How To Choose The Best Frying Pan
The Best Frying Pans For Your Kitchen
To choose the best frying pan, you need to consider two factors: functionality and materials. Failure to choose the best frying pan for you will result in not having an even cooking area which does not heat your food wholly, health hazards relating to Teflon, and leave a metallic taste in food.
Having the best frying pan for what you are cooking is essential to being a great chef. Depending on what you cooking such as omelettes, crepes or frying you will want a small frying pan, large frying pan or a stir fry pan. In addition, you must also consider what type of cooktop you have at home such as a gas stove or electric cooktops. For those with induction ready cooktops, there are lots of frying pan materials that will not work.
Considering all the materials on the market, we need to take a closer look at the different materials frying pans are made of. As you are aware, frying pans are commonly crafted from a variety of different metals and you should choose depend on what you are cooking the most. The cookware we use to fry our food is often made from stainless steel, aluminum, iron or copper.
When we have to decide which cookware is best to buy, we should not just look at the price, but rather choose the one that best suits our needs. This is one of the guides that will show you how.
Cooking With Frying Pans
Each type of frying pan material performs differently based on conductivity and reactivity. In some circumstances, the foods we cook may absorb materials from the pans in which we cook them. As wise consumers, the way we can select our cookware will depend on a variety of considerations such as health and safety factors, our personal taste and as well as our individual cooking style.
Stonefryingpans.com strongly recommends choosing stone coated frying pans, but we would also like to provide you with resources to make your own decision.
Stone Frying Pans versus Other Frying Pans
Non-Reactive* | Non-stick | Excellent Conductive Material | Heats Evenly | Teflon Free | Rust Resistant | Scratch Resistant | Easy to Clean | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Stone Frying Pans | ||||||||
 Anodized Aluminum | ||||||||
 Pure Aluminum | ||||||||
 Cast Iron (seasoned) | ||||||||
 Copper | ||||||||
 Carbon Steel (seasoned) | ||||||||
 Stainless Steel |
* = Non-reactive to Acidic and Alkaline Foods. Reactive pans, specifically aluminum and copper reacts to acidic food leaving a metallic taste and discolor sauces and soups.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
We understand that you want to buy the best frying pan out there but before you do, take stock of what frying pan is currently in your kitchen. Don’t be deceived by the look of your frying pan that you find or what companies claim to be the best non stick pans. There are many stick and non stick frying pan types with all different kinds of materials and as we examined above, each material has its own pros and cons as indicated in the table above.
Buying Considerations
Before you buy your next frying pan, ask yourself these questions:
- Is your non-stick pan safe or pose health risks to your family?
- Does your frying pan dent or scratch easily which reduces the life of the pan?
- Is the frying pan non-stick and contain Teflon with harmful chemicals such as PFOA?
- Does your frying pan distort the taste of your food?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, most likely the type of pan you are using is inadequate and you may feel disappointed.
The next step is to take a look at what cookware we have reviewed here.
