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I have a problem. Let's say I buy a frying pan for about 130 EUR. But after 5 months of using it 3 times a week, it looks like the photo. What am I doing wrong please ? (I never scratch the pan. I always wait until it's cold before washing it, I protect the Teflon with shoam)

Edited: to react to your comments, my habits are: preheat the pan for about 6 minutes on the biggest flame without oil - to prepare it for a steak. But i use it like this for about 20% of time. Is preheating damaging the Teflon? If so.. what material should i use?

enter image description here

Community
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theSpyCry
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    What utensils do you use with it? – beausmith Sep 10 '16 at 08:59
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    If you're going to stick with Teflon, you're probably paying too much. I haven't found that you get more durability above about €50 (you may get better heat spreading, a flatter base etc.) – Chris H Sep 10 '16 at 09:38
  • "what material should i use?" - open to debate of course, but for steak, cast iron is an excellent choice (high heat capacity + mostly non-stick surface if seasoned correctly, inexpensive if you know where to look) - though I would pre-heat it on a medium flame as it does tend to form hotspots when heated too quickly. – Nat Bowman Dec 12 '17 at 18:28

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These don't look like scratches to me, more like heat damage. You are either using it for the wrong tasks (e.g. steak), or using it improperly (e.g. preheating it), or the extremely frequent use is simply too much and tires the material.

Without knowing more about your cooking habits, we can't tell you what to change.

Edit: just realised you are using it 3 times a week, not 3 times a day. Scratch the last reason (too frequent use).

rumtscho
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  • To expand on the preheating: you obviously need to preheat the *oil* before frying, but not the empty pan. This pretty much rules out dry frying as well. – Chris H Sep 10 '16 at 09:34
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    @ChrisH Maybe you can get away with frying in preheated oil, if you use enough oil, but nowadays people tend to use very minimal amounts of oil, and preheating a tiny amount of oil in teflon is not good - it is easy to overheat, and if it doesn't overheat, it starts creating tiny sites of polymerized oil, and that patchy seasoning starts to reduce the nonstick over time. Most foods suitable for teflon do just fine without preheating the oil, so my advice is to not preheat it. – rumtscho Sep 10 '16 at 09:38
  • Plenty of things we cook absorb cold oil like sponges, but they tend to cook in more oil than just an onion (for example) – Chris H Sep 10 '16 at 11:47
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Consider a ceramic titanium non-stick pan. Much more durable surface than Teflon.

Search for Scanpan; I have two, use them daily, no scratches.

beausmith
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