Carbon steel is basically a lighter cast iron. It’ll cost more than cast iron, but it will last the same.

Or practice how to cook with stainless steel. There is a reason it’s the most commonly used pan in restaurants.

Good luck, I’ve been in the same exact boat as you. I use my cast irons (had them forever, they are what I prefer) and my wife uses the carbon steel.

Ok, Teflon is the only one of those that can wear off over time, and it wears off into your food so consider that.

Stainless steel and cast iron are essentially indestructible and will give you the same performance on day one and 20 years later, if yours are acting different in such a short time frame they’re either not stainless steel/cast iron or you’re not taking proper care of them.

Stainless steel is almost impossible to ruin, unless you’re cleaning them with industrial level sanding equipment I’m going to assume that’s not the issue. However stainless steel is tricky to use, you need to preheat over MEDIUM-LOW heat until the pan is UNIFORMLY heated enough that it can levitate a large bead of water all over the surface. Then you need to coat it with some form of fat like cooking oil, and you need to WAIT for the oil to heat properly (just a few seconds, but it’s not immediate). The words I capitalized are where I think most people make mistakes, they heat with high heat and so they have some parts that are very hot and others that aren’t, then they put oil and immediately add the thing they’re trying to cook, if the pan is not evenly hot enough cold spots can cause food to stick.

Cast iron is a different beast, they rely on a thin layer of polimerized oil to become non-stick. While this is resistant enough to survive most things it does wear down over time if you’re not taking proper care of it. If your cast iron pan is not as non-stick as it used to be it needs to be seasoned, so do the following:

• Clean it thoroughly with water and dish soap
• Dry it well (I tend to put it over the fire again until it’s dry, then you will let it cool down)
• Put a tiny amount of oil on it
• Grab a paper towel and spread it over the whole surface of the pan, it should look glossy
• Grab a new dry paper towel and dry the excess of oil, it will still look glossy but should not have any pools of drops of oil anywhere.
• Turn your oven to something like 200C/250C (it depends on the oil you used, look for seasoning temperature).
• Once the oven is hot you will put your pan upside down there and let it sit for at least one hour, but feel free to let it stay longer.

That should recreate the layer on the pan and make it good as new. You might need to do that periodically, maybe once a year or so depending on how you treat your pans. However after having the initial seasoning you can keep building it over time to avoid having to go through the whole process again. This is done by essentially taking good care of your pan, which means:

• Wash it after use (don’t let it sink with water for hours). Contrary to popular belief you can use regular soap here.ñ, the advice is from an era where soap had much heavier chemicals.
• Dry it after wash (you can do so with a towel, I like to put it in the fire again to ensure its thoroughly dried)
• Apply a small layer of oil like you did for seasoning before putting it away.

If you do that every use it will be good as new indefinitely. If at some point you feel it’s sticking or not acting as before you can resason it. Sometimes you might do wrong things like cutting stuff directly on the pan repitedly, or cook tomatoes or acidic food in it (the acid undoes some of the seasoning and leaves a metallic after-taste) which will require you to resason it, but as a general rule just cooking with it should keep increasing the petiquia (name of the coating created by the seasoning process).

Hope this helps, glad to answer anything else. I’m by no means an expert but I do like the few pans I have and like to cook so I’ve geeked over this for a while.

Unfortunately, Teflon pans are made to fall apart, can’t make money if it lasts forever. Just expect to replace it every few years if you like Teflon, I have Teflon and stainless. Cast iron is too much upkeep in my opinion. If it can’t go in a dishwasher, it can’t come in my house to be used on the regular.

I switch between cast iron and stainless steel. Tomato sauces and other acidic foods/sauces eat away at the seasoning on the cast iron, so that is where the stainless comes in handy for me.

The stainless is also a lot easier to clean and maintain.

They both need preheating to effectively become non-stick, which has caused my ADHD ridden brain to mess up both of my pans. I turn the stove on to preheat, walk away to do something else, and forget about it. The cast iron has had its seasoning burned off, and required a lot of work to get it back in shape. The stainless now has a bulge on the bottom, making it take much longer to preheat, and is now wobbly. This is just a personal flaw lol

Look up flash seasoning on yt. Get the pan to 400-500 degrees, dump in oil, smoke 30 seconds, dump out all oil, let rest to reasonable temperature, optionally add cold cooking fat of your choosing. I’ve tried this method and it’s by far the best most reliable method, and beats out the bullshit of 100 thin baked on coats of seasoning advice.

Strata fry pan. It’s carbon steel so requires building seasoning like a cast iron but has an aluminum core so it’s lightweight. Love mine, get good sear on meat and eggs will slide right off it.

Stainless steel is my favorite. I would bet you’re not using it right. They need to be preheated before cooking. Once you can get a bead of water dancing on the pan, after that, everything slides right off.

And I’m pretty sure soap is a no no on cast iron, but I’m no expert on that.

Okay, medium deep dive into cooking surfaces. No caveats or disclaimers because fuck that.

The only thing that’s truly “non stick” is Teflon. Anything else is just low stick. This includes the beloved cast iron.

But! Sticking isn’t an inherently bad thing, so unless you’re cooking eggs or making candy, chances are that cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless steel will get the job done anyway.

Out of all the options, cast iron requires the most work to stay as low stick as it can get, and nothing else reaches that degree of easy cleaning after use. Carbon steel is just a skosh behind cast iron, but it’s lighter by a significant factor, so it may be worth considering.

So, how the fuck to keep cast iron low stick? You gotta start with a good layer of plastic and then maintain it. Seasoning is essentially plastic. For seasoning to stick, and stay useful, you gotta be a little gentle with it over time. Use only standard dish soap, no heavy scrubbing, and watch how hot you get the pan without something in it. All those people saying the get your pan “ripping” or “screaming” hot? That’s bad advice for a pan you want to keep low stick. So you have two pans, or just accept that once you get that layer of polymerized hydrocarbons past about 450, it’s going to start having trouble.

And, being fucking real, you don’t need a pan that hot for anything except maybe a rare or blue steak. You’ll get better Maillard reaction at slightly lower temps that won’t stress a pan. Or, just fucking use a thick stainless steel pan, it’ll work fine if you want shit to carbonize. Invest in a fucking infrared thermometer and learn how to use it, you’ll get better results from knowing what temps give a specific result than from cranking the heat all to hell and hoping.

But if you want maximum non stick cast iron, it starts with the surface. You gotta have a smooth surface, or you gotta spend the time building up layers of polymers to fill in all the little bumps and schwiggles. Overall, the slickest surfaces will come from finely sanded, then vinegar treated, then polymerized. Just be aware that slick and low stick is a tradeoff, since some sticking is going to be what develops a nice fond from our friend Maillard.

You can get close to that with carbon steel though! Same process. You get the bare metal smooth as fuck all, then give it a nice warm vinegar soak, then season as usual.

But, again, you gotta be ready to accept tradeoffs. There’s no perfect material. And over time, if you don’t pay attention, a seasoned pan is going to develop uneven spots as fats polymerize during cooking. If you do pay attention, I’ll happen way slower, enough so that I’ll take decades, by which time chances are good that the layers will be thick enough that it isn’t a problem. That uneven buildup happens when the fats aren’t deep enough to stay even as you cook, and/or when things do temporarily stick during cooking (which is a good thing, not a bad one for meats).

Me? I accepted long ago that some cooking is going to result in pans that need a long soak before trying to really clean them. Hell, even Teflon can have stuff build up on the edges, so it isn’t immune to that. Your best bet is to leave the damn thing on the range, pour in some water, heat it up to boiling, then let it sit until it cools enough to handle. It reduces sink time a lot.

If you want Teflon, go top end. Don’t waste time or money going cheap. Opinions vary, but hexclad has a reputation for being the most durable Teflon stuff. Won’t last forever in terms of the surface, but no Teflon will. Just don’t fuck around with generic shit.

I’ve had the best luck with cast iron, but my wife doesn’t like to use them because they’re heavy.

Tell your wife she needs to lift heavier