Ozeri Green Earth Pan Review

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

A good friend of mine recently alerted me to the perils of “non-stick” cookware; of the chemicals used to achieve this non-stick status. Of course, all my cookware is non-stick and I just happened to have gotten a brand new set of pots and pans for Christmas that are gloriously non-stick. I use these pans every day so when she told me about the chemicals I was quite bummed out. She told me about how her family uses cast iron skillets and how much better they are for you. Now, mind you, I don’t have the money to run out and buy a whole new set of cast iron pots and pans. Thankfully, I came across a company called Ozeri who makes a Green Earth Pan that uses a ceramic coating free of harmful chemicals.

The coating is of German origin and is called Greblon. According to Ozeri:

[It is] one of the world's first frying pans to achieve non-stick perfection while remaining absolutely free of PTFE, PFOA and other harmful chemicals. Conventional cookware and other ceramic cookware brands achieve their non-stick performance through a coating of PTFE (PolyTetraFluoroEthylene), a synthetic substance that has waxy properties. At very high temperatures, PTFE begins to decompose and release fumes which are documented to be lethal to birds and small pets, and which can be harmful to humans. In addition, traditional pans incorporating PTFE are often manufactured with the aid of PFOA (PerFluoroOctanoic Acid), which the EPA has classified as a 'persistent pollutant of the environment'. With the Green Earth Pan's GREBLON ceramic from Germany, even under high temperatures, no harmful toxic fumes are ever released into the environment. This is because the Green Earth Pan utilizes a 100% ceramic coating inspired by nature - not a laboratory.

So naturally I was interested in this product after hearing and reading of the horrors that non-stick pans can produce. I received one of these Green Earth frying pans gratis for review and I was so excited! The company claims that their ceramic coating “…has better non-stick properties, [and] the Green Earth Pan allows you to sauté, fry, bake, boil and braise with as little as half the amount of oil normally used, and cleaning is a breeze. …. [and] your satisfaction is guaranteed…” Based on that description who wouldn’t love it? Less oil needed and easy to clean? Yes please.

I decided to try out my new pan and a new Pinterest recipe I had found for “fried” honey cinnamon bananas. The results were so-so. The packaging said to “season” the pan with oil first, which I did. The recipes that I found said I shouldn’t need to add oils because the bananas should produce enough moisture. Also, I made the bananas right after I seasoned the pan with coconut oil. So, based on the non-stick feature and the coconut oil that had just been applied, I expected nothing to stick. However, it was hard to turn the bananas because they were sticking to the pan and ripping.

Now I must mention that this could be due to a user error. The recipe called for “slightly un-ripe” bananas which I thought was strange because the taste of ripe bananas is so much better. But the bananas I used were so ripe that they were almost mushy, thus I fear that the reason they stuck could’ve been their over ripeness. Perhaps the un-ripe, more firm, bananas would’ve done better.  The pan did seem to cook things pretty evenly though, and for that I was happy.

Then came cleanup. I couldn’t clean the pan immediately because it was obviously scorching hot. The bad thing was that the recipe called for drizzling honey on the bananas while in the hot pan. So I had to clean the pan of sticky dried honey. It wasn’t easy, the honey wouldn’t come off. The packaging said to only hand wash gently with soap and a washcloth was no match for dried honey. The good news is that I simply filled the pan with water and let it soak. After it had soaked, the cooked on honey wiped right out without any trouble at all!

So overall I think that the pan is very aesthetically pleasing, and works pretty well. If I hadn’t tried to cook almost mush bananas I think it would’ve been great at its non-stick function. Also, the honey would’ve been tough to get off of any pan. I can’t really fault the product for these things. All that being said I would recommend the Green Earth pan. It works just about as well as my chemically enhanced non-stick pans and it won’t poison my family. It’s a win win. 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.