Ok, Teflon is the only one of those that can wear off over time, and it wears off into your food so consider that.

Stainless steel and cast iron are essentially indestructible and will give you the same performance on day one and 20 years later, if yours are acting different in such a short time frame they’re either not stainless steel/cast iron or you’re not taking proper care of them.

Stainless steel is almost impossible to ruin, unless you’re cleaning them with industrial level sanding equipment I’m going to assume that’s not the issue. However stainless steel is tricky to use, you need to preheat over MEDIUM-LOW heat until the pan is UNIFORMLY heated enough that it can levitate a large bead of water all over the surface. Then you need to coat it with some form of fat like cooking oil, and you need to WAIT for the oil to heat properly (just a few seconds, but it’s not immediate). The words I capitalized are where I think most people make mistakes, they heat with high heat and so they have some parts that are very hot and others that aren’t, then they put oil and immediately add the thing they’re trying to cook, if the pan is not evenly hot enough cold spots can cause food to stick.

Cast iron is a different beast, they rely on a thin layer of polimerized oil to become non-stick. While this is resistant enough to survive most things it does wear down over time if you’re not taking proper care of it. If your cast iron pan is not as non-stick as it used to be it needs to be seasoned, so do the following:

• Clean it thoroughly with water and dish soap
• Dry it well (I tend to put it over the fire again until it’s dry, then you will let it cool down)
• Put a tiny amount of oil on it
• Grab a paper towel and spread it over the whole surface of the pan, it should look glossy
• Grab a new dry paper towel and dry the excess of oil, it will still look glossy but should not have any pools of drops of oil anywhere.
• Turn your oven to something like 200C/250C (it depends on the oil you used, look for seasoning temperature).
• Once the oven is hot you will put your pan upside down there and let it sit for at least one hour, but feel free to let it stay longer.

That should recreate the layer on the pan and make it good as new. You might need to do that periodically, maybe once a year or so depending on how you treat your pans. However after having the initial seasoning you can keep building it over time to avoid having to go through the whole process again. This is done by essentially taking good care of your pan, which means:

• Wash it after use (don’t let it sink with water for hours). Contrary to popular belief you can use regular soap here.ñ, the advice is from an era where soap had much heavier chemicals.
• Dry it after wash (you can do so with a towel, I like to put it in the fire again to ensure its thoroughly dried)
• Apply a small layer of oil like you did for seasoning before putting it away.

If you do that every use it will be good as new indefinitely. If at some point you feel it’s sticking or not acting as before you can resason it. Sometimes you might do wrong things like cutting stuff directly on the pan repitedly, or cook tomatoes or acidic food in it (the acid undoes some of the seasoning and leaves a metallic after-taste) which will require you to resason it, but as a general rule just cooking with it should keep increasing the petiquia (name of the coating created by the seasoning process).

Hope this helps, glad to answer anything else. I’m by no means an expert but I do like the few pans I have and like to cook so I’ve geeked over this for a while.

A seasoned cast-iron is the way, likely you’ve not used your correctly OP.

Needs proper pre-heating prior to cooking and needs to be properly seasoned before being employed.

I switch between cast iron and stainless steel. Tomato sauces and other acidic foods/sauces eat away at the seasoning on the cast iron, so that is where the stainless comes in handy for me.

The stainless is also a lot easier to clean and maintain.

They both need preheating to effectively become non-stick, which has caused my ADHD ridden brain to mess up both of my pans. I turn the stove on to preheat, walk away to do something else, and forget about it. The cast iron has had its seasoning burned off, and required a lot of work to get it back in shape. The stainless now has a bulge on the bottom, making it take much longer to preheat, and is now wobbly. This is just a personal flaw lol

I’ve had the best luck with cast iron, but my wife doesn’t like to use them because they’re heavy.

Tell your wife she needs to lift heavier

Have heard really good things about nitrided carbon steel pans and titanium pans - very nearly as good as teflon but without the coating to flake off into your food.

Non stick doesnt mean magical. You’ve already run the gamut of different types, and still have issues. There is no such thing as non stick that doesnt also require proper usage and care. If you or someone in your household cant be bothered to properly use the pan then you’re shit out of luck. This is your issue, not the pan.

I hand wash them all with soap and water, but they all seem to lose their ability to shed off what I cook in them.

You need to oil them after washing them (wipe them down with a thin layer of vegetable oil or shortening).

Also, it may be time to reseason them if everything sticks even if you’re pre-heating it before adding the food. See: https://www.foodandwine.com/how-to-reseason-cast-iron-8600860

There’s a brand I got from Walmart called blue diamond or some shit, probably some infomercial stuff.

I’ve loved them. I believe they’re aluminum with ceramic coating. But they take a beating and I never have an issue with sticking.

Source: chef.

Alternatively learn what deglazing is and just have a little squirt bottle of water when you experience too much sticking. Plain old aluminum pans and deglazing solve most sticking for me. Certain things you don’t wanna do that with though, like eggs.

Check out carbon steel. Very similar physical properties to cast iron and significantly lighter. Also, learn how to properly use your pans. With proper preheating and use of fat (oil) even naturally sticky materials like stainless steel can be a dream to cook in.

Okay, medium deep dive into cooking surfaces. No caveats or disclaimers because fuck that.

The only thing that’s truly “non stick” is Teflon. Anything else is just low stick. This includes the beloved cast iron.

But! Sticking isn’t an inherently bad thing, so unless you’re cooking eggs or making candy, chances are that cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless steel will get the job done anyway.

Out of all the options, cast iron requires the most work to stay as low stick as it can get, and nothing else reaches that degree of easy cleaning after use. Carbon steel is just a skosh behind cast iron, but it’s lighter by a significant factor, so it may be worth considering.

So, how the fuck to keep cast iron low stick? You gotta start with a good layer of plastic and then maintain it. Seasoning is essentially plastic. For seasoning to stick, and stay useful, you gotta be a little gentle with it over time. Use only standard dish soap, no heavy scrubbing, and watch how hot you get the pan without something in it. All those people saying the get your pan “ripping” or “screaming” hot? That’s bad advice for a pan you want to keep low stick. So you have two pans, or just accept that once you get that layer of polymerized hydrocarbons past about 450, it’s going to start having trouble.

And, being fucking real, you don’t need a pan that hot for anything except maybe a rare or blue steak. You’ll get better Maillard reaction at slightly lower temps that won’t stress a pan. Or, just fucking use a thick stainless steel pan, it’ll work fine if you want shit to carbonize. Invest in a fucking infrared thermometer and learn how to use it, you’ll get better results from knowing what temps give a specific result than from cranking the heat all to hell and hoping.

But if you want maximum non stick cast iron, it starts with the surface. You gotta have a smooth surface, or you gotta spend the time building up layers of polymers to fill in all the little bumps and schwiggles. Overall, the slickest surfaces will come from finely sanded, then vinegar treated, then polymerized. Just be aware that slick and low stick is a tradeoff, since some sticking is going to be what develops a nice fond from our friend Maillard.

You can get close to that with carbon steel though! Same process. You get the bare metal smooth as fuck all, then give it a nice warm vinegar soak, then season as usual.

But, again, you gotta be ready to accept tradeoffs. There’s no perfect material. And over time, if you don’t pay attention, a seasoned pan is going to develop uneven spots as fats polymerize during cooking. If you do pay attention, I’ll happen way slower, enough so that I’ll take decades, by which time chances are good that the layers will be thick enough that it isn’t a problem. That uneven buildup happens when the fats aren’t deep enough to stay even as you cook, and/or when things do temporarily stick during cooking (which is a good thing, not a bad one for meats).

Me? I accepted long ago that some cooking is going to result in pans that need a long soak before trying to really clean them. Hell, even Teflon can have stuff build up on the edges, so it isn’t immune to that. Your best bet is to leave the damn thing on the range, pour in some water, heat it up to boiling, then let it sit until it cools enough to handle. It reduces sink time a lot.

If you want Teflon, go top end. Don’t waste time or money going cheap. Opinions vary, but hexclad has a reputation for being the most durable Teflon stuff. Won’t last forever in terms of the surface, but no Teflon will. Just don’t fuck around with generic shit.

As the other commenter said, only Teflon permanently loses its non-stickiness. After seasoning your cast iron or carbon steel pan (carbon steel addresses your wife’s problem of heaviness, and it’s basically the same substance as cast iron), make sure the pan is hot before adding your food. I’ve cooked eggs, fish, veg, all sorts of commonly sticky foods in well seasoned hot cast iron and not had problems. I only get sticking problems when the pan is not hot enough. For seasoning, I wash, dry by heating on the stove, add a little bit of oil, spread it thinly with a paper towel, put it upside down in the oven with a tray beneath to catch any drippings, and let my oven run on max temperature for about an hour. I’ve only had to do that I think twice over the several years I’ve had my cast iron pan though; the seasoning should maintain and heal itself just by cooking with it. The same applies to carbon steel if that’s what you get, btw.

My only exception is tofu, which I have literally never managed to fry without sticking except on Teflon. I think it’s because of the moisture of tofu. I don’t press my tofu tbf, out of laziness, but perhaps I’ll have to once my Teflon pan gives out.

It is very likely that you aren’t retaining enough heat while cooking if stuff sticks. The heavier it is the longer it needs to warm up, and lighter pans need more continual heat since they don’t retain as much.

Try spending a few extra minutes warming up the pan at a slightly lower heat. When you add food make sure it doesn’t need to come back up to temp slowly, that is a sign it lost too much heat and cold pans are sticky.

I use ceramic and cast iron and stuff only sticks when I try to rush getting the pan up to temp.

Strata fry pan. It’s carbon steel so requires building seasoning like a cast iron but has an aluminum core so it’s lightweight. Love mine, get good sear on meat and eggs will slide right off it.

Stainless steel is my favorite. I would bet you’re not using it right. They need to be preheated before cooking. Once you can get a bead of water dancing on the pan, after that, everything slides right off.

And I’m pretty sure soap is a no no on cast iron, but I’m no expert on that.

Non stick pans aren’t magic. They all require PMCS. There’s nothing wrong with the pans, just take better care of them.