According to my sources (aka my FYP), stainless steel is the cookware “trend” of 2025. Many of us have seen the research — and are thoroughly freaked out — by the forever chemicals lurking in most non-stick pans. As a result, the next generation of home cooks is switching to stainless steel… and some are finding it a little more complicated than anticipated.
🍳 Why are people ditching Teflon and other non-stick cookware materials?
Non-stick pans are often coated with PFAS chemicals like Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), commonly known by its trademark, Teflon. These “forever chemicals” are notorious for their environmental impact — they take over a thousand years to degrade — and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knows these chemicals have been linked to harmful health effects in scientific research.
I’m not going to sugar (or should I say, non-stick) coat it: PFAS have been linked to some pretty gnarly health effects such as kidney and thyroid cancers and pregnancy complications like preeclampsia. While the surface of PFAS-coated pans and the like aren’t toxic, they could be once they are damaged and the under-layer of the coating is exposed.
With all this information, it’s no wonder over 800,000 videos have been posted to the #stainlesssteel tag on TikTok. One user, @nancypf95, went viral for her first attempt at cooking with stainless steel. She learned the hard way that there’s a bit of a learning curve for pan-frying without the help of a non-stick coating.
In her video, Nancy sets off her fire alarm just by melting a nub of butter in her stainless steel pan. She captioned the post: “Are you not supposed to use butter with these? Serious question,” calling her attempt, which 40 million people watched, a “fail.”
There’s a lot of information about the right and wrong ways to use stainless steel. So many food influencers claim to have the “foolproof” method for cooking on it. To get some clarity on the whole process, we consulted the mysterious man who’s made using stainless steel his whole thing: Steel Pan Guy.
Steel Pan Guy (yes, that’s the only name we know him as) has gained over 900K TikTok followers with his cooking tutorials, stainless steel tips, and advocacy against what he calls “Big Teflon.”
We asked him what went wrong with Nancy’s attempt, and he told Tasty: “I’d say she did what 99% of people do when they try a stainless steel pan for the first time: she preheated the pan on too high of heat.” Before we spoke with him, he had already posted his own response video directly to Nancy.
He told Tasty that a stainless steel pan should be heated to “the high end of medium-low,” which is really just under medium heat. “Preheat it there for 2–3 minutes or until you see the water dance. Throw your cooking fat down, and you are good to go.”
He calls this technique the “glide method,” and it really works. In the video, once he pours eggs into the pan, it behaves just like a non-stick pan. He even uses a fork to push the eggs around the pan: “You can use metal utensils on stainless steel,” he says. (FYI: Metal utensils should never be used on non-stick because they can scratch the pan’s surface.)
“The secret is the proper preheat,” he told us. In the video, he proved just how non-stick the pan became by tossing the eggs in the pan without a utensil.
When Nancy posted a follow-up video to document her cooking journey, we asked the Steel Pan Guy what he thought of her progress. He says she’s already improved: “She took action, watched my videos, and on her very next try, she turned her steel pan ‘non-stick’ and cooked some perfect eggs.” It’s true. She even gave Steel Pan Guy a shoutout in the caption:
🍳 Still need some convincing to ditch non-stick for stainless steel? The Steel Pan Guy has some thoughts:
“I would never recommend a ‘Big Teflon’ pan to home cooks,” Steel Pan Guy told Tasty. “Firstly, the slightest scratch and they have to be thrown in the garbage, which means roughly every six months to a year, you buy a new coated pan and fill up our landfill.”
One argument against buying stainless steel is that it can be pricier than non-stick cookware, which is often made with cheaper metals like aluminum. But Steel Pan Guy points out that the frequent need to replace damaged non-stick pans actually makes stainless steel the more cost-effective option in the long run: “It’s more expensive to buy a new pan every year versus just one good stainless steel pan that can last generations.”
When we asked Steel Pan Guy for his top reasons for choosing stainless steel, he told us: “The biggest advantages are really too long to list. But, a few advantages are that you never have to worry about a chemical coating flaking off into your food, you can cook at higher heat safely on the stovetop or in the oven, food cooks evenly and doesn’t transfer flavor like other cooking surfaces, and cleanup is a breeze when you use my method.”
“And, of course, it lasts forever,” he added. “There’s a reason top Michelin-star kitchens prefer to use stainless steel cookware.” Clearly, this stainless steel cookware’s moment in the spotlight isn’t a flash in the pan — it’s here to stay. When it comes to durability, versatility, and standing the test of time, stainless steel really is as good as it gets (as long as you’ve got the right technique).
👨🍳 If you’re ready to give stainless steel a shot, download the free Tasty app for easy access to thousands of recipes that will put your pan skills to the test!
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