I previously sheepishly confessed to purchasing a Le Creuset casserole pan and I’m sure you can imagine it gets far less use than it should do. However, I was so impressed with it at the time that I also purchased a deep frying pan by the same maker and it was also excellent… that one definitely gets used on an almost daily basis.

Until now.

The pans are supposed to be lifetime products, take care of them and they’ll take care of you, but they aren’t. Not for anyone who lives a normal life anyway. There are conditions to this lifetime projection: only using certain types of oil, not having the pan too hot and overheated, and taking great care when washing clean. Who has time for that kind of care?

My pan is certainly showing the signs of age now, food is sticking and you can see the signs of neglect. I’ve had to start thinking about getting a replacement. My plan was to just buy the same over again, because in its early days at least, it was revolutionary to me. But then I read this opinion post on The Telegraph and it completely changed my mind. Other people are falling out of love with their Le Creuset pans as well, and worse than that, they might actually be bad for your health. I wasn’t aware of the things we need to be careful of surrounding non-stick coatings. From the post:

This relatively new but widely held ick has since been used as a marketing hook for a new breed of “non toxic” cookware made without PFAS, which has exploded in popularity. I’d always dismissed this as merely clever marketing, and perhaps it is, but the science also seems clear: overheated PFAS pans may well be hazardous on some level. Perhaps this is why although its core non-stick range still contains PTFE, Le Creuset also brought out a non-toxic PFAS-free pan range last year.

I could continue to use the replacement pan Le Creuset has provided, but since I don’t live the kind of life where we can spend 20 minutes frying an egg, I have already mentally moved on from continuing to use it. What I really need is a pan in which I could safely blitz an egg on setting nine in three minutes flat.

This absolutely speaks to me and I have also moved on from my existing pan set. I’ve sourced a Ninja pan that claims to be free of all sorts of P-things I haven’t heard of, and whilst a little bit smaller than my deep frying pan, is considerably cheaper and, ultimately, easily replaced. I am trying to be more ‘make do and mend’ and less ‘throwaway culture’ but in some cases it just has to be done.