This guy is misinformed.
That’s his ex-wife.
“the food was always sliding around the pan! Now it stays right where you put it!” Lol
The cast iron subreddit drama is one of the few things I miss from reddit. Even got me to buy a few more and cook more often with them!
I was super precious about all my cast iron for a long time. Then I had a thought watching this “cowboy” YouTuber wash his cast iron with some specialty thing.
“This fucking guy is like pretending to be out on the pasture or whatever. In the actual 1800s, this shit was probably just wiped out, or they used lye soap or something ridiculous! Why the fuck am I being so fucking careful?!?”
Now I do not care, like I’ve had my shit get rusty, crusty, “overheated”, the reality is that it’s a big ass chunk of metal! Short of deformation or intentional or extreme neglect (leaving it in the rain uncovered for 40 years) you will not destroy it.
If it gets too “sticky”, you oil it up and heat it, and bingo, it’s fine again.
Ok. But should you never put citrus in your garbage disposal because it summons the pipe demon, or are you supposed to put citrus in your garbage disposal because it repels the pipe demon?
You should rip your garbage disposal out and replace it with a normal drain, then put your food waste in the compost or trash instead.
I used to hike to a mountain lake in New Hampshire for trout fishing. On the wall of the Adirondack shelter next to the lake was a large cast iron skillet. Random people used it for decades to cook fish over a wood campfire. The only cleaning it got was being scraped with a flat rock, rinsed in the lake, and picked at by woodland critters. It always worked just fine, and the fish tasted great.
Isn’t that the whole point of cast iron pans?
they can be treated like shit and still work?
They also hold more heat so they can get hotter which is great for searing steaks.
Rust you can grind off, but if it was used to melt lead down, that will kill one of these cast iron pans.
All the fancy shit is just too save from having to season it again, and seasoning is a bit of a pita. Getting the whole pan kinda hot, adding a bit of a short chain oil, baking it at like 450 for a couple hours, and letting it cool back off.
I’ll just be kinda careful with mine and avoid having to do all that.
The sentiment is good, but you can easily avoid the rust and stickiness by using enough oil while cooking and if the surface is damaged wash it with soap and then if there is any bare metal heat it with a tiny amount of oil to remove the moisture and wipe out excess before putting it away. If no metal is showing and water is beading up, just dry with a towel!
I’ve graduated from cast iron to ceramic coated cast iron.
All of the benefits of cast iron with the added appeal of never having to reseason it.
I have a LeCruset enameled cast iron pan and love it. So easy to clean, doesn’t need seasoning.
Funny enough, I made the opposite journey. Bought a LeCreuset a while back and had to toss it after 1.5 years, because the enamel started to flake off, despite great care handling/cleaning it. Replaced it with a cast iron skillet and am thoroughly enjoying its simplicity.
I’ve always wondered if that is taking the durability advantage of cast iron and coating it with enamel that can chip or scratch. Taking the nice non-stick surface of perfectly season cast iron and covering it with something that will never be as slick
Looks might impressive though
At least, the pan as such is not ruined. You’ll just have to season it back into the proper condition.
And this is how I discovered pan seasoning.
Given the recent horrible things about non-stick pans, I wonder if I should just buy seasoned cast iron pans.
I don’t think I’d trust a pan that says it’s “pre-seasoned.” Get a cast iron pan and learn how to season it yourself. It’s kind of an ongoing process anyway; every time you fry something in it with butter or oil you’re maintaining the coating.
Meh, one of my pots came pre-seasoned and I just started using it as if I’d seasoned it myself, after the first couple of weeks of simply using it, it now has the exact same surface as everything I seasoned myself, because every time you fry something in it, it just improves the seasoning.
shrug
I mean I’m happy I know how to season my stuff, but if it lowers the entry-barrier to cast iron I think it’s worth it.
I can only tell you about my experience, I’ve made the switch half a year ago.
Cast iron is heavy, REALLY HEAVY and comparably more expensive than cheap non-stick pans. It’s a hassle to work with because it’s so heavy, no easy flipping stuff by throwing the pan around (inertia is a bitch), you shouldn’t clean it with soap, just hot water and some elbow-grease and you should always keep is slightly oiled. Oh and there is no “the handle doesn’t get hot”, it always does and you should wrap a cloth around it.
But Oh My Goodness!
I’ve needed some tries to get the seasoning right, needed some time to adjust my cooking as to not leave acidic food in the pan or pot over night, but now that my pan and pot are very well seasoned and I know how to handle them… nothing sticks, at least not for long. I can make a fried egg or some bacon and after sticking for the first few seconds it just… lift’s off the surface and moves freely in the pan. No non-stick pan has ever given me a non-stick experience like this and making steak has become one of my most fun experiences, because the pan keeps its heat when I throw the cold slap of meat into it and evenly browns the beef without any sticking.
Absolute game changer. just don’t heat an empty pan too much, because you can burn the seasoning off again.
Soap is ok for washing (as long as it doesn’t contain lye).
And carbon steel pans are a lighter alternative.
Stainless Steel also is great. We have one and not to much really sticks and you can clean it very easily.
You can buy pre seasoned cast iron.
My advice, as someone who has owned a cast iron pan for a while, is to take care of the pan. When you use it, wait for it to cool after use, then immediately clean it. Once cleaned, use heat to dry it (just put it back on the stove and heat it up to boil off any water), let it cool again, then add oil to protect the pans surface.
Don’t use just any oil for it, there’s a specific set of oils used to condition/season cast iron. I use grapeseed oil, but there’s plenty of others. A quick Google search should yield some options for you.
The main focus is on keeping the pan protected from water, as it will rust the iron. Using water while cooking/cleaning is fine, but having water standing on the surface of the pan, even microscopic amounts, will cause rust to form. The moisture in the air can also cause the pan to rust, hence the oil coating after cleaning to protect the surface of the pan.
I got rust on my cast iron once after I left the pan for too long after cooking with mushrooms, which are very high in moisture. I had to scrub away the rust, which left a shiny spot on my pan (where the seasoning/conditioning was lost), and I had to re-season the pan.
IMO, cast iron cookware is a pain in the butt to take care of, but well worth it. Easily one of my favorite pieces of cookware. It holds heat really well and it cooks pretty much everything very well. Something that’s always bothered me about regular cookware is the thermal cycling, you throw room temperature ingredients into a hot pan and suddenly, the pan isn’t hot anymore… It takes a while to get back up to temperature. Not nearly as bad of a problem with cast iron.
By the time my cast iron cools, I’ve left the kitchen, so tbh i generally clean it before the next time i cook with it, and have never had rust issues no matter what i cooked in it last. Every once in a while i notice the seasoning getting a little thin after scrubbing it, so I reseason it with a single layer on the stove.
With my carbon steel wok, i regularly clean it by tossing it on the wok burner at full blast until it’s entirely red hot and everything has carbonized off of it, and maybe splash some water in to help clear that off. Then i wait for it to cool enough and reseason it with a quick wipe of oil while it’s still hot enough for the remaining heat to polymerize the oil.
Basically, I’ve never spent significant effort taking care of my cast iron of carbon steel cookware, and it’s all still perfectly functional and non-stick and not rusted.
Just so you know my favorite way to clean cast iron is to run it dry until the bits start to burn then throw in water to deglaze it hot, dump the water and wipe with a cloth then back on the heat to dry and a little bit of oil back in the pan.
I get water is an issue but it shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
I just bought a stainless steel pan.
Easy to take care of, that thing is indestructible. And to avoid sticking just heat it really high. Inmediatly after using and it’s still really hot stick it under cold water. It cleans itself while making a cool noise.
For some meals like eggs or omelette you can have a non-stick only used for those. But steel is good as a daily pan.
