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.
You son of a-
Lol I like cast iron cookware, but you do whatever with what’s yours as long as you leave mine alone.
Ahahaha 😂 😒 wtf
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.
As long as you don’t leave it sitting in water you’ll be fine.
I leave mine sitting in water all the time. It still works.
I wash with soap and add a little oil every cook. Works great.
Perfect ☺️
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.
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.
The mystery is that iron will rust if wet. The care instructions are “don’t leave it wet for a long time”.
Even if it does rust accidentally, can’t you just scrape or buff out the rust and then reseal/reseason it again and it’s fine?
Okay but this one time I did exactly that thing I’m not supposed to and exactly what was expected happened so obviously cast iron bad?
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.
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.
Tbf the cast iron i’m cooking out of was found as scrap in the woods. I wash with soap regularly, and use normal oil/butter qty’s. I just don’t dishwasher it, not that i have a dish!asher XD. I’ve seasoned it one single time which is right after i found it. It’s been a year.
You might want to check that for lead. People who cast their own bullets have been known to melt lead in cast iron.
Ehhh… I’ve taken the 100LL avgas shower. At this point, a year of cooking later, the damage is done ig. Ill grab a test kit tho.
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.
Teflon also should not go in the dishwasher. Anything with exposed aluminum should not go in the dishwasher. Even stainless steel cookware recommends against dishwasher
Only because some Stainless cookware uses Aluminium rivets for attaching the handle.
I put pretty much all of my stainless steel stuff in the dishwasher and it’s fine
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.
Lol this response proves OP’s point. “Bro it’s so easy bro just soak in sodium hydroxide and fill your house with smoking oil it’s easy dude just measure how much starch is in ur meal dude lol ez”
These are instructions for those who are picky about stuff.
Just cook in it. After cooking, wipe it out. If its bad, when pre-heating I pull it off to put some water and rub with a pad with minimal soap, rinse that off, and back on the hob. Wow 15s of work before cooking. The horror.
The instructions rumba gave were “if you absolutely fuck up, here are easy ways to fix that so you don’t have to buy a new one”
Yup I usually just dry scrub with a little chainmail scrubber to get all the bits off with. Then I wipe down with a little veg oil and it’s ready for next time.
LOL at cherrypicking something I said to do instead of throwing the pan away
?
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
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).
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.
You aren’t cooking many things if all you’re using is a wok.
A wok is simultaneously a frying pan, a sauce pan, a soup pot, and a deep frier, when not in use. It’s Schrodinger’s kitchen appliance.
I’m a former chef that was trained in over 10 styles of food prep. I just don’t bake much.
Woks don’t have buttons! How the hell do you expect to deep fry things without any buttons!? I’ve seen into the back of a McDonald’s before, their deep fryers have buttons and beep and shit. If a wok ever beeped at me, I wouldn’t think “oh, fries are done,” I’d think, “am I going insane?”
Unless you’re using one as a helmet, in which case it’s more of a ding than a beep, but it means it just saved your life and you should tip your blacksmith. You should also probably clean the wok before you use it to sear something and set it aside or bake cookies or anything, though.
You just pout oil in it, bring the oil up to temp, and set a timer when you drop the food in. Just like deep frying in a pot at home
A wok is great for searing stuff and then putting some of it aside, so that you can cook several things at once. Nothing else has ever come close to it.
But that’s the limit of the wok. It’s a fucking amazing device, but it’s not the ultimate cooking ninja super appliance that does it all.
Ummmm wow. Wasn’t aware that the 7 wok stove that I cooked on daily for a decade was just for searing things and setting them aside. I guess the chicken broth in the center wok, and all the frying of the frying wok should stop existing since a French cook is trying to tell Chinese cooks how to use their own invention.
Sometimes you have to use some pot as meat tenderizer…
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 (unlikely)
- or maybe we should systematically attack any US poster on the basis that they’re imbeciles
Condescending and a pity party. Really a wonder why people aren’t flocking to upvote.
Well now you’re getting downvoted for complaining about downvotes
I don’t really care. Being French here means you’re being downvoted.
Just like I’m donwoting US users.
I’m English, don’t forget to downvote me!
Lol if you didn’t care you wouldn’t be constantly complaining about it
Oddly enough when there are fuck the mexicans or fuck the poles posts, people are vaguely interested.
Good a non-practising French, thought I could smell you through the screen for a moment.
I was giggling uncontrollably, and I knew that a US guy had to have replied to one of my posts with something hilarious. Of course I wasn’t wrong.
Ya the smug alert in that one was to high
Meanwhile, I’m like “huh, maybe you should learn how to cook, but you do your stuff, that’s your own business”.
Ceramic rules.
Ceramic is great for some things.
Like, cooking.
And engines.
And toilet bowls.
And rollerskate bearings
But apart from that, what have
the romansceramics done for us?the aquaduct?
Most toilet bowls are made of porcelain, which is different from plain ceramic.
Cooking some things.
Ceramic is the equivalent of non stick stuff.
Are we talking the same ceramic here? It sticks less than with teflon.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t cook eggs for shit in ceramic. Give me a stainless steel or teflon pan and I can knock out a perfect french-style omelet, but give me a ceramic pan and suddenly I’m clueless. I genuinely don’t understand what could possibly make such a significant difference, but I swear it’s true.
Well, yes and no. Ceramic is roughly on par with Teflon nowadays.
But for example when your searing meat, inox is usually considered superior (it would be ok for eggs though).
When you’re roasting potatoes, ceramic is definitely at the bottom of the list.
Each dish has its appropriate tool.
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
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?
Tomatoes/tomato sauce seems to be a contentious topic.
That’s just cause of acidity, I’ve made sauces in mine and it’s been fine.
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.
If you’re drying it properly you really shouldn’t be getting any rust. I sometimes get a bit on the handle loop but that’s it.
I personally don’t get rust but some people do and they can dislike that. Usually I’ll put the stove on low and help it evaporate to avoid rust. Its also really only a concern if (lye free) soap is used because otherwise the seasoning prevents it pretty well
Yeah I got one for free because a family member saw rust and wanted to throw it out.
Scrub, oil, and we’re good to go.
Seasoning is a polymer which gives it very strong resistance, which is not going 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 going to be a good day.
I mean, as long as it’s your cast iron skillet.
