Non-Stick, Non-Toxic Cookware: How To Make Smart Choices
We’ve all experienced the anguish: You’ve just finished a delicious, lovingly prepared meal only to gaze in despair at a pile of pots and pans embossed with layers of baked-on grease and grime. The subsequent age spent removing fossilised food remnants can be enough to kill any post-dinner mood.
Most traditional cookware surfaces make at least some claim to be “non-stick”. Generations of long-suffering chefs will no doubt testify that, in most cases, this is, at best, an exaggeration and, at worst, downright misleading.
Then, in 1938, all that seemed to have changed. A serendipitous accident in a DuPont laboratory created a mysterious white, slippery substance that nothing would stick to. Thus, the world was introduced to polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE for short), which folks playing at home will better know by its stage name: Teflon. A few years later, a French engineer had the bright idea to bond this wondrous substance to an aluminium pan, and non-stick cookware was born. By the 1960s, kitchens everywhere welcomed this space-age technology that promised to liberate home cooks from the tyranny of stuck-on eggs and stubborn sauces.
As with most miraculous scientific discoveries, the promise of convenience and elite performance masked a murky underbelly. Beneath the surface of every home chef’s new best friend lurked dangerous, pernicious PFAS chemicals linked with a laundry list of health issues.
For many of us, scrubbing crusty pots and pans is near the top of the list of things we would rather sit through a root canal than do daily. However, we also want to keep our families safe and healthy. That’s why we’re here to walk you through the cookware options and help you understand how to achieve the holy grail combo of non-stick and non-toxic cookware.
The Classic Contender: Cast Iron
Cast iron cookware has been around for centuries. Enthusiasts will vociferously hail its purported non-stick properties; however, if you’ve ever used a cast iron pan, you’ll know that this capability doesn’t come without a serious investment of time and energy. You must adequately season your pan to unlock this extraordinary power. Seasoning a pan involves utilising oil to polymerise the surface, creating a natural barrier between food and metal. In practice, this means carefully washing and drying the surface, coating it with cooking oil, and then heating it in an oven for half an hour. For new pans, you must repeat this process several times before use. Once in action, the natural cooking process will maintain the surface up to a point. Still, most users must regularly reseason their cast-iron cookware to preserve the non-stick magic.
Cast iron is virtually indestructible, has excellent heat retention and is perfect for high-heat cooking and searing. Best of all, there are no nasty chemicals to loiter in your bloodstream for years.
On the downside, they can be incredibly heavy and cumbersome to manage and may rust if not correctly cared for. While rust, in small quantities, is not considered toxic per se (iron oxide is a commonly used food colouring), do you really want to ingest it and feed it to your family? We didn’t think so either.
The Verdict:
Cast iron cookware has many great qualities. Creating and maintaining a clean, healthy, non-stick surface takes significant time and effort.
The Chef’s Choice: Stainless Steel
Stainless steel isn't technically non-stick, but with proper technique and temperature control, it can perform admirably while offering impressive durability. Many professional chefs around the world choose to cook with stainless steel.
However, not every home cook boasts the technical finesse and expertise commonly found in Michelin-rated kitchens. Like the pros that love it, stainless steel can be temperamental and unforgiving. Before your ingredients hit the surface, careful pre-heating is required to ensure the surface is within the appropriate temperature range. Too cool, and your food will not cook well. Too hot, and you’ll spend the rest of the night scrubbing.
Once you’re cooking, it’s crucial to maintain excellent temperature control. Any lapse in attention or concentration can lead to a messy and unpleasant culinary disaster. The reality of modern family life is that distractions from kids, technology, and countless other sources are rife. For many, this can make working with stainless steel an impractical option.
Equally as important, stainless steel requires liberal application of fat or oil to avoid sticking. This often means using more oil than you would otherwise need with other surfaces. In particular, if you’re cooking foods that absorb moisture, you may need to reapply oil multiple times as you cook. Whichever way you slice it, the result is higher-fat and higher-calorie food that may not gel with your health and fitness goals.
The Verdict:
Stainless steel has many desirable qualities that make it popular with experienced chefs. However, it is not naturally non-stick. It can, therefore, be unforgiving and tricky to work with and require more fat or oil than you may be comfortable using.
The Marketing Marvel: Stone-Derived Coatings
Stone-derived coatings (often marketed as "stone," "granite," or "rock") are touted as non-stick surfaces with mineral particles mixed in. Despite what late-night TV ads might suggest, these pans are not hewn out of pure rock. Indeed, if you’ve ever used one, you probably had that illusion quickly shattered when you discovered how easily they scratch. Still, they do have their benefits. They are typically relatively affordable, and often oven-safe at moderate temperatures, which is handy for many recipes that require stovetop to oven action.
However, in many cases, the marketing smoke and mirrors may mask some confronting home truths. Stone cookware surfaces are highly susceptible to scratches, which can rapidly compromise the non-stick qualities of the cookware, leaving you right back where you started - at the sink with steel wool in hand.
When it comes to toxicity, again, not everything is always as it seems in the late-night TV commercials. While stone is naturally chemical-free, some dodgy manufacturers attempt to keep the surface non-stick for longer by incorporating PFAS chemical-laden coatings. Savvy consumers should be exceedingly cautious and thoroughly research before purchasing these products, as you may get more than you bargained for.
The Verdict:
For all the hype, stone cookware’s non-stick performance is usually short-lived. Some products contain toxic PFAS chemicals, so care should be exercised before purchasing.
A Touch of Class: Copper Cookware
There are few sights more beautiful than a kitchen adorned with classical copper cookware. Copper is the oldest metal used by humans and we’ve been using it for cooking for thousands of years.
Aside from its unquestionable beauty, copper is prized for its superior conductivity. In the kitchen, this means that copper pots and pans heat up and cool down extremely quickly compared with other surfaces, which gives you exceptional flexibility and control at the stovetop. It’s little wonder why most elite French chefs prefer working with copper cookware. The same property can also make copper unforgiving, as lapses in concentration - increasingly common in the age of mobile technology - can cause the surface to overheat.
A major drawback of copper is its high reactivity with acids, which can cause copper to leech into food over time, making it a potential health hazard. To counter this, most copper cooking surfaces are coated with a layer of tin or stainless steel. Tin is completely inert and won’t react with acidic foods. However, it is a softer metal and tends to wear away, reducing the lifespan of the items. Stainless steel, as we know, is a reliable surface, but as detailed above, its non-stick credentials are less than superlative. Additionally, stainless steel and copper are like a mismatched couple whose parents have set them up on a blind date: they don’t stick together for very long. Modern technology has found ways to improve bonding between these mismatched lovers. However, the stainless steel coating may still have a tendency to delaminate.
From a price perspective, copper is at the top of the pile when it comes to cost. A decent-quality copper cookware set will usually make a $1500~$4500 dent in your bank account, making them out of reach for many regular households.
The Verdict:
Supremely beautiful and wonderfully versatile. However, reactivity to acids may have long-term implications for health. Tin or stainless steel coatings utilised to overcome this hurdle each come with their own cons. Lastly, while purists may consider copper to be the Lamborghini of the cookware world, they are also priced like one.
The Game-Changer: Modern Ceramic Nonstick Technology
Ceramic coatings like GreenPan's Thermolon™ represent the sweet spot where innovation meets practicality. GreenPan’s non-stick ceramic surfaces achieve this delicate balance, resulting in an exceptionally sleek and smooth surface that allows you to cook with no concern about toxic materials creeping into your food.
Developing PFAS-free cookware has always been our guiding mission. In Thermolon™, we’ve created what we believe to be the perfect combination of non-stick and non-toxic cookware surfaces. Cooks using non-stick ceramic for the first time are blown away by how effortlessly food glides over the surface. This also makes GreenPan cookware remarkably easy and quick to clean - a huge bonus for busy families. Better still, ceramic coating has outstanding heat distribution and requires zero seasoning or maintenance.
We always recommend that our customers avoid using metal utensils or very high heat with GreenPan cookware. However, aside from that, there’s little else to do but enjoy creating your culinary masterpieces with minimal fuss or stubborn mess to clean up afterwards.
Best of all, you can rest easily, knowing that no harmful chemicals are hiding beneath the coating, and there is no need to add extra oil to stop the stick. For health-conscious cooks, that’s a huge double win.
The Verdict:
Our revolutionary technology may be the perfect solution in the quest for truly non-stick cookware that is also free from toxic chemicals.
Is Ceramic Non-stick Cookware Better Than Other Non-stick Pans?
Compared with Teflon or other PFAS-laden non-stick pans, the answer is a clear and resounding yes. GreenPan cookware frees you from the moral dilemma of risking your family’s health for convenience and performance.
Other surfaces mentioned above all have their undoubted strengths. However, each also has drawbacks. Unless you have an unbreakable love affair with metal spatulas or refuse to cook at temperatures lower than Dante’s Inferno, there’s precious little to complain about and lots to love about our award-winning cookware and electrical appliances.
We might be just a teensy bit biased, but it’s hard to identify any criteria in which our ceramic coating doesn’t stack up to or outperform the competition.
Cost Considerations: Investment vs. Value
Your cookware is the silent partner in every home-cooked meal and the unsung hero of your kitchen chemistry experiments. Yet, for some reason, many of us are willing to spend more on a single restaurant dinner than on the tools we use to cook hundreds of meals at home.
Undoubtedly, top-quality, non-toxic, non-stick cookware costs more upfront than bargain-bin basics. However, their exceptional durability means they need replacing far less frequently than cheap alternatives. When averaged over the item's lifetime, the overall cost difference, if any, is usually minimal.
Beyond pure economics, there's the harder-to-calculate value of serving your famous stir-fry without a side of synthetic chemicals. Good cookware, like good shoes or a decent mattress, sits in that sweet spot where health and long-term value intersect. Quality is always worth more, especially when your family’s health is at stake.
Your Next Steps to Healthier Cooking
GreenPan Australia offers a comprehensive range of non-toxic, non-stick cookware suited to every kitchen and cook. From everyday essentials to professional-grade pieces, our collections span an impressive range of styles and serve cooks who prioritise performance as much as health.
Browse our full range of non-stick, non-toxic cookware to discover how your kitchen can become healthier and more efficient. After all, great food deserves the finest tools, and your cookware should support your well-being, not compromise it.
