- If you're like me and
you've made the mistake of Googling nonstick cooker recently, then you're probably seeing
ads for this pan a lot. (energetic music)
- HexClad's Hybrid cookware gives you the performance
of stainless steel, the durability of cast iron and the convenience of nonstick. Welcome to the hybrid revolution. Welcome to HexClad. - Those are some bold claims and so I purchased a few HexClad pans and today, we're gonna review them. We're gonna talk about
what do they do well, what do they not do as well and maybe have a short conversation about when marketing claims
become intentionally misleading. (gentle jazz music) But before we look at the performance and durability of these pans, if you're new to this channel, welcome. My name's Chris Young, and you might be wondering who I am and why you should listen to me. I've been combining science and cooking for almost two decades. While I studied chemistry and
mathematics at university, my actual career began when I became the head development chef for the three-Michelin-starred
Fat Duck Restaurant in the early 2000s, before co-authoring "Modernist Cuisine" with Nathan Myhrvold. After that, I co-founded the online cooking community Chef Steps and created the Joule
Sous Vide Circulator. These days, I'm the founder of a company called Combustion Inc, where our team is creating the most advanced wireless
predictive thermometer and its kitchen timer display. Now, this can just be a great
instant-read thermometer, but its real superpower is to use its eight temperature sensors to do things that no
other thermometer can do. Like automatically locate and measure the temperature at the core of your food, measure the real cooking temperature at the surface of your
food, and most importantly, answer two very basic cooking questions: how long does my food need to cook for and how long should it rest for to end up at my perfect doneness? Now, if you're interested in learning more about these products, I'll put a link to the
Combustion Inc. website in the description below. But this channel is about exploring the science and technology of cooking, and if that's interesting to you I'd really appreciate it if you click that like button and hit subscribe. Thank you so very much. Now, back to our review. This being a review video,
let's start with an unboxing. Comes with a nice reasonable dust bag, which I guess you can use to protect it when you're not using it. Nothing worse than people
stacking other cookware on top of your pristine nonstick cookware. So, that's thoughtful. And the panel looks very well constructed. Two layers of stainless steel and an aluminum core for
good heat diffusivity. This is induction capable, which is useful since I mostly
cook on induction these days. The edges are flared, which is nice to protect them from delaminating from utensils banging against them. Very nice hollow-core handle
with thermal standoffs that's riveted on for durability. Overall, this is a very
well-constructed pan. The stainless steel is very polished. The quality of finishing is as good as any other premium pan, whether All-Clad or Demeyere or the like. Obviously, the really
unique thing about this pan is the embossed tesselating
pattern on the inside and outside of this pan. And I'll talk about what this achieves and what it doesn't achieve. But to do that, it's really helpful to understand why food
sticks and how Teflon works. Nonstick cookware has one job to do: keep food from sticking. Food sticks to cookware because molecules in the
food, especially proteins, form strong chemical bonds with the metal. To prevent this, we need something between
the metal and the food that doesn't bond well to either. This is where Teflon is
unmatched in performance. Now, I understand that
there are many people who abhor the idea of cooking with Teflon, and if that's you, I
completely understand. There are other non-sick
coatings available but objectively none are
as nonstick as Teflon. Now, this isn't gonna be a video defending the safety of Teflon. If you're interested in that topic, the YouTuber Adam Ragusea
has an excellent video and I'll put a link to it
in my description below. Now, Teflon is the commercial name for polytetrafluoroethylene,
PTFE for short. It's a long molecule, a carbon
chain, the ethylene backbone, with fluorine atoms put
into every spot possible and the bonds between
the fluorine and carbon are so strong that
neither have any interest in reacting with anything else,
neither you nor your food. The challenge with Teflon
though has always been how do you get it to stick to the metal pan in the first place? The usual approach is to apply a primer that sticks to the metal, but whose molecules
kind of look like Teflon so that when a midcoat
layer of Teflon is applied it will think it's among
like-minded molecules and diffuse into it,
binding them together. The midcoat layer also includes
some inert ceramic filler that makes it more durable
and scratch resistant. This filler also gives the pan it's charcoal-colored nonstick sparkle. Finally, a topcoat of
pure Teflon is applied. It's this pure topcoat of Teflon that makes a brand new
nonstick pan so, well nonstick. Alas, it's also the
first layer to wear away. And that brings us to the clever idea behind
HexClad hybrid cookware. Listen to this. (pan scrapes shrilly) That's the sound of metal on metal. Let me compare it against
a pure Teflon-coated pan. (pan scrapes dully) That's the sound of metal on polymer. Nothing alike. The patented idea here is to laser etch an embossed
pattern into the pan then coat the entire pan with Teflon and then polish away the
Teflon from those high spots to expose the stainless steel leaving the Teflon
behind in those low spots where it's protected. This raised pattern of
stainless steel keeps utensils from actually colliding
with the Teflon surface, keeping it from getting scratched. They also divide the pan up into a bunch of individual zones so that if one zone gets
scratched and starts to delaminate it won't spread quickly
to the rest of the pan. It's kind of like the
mesh in ripstop nylon. HexClad even says, and
this is from their website, that you can scrub these
pans with steel wool. Can I just pause for a second and say how very, very wrong it feels to use steel wool on Teflon? Now, this all sounds too
good to be true, and it is. This little card included in the packaging is the first hint that
there might be a catch. "As with most fine cookware, HexClad hybrid cookware should
be seasoned before first use. Heat the pan to medium-low and spread one teaspoon of vegetable oil around the interior of the pan. Leave on heat for one to two minutes then you're ready to cook." If this is the answer,
it raises the question, why have this in the first place? Why not just get a carbon steel or a cast-iron pan and season it? Online reviews suggest my
concern isn't unfounded. Most folks seem to really like these pans but there's a concerning
number of negative reviews that consistently claim that
food sticks to these pans, which kind of defeats the idea that these are uniquely
durable nonstick pans. So is HexClad cookware solving
a fundamental shortcoming of traditional Teflon nonstick cookware or is it just very well marketed? To sort this out, I'm gonna
compare the HexClad cookware against All-Clad D3 cookware. It's a pan of comparable price,
quality, and construction. To compare these two pans,
I'm gonna cook some eggs because eggs are among the
stickiest foods there are. But first I'm gonna
test both of these pans with a bit of water. Remember, the stuff in the
food that sticks to cookware is mixed into water. When I pour water into these
pans, the more it beads up and tries to pull away from the surface, the more hydrophobic, water-fearing, the coating of the pan is which is a very good indication
that food won't stick to it. You can also see that the pure Teflon pan beads water more effectively
than the HexClad pan. If I empty the water from the pans and see how much remains behind,
it's a little more obvious. The pure Teflon pan is droplet-free whereas there's still a few
drops in the HexClad pan. Looking closely, the
water seems to be sticking to the exposed stainless
steel in the HexClad pan which hints at where sticking will occur. Okay, so I've preseason
the HexClad cookware as the manufacturer recommends,
which involves heating it with a thin layer of
oil on it a few times. The first thing I'm gonna
try are sunny-side up eggs and I'm not gonna use any oil in the pan because I know that that works with a classic Teflon nonstick pan and I really want to get a sense of how this HexClad pan
performs by comparison. Let's get started. (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music continues) (gentle jazz music continues) (UFO warbling) (spatula scraping) Well. So obviously this is not quite as nonstick as a pure Teflon nonstick pan. It's not that bad. A little bit of oil in the pan
would definitely have helped. Let's try something a
little bit more challenging like a classic French omelet. (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music continues) (gentle jazz music continues) (gentle jazz music continues) (gentle jazz music continues) (gentle jazz music continues) (gentle jazz music continues) The classic French omelet, pure technique. And it demands a lot from your
nonstick cookware surface, which will wear out over time, especially if you treat it like a chef. That's why I was really excited to learn about HexClad cookware. My previous nonstick cookware
had begun to wear out, omelets had started to stick. The idea of a nonstick pan that's durable and will last a lifetime,
that's incredibly appealing. It was probably this moment
in their advertisement that really sold me. - Watch this. (exhales) - The reality is somewhat disappointing. Now, they're not faking what
they show in their advertising but it's what they don't
show you that makes it work. And then you cook it until
it's very dry before... (Chris exhales forcefully) That is not a classic French omelet. It's a dry sheet of egg. And personally, I think their advertising is being a bit misleading here. They're trying to communicate that their hybrid pans are
as nonstick as pure Teflon when in reality they're not. In my testing, HexClad cookware does fine for tasks that don't demand an exceptionally good nonstick
coating like searing a steak. But their hybrid design
doesn't perform very well for more delicate tasks that really benefit from what
a pure Teflon coating offers like a classic French omelet or seafood. Of course, what you give
up in nonstick performance, you gain in durability. Sort of. Let's talk for a moment about why nonstick coatings fail and HexClad's advertised
lifetime warranty. Pure Teflon is an incredibly soft material that scratches easily. Now, modern Teflon coatings
like the one used in this pan includes hard ceramic particles,
clever bonding techniques, and multiple layers to
make the Teflon coating more nonstick and scratch resistant but it will eventually scratch and fail. HexClad, by contrast,
has a clever approach to protecting their Teflon coating by embossing it below a
stainless steel pattern. Now that does protect it from scratches and that does make it more durable but at the expense of being
less nonstick than this pan. Now, that might be a
reasonable trade off for you. Maybe it's acceptable to
be somewhat less nonstick in exchange for the increased durability. But scratches are only one of the reasons Teflon coatings fail and HexClad's approach does nothing to protect from the other reasons that Teflon coatings will eventually fail. The Teflon coating on both of these pans will begin to break down
above 500 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 260 degrees Celsius. But perhaps you're incredibly careful with your nonstick cookware and you never let it get too hot. Sadly, it will still fail. It turns out that metal and Teflon don't expand and contract at the same rate when heated and cooled. As a result, each time you heat the pan up and cool it back down,
stress starts to accumulate between the layers of
Teflon and metal in the pan. Over time, this accumulating stress will cause the Teflon
to delaminate and fail. Teflon is a remarkable material, but unlike diamonds,
it won't last forever. "This certifies that your HexClad product is warranted to be free from defects in material and craftsmanship for the lifetime of the purchaser. This warranty does not apply to damage caused in a
food-service setting, abuse, misuse, or altering the product. Over time, surface
imperfections may appear. This is considered normal wear and tear." Hmm, that doesn't sound
like they're promising these pans will remain
nonstick for a lifetime at all. And that feels, well, disingenuous. The implication of HexClad's advertising and the marketing claims on their website is that they have come
up with an innovation that overcomes one of
the fundamental flaws of Teflon nonstick coatings when in reality that's not
what they're promising. I don't think there's anything
wrong with HexClad's warranty and I think the pans themselves
are incredibly well made and comparable to other
pans at this price point. I do however, think their
marketing has crossed a line to be intentionally misleading in an effort to close the sale. Nevertheless, these pans are very popular and most online reviews are favorable. The negative reviews tend to point out what I hope I've
demonstrated in this video, that these pans are not as nonstick as a pure Teflon coated pan, and if you buy them with that expectation, you're likely to be disappointed. So who do I think these pans are for? I think it comes down to what you want out of a nonstick pan. There are some people, such as myself, that want a nonstick
pan for cooking things that demand the pan be, well,
as nonstick as possible. But there are likely a lot more people that want a pan that's
reasonably nonstick, generally easy to clean, but also durable enough for
misuse in a realistic kitchen. And if that's you, you're likely to be entirely satisfied
with HexClad cookware. But for me, I'll be sticking with conventional Teflon nonstick pans because, well, it's just
a lot more nonstick. But what do you think? Do you have HexClad cookware? Do you like it? Let me know in the comments below. And thank you so much for watching.
