Cast iron rule

Wasn't expecting so many people to get offended by this, not removing it though so stop asking

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.

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
That better be magnetic north
My sepulchre hasn't been marble 100 percent of the time, I'll try harder
And all the ley lines intersect 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.

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.

More expensive???

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

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 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.
- 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.
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.
- Stainless steel pans are quite nice too.
- Also teflon is TOXIC
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.
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.
- 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
Sending this to my wife. How does she bake shit in so bad? Jump her shit

Yeah you’re definitely over complicating it hommie

If you consider the lifetime, it's the cheapest type of pan by far.

Also you can clean them stop spreading misinformation pls 😘

If it's too heavy for you there is stainless steel or carbon steel which also last but those aren't as cheap.

Yeah I've been using my mom's cast iron pan since she died like 7 years ago. Barring a level of fuck up I don't think I can manage it should last the lifetime of the person who inherits it from me
- I've got a little pan that's on it's third lifetime now, and no idea what it originally cost, but guaranteed it was worth the price for a multigenerational product.
- You basically have to drop them from a second story window to break them
The lifetime is usually about 1 week. I can leave all my other pans soaking in the sink for a day without rusting.... I don't have the time or energy to do dishes every day.
- Don’t soak it if you aren’t going to wash it… like just leave it on the counter or if you want to really get ahead for it pour some salt in the pan and let that sit until you feel like cleaning it. Because you can use metal on it without damaging it it’s not even hard to clean.
  Teflon pans are disposable with a limited life that releases toxins into your body which is bad
  Stainless steel is much less non stick but can at least stand up to soaking
  Carbon steel also shouldn’t be soaked
  Copper is expensive and also has care requirements
- Lol.
  A) yes you do. You're conflating not wanting to slightly alter your habits with not possible.
  B) you can also leave it on the counter or the stovetop. You shouldn't leave any metal object soaking in the sink for a day. Leave them on the counter and then put them in the sink to soak like 5 min before you start cleaning them.
- I usually put water right into the hot pan. Flakes all the food off instantly, and it's a lot of fun to quench it. Then a squirt of dishsoap (I keep a bottle of diluted dish soap by the sink, super handy!), scrub, rinse, and you're done in actual seconds.
- If you’re soaking it to get stuck on stuff out of it… well stuff shouldn’t be sticking to it that aggressively. and if you’re soaking it to keep stuff from drying on, well, just rinse it out before leaving it to clean later.
- Okay even if you forget to clean it and it rusts, you can just use a steel sponge to get all the rust off and then you just need to re-season it for a few mins and you're good to go again

more expensive?

I once had a girlfriend whose mom bought a 300€ cast iron pan that she was talked into at one of those marketing events. Eastcon is a fucking con.
- I have a set of cast-iron I found under an abandoned trailer next to a junkyard. They cost exactly nothing and I got to have nerdy fun restoring them over a weekend afternoon, I have been using them for 20 years.
- 300€ WTFFFFFFFFF!????!! For a pan??
- It's in the name.
- I can be tempted by cast iron with a nice image on the base, though probably not for that much.
Vintage, or nicely finished pans with polished surfaces or extra greebles and nubbins can be expensive.
Something liked a lodge pan will be cheap but the bottom of it kind of sucks without being ground down ether by long usage or by tools.
- I cook on gas, couldn't care less about the smoothness of the bottom but I get people would if cooking on glass top
  In general thought, cast iron is cheaper than any pan equivalent in performance... the cheaper stufq they sell at grocery stores are practically dispossable
- My gigantic cast iron had a rather annoying raised ring around the bottom. It was fine on a coil electric range, gas stove, or campfire, but when I moved into a place with a flat top, it was annoying since it didn't actually make contact. I took an angle grinder to it and ground it flat. Night and day differerence.

…why are you not cleaning your cast iron pan?

It's old wisdom from way back when soap was made from lye.
That kind of soap is much harsher and can dissolve the seasoning, which is just a bunch of layers of polymerized oil that protects the metal from rust and gives it a glossy, almost non-stick coating.
Modern dish soap is nowhere near that harsh and is completely safe to use on a seasoned cast iron pan. It's just that your grandparents and great grandparents beat that lesson into their kids and it stuck.
Cast iron is fine to cook on, but I much prefer stainless steel. It's a bit harder to get the results you want, but it's way easier to maintain.
- They say high temp stainless basically becomes non stick. I just get stuff sticking then immediately burning and smoking out my kitchen.
- There's a good chance the dry detergent for a dishwasher can still strip the seasoning off cast iron. Especially generic brands. They're supposed to have buffers in them to prevent it, but every additive, and mixing time, adds cost.
  Your typical hand dish soap is probably safe as long as you're not scrubbing with steel wool.
- Thats interesting, I heard it was a smear campaign by marketing companies to sell Teflon pans.
- Godort’s grandma probably: come here Godort. Grandpa’s gotta beat you again for using soap on the cast iron pan
sEaSoNinG

They last forever and don’t contain forever chemicals.

IIRC the forever chemicals are not the coating that stays on the pan. The Teflon coating is inert, the toxic part is the water soluble PFAS they use to apply it that would go away (away meaning everywhere, each and every corner of the planet) while or shortly after manufacturing, or with the first uses.
So if you already own non-sticky pans don't get rid of them, but look for another alternative when you buy a new one tho.
- It's not quite inert, a too-hot Teflon pan will release toxic gasses that can kill smaller pets like birds.
- Don't they release microplastics as well?
Everything contains chemicals, and if it lasts forever it must contain forever chemicals.
But it doesn’t have PFAS which is good.
- no, cus it is just iron. the "seasoning" is the cover you make yourself which is why most people say you can't clean it.
- Holy crap, people really don't get your joke it seems. Guess my upvote can only give so much relief, but I thought it was funny if that helps.
The old cast iron skillets might have lead.
- Only if someone melted lead in it. I can do that in a new iron pan too.

I put mine in the dishwasher like maniac. And I don't season it, I just spray pam on it. Works fine, purists are just being weird about it.

There are a lot of myths and legends around cast iron that are due to older circumstances that are no longer applicable. And spray on oil seems like a pretty efficient way to season given that it’ll apply a fairly light and even.
- I seen a quote yesterday that I liked and it seems fitting here.
  Tradition is not an excuse to not think critically.
- Most spray oils are high smoke point for frying, which is the opposite of what you want for seasoning
A good seasoning should withstand some pretty brutal punishment. And even if it doesn't, you can easily reseason the pan which you'll have to do from time to time regardless.
I season my cookie sheets the same way. I've put them in the dishwasher, hit them with those steel wire soapy things, used barkeeper's friend, not much has taken the seasoning off once it's on there.
Except for lemon juice. Lemon juice fucks it right up.
- Lemon juice. Tomato sauce. That one egg that for some reason decided to be a real motherfucker.
  I love my cast iron cookware, but it can be a fickle bitch.
I don't put mine in the dishwasher and I don't use soap when cleaning mine (cleans easy enough with hot water, dish rag, and sometimes steel wool), but I don't season either. I just use a refillable oil spray bottle.
I thought the concern was rust more than anything
- It is, it's important to dry them quickly. Some dishwashers have a heated dry that could help, but I wouldn't trust it personally.

I saw some greentext about some list of caring for castioron/developing and maintaining seasoning. The list was some collection of a bunch of progressively more absurd tips. The comments were:

I own cast iron, and none of these are true.

I own cast iron, and all of these are true.

I own cast iron,, and some of these are true.

- Thank you!
The thing is, cast iron cookware is a criminally under researched segment of metallurgy and food science. Like, most of what is known is just oral tradition and folklore. It’s mystical in a sense, we preform these old practices and rituals in an attempt to coax an outcome in to being, not based on rigorous testing or knowledge based conjecture, but on myths and ancestral knowledge.
Like we can draw parallels from other areas of metallurgy to get a rough idea of what is going on but most of the modern research is for industrial uses (not cooking) and not for cast iron specifically because it’s not a super common material in engineering anymore.
Some of these old rituals and practices were developed in specific circumstance that are different from the modern day, and from each other, leading to conflicting ideas and practices as different traditions run In to each other. Some old knowledge is applied incorrectly, like people saying you can’t wash it with soap because that will damage it, which is true in the context of an 1800s homestead where they’d be using lye and fat based soap which would strip away the polymerized oil coating, but most dish soap is surfactant based and won’t strip the seasoning.
- This level of mystery is not true. It's just a hunk of iron that gets a polymerizered coating of oil on it. That used to be hard to achieve before we had reliable ovens and cooking oil. Now it's easy.
  That's all there is to it.
  They've continued to today because some people are paranoid / like to feel special / don't understand things well, so default to perpetuating rules they heard someone say confidently rather than questioning why that rule was created in the first place.

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.

I mean, carbon steel is basically the same thing in terms of how you care for it.
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.
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.
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.
- Hallelujah!
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.
- Well all that other than lift it

For the big stuck on pieces, you use a stainless steel chainmail scrubber. For cast iron pans you can scrub as hard as you can with that and you aren't hurting the pan. Try doing that on your aluminum, Teflon non-stick pan, or your nicely polished stainless steel pan and let me know how that goes (don't do this). For cleaning off oils and grease off cast iron, regular liquid dish soap (like Dawn) works great and is totally okay to use for cleaning cast iron.

For your cast iron, don't use lye based cleaners and don't put your cast iron in the dishwasher.

I usually just wipe up oil and leave it. Thin layer can remain for the next time I use it
I recommend people use lye-based cleaners and put them in the dishwasher in a whim.
You can throw a cast iron pan off a fucking roof, leave it in a wet ditch for 2 years, it won't be harmed.
Quarter teaspoon of oil rubbed in, be back to cooking.
- You can throw a cast iron pan off a fucking roof, leave it in a wet ditch for 2 years, it won’t be harmed. Quarter teaspoon of oil rubbed in, be back to cooking.
  Sure but if you don't use lye and just use dish soap, then you can skip that step and you keep cooking.
  You can throw a cast iron pan off a fucking roof, leave it in a wet ditch for 2 years, it won’t be harmed.
  Well if you leave it in a wet ditch for years it would rust and pit eventually. It doesn't mean you couldn't regrind the surface to get it smooth again, then seasoning to get it back into cooking form.

They retain and distribute heat well. Also I can move it directly from my stove to my oven or vice versa

Heat retention is true but when it comes to evenness of heat distribution cast irons are not great. I remember trying out different pots and pans when I first got an induction hob with a FLIR camera and being really surprised.
- Copper with stainless steel interior has the best of both worlds. However, it's nearly as heavy and very expensive.
- Yup. I’m an enameled cast iron guy. They just soak up heat, but they don’t distribute it well. They have high heat capacity but low conductivity.

I have one that I only use to make cornbread. Cornbread doesn't make it dirty and cast iron is the only thing that will give you a proper crust on the cornbread.

I use mine for steaks. Since I can put the whole thing in the oven after searing them.
- Yeah, I use mine on the grill for the same reason. It's the only pan I have that can just get tossed on without worrying about anything melting or cracking
- Yeah, I don't really eat steak. Or any meat in slab form actually.
That’s why it was originally called a cornbread pan. Cast iron is actually a miss translation.
- Keeping the old tradional of cast iron misinformation alive.
- Little Miss translation, we called 'er.

I got a fridge magnet like this a while ago for a friend:

The truly enlightened use carbon steel pans.

Not enough thermal mass in most carbon steel pans which is why the super truly enlightened use multiple different materials depending on what they are trying to cook
- Some of us have limited space and funds, so for me it's cast iron

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 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
- Yeah sure, but that's not the greater issue. It's a question of whether I have any interest in putting up with cast iron's hassles, when I know I don't have to. It also doesn't help that cast iron is a very oil-centric kind of cooking, and I generally don't use any added fats in my cooking. It just doesn't make sense for me to use it.

IDK anything about cooking really but... being heavier is a big deal. You kinda charge up the pan with stored heat and then when you plonk your steak or whatever on there it's going to sizzle and give you that nice crusty crispified outside.

It's the difference between something that looks like this picture, and the steak your grandma makes.

I paid $25 for a new Lodge...

More expensive? There's always a few at every thrift store for cheap p

Hear me out, though...nitrided iron.

Hear me out, 316 Stainless.
Lol, I keep seeing ads but never looked into it. Is there actually something to that or is it just marketing BS?
- It feels different from cast iron, but hard to describe how exactly. A different consistency to the metal? Slightly slick, in the way that gun metal is. It doesn't seem to need to be seasoned, and seems rust-resistant. Still great for searing meat and veggies. Holds heat like cast iron, and has the same weight.

*super easy to clean ... but it doesn't look clean, but it is.

It's better used as a fucking weapon than a cooking utensil.

You know, I thought the same thing (about being a weapon), but apparently that isn't the case. Maybe for one good bonk, but they're actually kind of fragile. They break way easier than a standard steel pan would.
But I do agree they're better for cooking because of the insane heat retention. I love mine. I have a whole set from small to large. Steaks come out perfect every time.

Cast iron dorks are just skill issue people that can’t handle using a $20-40 stainless pan from a restaurant supply store. It’s an objectively worse pan that holds onto heat forever. Pan got too hot? Too fucking bad, guess you’re waiting a bit. Need to toss something or slide it around? Good thing the pan weighs 800 pounds. They have a role and purpose but the cast iron cult will come out in any cooking thread and be like “you should only use cast iron or you’re a goddamn fool”.

bro's mad he ain't swole like us
- Bro's mad he ain't swole like a grandma
Aaaw is itty bitty stainless pan user on bad mood. Did you got a bad sear? Or did you notice your pan has uneven bottom? Poor little weak armed stainless pan user.
But seriously. Use what ever you want :D both pans have good thing going for them. And nobody says you need to use only one pan for all the cooking.
- I mean if you want to use a cast iron pan more power to you but they are objectively worse for 90% of cooking tasks.
  Why do you think if you go into literally any restaurant in the entire world 99% of the pans are either stainless steel or carbon steel woks with the occasional cheap nonstick pan thrown in for a crappy cook that sucks at doing eggs and fish
  But if you go onto like a cooking subreddit, twitter thread, youtube post, etc I guarantee any post about cookware will have a bunch of cast iron zealots that are like “just get a cast iron pan, season it, end of story, no other pans, other pans are stupid, anyone who recommends another pan is an idiot”. It’s a goddamn cult of people who bought a lodge at target.
  Also fwiw I do have a cast iron tamagoyaki pan and I have a 16” carbon steel wok. I highly recommend the (awesomely named) powerflamer wok burner if anyone is ever into wok cooking and has outdoor space. 160k btu and my Chinese food finally has that wok hei