Sometimes brown bits get stuck to the bottom of the pan while cooking and the best way to get them off is to toss some water into the pan before those bits can burn. Not much, maybe like a tablespoon - it dissolves all the brown bits into a very tasty brown sauce that coats the rest of the food in the pan. It's really not complicated, but the added moisture sometimes makes the cooking take a bit longer and isn't ideal when your goal is to cook something very dry and crispy (like when frying tofu)

I cook everyday and throw them away as soon as there's any visible sign of wear. Then after the third buy that damaged so soon, stopped buying nonstick.

But also, yes, I was buying cheaper pans. (Edit: tramontania i think?) Those aluminum ones with the nice red silicone handles. Fantastic pans, but degraded far too fast.

Now, I just use my cast iron skillet from a hundred years ago and it's easier to cook in AND makes better eggs AND I can use my metal spatula.

To clean it, I'll wipe it out with a paper towel, rinse it with warm water really fast, then every week or few days or if it smells, use a dollop of dawn and some warm water and sponge wash it for like 10 seconds and rinse it out, then one paper towel it clean, add in a tiny bit of canola oil, wipe it around, heat it until it starts to smoke on the stove, then turn it off. That process takes like, maybe 30 seconds, not including heating it until it smokes, which realistically is like only another 30-90 seconds.

The eggs are runny yolks and browned and crispy bottoms. And I'm not eating teflon, which to me is absolutely fantastic!

The best ones imo. No microplastics, zero maintenance, extreme durability, not hard to wash and not so expensive nowadays.

My grandmother still uses her stainless steel pans that are like 50 or 60 yo, and they still look perfect, almost like new, if not for the scratches. They were a gift when she married, and she literally never bought pans for herself in her life.

They're better than cast iron for some things in my experience. Acidic dishes, eggs (scrambled always stick to cast iron for me). But cast iron's heat retention is superior, providing a more even cooking surface on electric ranges - good for searing meat and most other applications.

A common misconception, the teflon molecules are very stable and don't react with almost everything, when ingested it usually just goes through your system in and out, no considerable interaction.

Now the other chemicals used to make Teflon ARE TOXIC, and are present literally, and I mean literally, everywhere on the globe.

Here's an educative video from Veritasium about the subject, super interesting watch.

Yeah, it’s not hard to rehab a cast iron skillet after messing it up. 🙂 I still got a cheap stainless skillet after some sauces experiences though.

I do this too, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem most of the time. 🙂

I also regularly cook fatty meat or fry things in it, so it gets some nice work inbetween, which probably helps.