Best: A toss-up between Non-Stick Stick, and Non-Stick Non-Stick. A Non-Stick Stick is usually a high quality pan that’s uncoated but has been seasoned and tempered just right so it’s non-stick. A Non-Stick Non-Stick can be an exceptional quality pan that’s coated with non-stick stuff and will forever remain non-stick regardless of treatment, but can also be a cheap Non-Stick that’s in it’s first days and is doomed to become a Stick Non-Stick. The former will cost you $300, and will pass the Intruder Kill Test (it will kill the intruder with the first blow), the latter might cost $1.99 and last for maybe 3 weeks of continuous use (but will never kill an intruder regardless of number or severity of blows).
Next: Usually a high-quality Stick Stick, because it might possibly be rehabilitated into a Non-Stick Stick. Just a victim of serial cluelessness awaiting rehab (that yes, may never eventuate). Often only given resuscitation by a visiting friend or family member who will be forever scarred by their day working in your “kitchen”.
Then: The dreaded Stick Non-Stick, a cunt of a pan that has flaking, carcinogenic Silverstone or Chinese imitation non-stick coating that grips any food like a bastard and never lets go. Also harbours previously undiscovered chemicals forged in the intergalactic furnace of a dishwasher. Only redeeming characteristic: it cost $1.99, so you can just throw it away as it transitions. A rival is the traditional English Non-Stick Stick, which gains it’s non-stick properties from generations of unwashed dripping. It doesn’t stick, but has been known to push a rancitometer off the scale; all food cooked in it tastes the same, i.e. of rancid animal trans fat.
Lastly: The dedicated, cheap Stick Stick, like a cheap cast iron thing you were enchanted by in some dreamy flight of fancy at a camping store, the pan that forever echoes the first poor egg that was ever desecrated within it’s unholy confines, and negates your need for a daily iron supplement. Meets it’s death in the dishwasher, as even the dumbest fuck in the world can trust their eyes in the case of this metallurgical transformation nightmare.
