Cooking with it at normal fry pan temperatures (350-400f) is safe, this has been repeatedly confirmed in experiments, some not even funded by DuPont. Don’t do crazy things like really high temp searing and don’t use metal utensils that cause the coating to flake off. Also if you’re really concerned ceramic nonstick + oil has come a long way. And I should add the the most nonstick pan I own is actually a properly seasoned carbon steel wok, yes it’s really possible if you know what you’re doing.

I love my Matfer Bourgeat carbon steel pan. It's just really heavy and kinda ugly. But it works great, especially at high temps when searing meats.

I've heard good things about carbon steel. Particularly, nitrided carbon steel. The pans are treated to be non-stick and are safe. It's what Alton Brown, the host of Food Network's Good Eats who also just launched a new cooking show on YouTube, uses.

Alton Brown had the best cooking show that ever existed. It was maximal knowledge with minimal BS (compared to most other TV shows in this space).

True but it owes a strong debt to Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking.

If you mean just a skillet / frying pan, i found that a cast iron pan is much better (for non stick), have been using a €10 one for about three years now. You can ignore all warnings about keeping it oiled etc. They also have glass air fryers now (borosilicate glass, quite durable). You can scrub both with a steel sponge.

I use ceramic, but recently learned that nitrided carbon steel pans are the way to go. They are both useful AND safe. Do yourself a favor and invest in one.

I'll keep using teflon frying pans for eggs, but we do most cooking in stainless steel pots and pans anyway.

There is no advantage for eggs. I use a seasoned iron or steel pan and it's just as easy with better results.

I recently switched from teflon to stainless steel, and after a few false starts figuring it out I like it more now. Also for something that leaves a lot of grease like sausage and bacon, the stainless steel surprised me by being easier to clean.

What did the false starts teach you? I have some stainless steel pans and sometimes they work great and sometimes they're just mysteriously sticky, with whatever I'm cooking bonding to the pan.

If it's happening only sometimes I'm not sure how useful this will be but these were where I had issues at the beginning - I'd looked up how to use them before buying them because I figured nonstick wouldn't exist if I could use them the same, but some information was misleading or incomplete. For example when cooking:

* You should preheat until you get a leidenfrost effect - get some water on your fingers and flick it onto the skillet, it should form droplets that bounce around without boiling off.

* Once this happens, immediately turn the heat to the lowest setting so the skillet doesn't get too hot (most instructions are missing this step and I didn't really expect the skillet would get too hot - stainless steel just keeps getting hotter at a temperature the teflon nonstick would maintain heat). Depending on your stove, the lowest might be a little too low and heat is slowly lost, this is something you'll eventually get a feel for.

* After getting the leidenfrost effect (maybe? not sure how important it is to wait until after), you have to add something (butter or vegetable oil, for example) to coat the surface and not only get a nonstick effect but also sort of buffer the heat. It's kind of like cast-iron seasoning, but extremely low-effort and you do it / clean it off every usage. Some of the things I'd read before buying said the leidenfrost effect was the important part for getting a nonstick surface without mentioning this stage, which led to a pancake that was black and stuck to the skillet on one side and still liquid batter on the other.

And when cleaning:

* I'd mentioned sausage and bacon above, these leave gunk that sounds kind of like what you described except a lot more of it. For some reason getting a wet paper towel and rubbing down the skillet (instead of putting water on the skillet directly) works really well getting almost all of it off, though it will take several of them.

* If there's still residue not coming off, something I got from reddit worked even where grease-removing dish soap didn't: Lightly boil baking soda in water in the skillet for about 20 minutes. Don't let the water boil off or you'll be left with baking soda gunk stuck to the skillet, you want it to dissolve and soak in the hot water for a while before emptying it and wiping it down.

* And lastly one of the side reasons I like it over nonstick while cleaning: The surface is actually smooth. When using a scrunge to wipe it down you can feel where there's still something stuck to the surface, while nonstick is rough even when clean.

Honestly it doesn't take too long to learn how to cook properly on other types of pans. I use my cast iron pans for nearly everything. I have stainless steel for the rest. There is nothing I can't do in them.