Porcelain Pan Propaganda

Occasionally, I find myself getting caught up in some of the gazillions of infomercials that bombard us daily.  One such informercial, boasts of a new pan that uses “porcelain technology” that will give you the ultimate non-stick cooking surface.  The informercial shows the pan sliding a cooked egg off it’s surface like a mail carrier falling on an icy sidewalk.

Ok, they have my attention, we have all used that damn Teflon, a chemical coating, that luckily has not doomed humanity to extinction.  The chemically produced coating was used by a company to promote an oil treatment that allegedly would make your engine last longer.  As it turns out, they discovered that the product deposited a damaging residue that could destroy your cars engine.  Image what that crap is doing to human bodies!

Having a cooking surface where you could reduce the use of oils, butter or other fat based would obviously be healthier (a claim made in the informercial).  We are of course, always looking for more convenient ways of cooking or anything else in our lives for that matter (I give you the wheel).  As I am now in the final stage of my life, I find myself enjoying cooking more and more and am always looking for better ways of doing it.

So, I bought one of these miracle devices made by the company with the same name as the city Batman hails from, obtained from the store with smiling faces.  With a certain amount of anticipation, I was ready to take the new pan out for a test run.  My first test would be the egg, which was the first product shown to be cooked with no butter or oil needed.

Setting my stove on a medium cooking temperature, I waited patiently for the surface of the pan to heat up (no oil or butter added).  Once the surface was hot, I cracked the egg and put it in the pan.  Waiting for a couple of minutes until the egg began to cook, I used a spatula to break the yoke and turn it and discovered that the egg had become fused to the non-stick surface. After a few more minutes the egg had turned into a glue-like substance that had hardened and fused itself to the pan.

I decided to try another egg, this time I would add the egg while the pan was still cool then bring it up to temperature.  As the egg began to show signs of heating up, I once again broke the yoke (I like eggs over hard) and attempted to flip it over.  Once again, the egg stuck to the pan so hard that I couldn’t break it loose even with a chisel.  After two attempts I discovered that I had seen better cooked eggs on a hot sidewalk.

I made one final attempt to cook a quick release egg, this time I used grape seed oil (a high heat oil perfect for cooking food without burning), again I set the heat at a medium setting and waited for the oil to heat up.  Once again after reaching cooking temperature the egg fused itself to the pan.  Amazingly, the oil didn’t stick!

I consulted the product website which assured me that the egg could be cooked without oil, butter and with the use of a gas or electric stove.  After considerable frustration, I decided to consult the all world video site for some help.  One video I found was done by America’s favorite conservative morning news show who had decided to showcase the pan.

With three skillets cooking, the show decided to demonstrate the effectiveness of each skillet.  The first two skillets kind of showed some success but still had some sticking of the products.  The third skillet was an “epic failure” (an expression oft used by my sweetheart-Christina), the marshmallows that had been baked in the skillet at 500 degrees (as promoted by the product website) burned and stuck to the bottom of the pan.  One host tried to defend the marshmallow mess as being “over cooked”, while the other two hosts looked stupefied.

Look, I am not trying to vilify this product, but why are customers constantly being deceived by slick carnival hawking salespeople who use modified props to sell bogus shit.  It seems like the concept of “truth-in-advertising” today has gone the way of the dinosaur, hell, back in the day, even the “Pocket-Fisherman” worked.

Talk to Ya Later!

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2018 All Rights Reserved