Flat bottom pans

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

jrut

Assistant Cook
Joined
Sep 24, 2021
Messages
13
Location
Reidsville NC
Does anyone make a decent non-stick fry pan that actually has a flat bottom. Almost every one I've tried in the last few years are domed in the middle. All the oil\juices run to the outside edges. Looking for an induction compatible pan.
 
Non-stick pans are often made of aluminum. If it's too thin, it will warp over high heat. Look for pans with a thicker aluminum body. You'll probably have to pay more for the good stuff.
 
I have had a ScanPan, non-stick frying pan for about six years. It is still in great shape and has not warped at all. Mine isn't usable with induction, but I know they make non-stick pans that are usable with induction. They aren't cheap, but I consider them worth the money.
 
Welcome to the forum!

Usually, if you are looking for an induction capable pan, you will be wanting to get a sandwich type pan - the cheaper ones will just have a disk of magnetic SS on the bottom, followed by aluminum, with a NS coating, and when there are just two different metals, there is often warping - they often make them domed, thinking that once heated, it flattens out, but I don't think that happens well!

Like Andy said, the good pans will cost more! When ATK does their tests for pans, one of the things they do is overheat them, for lack of a better term, then test them for warping! This is not for NS pans (not something you want to do with!), but many brands warp. All Clad is one of their top rated, almost every year, but Cuisinart and Calphalon are two that also pass, and are a little cheaper. Some of the more expensive have 5 ply - even more resistant to warping than the 3 ply, but I don't have a problem with the 3 ply.
 
Welcome to DC, jrut. I have a set of All Clad for home, but not non-stick. For non-stick I bought a few Calphalon fry pans and even a wok, of sorts, I'm happy with them and they are oven safe to 400, I think. For the RV I have Magma, including a non-stick (small) fry pan. The Magma set if great because they nest together to take up less space...but that's probably not an issue for home.
 
Flat bottom pans, you make the cookin' world go 'round ~ Apologies to Freddy Mercury & Queen

I have several T-Fal pans, 8-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch, and a humongous 14-inch chicken fryer that are perfectly flat on the bottom.
 
Last edited:
Just ordered a pan from Misen. Hoping it will be good. I do have some SS from Tramontina and they are excellent. Might try them next if this doesn't work out.
 
Well, the 10" Misen worked well so I ordered a 12". On my large burner set to Hi, the 12" pan would hardly heat butter. Not sure. Maybe I got a bad one with a bad sandwich of metal.
 
Well, the 10" Misen worked well so I ordered a 12". On my large burner set to Hi, the 12" pan would hardly heat butter. Not sure. Maybe I got a bad one with a bad sandwich of metal.

Some cookware works like this with induction, it heats, but very slowly and can't reach the high temperature a proper cookware does. It's definitely a problem on the manufacturers side, poor engineering if you ask me.

I was "lucky" enough to buy a whole set of cookware like this... 3 pans and 4 pots and all of them behave the same, so it's not a question of a faulty piece. My sister has a few pots like this too.

They all have one thing in common in our case, the coating is some kind of stone/marmor material. We both keep on using them, because it's almost impossible to burn anything with these, but they are slow as hell for sure.
 
I have never had a problem with any of my pans heating up on my induction burner; in fact, when I first started using it, I was amazed at how fast they heated up! I always said that if I ever had to move, and get a non gas range, it would be induction, after using that.

That definitely sounds like some bad product, with simply some bad, or an insufficient amount of the magnetic metal in the base. Thinking about this, I took a magnetic dish - some things I keep screws, nails, and things like that in, in my workshop and outside, which have a magnetic disk in the base - and put it on the bottoms of many of my induction capable pans, then pulled it off. The one pan, which is the only one I noticed that was slightly slower heating up, was definitely easier to pull off, and the carbon steel wok almost yanked it out of my hand, and was the hardest to pull off. All were fairly strongly magnetic, and even the tea kettle with the very thin metal, was strong, which didn't surprise me, as that thing boils the water slightly faster than the gas, unless I have it on so high it's up the sides! And the enameled CI also seemed strong, so that coating doesn't seem to weaken it.

So check the magnetic capability of those pans - maybe it has something to do with that? I would have thought they'd have that standardized by now, but we know how that goes!
 
That reminds me that there are induction converter plates for pans that don't have enough iron to work on induction. It might help for those pans that are slow to heat on induction.
 
Does anyone make a decent non-stick fry pan that actually has a flat bottom. Almost every one I've tried in the last few years are domed in the middle. All the oil\juices run to the outside edges. Looking for an induction compatible pan.


I wonder what kind of pans you have?
 
That reminds me that there are induction converter plates for pans that don't have enough iron to work on induction. It might help for those pans that are slow to heat on induction.

I use the plates for Corning ware and they work great. However, they do not cool down quickly like normal induction pans, so you need to remove the pot from the plates, or it does continue to cook and can even boil over! Fortunately, the induction cooktop is easy to clean up.
 
That reminds me that there are induction converter plates for pans that don't have enough iron to work on induction. It might help for those pans that are slow to heat on induction.
I have something like that that I tried in the beginning, but it didn't work out well, even putting a copper pot on it, isn't as good as just using an indication pot. It is just a metal disk, which I originally got as a flame tamer of sorts, (though not as good as the double layer type), due to the high gas output of my range, and works with this to keep a very low heat. It does make it possible to use a pot that's not induction capable, but I really don't have to.
 
Back
Top Bottom