooking oil. I keep a small rag in some oil for this purpose. Done! It takes me like 3 min to clean the pan, tops.

This cleaning method is sooo much easier than having to deal with any of my other pans. If you wash it hot and keep it seasoned, nothing will stick and it’ll last forever!

FZDC, (edited )

To me, the obvious answer is stainless steel. There are cheap ones and expensive ones, and everything in between. The more expensive ones tend to be constructed with more even surfaces, with better heat transfer (things like an aluminum or copper core), and more durable to regular or even careless use. But even the cheap ones are great.

Stainless advantages over traditional Teflon-based nonstick:

  • Metal utensils and scrubbers don’t damage it, which means you can use thinner spatulas and scrub more aggressively, or do things like whisk in the pan (helpful for making sauces or gravies)
  • No need to worry about maximum temperature (Teflon reacts poorly to high temperatures, degrading quickly and off-gassing fumes that are mildly harmful to humans but deadly toxic for birds)
  • Oven-safe (if the handle is oven safe), which is good for certain recipes that are easier to just transfer to the oven (certain sauces or braises)
  • Much better thermal conductivity, for faster temperature response to turning the heat up or down.

Stainless advantages over ceramic non-stick:

  • Metal utensils and scrubbers OK (ceramic nonstick is more resistant to scratches than traditional nonstick, but the guides still all tell you not to use metal)
  • Can withstand higher temperatures (ceramic nonstick isn’t as bad as traditional nonstick at high temperatures, but it still loses nonstick properties under high heat, over time).
  • More likely to be oven-safe (some ceramic nonstick is oven safe, but you’d have to look and check, and still be mindful of temperature limits)
  • Better thermal conductivity

Stainless advantages over cast iron:

  • Better thermal conductivity (cast iron actually sucks at this but nobody seems to acknowledge it)
  • Easier care, no need to season
  • Can handle acids no problem, so things like slow cooking a tomato sauce or deglazing with wine/vinegar/juice are possible without weird dark discoloration in your food.
  • Much lighter in weight, so much easier to use when transferring or pouring food, washing the pan, etc.

Stainless advantages over carbon steel (including carbon steel woks):

  • Easier care, no need to season
  • Can handle acids

Don’t get me wrong: I literally own every single type of cookware listed here, and I cook on all of them for different purposes. But the stainless is my workhorse, the default I use on weeknights, because it’s easy and mindless and I literally can’t mess it up.

EDIT: Wow, can’t believe I forgot to actually list the disadvantages of stainless. Main disadvantages:

  • Not non-stick. When things stick, it can be a huge pain in the ass, ranging from making your food ugly to actually ruining a dish (for example, if the sticking causes you to destroy the structural integrity of the thing you’re cooking, or the the stuck food starts scorching and adding bitter burnt flavors to your food).
  • A little bit more effort to clean in typical situations, and a lot more effort to clean when there’s food residue stuck to the pan.
Rekhyt,
  • Better thermal conductivity (cast iron actually sucks at this but nobody seems to acknowledge it)

One of the main selling points of cast iron is the fact that it has low thermal conductivity - it takes a while to get hot, but then it stays hot for longer. This is an advantage for some types of cooking and is why I only use my cast iron for specific things.

Fwiw, I agree that if you only have one pan, don’t make that pan cast iron - it’s good at what it does but it’s not as versatile as a stainless steel pan for most things.

al177,

Cast iron has better thermal conductivity than stainless: engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-metal… . This is why copper clad stainless exists. However a cast iron pan has a lot more thermal mass, so it takes longer to get the surface up to temperature.

ickis,

Hi there,

I am a big fan of enameled cast iron, and have not had issues cooking fish or eggs in mine. If something sticks, you can add a little fat or liquid (broth, beer, pickle juice, ad infinitum) to help loosen the stubborn item, it doesn’t take a whole lot. I like using a sizeable spatula with a pat of butter atop it and gently work the spatula under whatever is stuck as the butter melts under the food itself.

Things stick in your pan because there’s not enough fat to keep it moist. You’re essentially frying things when you use a pan, so having enough oil is essential to prevent burnt sticking food. With enough fat in the pan, you should be able to glide a fried egg around the pan with ease.

Enamel cast iron pans are excellent for deglazing as well, which’ll make cleaning them even more simple and the byproduct makes for a delicious sauce that’ll punch your meal quality up tenfold. Honestly you should deglaze everytime you cook,

Enamel stains as you use it but it’s pretty easy to clean with Barkeeper’s Friend (either the powder or gel work, though the powder will last you an eternity longer than the gel). Outside that, the exact cleaning method you stated works.

I hope this helps in your quest, happy hunting!

oldGregg,

deleted_by_author

    •
    scytale,

    Same. We use a ceramic wok for 90% of our cooking. Just have to be mindful of the temperature and not use metal utensils; but otherwise it’s non-stick, versatile to cook various types of dishes, and very easy to clean.

    falsem,

    If you're a novice cook and want to keep it simple then get a nice nonstick pan and just don't use metal on it - silicone, plastic, or wood. You can even use the rough side of a sponge fine. Just don't run it through the dishwasher. Should easily last you 5+ years.

    Cast iron and stainless steel are great but more particular in how you use and maintain them.

    Spaloone,

    How is a stainless steel pan ‘particular’?
    I have several and I don’t baby them, I throw them in the dishwasher etc.

    falsem,

    You need to heat it before putting anything in and you need to use enough fat/oil to keep things from sticking. Non-stick is more forgiving on this front. It can also be harder to clean

    lemillionsocks,
    @lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

    Personally I moved away from teflon back to steel and I cant go back. In addition to no longer having to baby it to keep the thing from going from nonstick- to stick and being able to scrub that badboy. On top of that going from plastic and silicon spatulas back to a metal spatula is just incredible.

    That said if youre a novice cook and dont want to clean dishes then a stainless steel can sometimes require some scrubbing(though you can usually mitigate this by adding water while hot and essentially deglazing the shmutz off

    raccoona_nongrata,
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    lemillionsocks,
    @lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

    I have a ceramic cast iron dutch oven that I use a lot and it’s pretty good so far 2 years in, but I am always a little concerned that one day it will start chipping and that’ll be the end for my pot.

    PiecePractical,

    So funny story. The workhorse of my kitchen is a cheap-ass enamel Dutch oven that my wife impulse bought at a grocery store 4 or 5 years before we moved in together. After we got married, I decided to get her a LeCruset replacement for our anniversary the year that cheap one bit the dust. We’ve lived together ten years as of this summer and I still haven’t had to shell out for the Lecruset. We use that thing at least twice a week, maybe more in the winter months and this thing shows no signs of quitting. At this point we’re so attachted to it that when the enamel does go, I’ll probably drill holes in it and keep it as a flower pot.

    toastus,

    I usually love to recommend non enameled cast iron pans.
    Those are the pans I use most and I am pretty lazy myself.
    Most times I just clean them with soapy water and a sponge, dry them well, rub a really really small splash of oil around in it and heat it back up until I see the first signs of smoke.

    If even that is too much work (and you have a gas stove or similar) I would recommend a simple wok from any Asian store.
    I have a glass stove top right now so I rarely use mine anymore, but if I had a gas stove I think that I would use it all the time.

    Kiloee,

    You are not supposed to wash cast iron with soap and you also need to let them cool down enough before washing because they can get a temperature shock otherwise and crack inside.

    toastus,

    I have cooked with cast iron for years and have never cracked one.
    I have destroyed a bit of seasoning, but surely not with mild dishsoap.

    Normal modern dishsoap does not have any strong lye in it (and hasn’t for decades) and will not destroy a proper seasoning.
    And obviously I don’t wash my pan while it’s ripping hot.

    Usually I do my dishes after eating, sometimes the pan is completely cooled down, sometimes it is a bit lukewarm, I never had problems with either. If I can handle the pan with bare hands it is cool enough to wash with warm water.

    Don’t spread outdated information.
    The only thing this does is intimidate people from using cast iron at all and that’s just a shame.

    Kiloee,

    Maybe dishsoap is not the same everywhere, ours can definitely strip seasoning off. The company making the pan explicitly states that the pan should not be washed with dishsoap.

    I have seen quite a few people serving the dish, taking the just emptied pan and run it under the (not yet warm even) water. If the water evaporates when hitting the pan, I believe that difference is enough to damage the pan. What you’re describing sounds perfectly sensible to me.

    banjoman05,

    This right here. If a bit of soap and scrubbing takes off your seasoning - you didn’t have real seasoning in the first place!

    PiecePractical,

    Don’t spread outdated information.
    The only thing this does is intimidate people from using cast iron at all and that’s just a shame.

    Yeah, I think this was my biggest issue when I started using cast iron. I never had much luck getting it actually clean without soap and it definitely showed in my cooking. I eventually got some better advice and started having much better results. Now my CI is my go to eggs every weekend and afterwards, I throw it in the dishpan with everything else. As long as you don’t soak it, you’re fine. I think the soaking thing is a big part of why a lot of manufacturers still recommend against soap and water. It’s easier to tell people to not use soap and water than it is to explain the nuance of “wet it, don’t soak it” and “gently wash, don’t scrub into oblivion”.

    MJBrune,

    I have a glass top with electric coils under (not induction) and I still have other friends recommending a carbon steel wok. It might be really worth it.

    AssA,

    I got a set of these kind of pans to christmas last year. At first I was sceptical but they are really easy to maintain and great for nearly everything. (you still need a real nonstick pan for a great omelette though)

    ElleChaise,

    Cast iron is the only thing that will last longer than you or me. Whether or not you spring for the enamel coated big whoopty-doo expensive brand name, or just simple lodge ware, it's gonna be built tough. Personally I wouldn't recommend the enamel coated, because you will eventually crack that coating too, you can make your own, stronger coating, by simply using your cast iron pans to cook. Simply scrub it with warm soapy water after use, preferably while it's still warm enough to easily remove food, dry it, add a dab of high smoke point oil (avocado, cold pressed flax oil, and plain old canola are my go tos), dab that on after drying, make sure it's not thick and oily, just enough to prevent rust, and you're good to go.

    For a few years I had a light weight aluminum wok that served me well, very versatile given the big surface and naturally light weight of the metal. Also needed regular care and seasoning routine, but was worth the steps to only have one main pan/pot.

    Good luck with whatever you go with.

    MJBrune,

    Thank you! I’ve seen a few recommendations for carbon steel as well. It seems to be a competitor to cast iron and cast iron apparently leaches iron into the food. Additionally, I’ve read that carbon steel is smoother and thus creates a better non-stick surface. Is this something you’ve found? It’s kind of why I wanted enameled cast iron, keeps things simpler it seemed. I didn’t realize how many recommendations differ though. I guess everyone has a preference.

    medgremlin,

    The enameled cast iron from le Creuset is pricy, but worth it in my opinion. For nonstick that will last a good long while, I recommend Scanpan.

    IWantToFuckSpez,

    Yes it’s smoother. Another advantage is that a carbon steel pan is lighter than a cast iron.

    tallwookie,

    I like my steelclad set - a deep sauté pan is very versatile but it’s not the best if you plan on boiling anything. if I had to pick only a single pan that’s the one I’d choose.

    personally, I dont think you’re going to be able to cook for 4 people with a single pan (ok, maybe a really big paella pan or a wok but those are limiting). at minimum you need a sauté pan (frying, sautéing), a stock pot (boiling large volumes of liquid, soups), a saucepan (small amounts of liquid, sauces, poaching eggs, etc), and a stovetop pressure cooker (2 liter or larger). you could use the pressure cooker as a saucepan but it’s useful to have both.

    if you’re really set on going the cast iron route, got with Le Creuset’s enamel coated cast iron. they’re very expensive but will last decades.

    tim_0475,

    Stainless steel is buy it once and use until you die with low maintenance, use any utensil in it and can withstand the rough side of the sponge. Its also much kighter than cast iron, so easier to use. Look for one with stainless steel handles without any wooden or plastic parts, then you can also put it in the oven. No rivets on the inside is a bonus for cleaning if you find one like that.

    I clean mine while it’s still warm (if I can, doesn’t work always unfortunately), use a stiff brush under warm water first and that usually gets 90 percent of the stuff stuck to the bottom, the rest I do with dish soap and the soft side of the sponge and don’t need to be aggressive at all. Brushes are great for cleaning pots and pans!

    In my experience :D, you can’t use any utensil you want, use the rough side of the sponge, and expect a non stick pan to last more than a year. I stopped using nonstick for anything high heat like searing, I use it pretty much only for eggs these days and used my last nonstick for 5 years before I had to buy a new one for induction. It had no scratches when I gave it to a friend and was still nonstick, even if not as good as new.

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