Cast iron or carbon steel
Instead of a coated nonstick pan, replaced every few years
~$30 once against ~$50 every three years
Both release food. One of them keeps doing it for fifty years.
A nonstick coating is a consumable. It wears, it scratches, and the pan goes in the bin when it does, which is the real price of that pan rather than the number on the shelf. Iron seasons instead of coating, and the surface improves with use rather than degrading. On the safety question the answer is duller than the internet suggests: PFOA left American manufacturing by 2015, and an intact coated pan at normal cooking heat is fine.
Iron wants seasoning, hand washing and drying, and it rusts if you leave it wet. Long simmers of tomato or wine strip the seasoning back off. And a coated pan overheated dry, past about 500 degrees, does give off fumes that cause a temporary flu-like illness, and those same fumes kill pet birds at lower temperatures than that.
What to get
- Cast iron skillet10 or 12 inch, pre-seasoned, one piece of metalAmazon ~$30
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