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They’re way cheaper and they last multiple lifetimes. I don’t know what you’re on about.
People that can’t handle cast iron are the same that can’t get their car’s oil changed on time.
After breakfast this morning I washed my skillets with the other dishes. The only difference is I put it on the stove to dry.I don’t know if people will be angry with me but I just cook in it for iron. So I just clean it normally with water later (no soap most of the time). Heat it to dry, and apply a bit of oil and store it. That way I never have grimes and dirty pieces there.
I never touched a cast iron pan in my life growing up, it simply wasn’t a thing. My ex had one and shortly after we met I was cleaning up his kitchen for him, found his nasty crusty cast iron pan and washed it. (We didn’t have Internet then so it’s not like I would have looked it up). His Australian parents were horrified. I still hate the filthy things.
That is yuck. Sometimes you do need to wash them properly with soap and everything, and just re-season them or whatever the cast iron enthusiast say.
That’s reminds when people don’t clean their BBQ and it’s this smelly source of fat going bad.
Not sure where this superstition came from. You can clean your cast iron with soap, pretty much any kind. Seasoning is very tough, around the hardness of glass. Pretty much the only real guidelines are don’t use anything abrasive like bar keepers friend (unless you wanna reseason), and don’t leave it wet.
The people leaving a layer of uncleaned grease on their pans have no clue what they are doing.
The superstition is due to old soaps which contained lye. That will desire you seasoning.
Modern soaps don’t contain any lye. You just want to make sure you dry it quickly after washing it.
Does it really make a difference? Personally I want my pan to sparkle but are these people really experiencing any negative effects? I realize food born illnesses exist but it doesn’t seem like the practice is bad enough to matter.
Yeah you’re definitely over complicating it hommie
More expensive???
It’s better used as a fucking weapon than a cooking utensil.
I was done with cast iron when I got a new cast iron pan that rusted the same day because it was humid and I didn’t get a chance to glaze it for just a few too many hours.
Oh well, I prefer to do big batches of one-pot cooking anyway. Simple, easy, efficient.
You can just scrub the rust off and glaze it, it’s fine
*super easy to clean … but it doesn’t look clean, but it is.
Most of the care tips you see on cast iron are just superstition.
It’s actually super easy to care for. You just scrub it with some salt and a boar bristle brush, dry it with a linen towel, then store it in a marble sepulchre facing North.
if I don’t have a sepulchre will a charnal house do?
If you’re not going to take this seriously, just get a Teflon pan.
Absolutely fucking not
My sepulchre hasn’t been marble 100 percent of the time, I’ll try harder
And all the ley lines intersect there
That better be magnetic north
Hear me out, though…nitrided iron.
Yeah i dont wanna bother having to sort through all the misinformation and contradictory advice on cast iron pans at this point. Cuz I’ll read someone say “I wash it all the time” and then the next comment will be “I washed mine and it rusted instantly”
I just use carbon steel and it treats me right.
Even with rust, it can be fixed with a decent scrubbing. Small trace amounts of rust shouldn’t harm you either, just give you more small metals than usual.
Yeah except it only rusts instantly if you royally fucked up lol. This is not rocket science. It’s not even slightly challenging. A six year old can do it.
Of course it’s going to rust instantly, that’s why you hit it with the brillo pad and then re-season it immediately after.
Eh, a little extra iron in your diet ain’t the end of the world. I just boil some water in it, pour it our, hit it with the chain mail, then rinse and smear around a decent sized dollop of pig fat in it and call it a day.
Ain’t nobody got chain mail and pig fat lying about!
Really??? You can get a chainmail scrubber at most places that sell cast iron pans, and pig fat is leftover Bacon grease. Lots of people have that, right?
Had to Google the chainmail scrubber, that’s really cool. Maybe they haven’t made it over to Ireland yet haha. I want one.
You need to really be into cooking before something like cast iron versus whatever else will ever be an issue in your life.
I yanked my set of cast iron out from under an abandoned single-wide trailer in the desert next to a junk-yard, they were partially buried in an ant mound. Over the last couple decades I have abused them hard, both in restoration and in cooking/cleaning, they’re just work-horse cookware I don’t have to be too concerned about, but if I put a little extra effort in I can use them to get a perfect crust on a ribeye when I cook meat for friends and family. If that kind of thing is important to you… well don’t worry, you can also get that with steel!
People who obsess about their cast iron just either really, really enjoy micromanagement in their lives, or have nothing else that makes them feel special.
I mean, carbon steel is basically the same thing in terms of how you care for it.
Folks love to harp on about how “iTs So HaRd To CaRe FoR” but honestly Teflon pans (the more common option) are worse
Cast iron:
- be a little careful when washing it
- will last longer than your grandkids
Teflon:
- don’t get it too hot
- don’t use metal tools
- don’t use too much oil
- often not oven-safe
- will last like 10 years at most
Acidic stuff will eat into the seasoning on cast iron, so that be careful with those.
Honestly I’ve been told this a bunch, but I cook so much tomato-filled Italian/Mediterranean food and then just leave the pan until the next day to clean, never seen any serious issues from it. Seasoning is also regenerative, so even if you do fuck it up a bit, a couple of meals later it will be basically back to normal.
Yeah, it’s not hard to rehab a cast iron skillet after messing it up. 🙂 I still got a cheap stainless skillet after some sauces experiences though.
I make shakshuka in mine fairly often and never had a problem, but if that’s all I used it for I could see it causing trouble
Teflon Poisons the entire planet. Also when over heated, creates Florine gas that may be harmful if you are in close proximity.
The fuck? Nonstick lasts like one year, MAYBE two. It’s not worth it.
Also cast iron also cooks different. Not better, different.
You’re buying trash pans if they only last a year.
I cook everyday and throw them away as soon as there’s any visible sign of wear. Then after the third buy that damaged so soon, stopped buying nonstick.
But also, yes, I was buying cheaper pans. (Edit: tramontania i think?) Those aluminum ones with the nice red silicone handles. Fantastic pans, but degraded far too fast.
Now, I just use my cast iron skillet from a hundred years ago and it’s easier to cook in AND makes better eggs AND I can use my metal spatula.
To clean it, I’ll wipe it out with a paper towel, rinse it with warm water really fast, then every week or few days or if it smells, use a dollop of dawn and some warm water and sponge wash it for like 10 seconds and rinse it out, then one paper towel it clean, add in a tiny bit of canola oil, wipe it around, heat it until it starts to smoke on the stove, then turn it off. That process takes like, maybe 30 seconds, not including heating it until it smokes, which realistically is like only another 30-90 seconds.
The eggs are runny yolks and browned and crispy bottoms. And I’m not eating teflon, which to me is absolutely fantastic!
Yes this. Literally just handwash with soap and water. Season occasionally (clean & then scrub with steel wool to get an even surface, very small amount of oil/lard spread over pan very thinly, oven at 260c/500f until totally dried/hardened, repeat a couple times).
Oven safe, nonstick, durable.
Also teflon is TOXIC
A common misconception, the teflon molecules are very stable and don’t react with almost everything, when ingested it usually just goes through your system in and out, no considerable interaction.
Now the other chemicals used to make Teflon ARE TOXIC, and are present literally, and I mean literally, everywhere on the globe.
Here’s an educative video from Veritasium about the subject, super interesting watch.
Stainless steel pans are quite nice too.
They’re better than cast iron for some things in my experience. Acidic dishes, eggs (scrambled always stick to cast iron for me). But cast iron’s heat retention is superior, providing a more even cooking surface on electric ranges in my experience - good for searing meat and most other applications.
The best ones imo. No microplastica, zero maintenance, extreme durability, not hard to wash and not so expensive nowadays.
My grandmother still uses her stainless steel pans that are like 50 or 60 yo, and they still look perfect, almost like new, if not for the scratches. They were a gift when she married, and she literally never bought pans for herself in her life.
Sending this to my wife. How does she bake shit in so bad? Jump her shit
I exclusively use stainless steel pans in my kitchen. None of the weird chemicals from teflon, I can scrape the shit out of them with metal tools and I can toss them in the dishwasher with no second thought. The only downside is that I have to deglaze from time to time while cooking to get stuck bits off, but it’s really not that bad.
Can you explain the deglazing process and reasoning. I just got two stainless pans and I’m very curious.
Sometimes brown bits get stuck to the bottom of the pan while cooking and the best way to get them off is to toss some water into the pan before those bits can burn. Not much, maybe like a tablespoon - it dissolves all the brown bits into a very tasty brown sauce that coats the rest of the food in the pan. It’s really not complicated, but the added moisture sometimes makes the cooking take a bit longer and isn’t ideal when your goal is to cook something very dry and crispy (like when frying tofu)
You can deglaze with alcohol as well, and then reduce it into a delicious sauce.
Now, that being said those browned bits are delicious and are the starting point for a lot of sauces. A dirty steel pan is an opportunity for loads of flavor (provided were talking about a seared or sauteed food, not like pasta or something.
I agree with you on the stainless. I do still have one cast iron pan that I swear by for certain things but I also don’t baby it in any way. I also have a couple of ceramic coated pans for specific things that love to stick to stainless. I mostly use the stainless and the cast iron, though.
I thought Teflon coatings were only good for 5yrs before the shit PFAS start leeching out.
It’s entirely possible, I’ve actually never even had one last even that long and just kinda guesstimated how long a pan that had been absolutely baby’d would last.
Sorry for linking R*ddit, but this thread seems to mirror my suspicions, 3-5 years on average, 10 if you treat it insanely well.
It helps with iron deficiency.
This can look like a joke for some, but it’s actually true. For anyone skeptical, search fr academic articles on the matter and see it for yourself.
I got a fridge magnet like this a while ago for a friend:
