Metal hot. Make food hot.

Think a bit deeper. How quickly is that heat transferred, and at what peak temperatures? Does the metal keep any heat of its own and impart that into the food, or does it just convey the heat from the burner to the food? And how quickly does it do that?

but my wife seems to think cast-iron is necessary for certain things (searing a prime rib roast, for example.).

Look at the thermal mechanics of this.

Take the cast iron pot. You can throw that on the stove and let it get ripping hot, like the metal itself is carrying a ton of heat energy. When you put the prime rib in it, the metal dumps its heat into the meat much faster than a flame alone would. This helps you get a strong sear on the outside, without dumping in too much total quantity of heat to cook the meat on the inside more than you want.

then I gotta figure out gas vs. electric vs. induction vs infrared…

Heat can be transferred 3 ways- conduction (flows between two touching objects), convection (hot object heats air, air blows against cold object, air heats cold object) and radiation (hot object radiates energy through space and it warms cold object).

Electric- coils get hot, the pan touching the coils transfers heat by conduction. Downside is uneven heating- neither the pan nor the coils is perfectly flat so you get hot spots.

Infrared- coils under the glass get hot and radiate heat through the glass. This works pretty well.

Induction- coils under the glass but they don’t get hot. Instead they create a magnetic field modulated at low radio frequencies (15-150 KHz). This fluctuating magnetic field interacts with any ferrous metal close to it, creating small but powerful eddy currents inside the metal and thus heating the metal up. So the stove doesn’t create any heat at all, it’s the pan that actually gets hot. This by the way is neither conduction convection nor radiation, because heat isn’t being transferred, it’s created inside the pot.

Gas- flammable gas (usually propane or natural gas, which is mostly methane) burns creating high temperature exhaust gases that rise against the pot and thus heat the pot. Many chefs like this. Gas stoves should ideally be used with an overhead hood as gas stoves have been proven to drastically reduce indoor air quality.

Of the options- induction is usually the best these days, because it’s the most efficient, cleanest, and also in many cases has the highest output (in terms of watts of heat pumped into the pot).

When cooking, you want a stove capable of very high output. The more output you have, the faster it will boil water for example.

Metal hot. Makes food hot. Yes.

But!!

Cold food makes hot pan cold.

Cast iron has a lot of thermal mass, so when you put a cold piece of meat on it it doesn’t immediately get cold and stop cooking for a bit. Thin pans without it don’t keep hot, hot so they don’t sear long enough and you don’t get the maillard reaction and the tasty brown crust.

Get a thick bottom stainless steel pan and don’t be afraid to use butter, it’ll take care of all your needs and doesn’t require special or gentle treatment.

Your wife sounds smart, listen to heerrrrrr.

Also I don’t know, but since hearing about non-stick pans leaking cancer into your food (if you scrape them with a fork, etc), I just like to use a normal pan.

Reddit has a fucking hard-on for cast iron. I’m not really a fan.

I don’t use teflon non-stick but have had good results with ceramic-based non-stick. My second choice would be carbon steel, which has a similar “seasoning” process as cast iron, but I find carbon steel easier to work with compared to cast iron.

Cast iron is vastly superior to non stick. You can get it hotter, it stays hot when you put food in it, you can use metal utensils, no horrible chemicals like pfas.

Non-stick is terrible for anything that needs real frying, because the non-stick coating breaks down at high temperatures (generally manufacturer recommendations are to keep the pan under 400f / 204c. I’ve had the coating start browning and changing at lower temperatures than that.

I have cast iron pans, but I can’t be bothered to maintain them so they mostly sit in the cabinet. I need to sand and re-coat mine currently, as they’ve got some rust spots, and I don’t really use them.

I swear by steel pans. They work great on any stove type (gas, electric, induction, doesn’t matter), have enough heft but are lighter than cast iron, and they can handle high heat and even be baked so long as the handle is also steel. The trick to stainless is making sure it’s hot enough for water to dance on, and nothing will stick. I tend to use a bit of oil and then a bit of butter when cooking in them and they’re practically non-stick that way anyway, just give it a rinse and wash while it’s still hot and everything comes right off.

Plus, there are some foods you actually want to stick a bit sometimes, like when you’re searing meats and later using the glaze from the pan for a sauce.

If you’re using steel and accidentally leave it and stuff is stuck to it, no need to panic, just put some water in the pan, heat it up (preferably with a lid on), and once it’s hot, everything should come off easily.

Edit - one trick to cooking with a stainless steel pan that I’ve found specifically when cooking with oil (olive oil generally) - When the oil becomes thin and moves around the pan easily you’re generally good, but if you leave it sit on medium heat until the oil makes a sort of sine wave pattern where the edges of the pan start to curve up, you’re set, nothing will stick.

Some answers here are close.

It depends on what type of person you are.

If you’re the kind of person who has a neat, clean kitchen who does all their dishes after every meal, go cast iron.

If you’re the kind of person who has a messy kitchen and you really only do dishes once or twice a week, go primarily with stainless, a nonstick pan for eggs, and a 10-12 inch cast iron pan for occasional use, like that rib roast.

“Pan gets hot” does not fully specify how something cooks. Does it spread heat quickly and evenly? Have a high thermal capacity? Stick to meat forming a harder sear? All of these are good or bad depending on what you are trying to do.

If I could only have one pan, Le Creuset Dutch oven, no question.

Cast iron is not good for acidic foods or foods that require heat variation.

Non stick usually implies teflon coating. Throw it out.

I have some cast iron cookware. Fun to use, the end result does feel different, heat disperses well and evenly and keeps warm for longer.

It can be used over nearly any heat source, with similar results, but I do prefer induction. More efficient and less prone no mishaps.

Yes

It’s a tool. Like a hammer.

Hammer hit nail, nail go in. But if you look for hammers you’ll quickly find that there’s a dozen or so different hammers available, all of which make nail go in.

Different hammers are for different types of hitting things.

Different cooking pans are for different types of cooking. All of them make food go hot.

Stainless steel make food go hot and also make pan sauce and clean real easy. But food sometimes stick. This is considered a feature, not a flaw.

Non stick make food go hot but food no stick. Doesn’t last very long but it’s very easy to clean. If you really love eggs they’re a necessity.

Cast iron make food go hot and stay hot longer. But they don’t heat very evenly and they’re hard to clean, this is also considered a feature by… Certain people…

For some reason there’s a community of gooners for cast iron. I cook a lot and have long since abandoned 99% of my cast iron cookware. The only things that survived was a burger press and a Dutch oven that has a ceramic glaze on it so it’s easy to keep clean. I find that for just make food go hot, cast iron is not as good at it as stainless steel is. But if I’m making a stew, or bread, or frying something, a really big cast iron vessel really is the best thing. It stays at a temperature longer than anything else does, and that matters in specific applications.

Pan make food hot. But cold food make flimsy lightweight pan less hot too. Food just sort of simmers while sometimes you want scorching.

Cast iron, or heavy bottom stainless steel pan, stays hot while food touches the pan. More energy is stored in hot heavy bottom pan. Food gets scorched and this gives more roasty toasty flavour, which is better in my opinion. If you don’t care for this, don’t.

Also, heavy bottoms spread heat more evenly so everything is cooked at same speed (not the middle of the pan faster like most non-stick pans).

Different tools for different jobs. There’s a ton more variables at play. Oversimplifying does just that.

Play with it all. Try to do both. Then you will have a better idea. Or post on lemmy asking everybody and read a lot of incomplete and possibly misleading explanations that might help you find the detail(s) you lack to edge your mind into a wider hunger for deeper understanding.

Mine? Cast iron is just different. Like using a truck vs using a car.

In real life, nothing is clear. So, when people give you clear explanations, they may be making the decision to not invest a lot of energy trying to get you to understand or know more. Like right now, I know that spectrum people take a lot of explaining sometimes, and I am really tired and going to bed, so my best advice is to understand they’re different. Learn by doing if you can, and learn from others if you can. But, if it means anything, I use two cast iron skillets, three types of stainless steel pans, some of them tri-ply, and an aluminum with a nonstick coating. I have my preferences not just for different things, but styles of certain things, and even times for different things (like just cooking for me, or one other person, or multiple other people).

Also, generally with non-stick, using high heat or metal utensils on it will ruin it and expose you to pretty bad chemicals basically immediately. But also so does any smoke in general.

Literally pick your poison.

My family uses our cast iron skillets daily. We have one that is almost exclusively for eggs, and one for meat.

Cast iron wants to be used often and if you really like cooking, will eventually become your go-to. But not everyone gets there; for a lot of people it is counterintuitive to have a pan that you only scrub any bits off and rinse with plain water. Actually, our egg pan only gets wiped out with paper towels because its so slippery now. I don’t think I’ve scrubbed it in months.

If you really want to use your pans:

1. Best: cast iron
2. Better: stainless steel or enameled
3. Good: high quality nonstick like HexClad
4. Never: cheap non-stick

We use the absolute hell out of our cast iron and our stainless steel. They all get scrubbed with a metal Chore-Boy scrubbee. Only the stainless gets soap.