This website is obviously AI generated down to the "Number Noun, Number Noun" section headers, "authored" by someone with a questionable background. I don't know why HN keeps upvoting articles from it.
> I don't know why HN keeps upvoting articles from it.
Do we know how many HN accounts are automated bots? Probably over half at least. And moderation doesn’t do anything about it (for example, there’s an account called cindyllm that posts random comments and gets downvoted and flagged but the account lives on). Upvotes are probably nearly automated.
Pyrex was one of the great customer betrayals. Corning built the brand to promote a specific blend of glass with it's specific properties. Successfully enough that that blend, borosilcate glass became synonymous with the brand, Pyrex. Breaking this link to ride on the coattails of trust the brand had while selling a different blend with different properties was a dirty move.
An interesting subject is how to differentiate borosilicate glass from tempered glass, It turns out to be surprisingly tricky, at least in a home kitchen setting. You could break it, easy but now you are can't use the dish. Color(blueish vs more clear) turns out to be a unfaithful test. There are ways to check the index of refraction(IOR) with oil, but it turns out the IOR of borosilicate and soda-lime overlap. I suspect the polarized light test to identify tempered glass stress would work, but that requires getting the polorizing filters and knowing what to look for. I sort of wish there was a requirement to stamp the formula right into the glass.
After my AllClad pans have started to get the sharp edges from dishwasher corrosion of the aluminum layer, I've been switching to Hestan Nanobond. It's not exactly nonstick, but the surface is so hard and polished that things don't stick very much and you can use metal implements without scratching the pan.
But I think AllClad has switched to sealed-rims on their pans, thus making them truly dishwasher-safe?
I will point out one counter example, Duralex still turn out top notch stuff are really great prices. They have been in trouble a few times but they keep finding a way through.
Also anything cast iron like Lodge and Le Creuset for example are usually going to last generations. When I used to sell them, I used the line "You are buying heirlooms not land fill".
Ive been happy with All-Clad, but last ones I bought was horrible quality, this explains much. Brands living off their reputation, but private equity running them into the ground.
Maybe unit is an Atlantic divide issue, but I don't know many people that put pots and pots in the dishwasher. Putting fatty pans in there is sure to ruin not just your pipes but also the internal machinery of the dishwasher, notably if it's a water saving one
How? It seems like any legal framework for attempting to prevent something like this would only have worse unintended effects.
For example: every sale of a brand or a company has to go through a government committee (bribes, kickbacks, friction...). Restrictions on product changes: the new owner isn't allowed to improve the products, or stop producing older products when newer ones sell better, even if the newer ones are better. Can't shift manufacturing to China? Can't shift it out of the U.S.? How do you get such laws to apply everywhere (like Italian or French companies selling out to China)?
The least harmful solution I can see is publicizing this B.S. and then having consumers speak with their wallets and dropping those brands.
We've had to do that with so many brands. Aveeno used to make an oat and almond body wash that was amazing. It really helped the skin heal, feel soft, and still cleaned well. They got bought out. Boom... ammonium laurel sulfate... no oat, no almond, just fragrance, just like every other cheap body wash, and now it was bad for the skin. Same for their shave gel, same for dozens of other products.
I don't know how we consumers stop it short of buying the product and not the brand. I'm skeptical of government being able to do anything about this phenomenon that isn't much worse overall.
I don’t actually know what a good government policy would be. I don’t want to add friction to normal business practices.
But I’d also like to make it unprofitable to plunder well-established brands. It seems like a form of dishonesty, to sell an intentionally inferior product under a brand that was previously quality. Consumers eventually figure it out and move elsewhere, but the pirates have already cashed out by then.
These days, abusing informational asymmetry feels like one of the primary ways for capitalists to squeeze out the last drops from most of their customers base.
Stamped steel has most of the properties cast iron has with regard to seasoning, the main difference is reduced heat retention.
I prefer stamped steel, lighter, stronger, won't break. But it does turn cooking in it more like cooking in a wok, faster to heat up faster to cool down. Where as cast iron is better for staying the course with a steady temp.
But the thing I like best about both is the maintainability of the pan, When I commit a sin against cooking and burn the living hell out of the poor thing, I can sit down for an hour of penance with the wire wheel and steel wool to strip the mistake out and then resurface the pan to it's nearly non-stick surface. I love having a surface I can repair with just the tools found in my kitchen.
They have different applications. Sometimes you want steel because you want the pan to lose heat rapidly, depending on what you're cooking. Other times, you want cast iron; you want slow temperature change.
A well-equipped kitchen will have both... and a Dutch oven, and...
Hard to get a seasoning that isn't stripped by acids, most vendors don't seem to provide the correct method either, leaving people with a blotchy seasoning.
Yeah that's the way, creates magnetite. Many manufacturers recommend the normal cast iron way that creates a brown seasoning that is stripped if it sees a lemon and doesn't get better over time.
I have several Griswolds and they’re my daily drivers. I love cooking on them, but stainless steel is so much easier to clean. I can scour it as hard as I want and it’ll be fine without any additional work.
My grandmother isn’t going to be using a 12” Lodge cast iron skillet no matter how much exercise she gets.
I have one of each more or less. Stainless are great as they can stick and you can use the sucs for pan sauces, but can also be essentially non stick if handled correctly.
> The joy of working with seasoned cast iron cannot be overstated.
If you don't mind waiting half an hour for it to heat up. (semi-/s)
There are plenty of times where you do not need or want the heat capacity of cast iron, and it's actually a 'con' for the dish. Never mind that you don't really want to cook anything that's acidic (e.g., tomatoes) in it.
Certainly having cast iron in your tool box isn't a bad idea, but stainless steal has all sorts of other advantages. And if you want something less sticky but still responsive, there's also carbon steal.
Not sure if you have a wife or not, but "just get cast iron" is something I would have said when I was single. Now, it's buy a new nonstick pan every year.
Why do you assume I'm not a woman? And why would that even be a problem? Are you seriously saying that women - particularly married ones - have some problem with cast iron? People - surely women primarily - used them almost exclusively. And surely MANY women love cast iron now, despite lots of options.
While a lot of folks have a negative feelings towards the word "capitalism" in recent years, someone remarked that perhaps we should bring back the word "free enterprise".
As it seems there's to be lots of consolidation, which is kind of antithetical to the free market and competition. If governments (?) better resisted consolidation and conglomerates I think a lot of this enshittification would be slowed down because of actual competition.
This website is obviously AI generated down to the "Number Noun, Number Noun" section headers, "authored" by someone with a questionable background. I don't know why HN keeps upvoting articles from it.
Don't worry. A flood of half-assed excuses for genuinely bad, annoying prose is being dispatched to your comment now.
The internet is becoming a joke.
it gives HN users a chance to share their anecdotes about cookware
I would prefer us to do it in a way that does not benefit zero effort marketing rags like this.
> The pattern in who survived is uniform:
Wish I had a dollar for every time I heard this construct from Claude Code.
I'm glad to have found this site. Though it's obviously AI-generated, the research itself is solid (I've checked).
I'm using it to avoid enshittified brands in the future.
For real, not sure why HN does not take seriously the fact the reporting farming accounts should be nowadays a baked in feature.
I appreciate that it’s minimal in functionality, but times changes and slop infiltrates every single platform, HN no exception
> I don't know why HN keeps upvoting articles from it.
Do we know how many HN accounts are automated bots? Probably over half at least. And moderation doesn’t do anything about it (for example, there’s an account called cindyllm that posts random comments and gets downvoted and flagged but the account lives on). Upvotes are probably nearly automated.
Pyrex was one of the great customer betrayals. Corning built the brand to promote a specific blend of glass with it's specific properties. Successfully enough that that blend, borosilcate glass became synonymous with the brand, Pyrex. Breaking this link to ride on the coattails of trust the brand had while selling a different blend with different properties was a dirty move.
An interesting subject is how to differentiate borosilicate glass from tempered glass, It turns out to be surprisingly tricky, at least in a home kitchen setting. You could break it, easy but now you are can't use the dish. Color(blueish vs more clear) turns out to be a unfaithful test. There are ways to check the index of refraction(IOR) with oil, but it turns out the IOR of borosilicate and soda-lime overlap. I suspect the polarized light test to identify tempered glass stress would work, but that requires getting the polorizing filters and knowing what to look for. I sort of wish there was a requirement to stamp the formula right into the glass.
After my AllClad pans have started to get the sharp edges from dishwasher corrosion of the aluminum layer, I've been switching to Hestan Nanobond. It's not exactly nonstick, but the surface is so hard and polished that things don't stick very much and you can use metal implements without scratching the pan.
But I think AllClad has switched to sealed-rims on their pans, thus making them truly dishwasher-safe?
I will point out one counter example, Duralex still turn out top notch stuff are really great prices. They have been in trouble a few times but they keep finding a way through.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/22/french-people-...
Also anything cast iron like Lodge and Le Creuset for example are usually going to last generations. When I used to sell them, I used the line "You are buying heirlooms not land fill".
Ive been happy with All-Clad, but last ones I bought was horrible quality, this explains much. Brands living off their reputation, but private equity running them into the ground.
The former Japan license-holder for Pyrex still makes it as Iwaki
I’ve noticed it’s extremely common for things to be advertised as dishwasher safe, but once you open the box, the instructions recommend hand washing.
I’ve started doing a lot more research when buying things because of this. It seems like every pot and pan does this, not just All-Clad.
Maybe unit is an Atlantic divide issue, but I don't know many people that put pots and pots in the dishwasher. Putting fatty pans in there is sure to ruin not just your pipes but also the internal machinery of the dishwasher, notably if it's a water saving one
Stainless steel is your best bet if you want something you can put in the dishwasher consistently and not have it do anything weird.
All-Clad is stainless steel and there was a lawsuit over the issues related to it going in the dishwasher.
I got some stainless steel pans about 6 months ago. They were advertised as dishwasher safe, but the fine print recommended against it.
All-Clad has issues because it is a composite of stainless and aluminum. Pure 18/10 stainless cookware is basically inert.
When I was researching pans, almost every recommendation was for fully cladded cookware. Stainless steel on its own is a poor conductor of heat.
I’d love to see legislation prohibiting private equity from strip-mining established brands.
How? It seems like any legal framework for attempting to prevent something like this would only have worse unintended effects.
For example: every sale of a brand or a company has to go through a government committee (bribes, kickbacks, friction...). Restrictions on product changes: the new owner isn't allowed to improve the products, or stop producing older products when newer ones sell better, even if the newer ones are better. Can't shift manufacturing to China? Can't shift it out of the U.S.? How do you get such laws to apply everywhere (like Italian or French companies selling out to China)?
The least harmful solution I can see is publicizing this B.S. and then having consumers speak with their wallets and dropping those brands.
We've had to do that with so many brands. Aveeno used to make an oat and almond body wash that was amazing. It really helped the skin heal, feel soft, and still cleaned well. They got bought out. Boom... ammonium laurel sulfate... no oat, no almond, just fragrance, just like every other cheap body wash, and now it was bad for the skin. Same for their shave gel, same for dozens of other products.
I don't know how we consumers stop it short of buying the product and not the brand. I'm skeptical of government being able to do anything about this phenomenon that isn't much worse overall.
I don’t actually know what a good government policy would be. I don’t want to add friction to normal business practices.
But I’d also like to make it unprofitable to plunder well-established brands. It seems like a form of dishonesty, to sell an intentionally inferior product under a brand that was previously quality. Consumers eventually figure it out and move elsewhere, but the pirates have already cashed out by then.
These days, abusing informational asymmetry feels like one of the primary ways for capitalists to squeeze out the last drops from most of their customers base.
Hestan >>>>>
...for now.
Just get cast iron
Why do that when steel is lighter, easier to clean, easier to maintain?
The joy of working with seasoned cast iron cannot be overstated.
Heavy isn’t bad, we could all do with a bit of exercise. Easier to clean and maintain I disagree with, if you’re willing to do a bit of work up front.
Stamped steel has most of the properties cast iron has with regard to seasoning, the main difference is reduced heat retention.
I prefer stamped steel, lighter, stronger, won't break. But it does turn cooking in it more like cooking in a wok, faster to heat up faster to cool down. Where as cast iron is better for staying the course with a steady temp.
But the thing I like best about both is the maintainability of the pan, When I commit a sin against cooking and burn the living hell out of the poor thing, I can sit down for an hour of penance with the wire wheel and steel wool to strip the mistake out and then resurface the pan to it's nearly non-stick surface. I love having a surface I can repair with just the tools found in my kitchen.
They have different applications. Sometimes you want steel because you want the pan to lose heat rapidly, depending on what you're cooking. Other times, you want cast iron; you want slow temperature change.
A well-equipped kitchen will have both... and a Dutch oven, and...
The joy of working with a well seasoned carbon steel pan is similar, I find
Hard to get a seasoning that isn't stripped by acids, most vendors don't seem to provide the correct method either, leaving people with a blotchy seasoning.
Vinegar etching helps heaps with that I’ve found :)
Yeah that's the way, creates magnetite. Many manufacturers recommend the normal cast iron way that creates a brown seasoning that is stripped if it sees a lemon and doesn't get better over time.
I have several Griswolds and they’re my daily drivers. I love cooking on them, but stainless steel is so much easier to clean. I can scour it as hard as I want and it’ll be fine without any additional work.
My grandmother isn’t going to be using a 12” Lodge cast iron skillet no matter how much exercise she gets.
Just gotta stay ahead of the heat curve!
Also well seasoned cast iron is dishwasher safe, there is very little you can do to kill a cast iron pan.
A dishwasher is also overkill for cast iron, you’d probably have to re-season after the wash.
I have one of each more or less. Stainless are great as they can stick and you can use the sucs for pan sauces, but can also be essentially non stick if handled correctly.
> The joy of working with seasoned cast iron cannot be overstated.
If you don't mind waiting half an hour for it to heat up. (semi-/s)
There are plenty of times where you do not need or want the heat capacity of cast iron, and it's actually a 'con' for the dish. Never mind that you don't really want to cook anything that's acidic (e.g., tomatoes) in it.
Certainly having cast iron in your tool box isn't a bad idea, but stainless steal has all sorts of other advantages. And if you want something less sticky but still responsive, there's also carbon steal.
Not sure if you have a wife or not, but "just get cast iron" is something I would have said when I was single. Now, it's buy a new nonstick pan every year.
Why do you assume I'm not a woman? And why would that even be a problem? Are you seriously saying that women - particularly married ones - have some problem with cast iron? People - surely women primarily - used them almost exclusively. And surely MANY women love cast iron now, despite lots of options.
I can't tell if this thread is real or not.
But, uh, I have All Clad pots and pans and still like them. The bottoms warped on a couple so I replaced them with other brands.
In general they hold up well when hand-washed.
The handles are terrible though. Maybe it's a UX nudge to always use a pot holder?
While a lot of folks have a negative feelings towards the word "capitalism" in recent years, someone remarked that perhaps we should bring back the word "free enterprise".
As it seems there's to be lots of consolidation, which is kind of antithetical to the free market and competition. If governments (?) better resisted consolidation and conglomerates I think a lot of this enshittification would be slowed down because of actual competition.
The word "capitalism" is originally a pejorative epithet, coined by critics of capitalism.