The reverence and fear of cast iron cooking pots and pans is stupid on both sides. People have been using cast iron under every condition from the big fire place in a castle's kitchen to a fire pit in a peasant's hovel to open fires outdoors to Michelin Star restaurants in Paris and London. And they cooked EVERYTHING in it because it's what they had and all they had. There is no mystery to seasoning and care of cast iron. Just like there is little to fear from cooking with it.
Those that do worship in the church of cast iron-- just cook in it. There is nothing sacrosanct about it. If your Great Grandmother didn't worry about it, why should you? Any damage you can do it can be repaired quickly and easily. So get over yourselves.
And those that fear cast iron cookery, get over it.......They are often the same ones that are fearful of micro plastics getting ingested and yet have no care or concern while cooking with plastic cutting boards and utensils in plastic coated cookware.
The mystery is that iron will rust if wet. The care instructions are "don't leave it wet for a long time".
So much gatekeeping in anything creative. Music, cooking, art…. If you change one little thing it’s no longer the Thing, it’s something else, and it’s not what chef/band/artist/or grandma made, even though it’s a popular variant of the same Thing called the same thing somewhere else. Cast iron falls into the same trap. Such harsh judgement on use and care. It’s a f’n pan, not the last remaining example of a vintage Ferrari. Get over it.
I have no fear of cooking with it, I just want my cookware to be minimally fussy and not require special treatment. If the $10 Walmart skillet can be thrown in the dishwasher and the $100 cast iron one requires me to baby it or it'll rust, I'll go with the cheap skillet every day.
You have those prices reversed though. My cast iron collection, as noted further down, cost less in total than my one really good stainless steel pan, and guess where some of that cast iron was purchased? For $10 at Walmart, LOL. And at thrift stores and Target.
First, everyone (not you because you don't like it) should buy their cast iron at the hardware store, should be ~ $30. It'll last pretty much forever so that $30 over a lifetime is not much.
If you don't cook a starch or aromatic in it, just wipe it out and let it get super hot.
If you do cook starch in it, hand wash it with soap, just let it get over 212 degrees on the stove to dry it.
If you want to throw it in the dishwasher, just pull it out at the end of the cycle and throw it on the stove > 212 degrees to dry. A well seasoned pan is generally so easy to clean, this would be a waste of your time, but it won't kill anyone.
If you want to subscribe to the no soap, scrub off the cooked starches with water and a non scratch scouring pad, re-coat in a fine layer of oil and let it smoke off under high heat. I really don't bother and just use whatever it takes to get it clean easily.
If the seasoning polymer you get from burning off oil gets cruddy after 6-8 months, re-season.
If you accidentally get a little rust on it, soak it in vinegar until the rust dissapears, scrub the spot with a 3m pad until the spot is clean and re-season.
You can get a rusty ass pan from a yard sale, soak it in vinegar for a day, scrub it down and re-season it. It'll come out like new.
If over the years, the seasoned surface starts to look super cruddy, soak it in sodium hydroxide until the polymer disolves, then reseason.
Yeah, they're harder than throwing it in the dishwasher, But they're wasteless, cheap, pleasant to cook on and give great results.
I keep a teflon pan and a couple different cast iron around. Even found a glass top lid that fits.
Look at Ol' Diamond Jim over there with his $100 skillets!
I got 2 cast iron frying pans, a 6qt dutch oven, a 2 burner flat iron, and one cast iron 2qt kettle. I ain't got $50 into the whole lot of them. Vintage cast iron is cheap because it will last for multiple generations and there is lots of it floating around to be had on the cheap.
And if you ain't got 5 minutes to clean a cast iron frying pan, then no $10 nuclear glow int the dark Walmart special is going to do any better in your care. I highly recommend you find someone to cook for you. Before you give yourself food poisoning.
The obsession with cast iron like it is some kind of magic ritual is honestly really weird. After you cook with it, wash it with water and dry it with some paper towels, that's it, no need to make it more complicated than it really is.
If things are sticking to your pan, use more oil in your pan; with enough oil, you can cook on a rock and make it nonstick.
Just wash it with dish soap like everything else, use a soft scrubber like everything else.
If you have an actual polymer layer, it won't be harmed.
Dry it off, throw it on the burner. Get it hot, give it a touch of oil, and store it.
Nazgûl screeches intensify
That just gets me excited to start a fresh new seasoning. Starting from bare metal is a good feeling
Well that's blatantly what they're doing, isn't it. Must have found a shitty pan or something.
It’s insane to me that people don’t wash them and call it seasoning.
It’s apparently a different story when someone seasons their underwear.
Just FYI, you do wash cast iron, you just don't use detergents on it. One common method is to dump a handful of salt and a tiny splash of water into the pan and start scrubbing. You can use a gentle dish soap, but I'd avoid using the dishwasher, because those detergents will be a lot stronger and will actually ruin the seasoning (as well as linger on the surface and end up in your food, which is also bad).
I use a little dawn on mine now and then and it’s still basically like glass. Just put a little oil on it afterwards. Never the dishwasher though omg
Ice in the hot pan also works. Paper towel to wipe out, voila!
Detergents are basic because that works wonders on greasy stuff. When oil polymerises it won't be susceptible to basic substances anymore but will react to acids. (Unlike acid and oils which don't really react with each other – think vinaigrette separating in the fridge.)
Washing a cast iron pan with detergent will clean it from unpolymerised oil.
Cooking e.g. tomato based sauces in your cast iron pan will strip it of the polymerised coating (might impart flavour too).
Cleaning kitchen tiles near your stove is sometimes easier with acidic cleaning solutions as well. Just be careful with the caulking which will brittle over time from using acids.
We do wash them, I clean mine by boiling water in them, scraping any stubborn bits with a wooden spatula, rinsing it out under running water and wiping them down with a clean towel and heating the pan again to evaporate any remaining water. No microbials will survive being boiled and then heated again, anything stuck to the pan dissolves away in boiling water and a clean towel will wipe away anything else. After that I add a few drops of oil and wipe down the still hot surface with the thinnest possible coating of oil.
Seasoning for cast iron doesn't mean holding onto previous flavors. It definitely shouldn't taste like last night's dinner. Seasoning in the context of cast iron is the build up of thin layers of polymerized oils from heating them up in a clean pan that forms a durable protective finish that is incredibly non-stick.
So more accurately parallel your underwear example how cast iron is cleaned, if you took your underwear, boiled the hell out of them, used something to give them a scrub, rinsed them out well and then heat dried them.
I hate cast iron, but 'seasoning' is just a misnomer that was adopted to refer to the oils polymerizing on the pan. The oil (usually something like canola) is literally bonded to the metal.
Not cleaning a cast iron pan is gross, fats left in the pan will go rancid.
The only soap you can't use is lye based as that will strip the seasoning off.
Whatsa matter? You don’t like your pancakes to taste like last nights steak?
It still gets them to reply, every time.
lol I got seasoned by 101 men at an airbnb and cried
Bukowski
¯\(ツ)/¯ wouldn't kill it. Just scrub any flakes off and re-season. The abuse they can take is almost unreasonable.
You could leave it outside in the dirt for 5 years and still just give it a lye bath then reseason it to work like new
Preach!
So, this is somewhat of an irksome idea to me. My stainless steel pans would also be just fine buried in dirt for years, and you could just scrub them with heavy steel wool and or toss them in your dishwasher with no problem. Likely the same for ceramic. This isn’t the flex that most cast iron folks think it is. Note that I have a couple very nice cast iron pans that I love, but they certainly are more of a pain to use. I’ve never cracked a steel pan, but I have tried to rinse a cast too quickly and it was gone for good.
I've seen a video where someone did just this. Blew my freaking mind.
You... hate cast iron? Of all things people could hate, cast iron is the choice here. Mmaight.
Cast iron has a weird cult following. It's like the jahovas witnesses of cookware
Oh no people like something, better start calling it a cult so can we can get views.
Social media is such shit.
I used to think so, then I just started using them on the reg and it turns out to be super easy.
It's just a pan.
I don't like using it because of the maintenance and manual cleaning, but I do use it because of the iron rich food it makes, and the longevity of the cookware.
Also I heard Teflon is literally freaking poison for you, like one of the worst things to consume. And pots and pans always tend to flake Teflon after a while, from general use. So we got rid of everything Teflon.
I don't know how true it is but it feels good. Doing some manual labor isn't a bad thing either.
I wash my cast iron with normal dish soap and steel wool, and if I'm too lazy, I put it in the dishwasher. I've been doing this for 20 years. I don't "season" it. It's a pan, no more, no less. The main advantage is that you don't need to worry about scratching the shit out of it.
Needs a tiny little bit more fat than a non-stick if you want to make an omelette.
Same here, though i don't use steel wool and i do season it every now and then
The pan handles it like a champ
Unseasonably mad
I am in flavor of this.
I use the washer and then let it sit wet over night to bring out its natural paprika seasoning.
As long as you don't leave it sitting in water you'll be fine.
I wash with soap and add a little oil every cook. Works great.
Perfect ☺️
I leave mine sitting in water all the time. It still works.
As long as you don't scrape off the protective layer and then leave it in water.
Lol I like cast iron cookware, but you do whatever with what's yours as long as you leave mine alone.
even putting it on the top rack, instead of the bottom where the pots go. Masterfull attention to detail in trolling.
And turning it away from the water jets
Gets angry over the fact that you have a dishwasher
Actually not my photo but I finally have a dishwasher after like 25 years of living with my SO.
Seasoning is a polymer, which is known for its strong resistance. It is unlikely to breakdown just with one dishwasher wash.
The seasoned surface is hydrophobic and highly attractive to oils and fats used for cooking (oleophilic).
The protective layer itself is not very susceptible to soaps, and many users do briefly use detergents and soaps.[28]
Unless you are dish washing it everyday and refuse to dry/reseason it, you will be fine.
However, cast iron is very prone to rust, and the protective layer may have pinholes, so soaking for long periods is contraindicated as the layer may start to flake off.
This aligns with how I care for mine. Scrub it with a chainmail scrubber, Wash it with soap / watwr, then rinse dry over flame and then drizzle a but of oil and rub with a paper towel.
I have no reverence for my cast iron besides avoiding letting it sit wet for a long time.
It's your expensive quality cookware, if you want to ruin it I can't do anything about it.
Whispers gently to well seasoned dutch oven
Shh, it's okay, the bad man can't hurt you.
It's pretty hard to ruin good cast iron. A good cast iron pan could spend a year at the bottom of a lake and all it would need is a good scrub and reseason to be good to go again.
About the only thing I've seen that makes them completely irrecoverable is when people use them to melt lead. Also you can crack the cheap ones in half with thermal shock.
In all seriousness I actually have this pumpkin Le Creuset cast iron Dutch oven and it's in fine shape. The pans that I hate are the gross frying pans my SO brought to this relationship which are disgusting. This Dutch oven can go in the dishwasher no problem actually.
Carbon steel > cast iron. Lighter, basically the same heat properties, and you don't get peer pressured into unnecessarily babying a lump of solid metal.
Seriously no reason to dote on either of them so much. Only real care you need to take is that they can rust, so don't leave them wet. And don't needlessly scrub them with chain mail or angle grinders, or you might need to take a few minutes fixing them with cooking oil and the oven.
Does cast iron really take babying? I have a 12" cast iron skillet that's pretty much the only pan I use, and I just scrub it with steel wool, get it hot again, then throw in some avocado oil. It takes like 60 seconds of work
No, it doesn't. But people think it does and will get really vocal about it if you, god forbid, get it super gross and need to rinse it out with some soap and water.
That's why I specified that it was peer pressure, not necessity. :)
No, it doesn't. I don't even bother coating mine with oil, just a scrub with hot water and let it dry.
I end up reseasoning mine every couple of years, inevitably somebody leaves it in the sink for a bit trying to soak off some burnt on stuff. It's really no big deal.
Babying it is pretty new and somewhat cultish behaviour, my grandfather just used it and washed as normal, the only babying it needs is a huge temperature differences can break it. Stainless steel and high carbon steel pans are better.
Carbon steel has the heat storage of cast iron but transfers it fast like aluminum. I thought a cast iron seared steak was great until I used carbon steel and omg is it so much better.
You baby your cookware and debate the differences of each type.
I don't even know what type of cookware I have.
We are not the same.
If you don't care why post on a thread to tell people how little you care?
Clearly making a fun joke about my cookware ineptitude. Also I didn't say I didn't care, I said I didn't know.
Cooking has been a hobby of mine for decades now. I have gone through a lot of phases in cooking, especially early on.
I have used cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and a dubious flirtation with all aluminum.
16 years on now and this is what I reach for 100% of the time:
Skillet/sautee: cladded stainless. Both standard side and high sided.
Dutch Oven: Enameled cast iron.
Pots Pans: Cladded stainless steel. For smaller 1qt to 2qt I like All Clads D5 for its heat retention. Larger than that I like the D3 for its lighter weight
Grill Pan: cast iron. Hate the excessive weight though
Non-stick: Ceramic coated aluminum. What ever Americas Test Kitchen recommends that year. I consider these disposable items. I stopped using TEFLON a long time ago.
I used cast iron skillets for several years. I found them to be finicky. Heat retention was stupidly high and that's not always a good thing. Excessively heavy and god forbid you attempt any sort of tomato based sauce or anything acidic for that matter. Circumstances forced me to use stainless steel and I just found it matches my needs in a kitchen much better than cast iron. It gets used, it gets cleaned and I put it away. No having to have the vaginal juices of a thousand virgins on hand to make sure it doesn't destroy the next egg I try to cook.
I consider cast iron skillets like safety razors. They had their day, but continue on because of a dedicated set of die hard users. Nothing wrong with that, just not my thing.
The above goes for carbon steel as well, although it usually isn't nearly as heavy.
Ugh. You wanna know the secret to cooking on cast iron/carbon steel? Just cook with it. Put fat in, get it hot, put your food in. It's really that easy. Wipe it out when you're done, rub some oil on it. That's it. You can even cook tomato sauce in it, it'll be ok. People have been using cast iron to cook all kinds of things, acidic and not, for literal centuries. This myth that cast iron/carbon steel pans are these delicate special snowflakes that need constant attention and maintenance needs to die.
I have a side business restoring antique cast iron pans and I use them for most of my cooking. I cook whatever the fuck I want in them, I leave the pan dirty on the stove a couple days sometimes when I'm busy, I use a scotch brite and scrub them clean with dish detergent, it really doesn't matter.
Go get a shitty Walmart pan and complain that CI is too hard to work with, it's ridiculous. My CHF #8 is an amazing piece of hardware
But they do need special maintenance, compared to Teflon pans or ceramic pans, they are the most finicky and hard to work with.
There are a lot of things people have done for centuries. Being old doesn't make something superior.
The problem with the people who prostletyze cast iron, is they usually assume that everyone cooks like them, but the reality is that cast iron is generally a pain in the ass. I mean just the fact that you need to cover the entire pan in oil Every time you put it away should be enough of an indicator.
The polymerized coating on cast iron is stripped almost immediately with anything acidic. It's basic chemistry.
Put some fat in the pan... You mean exactly what I do with my stainless steel?
Also cooking the way you describe builds up carbon, which is carcinogenic.
What needs to die is the emotional attachment people have to a technology that has its place, just not for every day cooking.
My grill Pan and Dutch ovens are cast iron. But they are Enameled making them a lot more useful. ,
No wok? Also safety razors are great and I'm guessing the only reason cartridges won out is because of marketing, then the following generation forgot there was another option.
I have a carbon steel wok and even have a wok grate for my stove. While I do some Chinese cooking, I've found that on an American stove it doesn't really have any advantages.
I'm sure if I cooked more Chinese cuisine it would be a different story.
I use cast iron for most of my stovetop cooking, but I'm sure it's because my cooking style evolved around them, they were so cheap and absolutely the best pans I could afford. They become nearly nonstick, can go from stove to oven to grill, even fire. So for something like $5-20 each I accumulated a set over time, and I love them. We do wash with soap, dry right away, it doesn't kill the surface. Now I have some money for pans, we do have one gorgeous stainless All-Clad skillet I call the "stick skillet", my kids like it. But in terms of PRICE to quality, cast iron is where it's at. That one All-Clad pan cost almost as much as all my cast iron put together.
I used flax oil to season my dutch oven, and finds it stands up to frequent tomato based pasta sauces for a bout a year, but it does eventually fail, an you know immediately when that happens, iron flavoured bolognese. Did that for a few years and finally got an enamelled set for that. As for the frying pans, mine are really old (1920s) and quite lightweight, nowhere near as heavy as newer Wagner 1898s and Lodges. I find the heat retention just perfect when making a carbonara, i turn the burner off when the pasta is three minutes from done and the heat is just perfect to make the carbonara sauce cook without turning into scrambled eggs. The other use, pan frying steaks, nothing does that better. They're not for everything, I have one 7 inch teflon pan that i use for one purpose only, and that's french omelets. I have zero interest in trying that in a cast pan.
Cast iron is to sear the bajesus out of steak. Nothing else can blacken the steak crust to my satisfaction without inadvertently overcooking the middle.
I hate it for everthing else.
A tiny cheap teflon pan just for 1-2 fried eggs and nothing else.
Then SS all-clad as the go-to for everything else.
Been having good experience with the hexclad teflon pan although handwash only. I believe it is generally disliked because it is marketed as "dishwasher safe" which is absolutely false. When handwashed it holds up very well.
You would probably like cast iron more if you stopped committing war crimes against it.
I mean, as long as it's your cast iron skillet.
The whole cast iron thing is such a cult. Always makes me laugh when someone tries to preach it to me, how it's great, then there's all this stuff you need to do that you normally wouldn't, oh right you can't do this and you need to do this and yes it's heavy as all hell but that's actually a good thing
lol
I'm not a fan boy, I actually resisted getting one for nearly a year before one was gifted to me. There are a couple perks and draw backs I've learned. Pros: heating is pretty even, cleaning is actually way easier (IMO), and I can use metal on it. Cons: needs to be seasoned, takes longer to heat, some people get the ick from seeing rust.
TBH it's pretty much the only pan I use now (cause I find cleaning easier and I'm lazy AF), but people should use whatever suits them.
People make this shole "cast iron cult" thing out to be a much bigger thing than it actually is. Cast iron is a durable material and has been used as a tool for cooking in the harshest of conditions for centuries, but to be able to use it in those harsh conditions it needs to be properly taken care of just like any tool.
The reason people seem so neurotic over taking care of cast iron is that cast iron cookware is an investment. Year after year a cast iron pan (and this applies to carbon steel pans too) becomes better and better the more the thin layers of oil polymerization into the seasoning. A fresh off the line Lodge dutch oven doesn't have the years of layer after layer after layer of polymerized oil on it as the same mode Lodge dutch oven my grandmother used when back she was half my age.
Cast iron is easy to take care of, there's nothing special about how to take care of it, but the ways to take care of it are specific because of the nature of the metal used. Hell I spend less time cleaning my cast iron pans and carbon steel wok than I do cleaning any other pan type.
The cast iron "purists" are silly. We just wash ours with soap and water and use it like any other pan. I only know of stuff you can do with cast iron, use metal spatulas, scrub it out with salt, and/or put it in the oven. Not sure what you can't do.
Granted, I don't put any pots and pans in the dishwasher. Maybe y'all have bigger dishwashers than I do, but if one item takes up half the space, what's even the point?
What weirdo takes a picture of their dirty dishes and posts it to the Internet? I'm unreasonably angry, mission accomplished.
(it's from the Internet I didn't take it).
You son of a-
/s I am indeed unreasonably mad.
Not that you put the cast iron in the dishwasher (enjoy your rust), but the fact that you can actually fit the pan in your dishwasher. I recently spent $350 on a portable dishwasher and your iron skillet is bigger than that. I bought that thing to NOT have to scrub dishes. Thanks for reminding me that I STILL have to scrub pots and pans!
Meanwhile, I'm like "huh, maybe you should learn how to cook, but you do your stuff, that's your own business".
it's just a pan
You can take care of your pans anyway you want. But it's telling when people treat neglect like it's an ethic.
Setting off the pan nerds should be listed as a war crime by the Geneva Convention.
Everyone acts like enameled cast iron doesn't exist...
I bet I’d get this joke if I had ever used a dishwasher in my life
You're not special for washing dishes in a less efficient way that's worse for the environment. If you've just never had access to one, ignore me, but Ive definitely known a surprising number of people who have dishwashers in their apartments but refuse to use them. If that's you, you're probably doing life wrong.
Anyway there's nothing that unique about the dishwasher itself, washing cast iron in hot soap and water and then leaving it to air dry will strip the protection of the polymerized oil and then trigger the pan to rust. Nothing to do with dishwashers as a technology except if you wash a pan by hand you're likely scrubbing it less effectively and not willing to spend 1-2 hours spraying it with hot water. If you stick the pan into the washer for 15 mins, immediately rinse, dry, and re season, it's not particularly different from washing by hand.
Why do you hate cast iron?
It feels super greasy and filthy, and everything you cook sticks to it. Give me stainless steel any day.
That's just a dirty pan. Actual cast iron seasoning isn't sticky or dirty because it has no impurities from the food, it's actually polymerized with the cast iron and it should look make the pan look black and glassy. I wash mine with Dawn soap and hand dry it, and it makes Teflon look like a joke. I can heat it without any butter or oil, drop in a glob of egg yolk, and it'll slide like it's skating on Astroglide. You're having a skill issue and you need to get good.
You have problems with cast iron sticking but you like stainless steel? Stainless steel is probably the most non stick material you can use. I can't stand the stuff.
It is a myth that you can't use dish detergent on cast iron. If it feels greasy and filthy, it is greasy and filfthy.
The truth behind the "no soap" myth is that we used to use lye-based soap for dishwashing. Lye does, indeed, break down seasoning. But we use surfactant-based detergents now, rather than actual soap. Detergents break down oils which are necessary for rust prevention, but they don't damage seasoning. Just wipe them down with the thinnest layer of high temp oil before storing them, and you're good to go.
Your boomer parents/grandparents couldn't wash their cast iron with dish "soap". You can.
Interesting. Mine doesn't and I only have problems with sticking if I walk away too long. I gave a stainless pan away. To each their own! Thanks for the answer.
I see someone has chosen violence today
I used to love cast iron but carbon steel has stolen my heart
I bought my first carbon steel pan (a wok specifically) last week and I did a bad job at seasoning it for the first time. I had to scrub the shit out of it with steel wool and vinegar to reset. My second season was a little better but it’s still not fully non stick. I hope it will just naturally get better as I keep using it.
Oh it's the absolute best. Frank Prizinsano the chef taught me that.
I love cast iron for cooking. It's also very forgiving. Depending what I am cooking it gets treated carefully for the seasoning, or scrubbed with dish soap. The beautiful thing is I can take it camping, come home and scrub all the 'seasoning' off, then re-season with 30 min in the oven an a bit of olive oil.
When my SO and I first got together I did his dishes one day, and as I had never seen a cast iron pan I just washed it, fussing the whole time about how filthy it was. My Australian bush lunatic, one pair of underpants owning mother in law had an apoplectic fit. But seriously, these people cook salmon in them one night and pancakes the next with barely a wipe and it's disgusting. Give me stainless steel.
Well that’s just crazy. I wash mine with soap and water after cooking… but then I give it a quick flame dry and re-season on the stove top, which I can definitely admit is more maintenance than most people want to deal with.
?
No wash cast iron in dishwasher, bad!
Dishwasher detergent is super aggressive, because it has to clean with minimal mechanical force, therefore many materials should not be washed in the dishwasher or they will be damaged.
Ruins the patina, or something
Yep, can also cause rust
Wash it all you want, should be fine as long as you hand dry it after.
I put mine in the clothes dryer with a load of socks. Is that wrong?
Depends on how much you like buying dryers.
I'm imagining the sound
For your clothes dryer most definitely. Probably not great for the sheets either.
Also throw in the metal fork you used to scrape your expensive non-stick pan.
Fuck you. >:(🖕
I'm loving all the superstition in this thread.
You can wash Cast Iron all you like, I wouldn't suggest the dishwasher, just don't use soap, scrape with a plastic paint scrapper under hot water, heat until smoking, rub some oil on it, let cool. Easy peasy. After knowing we're all poisoning ourselves with the nonstick coating and have been for decades, the Cast Iron is a great nonstick alternative.
Use "soap" if you want. Modern dishwashing liquid doesn't have lye in it. It's the lye from old school rendered soap that damages the seasoning.
Don't use anything with an abrasive more than the rough side of a sponge, and even with that, don't rub super hard or in the same place for too long.
In this thread are people trying to use one tool for everything.
You don't use a screwdriver for everything.
Likewise, in the kitchen, you don't use the same utensil for everything.
And I'm sorry, for the people that have one fork, one knife one knife, one pan. No. Unless you live on shit food, you can't cook with just that.
If you actually want tasty food, you'll need some hardware. There's just no way around it.
Disclaimer, I'm French, and an actual cook (non practising).
Good a non-practising French, thought I could smell you through the screen for a moment.
Ya the smug alert in that one was to high
I was giggling uncontrollably, so I knew that a US guy had to have replied to one of my posts with something hilarious. Of course I wasn't wrong.
You can use a wok for just about everything. Not great for baking, but anything else can be done in a wok, but even us chinese cooks (I am white, but learned to cook Chinese food) will look at you weird if you actually try to cook everything in a wok.
Sometimes you have to use some pot as meat tenderizer...
Sure, if it's heavy enough.
I feel bad for people who truly can not afford good kitchen stuff, granted most people in my area can. Otherwise yeah, assuming the person were discussing can afford it. There's no going around spending a little money on good kitchenware if decent results are expected. It's not like people have to drop thousands, but a few hundred is kinda normal.
Also tip for anyone who's building up their first kitchen, those gimmicky things that are always on sale are almost always crap. Buying that stuff is worse than gambling, cause at least gambling doesn't leave you with a kitchen full of worthless clutter.
I feel bad for people who truly can not afford good kitchen stuff
Now there's a lot of people who can't.
Because kitchenware is actually hideously expensive. And even here, in France where we have access to the fundamental cooking industry tools - ok maybe slightly less-)
(Ok, I said I was in France, it's cool, feel free to downvote me now)
I find it amusing that as someone that actually spent years learning how to cook, and that I took the took the time to understand the chemistry and logic of cooking, I'm downvoted because:
- I'm french (because a fair number of users are idiots, and yet I'm still here to face them)
- or they believe they can cook with a microwave (a US affectation)
- or maybe it's just a jest across the atlantic, since we made them a country, they hate us for some reason as a joke, haha.
I just reseasoned my 12” Lodge today! A lot of nasty smells coming out as I took off layers and layers of old seasoning with barkeeper’s friend. But now it has a non sticky, glassy smooth new sunflower oil seasoning. Very slick!
Does anyone know how to avoid having bacon foul up the seasoning? Seems like it always reacts chemically and incorporates proteins into the seasoning which make it nasty and dry and flaky rather than smooth and glassy.
Try washing it.
So long as you're not using the lye-based soaps your grandparents used to wash their dishes, you're fine. Dishwashing detergent does not damage seasoning.
That’s what led me to redoing the seasoning today. I washed up the grease with a few drops of Dawn and the pan came out with large areas of brown/white and dry/powdery rather than black and shiny.
I definitely have had the pan have a really strong seasoning that maintains a hard, glossy black finish even after washing with soap before. I’m hoping the current seasoning holds up a bit better.
I think maybe sometimes I burn the seasoning from cooking with too high heat? I really love to put a good sear on a burger or a steak and I love how cast iron is like a deep cycle battery that can store and release a large amount of heat into a piece of food.
Store bought modern bacon is loaded with sugars and that is what is causing the issues. I've found that the older the seasoning the lesser the impact. Still, just scrub off the stuck on bits with a chain mail and some hot water with a mild dish detergent then do a quick post-season on the stove and it's like it never happened.
Scrub it clean with soap, then put the pan on a burner to heat dry it. At the end, rub a very thin layer of fat on it. I use clarified butter. It's a cumulative process, you won't see all the benefits of nonstick all at once.
That butter is going rancid on the surface.
You have to be like at least 50 to get mad over some pan
I just turned 50 last month in fact?
It's going to be a good day.
In all fairness by the looks of the carbon buildup on the outside this skillet is due to be reseasoned. I doubt the dishwasher will do much to help; this thing needs a lye bath or electrolysis at this point.
I just stripped my 20+ year-old 10" lodge because the carbon buildup was flaking on the inside. The pan is better than new now as the rough finish has worn considerably (though it isn't glass smooth). I have a lot of fond memories of meals made in this skillet and plan on using it for the rest of my life even though I can afford and own arguably better quality cookware these days.
Ahahaha 😂 😒 wtf
its just a fry pan
This thread is full of people claiming that dish soap doesn't contain lye, but the most popular dish soap I'm aware of, Dawn, contains lye and that's easily found in a two second Google search.
what the hell is dawn?
easily found in a two second Google search.
The look of that pan somebody needs Go ahead and strip it back down to bare and restart seasoning.
