Toxic cookware exposed: why I got rid of every non-stick pan in my kitchen

Most Saturday mornings, my kitchen sounds about the same. The radio's on, the kettle's going, and at some point three grandchildren come thundering down the stairs asking when breakfast will be ready. I do them a proper fry-up: eggs, bacon, sausages, a few mushrooms and tomatoes if I've got them in. I've done it for the best part of twelve years, in the same kitchen, with the same trusty non-stick frying pan. And in all that time, it never once crossed my mind to wonder what that pan was actually made of. Then one day it did, and I've not cooked on non-stick since.

The question I never thought to ask

To me, a non-stick pan was simply one of those things you replace every now and then. The coating gets scratched, the eggs start sticking, you have a bit of a moan about it, and eventually you pop down to the shops and buy another one. I must have got through half a dozen of them over the years and never given it a second thought. What I'd never once asked was the obvious question: what is that slippery coating actually made of? When I finally sat down and looked it up, the answer stuck with me. The non-stick surface on most pans is made from PTFE, which you'll know better as Teflon. As it turns out, it's one of the "forever chemicals" you hear mentioned on the news now, the PFAS ones that don't break down.

It wasn't the science that bothered me. It was the flaking.

I'll be honest with you, I'm no scientist, and I'm not here to put the wind up anybody. But I kept coming back to something I'd watched happen in my own kitchen for years. Those pans scratch. The coating wears thin, it chips around the edges, and bit by bit little flecks of it come away. I'd always just shrugged and carried on cooking. Once I knew what that coating was made of, though, I didn't much fancy the idea of it ending up in the grandchildren's breakfast. That weekend I had a proper clear-out, and every non-stick pan I owned went in the bin.

Finding a decent replacement was harder than I expected

I assumed I'd nip out, buy a "healthier" pan, and that would be the end of it. If only. The ceramic ones with "non-toxic" splashed across the box were lovely for a few months, then lost their slip just like all the others. Stainless steel had my eggs cemented to the bottom unless I got the heat and the oil spot on, and I was straight back to scrubbing the thing for ages at the sink. Cast iron was smashing once it got going, but heavy enough that my wrists were grumbling by the time I'd finished a fry-up. After all those years of cooking, I was starting to think a good, safe pan that actually behaved itself simply didn't exist.

Then my nephew said one word: titanium

It was my nephew who first brought it up. He works with metals for a living, so he tends to know what he's talking about. I'd honestly never thought of titanium as something you'd cook with. He explained that it's the same metal surgeons use for hip replacements and the like, because the body simply doesn't react to it. It's what they call inert. And here's the part that mattered to me: titanium isn't a coating sprayed onto a pan. The pan is titanium, the whole way through. There's nothing layered on top to scratch off, nothing to flake away, and no PTFE or PFAS in it in the first place. The more he explained, the more it made sense.

What it's actually been like to use

The pan I settled on is called TitanPan. Pure titanium, no coating. I've cooked hundreds of breakfasts on it since. With a knob of butter or a splash of oil, the eggs slide straight off and it wipes clean in seconds, so no more standing at the sink scrubbing away. It's light enough that my wrists don't grumble, I can use a metal spatula without fretting that I'm ruining it, and it simply hasn't worn out the way every other pan I've owned did within a year or two. The Saturday fry-ups carry on exactly as they always have. The only real difference is that I don't give the pan a moment's thought any more, and after all that palaver, that bit of peace of mind means a great deal to me.

My daughter asked where I'd got it

My daughter clocked it the first time she came round for breakfast. She'd been having the same on-off battle with her own non-stick pans, forever buying new ones, so she wanted to know what I'd switched to and why. I told her exactly what my nephew had told me. She's since done the very same in her own kitchen. Funny, isn't it, how something as ordinary as a frying pan ends up being the thing you natter about over a cuppa.

Why you might not have come across it

You won't spot TitanPan on the supermarket shelf next to the names everyone knows. It's a newer brand, sold mostly online, which is really the only reason I hadn't heard of it sooner myself. A friend of mine has since ordered one too, mostly because I wouldn't stop going on about it.

If you've been buying the same pan for years

I'm not one for telling other people what to do. But if you're anything like I was, replacing the same scratched non-stick pan over and over, it's worth knowing what that coating is actually made of. And it's worth knowing there's a pan out there with no coating on it at all.