Topic: Ceramic pans.

[stevepaul]

After seeing many TV demo's for ceramic frying pans, I finally bought one from ASDA. What a waste of money that was. Probably the worst cooking implement I've ever owned.

Yes, it was fine for the first few weeks, but gradually everything started to stick. The pan also took on a burnt look which just wouldn't wash off. Having become totally peed off with this so called non-stick item, I called the maker and spoke to some woman in customer service.

Now I would class myself a decent cook, but this person treated me like an idiot. First I was told I should only ever use vegetable oil which I use all the time anyway. Next, and check this out, when I said even eggs were sticking, she asked how I was trying to cook them. The same way I'd always cooked them. Add a bit of oil, warm up the pan and crack the egg. No no no. I was told I should crack the egg into the pan while it was still cold!!

Talk about being fobbed off. She had no interest whatsoever. After looking on-line I read that many others had had the same problems with ceramic pans. Fair play to ASDA though as a couple of months after I had bought the pan I just happened to mention the problem I'd had with it and despite having no receipt they refunded my money. Buy one of these pans at your peril. You might be lucky and get a good one, or you might end up getting your fingers burnt.

[Secret Santa]

Funny you should mention ceramic pans as I've just ditched all my ali ones and bought ceramic pans to replace them with. So far I'm happy enough. My main curry pan is from LIDL which they do for about a tenner every now and then. It's a solid pan and the ceramic is holding up nicely so far. It does discolour to some extent but it's been cooking many curries so I'm not going to hold that against it.

I must admit I had no thought as to its non-stickiness when I bought it, I was just after a decent ceramic coated pan to replace the aluminium one I had sold on. But it does seem non-stick as long as a small amount of oil is used.

I also bought the cheapest set of ceramic pots off ebay that I could find and they're holding up well too.

So perhaps you just bought a bad example of the genre?

[Sverige]

As I understand it (could be wrong!), any ceramic pan will lose its non-stick properties if you overheat the surface.  The instructions on the pan I just bought say that if you go over the temperature limit you must air out the room well, which I take to mean there's some kind of chemical breakdown of the coating which occurs.  And overheat in this context means going above 250C, which is not all that high if you're preheating a pan with oil in it prior to adding food. It would be especially easy to get above that if you were aggressively preheating a pan before stir frying where you want a bit of sizzle as soon as you add the food.

Maybe this is why the manufacturer's customer service line made such an odd comment about adding food to a cold pan and then raising rhe temperature (which I agree is not a great way to cook). For curries where the pan temperatures will be limited by the addition of base gravy, then I'm sure it's not going to be a problem.

How do you find curries cooked in your ceramic pan compare to those from aluminium pans SS?  I've always thought a bit of stickiness is needed to get the contents to caramelise a little.

[BombayDuck]

I just wanted to comment on this post that a long time Bangladeshi Chef came round my house to teach me and preferred to use the non stick ceramic pan to the ali ones. The flavour was great with both so cant say if it adds an edge just migth be easier to cook with if there are ingredients likely to stick.
regards

[Peripatetic Phil]

I just wanted to comment on this post that a long time Bangladeshi Chef came round my house to teach me and preferred to use the non stick ceramic pan to the ali ones. The flavour was great with both so cant say if it adds an edge just migth be easier to cook with if there are ingredients likely to stick.

I have two very similar pans (similar in size and shape, that is :  24cm, rounded flat), one being copper-bottomed stainless steel, the other being non-stick ceramic, and I prefer to cook curries in the copper-bottomed stainless one, my theory being that caramelisation will take place more readily on the steel surface than on the non-stick ceramic one.  I think that caramelisation is important in achieving the flavours that we all seek, but of course (a) even if true, that is only one factor of many, and (b) I might be completely wrong.

** Phil.

[livo]

It is a really bad look to join a forum and immediately try to direct people on the forum to a sales link.

I see the offending post has been removed.