Unless you're using a very small pan, there's no way 5ml of oil is going to provide enough coating for "eggs" (plural) "that flip perfectly". Also, the "taste 100x better" claim is so hyperbolic that I have to internally downgrade it to "I like it more".
I maintain that "100x better" is an understatement for teflon eggs vs eggs fried in butter.
Also, there's almost never a good reason to be so extremely strict about fat consumption that 5ml or 10ml or 15ml is a problem, especially if you're eating eggs in the first place. If your diet is that strict, boil the egg. The old studies linking fat to heart disease are complete bunk.
>I maintain that "100x better" is an understatement for teflon eggs vs eggs fried in butter.
I can't imagine this being true for any holistic metric "taste". The only way is if you used some contrived measure like "amount of caramelized particles from frying pan" (in which there's 0 from teflon pan and non-zero from butter eggs, so it's infinitely better), or you use a non-linear scale (eg. slightly better = 10x, slightly better than that = 100x, etc.)
>The old studies linking fat to heart disease are complete bunk.
Fats are at the very least, calorific. And studies showing weight gain to all cause mortality are robust. According to the USDA a tablespoon of butter is 100 calories. An egg on the other hand is 155. Even if you use some optimistic estimates (eg. 3 eggs, half the butter remains on the pan), that's still 10% extra calories. I'd rather spend my calorie budget on other delicious things than slightly more buttery fried eggs.
Also, calories is why you're eating in the first place. The butter is part of the breakfast. If you're getting fat, that's not the fault of the butter per se, but of all the calories put together, and plain chicken breasts are a better option.
Your last comment: >there's almost never a good reason to be so extremely strict about fat consumption that 5ml or 10ml or 15ml is a problem
Which one is it? Is butter/fat usage something you need to watch out for, or does it not matter so you don't have to watch it?
>If you're getting fat, that's not the fault of the butter per se, but of all the calories put together
That might be true, but it's still fair game to single out cooking oils for something that needs to be reduced. A can of coke (140 calories) is only 7% of your daily recommended intake, but it'd be absurd to recommend leaving it in someone's diet, or claim "it's almost never a good reason to be so extremely strict about your diet that 1 can of coke a day is a problem". If anything, you should be prioritizing the can of coke vs cooking oils. A can (or even half) provides a distinct experience in your diet, whereas adding butter only makes your eggs taste slightly more buttery.
> and plain chicken breasts are a better option.
so... boiled chicken breasts? I'll stick with my teflon pan, thanks.
You’re missing a rather fundamental way that nonstick pans (teflon or “ceramic”) differ from metal or seasoned metal: nonstick coated pans are usually oleophobic, and oils do not wet or otherwise coat them well. So you can’t cook your eggs on a very thin layer of butter or oil. But steel and seasoned steel will be wetted by hot oil or butter, and you can properly fry your eggs.
> Also there’s never a good reason to be extremely strict about fat consumption that 5 or 10 or 15ml is a problem
A tablespoon of butter (or olive oil) is roughly 100 calories, which is about 15% of a meal. It’s _roughly_ equivalent to 10 minutes of moderate exercise running.
If you have one fried egg in a tbsp of oil and a slice of toast, the oil is half the calories of the snack.
> The old studies linking fat to heart disease are complete bunk
I’m going to need a source in that wild claim. We definitely know that it was overblown, and the cure (let’s put sugar in instead of fat) might have been worse than what it prevented, but I don’t think there’s any doubt of the consensus that saturated fats in particular (one tbsp of butter is _about_ 40% of your guideline saturated fat in a balanced diet).
The whole point of non-stick pans is not to need any fat/oil, not even a little bit, though. No matter how often people tell me, stainless steel, carbon steel or cast iron, none are as good and low effort as a simple non-stick pan.
I don't think it's really lower effort if you account for the care with which you need to cook with teflon (no metal utensil), wash it (no dishwasher) and store it (no stacking). Unless you replace it every ~year I suppose.
There's plenty of things you can cook without fat in a stainless steel, too (pretty much all meats).
And fat isn't just for nonstickiness properties, it's a part of making food taste good. If you want/need to avoid fat for health reasons, that's fair.
You also just can't sear in a teflon, as you're not supposed to preheat the pan.
I almost never reach for my teflon for the opposite reason as you: I find it more effort. The one thing I really use it for is fried eggs, or when I really can't be bothered to wait a few mins for the stainless to preheat
I mostly use wooden cookware, and I throw that and non-stick pans in the dishwasher, teflon is so chemically stable that it shouldn't matter. But yes, I just buy a new pan every ~2 years, sometimes 3.
Teflon is known to not interact when it is in its stable long polymer state. But if we accept that it is breaking away from that state, we know it is not stable, and is potentially reactive.
Personally, a touch of avocado oil in a coast iron is much (much) lower risk (and price) than taking bets on whether this particular PFAS matrix will see the same fate as all the prior (now banned) ones or if we have somehow finally solved PFAS once and for all.
Not to mention all the known-bad environmental PFAS’s the manufacture and disposal of these 2 year pans creates.
Even 2.5ml of oil and 2.5ml of butter mixed together will result in eggs that flip perfectly and taste 100x better than teflon eggs.