My wife recently began researching possible harmful items in our home, and asked me to get cookware without Teflon. Having grown up with non-stick pans, and having had a bad encounter with stainless steel, I was expecting this change to be a nightmare. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised.
I researched healthy alternatives to non-stick and came up with ionized aluminum, stainless steel, cast iron and ceramic coated cast iron. None of these seemed like a great choice. I then went to Bed Bath and Beyond to look at pans and discovered the Cuisinart Green line. After seeing the cast iron, I realized we probably would somehow damage our new glasstop stove as it was so heavy, so ceramic coated aluminum sounded great.
I settled on either Calphalon One infused ionized aluminum or the Cuisinart line. However, Bed Bath and Beyond is a bit confusing with the Cuisinart line. They sell Cuisinart "Greenware" as a set and Green "Gourmet" as individual pieces. The Green Gourmet set is a bit more expensive, and I was advised by the salesperson not to buy GreenWare as it has a rough bottom that may scratch a glass top stove. He offerred to order a Green Gourmet set, but I decided to buy one Caphalon and one GreenGourmet frying pan and test them before investing in a set. I honestly didn't expect either to work as well as my non-stick pans.
I generally only cook breakfast on the weekends, so I cooked what I know how to cook. I took both pans and set the burner at the same setting (6 on my stove which is the setting I used for the non-stick pans). I made pancake batter and used an organic olive oil cooking spray. Interestingly, the Cuisinart pan was too hot at 6 so the pancakes burned and I had to set the stove at 4 to get the same results as the 6 on the Calphalon pan. Both pans were great with the pancakes–better than my non-stick pan and probably the prettiest looking pancakes I have ever made. The Cuisinart pan was very easy to clean, but the Calphalon took a bit more effort. On another day, I cooked eggs. Again using the same Olive Oil spray. The eggs immediately stuck to the Calphalon pan. Having read instructions on using cast iron and waiting for the eggs to "release", I waited, and waited and waited. What a mess! I couln't get the burnt eggs off the pan. Of course as soon as I put the pan in the sink with water, they popped right off so clean up was easy. I'm sure there is a correct way to cook eggs on this pan, but I couldn't do it after 4 tries. On the Cuisinart Pan, I had no problem, and surprisingly, the eggs seemed to be easier to turn over than on our old Farberware non-stick.
So after this, I decided to get the Cuisinart and ordered from Amazon which was $50 cheaper than the price quoted by the Bed Bath and Beyond salesperson who offerred to order it for me.
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