Most of this is true, I’ve never used cast iron in my life
Some of this is cast iron, I’ve been true my whole life.
True is some of this, I’ve been cast iron my whole life.
True iron is some of this, I’ve been cast my whole life.
My whole life is cast iron. I’ve been true for some of this.
Cast iron life been true. I’ve my is of this for whole.
Bames Nond’s having a stronk, call a Bondulance.
That’s a skill issue. Get better.
*skillet issue
make me
Cue montage of hard work being done over an energetic Kenny Loggins song
🍳🍳🍳🍳🍳
+15XP
I have a cast iron pan. Pros - it’ll last forever if you look after it, it doesn’t contain PFAS and generally it is non-stick enough to not be a nuisance. Cons - heavy AF, needs to be cleaned and dried after use & not in a dishwasher. I haven’t tried to cook anything acidic in it yet but it does okay for steaks, eggs, mushrooms, sauces that I have used it for.
I still use soap and a plastic scrubber on mine and just dry it on the hob for a bit. I haven’t had to reseason it yet but I imagine it will be a pain in the ass when I do. I have seen part of the seasoning flake off but it normally self heals with more cooking.
So it’s okay overall but I think lack of PFAS and the fact that this thing will last a lifetime are the clinchers. Even if you have non-stick buy one of these and use it by default. I expect a stainless steel pan would be good too for same reasons.
Stainless steel pans are amazing when used for the right purpose. They weigh much less than cast iron, don’t require any maintenance beside cleaning them, and they are pretty much indestructible. If you burn something badly you can use metal scowering pads or any chemical you damn well like (including sodium hydroxide that will melt flesh) to get the thing clean again. They are tolerant to any cooking temperature you would ever use, ever. You can’t overheat one with any appliance a normal kitchen would have. This means you can easily pop one in the oven provided it has a metal handle.
The only issue being they have no non-stick properties to speak of and relatively little thermal mass. This is good in that they don’t need long to heat up, but bad in that it’s not a consistent temperature and you have to know what you are doing with the power control to get the results you want. This means it’s essentially useless for cooking things like steak, and difficult even to cook an omelet without using a lot of butter, ghee, or oil. Things like tomato sauces though? Perfect. The stainless steel could care less about the acidity.
So the stainless steel does care at least a little bit about the acidity?
What made you think that?
Well you said the stainless steel could care less. In order for it to be able to care less, that means it has to care at least a little bit to begin with.
Hi David Mitchell!
I’ve heard from several sources that the iron is supposed to be good for the diet. I love my carbon steel and cast iron kitchenware. All of the studies I’ve seen show it as a superior option to PFAS cookware and will still outlast the latest ceramic options. I have a very non-stick carbon steel pan and griddle from avocado oil seasoning.
You didn’t mention that you’re oiling it after drying it. It’s recommended that you lightly oil the surface upon storage.
One Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px6jqcYFdFs
I’ve heard from several sources that the iron is supposed to be good for the diet. I love my carbon steel and cast iron kitchenware. All of the studies I’ve seen show it as a superior option to PFAS cookware and will still outlast the latest ceramic options. I have a very non-stick carbon steel pan and griddle from avocado oil seasoning.
You didn’t mention that you’re oiling it after drying it. It’s recommended that you lightly oil the surface upon storage.
I think cast iron will definitely outlast ANY non-stick, no question. For non-stickiness though it’s basically on the tolerable end - put oil in it and most stuff will slide around but sometimes you don’t want too much oil so its a trade off. I think stainless steel is a great option in its own right - it’s not really non stick but it can be made tolerable with oil and can be scrubbed back to condition and thrown in the dishwasher.
I sometimes coat my cast iron pan in oil, but more often than not I don’t.
Love my cast iron pan and my stainless and mostly agree. Just want to point out that stainless steel isn’t really comparable to cast iron. Cast iron is cheap while good stainless pans are quite expensive, and you can’t really season stainless to be nonstick. Sticking is actually a feature of stainless, because then you can use a technique called “deglazing” to make a flavorful sauce out of the stuck bits.
I have one of each and I like them both for different things.
Mostly agree. I want to add, there are ways to make your stainless steel produce a non-stick effect.
Very similar to the method used to produce a non-stick surface on carbon steel, cast iron, and other heated cooking surfaces. Essentially you apply a light coat of oil and created a polymerized surface on the pan.
One source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXEt-fhyCis
Edit: Another Source (Leidenfrost effect): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUwaOnCd1h0
My biggest gripe with Teflon, after the whole PFAS problem, is that you have to baby it. I never was able to find a plastic spatula that worked well for any application. At worst, some are so darn floppy it’s like trying to flip an fried egg with another fried egg. Not to mention, the leading edge would eventually melt and deform sending plastic shreds everywhere over time.
The things you can do cooking-wise with metal tooling just get you more control and better results. Any pan/pot that lets you do that is going to help your overall cooking experience. Plus, even if you don’t go carbon steel or iron - say, stainless or even glass - de-glazing the pan with some water and heat from the range can make short work of cleaning.
One last point to this rant: your favorite cooking shows are lying to you softly. Your cookware are tools - they’re gonna get fucked up. Used things eventually get scratched, stained, singed, dented, and that’s okay; I promise you they’re not unsanitary because they’re in this state. Those stainless pans with mirror-perfect surfaces, or carbon steel skillets with that pristine golden hue, they’re new; you usually see new product on camera thanks to sponsors and the general optics of the thing. Teflon pans hold out this false promise of pristine cook surfaces that just aren’t realistic. And in practice, even those awful things do not go the distance. So yeah, reject modernity and all that. You’ll be okay.
Why would you use a plastic spatula? I use wood with teflon - doesn’t scratch and isn’t floppy!
Right! I use silicone spatulas because I like the slight bit of flop it has, but there are options besides pan scratching metal and really crappy, pan saving plastic spatulas.
call me lemmyml but I fucking love using a carbon steel wok to cook anything
I bought a $20 cast iron pan at target, I season it like once a year. I just wash it and make sure to dry it, I’m sure this is against the rules. Seems to work fine for me though. I wouldn’t say it’s nonstick but it’s mostly fine.
A $20 Teflon pan would be flaking and unusable, so for $20 it’s a good deal.
I bought those cheap marble coated pan, now entering 2 years of frequent use, other than tiny bit of degraded non-stick capability, it works just fine, didn’t even chip. I bought an expensive teflon once, it only last around half year before it start chipping. Teflon is just bottom tier coating now.
I also own a cheap cast iron skillet, cook with it frequently, wash with soap and only heat dry it, didn’t even bother with seasoning after washing, it now has a nice, smooth patina on it that mostly non-stick. I genuinely don’t get why people always baby a cast iron, it’s a hilux, not a cybertruck.
to answer your question, I’ve heard it described as half hobby/half pan. And quality can vary on the finish. Mine required a full restoration after a potato took the seasoning with it. Since then, low maintenance.
Damn. Whatever happened to that potato
Crossed the border with the seasoning literally tied to the roof rack of his car and hasn’t been heard from since. #nogoodpotats
I have a cast iron griddle that I use once a year at my mom’s house. I leave it in the outdoor grill when I’m done using it and don’t even clean it. The next time I go to use the grill, I take out the cast iron griddle and just leave it out in the elements and it rusts like crazy.
Then, the day I’m ready to use it again, I scour the shit out of it, heat it up to 500-600°, throw some oil on it like a greased up whore, and get the lowest quality seasoning on it.
Then I use it to grill some ears of corn so they don’t turn black from the soot of all the wood I burn to heat the outdoor grill. Once the corn is done cooking, I close off the grill and tell the cast iron griddle to go fuck itself.
That sounds like a waste of effort to me, but you do you.
80% of my life is wasted effort. 15% is giving up at “good enough.” 5% is me looking back at my choices and and saying “yeah, I guess that was a good idea after all.”
lemm.ee has a profanity filter too?
I don’t see any censorship in that post.
Maybe it’s .ml? I see shit, whore, and fuck (as in poop[s•••], sex worker[w••••], and sex[f•••], in case they get censored)
Ah, they filter other way too, huh.
What a shitty instance
Do test cast iron pans for lead please. Even cheap ones from Target (especially cheap ones)
The FDA bans lead in cookware: https://blogs.edf.org/health/2023/08/15/fda-says-cookware-that-exhibits-any-level-of-leachable-lead-upon-testing-is-prohibited/
Although I’m a little surprised it took until 2023 to make this happen. In any case, stuff bought at retail should be fine. I’d be very surprised if Lodge cookware–what Target usually sells–ever had lead in it.
Amazon stuff, though? That place is a leaky sieve of Chinese goods that wouldn’t normally be allowed.
How can I test one for lead?
It’s like gold, you bite it and see if it’s soft.
It’s fine and good to wash cast iron - particularly if you had something corrosive in there. Don’t do it in the dishwasher (change in heat can be bad for it - same reason not to machine wash kitchen knives).
People who say washing your pan will remove the seasoning have not properly seasoned their pans or see food residue washing out and think it is the polymerized oils bonded to the metal that are washing out. If that’s the case, they are washing way too aggressively.
There used to be some truth to the advise of not washing cast iron because those old-fashioned soaps had lye that could break down the seasoning. So I guess if you like to use boutique soaps you should be mindful if they contain lye. But if you’re just using dawn dish soap like probably 90% of everybody, go to town, you’re not going to remove seasoning with dish soap
it’s so much better than stainless
debatable but i think so
it takes a little maintenance
everything needs maintenance in the sense that you have to clean it. jokes aside, the only maintenance it needs is to burn oil in it if the seasoning got a little damaged for any reason
can’t cook anything tomato based
you can, it’s not great but won’t ruin it
eight coats of oil you have to burn onto it before you can use it
that’s not true, all cast iron pans come pre-seasoned from the factory
you can cook fried eggs and steak
that is true
even after seasoning it everything will still stick to the pan
not really, it’s pretty non-stick
to clean it you gotta heat it up then dry salt scrub then re-season
not really, you only need to do that if the seasoning got damaged
if water ever touches it the entire thing will disintegrate
that’s not true, you’d have to leave it in water for days to get it to rust
things that aren’t mentioned: you gotta use it regularly otherwise it gets sticky; you can use metal tools like knives and spatulas directly in the pan that would demolish any teflon; the seasoning is more resilient than people think, you can even wash it with dish soap; the seasoning actually gets stronger when you fry fatty things in it (grilled cheese, steaks, eggs, sausages); it’s very simple, durable, rustic, old technology, and incredibly cheaper than skillets of a similar quality (excluding cheap teflon pans); you can unrust it in your garage and even weld it back together if it breaks, which is sick as hell.
“some of this is true”
you can unrust it in your garage
You can very easily de-rust cast iron cookware with Ospho which is basically phosphoric acid (Loctite naval jelly available at Lowe’s is the same stuff in gelled form, which is a bit grosser). Obviously you have to rinse it really well afterwards, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to physically remove the rust.
I’m with you 100%.
I’ll add that I rarely use my cast iron in the kitchen, preferring to use it on camping trips or the grill. Why? The sheer heft of the thing could accidentally cause my glass cooktop some trouble. For those occasions, I reach for my well-seasoned carbon steel pans: much lighter with most of the same non-stick situation as the iron skillet.
glass cooktop
This is one gripe I have with my own cast iron, is that it marks up my glass cooktop when I use it. I can return the top to pristine condition by scrubbing it with steel wool, so it’s not permanently damaging it, but it’s kind of annoying to me that you can see which one of the burners I use way more often than the others because its discolored in a cast iron-sized circle.
I don’t know your glass cooktop, but i’d be shocked if the weight of a cast iron was enough to damage it. Does this mean you also wouldn’t put a cooking pot full of water on it? Mine had no problem, didn’t even get scratched which i was worried it might.
That said i do think cast irons can be too heavy for some people, especially when it’s full
Here’s the thing: I’m a klutz, and do not always watch my hands (damn ADHD). So this whole thread is semi-rational at best. Still, I’m certain that I’m the guy that would drop it one or more inches onto the cooktop by accident. I honestly don’t know how resilient these things are, but I’m not about to find out.
That said, I looked up some numbers for weights and well, it’s really not too different from a full pasta pot. I may just have to work up the courage. Thanks.
Yeah i believe you can break a cast iron, it will snap instead of bend, but i have no idea how hard you’d have to drop it. It also probably would damage the glass
I like to avoid the hassle of taking special care of a cast iron and just use a stainless steel pan from IKEA. Spray on cooking oil works really well to keep food from sticking if your don’t crank up the heat and anything that does get stuck can be easily scrubbed off with a copper scouring pad. Best part is that there’s no need to worry about rust. Ultimately just use what you like most.
Especially for steak, pork, and fish, the cast iron heats up better and sticks far less than steel. Also much easier to clean.
But for anything that’s saucy (pasta) or could benefit from a good deglazing (scallops particularly but also for veggie dishes), stainless steel works best.
I just have to commit myself to cleaning up immediately after the meal or consign myself to a lot of scrubbing.
I like to have both on hand. Really depends on the dish.
Ultimately just use what you like most.
I always say that the best pan is the one you got for free when you moved into your new house.
My best pan was the cast iron frying pan from the 1920s that I inherited from my grandmother. I say “was” because eventually my brother used it to drain the oil from his motorcycle. I still haven’t totally forgiven him for that.
Hey, if your meat is sticking it might just need to sit longer at a slightly lower temp if you are worried about burning. Letting pork sit for longer has done a lot for me for it sticking.
And then also for cleaning heating up the pan dry on the burner than throwing in some warm water to boil while scraping the bottom has been way faster than scrubbing it all.
Don’t care, use carbon steel
Stainless steel I swear by though. Easy to clean and nothing sticks if you heat the oil properly.
While oil is necessary, It’s more about how you preheat it and your technique, rather than how you oil it; no amount of oil is going to save you from over crowding a cold pan.
Yep, the old hot pan cold oil technique you use with a traditional woks works well with cast iron, carbon steel, and stainless steel.
You basically get the pan as hot as you can, coat with enough to cover the pan with a thin layer of oil, and heat until smoking. Dump out your hot oil and add your cold oil and then your ingredients. If you get good at hot pan cold oil you can make just about anything nonstick.
I’ve always just used the bead test where you drop a drop of water in a dry pan and if it beads up and rolls around, instead of just sizzles, then the pan is hot enough to add oil (although this also works if it’s too hot, but I have a good sense of how long it takes to get to this temp, so I’m usually testing just before and just after it hits this temp). Then when the oil is shimmering, this is the time to add food.
Been rocking stainless for about 15 years. No issues. I have no prob searing pork chops without any sticking.
I always thought non-stick was better for egg, but actually I’ve been cooking eggs on stainless steel without them sticking for quite a while now.
My sauce pans are stainless and are The Shit. Had them four years now and they’re still in good order.
My frying pan is cast iron and is The Shit. Had it a year and it’s still as good as when I bought, and I use it every day.
I will never go back to flaky non-stick bullshit.
Cast iron is cheap, indestructible, gets better with time, does want some care but nothing outrageous. I do have a good stainless skillet as well, call it the “stick pan”, if you want something to stick and then deglaze, it’s good.
But the cast iron is my joy, my kids joke that I love it more than I love them (it is older than they are) and already argue about who will get it when I die. Have never bought a nonstick pan, they seem unhealthy, and old cast iron is satiny and nonstick. It suits the way I cook, or perhaps the way I cook has been shaped by the pans. I don’t worry about tomatoes or wine sauce but wouldn’t slow cook spaghetti sauce in one, would use stainless or the Le Cruset one for that.
Mostly I think it’s like flannel, not great at the start but improves with use, ends up better than everything else and then stays better for a long time. In the case of cast iron that could be several generations.
Then my fictional grand kids can have my pan that has 5 different layers of seasoning on it with half of them peeling off.
It will last even longer because it’s in my cupboard for 5 years at a time.
Nooo give it to a disapproving hipster dude, so he can sand it and lovingly restore it and judge you!
One of mine got crusty, I put it in the oven and ran it through a self clean cycle, it all burned off and I re-seasoned it, been smooth sailing since. So you could try setting it on fire like that.
Tue secret to cast iron is fire.
I know everyone talks about their tricks but mone has mostly just been lots of heat directly applied to it and then slap cheap oil and rub it with a rag I accidentally set on fire once and then back to the flame. I figure it worked for my ancestors. And they seasoned that shit with sunlight.I don’t have much more than 250, 270 celcius and that does not seem to cut it.
Find someone with a self clean oven. My current one doesn’t do it either but the ones made to burn the baked on grease to ash get up to 475-480, that is what will burn off the seasoning. Not as hot as a kiln, I have no Idea what that would do.
The only thing I would use cast iron for is to fight the ninjas hiding behind my fridge
Unless you have arms like tree trunks then this is a bad weapon choice. Ninjas are notoriously fast and cast iron is notoriously heavy.
I assume they would be slowed down by having to clamber out from behind the fridge, I can get them while they’re off balance
I’m honestly surprised it took this long before Teflon and PFAS in general became a more public issue.
Especially after project farm showed how easy it is to scratch the coating material. I think only like 2 pans actually held up somewhat in hardness.
Not objective by any measure, but I don’t think ingesting dissolved iron is as bad as dissolved Teflon.
Don’t these pans last like generations, being passed down? I doubt your grandma and her grandma were bothering to apply 8 coats of flaxseed oil and heating it up to 1000 degrees and the pans would still perform as expected for ages
Has anyone outside of a commercial kitchen ever actually destroyed a stainless steel pan though
Yes.
Apparently you can’t hear up tortillas in them without it forever getting scorch marks. I suppose only thing I haven’t tried is using a machine sander on it to try to remove it.
Are those scorch marks an issue beyond aesthetics though? (Genuinely curious, not judging)
They leave a burnt taste in the food
In that case, try boiling a mixture of baking soda and water in it, then scouring it using tongs with copper wool (I’d probably use steel wool, but that might also leave scratches, I don’t know). If it’s giving your food a taste, it is coming off, just really gradually and under high heat.
Barkeepers friend (powdered metal and glass polish/cleaner, typically comes in a cannister) will get that off with a little bit of elbow grease.
Half the pans I’ve bought i got at a thrift store for like a buck because people thought they ruined them with a little bit of scorching., and I’ve gotten some nice stuff.
Unfortunately haven’t found that cheaply available in Finland. I know about it too. It’s the only thing I haven’t tried other than straight up sanding it
So the legend of bar keepers friend is that it was invented after someone boiled a bunch of rhubarb greens and noticed it cleaned the pan. I reckon any green high in oxalic acid (the main ingredient in BKF) should do similarly enough to the actual product to let you know if it might work.
There’s probably a local equivalent; looks like the primary “ingredient” is Oxalic Acid so a cleaner containing that would probably work just as well
A straight angle grinder is better suited for that job
Yes. Intentionally though.
I’ve been using the cast iron pan handed down to me for like 30 years. It skipped a generation and went straight from my grandmother to me. I don’t know exactly how old it is though
If I know grandmas, I was probably purchased at Kmart in like 1996.
If you know basic math, it was probably purchased before 1996 based on my original comment. It was also very well used when she gave it to me.
Sorry. Just trying to make a joke a grandmothers’ expense. My grandma had several artifacts that she claimed were ancient and/or hand crafted that were definitely not.
We were 3/4 of the way through mounting her hand painted collectible plates when we found two that were 100% identical.
I just like how I can use my metal scrapers and spactulas without having to worry about damaging it.
I get that point, but stainless steel also exists.
Stainless doesn’t work as well as ferrous, especially for frying. Carbon steel pans are popular too, sort of a modern version of cast iron.
Yeah honestly I want more pans made like my wok and just have it be anodized carbon steel. It’s so good even if it is not pretty.
Reject tradition. Embrace forever chemicals.
BerlingerHaus uses some kind of artifical stone instead of teflon. I’ve only got a grill pan so far but it’s easier to use and to clean than teflon. Surely wherever you are has something similiar?
Enameled cast iron is definitely a thing, our le cruset Dutch oven is a work horse
Le creuset Dutch oven is a different budget :x
We found a used older one, used it just about daily for a couple years before my dumb ass left it in an oven that was too hot (some old ones only got to like 400F apparently) and caused a bunch of cracks. We messaged le cruset and after sending them some pictures and a sob story they sent us a brand new one.
Doesn’t need to be a new one or le cruset, enameled cast iron is just nice generally in my experience
I got a $30 enameled cast iron 6-quart Dutch oven at a post-Christmas sale. It wasn’t Le creuset, but it was a kitchenaid, which was over $100 at its original price. I also got a crockpot brand one, which was under $40 at its standard price, and they both lasted over a decade, until I moved across an ocean (afaik, my former neighbor is still very happily using them and my old kitchen aid stand mixer).
Ahh enameled cast iron. The forgotten brother of the glory that is cast iron. The truest form of slow cooking but still limited to softer utensils. I got a cheap one too and the sucker still is perfect enough for a roast.
some kind of artifical stone
Ceramic - similar to glass in that it’s made by melting sand (tiny stones)
My pans are ceramic, they’re great nonstick pans. Usually any patina of burn-on is easy to clean off with some barkeeper’s friend. Everything else comes off in cooking. Still wouldn’t use metal utensils on it though as at the end of the day it is still just a coating and scraping it will degrade my pan. But they’re still like new a couple years after buying them and they’re very aesthetically pleasing pans to boot. And no pfas to my knowledge.
One of them is an aldi find, safe in the oven up to 450°
The other one is just a t-fal frying pan with a plastic handle. So not oven safe at all.
No, not normal ceramic. It has non-stick properties (imho superior to Teflon).
Yes. It is non-stick and not teflon but it’s still a non-metal coating on top of a metal pan.
