Cooking For Engineers

AdmNAismit not signed in · Guest

Cast iron is completely non-stick so long as you keep it well seasoned.
It also holds heat evenly and is pretty much hypo-allergenic.

CookNewb · Guest

The good thing about titanium cookware is that titanium oxide is a tough non stick surface.

GaryProtein · Joined: 26 Oct 2005 Posts: 535

Michael Chu · Joined: 10 May 2005 Posts: 1654 Location: Austin, TX (USA)

Since when is titanium non-stick?

GaryProtein · Joined: 26 Oct 2005 Posts: 535

CookNewb · Guest

I'll have to go back and find where I read that titanium oxide is a non stick surface. I read it in passing so I don;t even know if it was just marketing propaganda.

Guest · Guest

I purchased some of the "exclusive titanium" cookware from Germany. I bought it in Toronto, Ontario at the Sportsman Show. Paid over $1000 for 3 pieces.

It worked great in the beginning. Got about two years of easy, no hassle cleaning. After about two years however, small pitting began to show up on the surface of the frying pans. I fried some macaroni and cheese in the pan and could not get the food out of the small pits on the surface, no matter how hard I scrubbed. Although the coating did not wear through like it does on cheaper pans, the roughness that the coating developed after two years, made cleaning more difficult than when new.

I learned a lesson the expensive way. I will not buy the titanium cookware again unless it is being sold close to the price of cheaper pans which can be thrown out after two or three years. For now I will go to Walmart and buy coated pans and throw them to be recycled at the scrap yard.

Guest · Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 7:33 am Post subject:

I've read a report (http://www.naturalnews.com/021059.html) that Swiss Diamond cookware is coated with diamond dust embedded in PTFE - Teflon is Dupont's brand name for PTFE. PTFE is very bad for the environment and is reported to be carcinogenic.

Woll from Germany appears to be titanium dust embedded in PTFE (http://www.woll-cookware.com/mediathek/defaultScripts/PHP/index.php?c=/export/English/doc/98.html&sn=NAV_2-2_S&img1=411.gif&sel=2&lang=4), but I've emailed them to be sure.

Other manufacturers all seem to be making coated cookware. Of course, what I want is titanium with heavy aluminum clad to the outside - no coatings.

Comments?

As I get more answers I'll post more info.

Dilbert · Joined: 19 Oct 2007 Posts: 1307 Location: central PA

PFTE aka Teflon has a long track record of approvals for food and medical devices/implants in USA and multiple other countries.

PFOA - and similar compounds - used in the manufacture of PFTE are not such good actors.

the question is how much PFOA remains in PTFE - which could pose danger to humans.

the question was investigated by EPA stemming from petitions from various environmental groups - the upshot being the petition were denied based on the actual science that low to no detectable levels of PFOA were found in cookware. I've seen data from UK and Sweden which reached similar conclusions - no PFOA compounds detectable in PFTE finished products.

this article recaps PFOA exposure, with sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid

microwave popcorn? bad PFOA actor.
PFTE pan? not a significant source of exposure.

PFTE aka Teflon does break down when over-heated. somewhere in the 500-600'F range. not difficult to achieve on a stove top. in a roomy kitchen, not too likely to affect a mammal, but birds are much more sensitive to the over-heating chemical breakdown and multiple instances of pet bird death have been reported on exposure to over-heated PFTE. so if you have pet birds, avoiding PFTE would be a wise action - simply because kitchen accidents do happen - not because PFTE is inherently unsafe.

the competing non-stick technologies are
- silicone based - works for bakeware, not especially well suited for stovetop
- polyester based
- ceramic based

consumer reviews on the alternatives are mixed. if I had to summarize they fall into two categories:

"I bought this last week and it's wonderful . . "
"I've been using it for a year and after x months it turned into a glue pan"
your mileage may vary . . .

the Woll site shows the three layer coating thickness to be 80 microns thick - takes a thousand microns to make a millimeter - or a little over 0.003 inches thick. seems unlikely to be PFTE at that thickness.