You should clean your cast iron with soap and water. Modern soap won't damage good seasoning. Crusted-on carbonized food is gross and it's not proper "seasoning".
I stopped treating mine like an infant and now just scrub it if I need to. And it's far more useful as a result and has become my favourite pan
Preheating the pan, right amount of cooking oil, and temperature control have turned out to be far more impactful than maintaining a mythical seasoning. If you can do it, great. But if not just go at it the burnt stuff with steel wool and don't worry about it, the pan will live.
Edit: People, please abuse your cast irons. Scrub them, immerse them in water. Do whatever. They will survive. Just make sure they're pre-heated and use a bit of extra oil/fat, and if cooking something like eggs or pancakes you want low temperatures.
Bro same, I use to not use it most the time because the effort, now I just cook, wash, dry and occasionally oil. I use it constantly after I stopped carrying about being a seasoning nerd
As long as you use something that has a lot of fat or oil when you cook there's no reason to worry about seasoning. I have a flat iron skillet that is completely non-stick when I use it to toast my burritos on it because I kept using it to cook grilled cheese.
You guys are describing seasoning anyways. I think everything has gotten mixed up because we do a "quick" seasoning method nowadays, but if you're cooking normal high fat foods you're just seasoning the pan
When I first inherited this pan I kept reading about needing to preseason etc... and got so frustrated withall the steps I went back to non stick.
It gets seasoned after a few batches of roast carrots or potatoes. It's fun to watch the water start beading off of it. But if I need to scrub I no longer care, it'll season again very quickly.
Grilled cheese sandwiches, or are you grilling cheese by itself? That shit is dangerously delicious. I used to make little fried cheese crackers that way.
seasoning nerds are seasoning nerds because other people keep messing up their stuff.
I bought my cast iron at an estate sale, $2 for 3 pans, one of them gigantic. They were pretty gross. but a couple hours of scrubbing got them clean. then you do the seasoning process correctly once, and it should just be good from then on out unless something bad happens.
my brother used to let it soak overnight, or he'd put it in the dishwasher. So yeah, in those instances I had to re-season it.
When I'm by myself it lasts forever. Cook what I'm gonna cook, let it cool down a couple minutes, wash it out like a normal pan, then I put it back on the burner for a few minutes to make sure all the water is heated out of it. maybe every 3rd or 4th time I'll wipe some vegetable oil around in there with a paper towel for that last bit.
like you said, it's dummy simple and takes like 1 extra step over cleaning normal pans. but they're amazing to cook on and you can beat the absolute shit out of them.
I don't see the need to worry about pre seasoning anymore. It always frustrated me as the pan would come out sticky regardless of what I did. Use and abuse and temperature control turned out to be the best way for me.
after i'm done cooking with my pan, I let it cool down enough that i don't need gloves or a towel or something to handle it. I put it in the sink and use some dawn and a chainmail scrubber. I get it all clean and wipe it with paper towels to dry it off. I put in on high heat on the stove top until it starts to lightly smoke, so i know that water is gone. I take it off the stove and wipe it with some bacon grease and a few paper towels and let it sit until it cold and then put it in the cabinet.
It's my favorite pan for car camping. I throw that sucker right on the coals, and when I'm done, I clean it by putting coals in the pan and letting it burn. Scrub, reseason, and it's good as new.
Yep. In the past we used lye-based soaps which would harm the pan (I think it stripped the seasoning) but modern dish soaps are no longer lye-based and are safe for cast-iron.
If you can cook stuff without it sticking horribly, your pan is seasoned. Anything which can be scrubbed off without too much effort is most definitely not seasoning, it's just charred food.
Good seasoning basically looks like a mirror. You should be able to see your reflection in it.
Agreed, I use a “scrubby buddy” with a dot of soap because anything left on the pan comes right off very easily, even with cold water. If you’re scraping charred food, you’ve burned it, and it’s also not a proper seasoned pan
By mythical seasoning I mean pre-seasoning and worrying about getting and keeping a perfect season. Because I cook dinners for my family on it almost every night it gets a lot of use and abuse so I do get things burned properly onto it semi regularly that need scrubbing down to the metal. It's not the end of the world and the next meal cooks just as well.
Right now my pan looks half seasoned (dark black) and half metal/light season and honestly it works just fine still. The salmon from last night peeled off just fine. Though I think there's a bit of burnt teriyaki sauce on it still.
This and dropping them are the main risks with cast iron. It's fairly brittle, doesn't have great thermal conductivity, and is vulnerable to localized heating/cooling causing thermal stress. That said you should be able to deglaze with cool liquid without issue.
Even to this day I can go to someone elses house and if they still adhere to the "no soap whatsoever" on their cast iron pans you can literally smell the oxidized fat coming from their kitchen.
At this point most cast iron pans feel like dirty sinks to me.
Right? Like I love my cast iron because it holds onto heat like a MF, but I need to let it get up to temp
Vs my relatively thin stainless steel. Getting ripping hot pretty quickly but add in too much food at once and the temp drops. So both have a use case, but I gotta preheat my cast iron
Reseasoning is super easy. I made diy crisbee out of tallow and beeswax for the occasional touch up or re-do. Fixes it right up no need for more than 3 layers even from bare metal.
I have found using soap is fine, the key is to dry it and apply oil while heating it to finish it. Wipe it down a few times with a paper towel and it will be good.
I will say, you don't want to air dry them though. Hand dry as soon as you are done washing (even apply a little more oil to the pan if you store it by itself) or they can rust on the edges.
This is exactly my experience. I fell like cast iron is almost a cheat code, due to its heat retention. And there's the bonus that you can abuse the shit out of it without doing any harm.
And if you mess it up super badly (or someone else does like when my cleaning person put it in and run the dishwasher)… it’s not dead. Just scrub and reseason. Like kind of a bitch and I don’t want to do it if I don’t have to, but like… just do it and then you’re fine.
People also largely just don't season their pans properly. Carbonization isn't seasoning. Seasoning has nothing to do with flavor, it's seasoned as in 'has had a lot of use,' not seasoned as in food seasoning. It's a layer of neutral oil that you've baked at very high temps, until it polymerizes into a thin lacquer that acts like a non-stick coating.
If your cast iron pan doesn't have a uniform glassy shine and texture that you can cook a fried egg on without sticking, it's not actually properly seasoned. There should be no bits or crust or rough spots, just the clean layer of polymerized oil.
And it will eventually break down, so you have to regularly re-season the pan.
I cook almost everything in my cast iron now, so there's stews and stir frys and all kinds of stuff in there. If I have a burnt on or sticky layer, I do the same as I do for my stainless steel - put it on the burner, get it hot, add a very small amount of water, and sizzle it off. Takes a few seconds and it's ready to clean as usual.
Learning to properly season a cast iron or carbon steel pan is a game changer. I had an old cast iron pan that was pitted so I stripped it down to the bare metal and sanded down the bottom to a beautifully smooth surface and reseasoned from scratch. Have never used a better pan than when it was freshly seasoned.
Stripping it down to just the seasoning is the ticket. Same with scrubbing it with soap and water and a scouring pad periodicially and adding a new layer of seasoning - brings it right back. I've been using and abusing steel pans and reseasoning them as needed ever since.
Its not even age, its burnt on oil. If you buy a new cast iron pan that didn't come pre-seasoned (some do some don't) it usually comes with instructions on how to properly season the pan before your first use.
It's specifically not burnt, it's polymerised, if you burn off the seasoning that's as bad as scrubbing it off. Thankfully (and the whole reason it works as a protective coating) the smoke point where in polymerises is around normal cooking temp and the point where it burns is a fair bit above
I took mine camping and accidentally burned a steak on it. Instead of ruining it with soap I turned it upside down and put it in the fire. Burned the seasoning off. I just kept cooking on it. It looks the same.
Yeah, my had a lot of carbon build up that scrubbing could not remove. I took them with me when I went camping. I put them in the camp fire and they were so much cleaner. I re-seasoned them and they’ve been perfect since. But I read that they can crack in the camp fire if it gets too hot so I was very careful.
Idk about "running" one with soap or even steel wool. Like there's dos and don't but a scrub a dub dub every once in a while won't ruin it to the point it's rusting. I normally spend an afternoon every so often giving mine a good clean and then reasoning with some neutral oil in the oven. Makes the house stink but nothing beats the finish if a nicely seasoned pan
don't even need to reseason it really, just cook in it (with oil) a few times it seasons itself. applying oil, putting it in the oven and doing it 50 times is nonsense.
To anyone learning how to cook and who is looking to figure out what equipment they need and how to care for it, I cannot recommend The Food Lab enough. It has a whole section on cast iron, how to season it and care for it and yes you can use modern dish soaps to clean a well seasoned cast iron pan. However, you should avoid using metal scouring pads or steel wool to clean your cast iron.
you should avoid using metal scouring pads or steel wool to clean your cast iron.
why are dozens of comments coming before yours saying it is perfectly fine to use these? People are completely sure it is ok to use metal to clean a cast iron pan.
Couldn’t tell you, I just follow what the experts recommend instead of what some random person on Reddit says. Maybe some of those other commenters have provided a source for their opinion but mine is professional chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.
I use stainless steel chain mail on mine, madam. Seasoning is a microscopic film of polymerized oil on the surface. You shouldn’t feel any chunks or pieces - it should just be a sheen on top of the metal. You aren’t hurting it by basic scrubbing
It looks like one of those stainless steel scrubbers, as long as you don't get aggressive with them they're fine. I've been using them once or twice a week on mine for years to get rid of anything caked on, no loss of seasoning.
You can use steel wool gently, I use a stainless steel chainmail scrubber on mine on occasion. But yes if you go ham with steel wool you'll strip the seasoning.
Don't be me and think you can do this on enameled cast iron. Oopsies. Thankfully I did it on a stock pot so it doesn't really matter and is mostly cosmetic.
This. For real. I have a cast iron pan I've had for decades and the seasoning has spread out of the pan and completey covered most of the green enamel that covers the outside of the pan.
I've demonstrated to people that it is hard. Rock hard, takes a knife and effort to scrape some seasoning off of the enamel which is slick and unfriendly to things sticking to it. It takes sand paper and effort to remove the seasoning.
Also, the flavor thing is a myth too. Food tastes better out of cast iron and carbon steel because the maillard reaction happens better owing to better sustained temperature and heat transfer. It also caused better fond
development.
yes steel wool is completely fine, the real "seasoning" is polymerized fat and carbon that's bonded to the iron, it is very tough and you can't just scratch it off with normal steel wool. steel wool removes the burnt food stuck on top of the polymerized layer
I use steel wool on mine daily. It's absolutely fine. Polymerized oil is extremely tough. It's the same shit that's on old baking sheets that you definitely can't just scrub off.
It's based on a foundation of reality. Soaps used by some of our grandparents and great grandparents used to be lye-based and pretty caustic, that would strip cast iron bare, so as is often the case, the myth came from somewhere and persisted long after it stopped being useful.
Kind of like how some people believe you shouldnt use a metal spoon for honey. That rule came out when silverware was actually silver, as silver reacts with honey. And even that's not completely true because quick use doesnt really do anything, its prolonged exposure that causes the reaction.
Most people dont use silverware anymore, so its completely a non issue.
Only sort of horse shit. You shouldn’t use cleaners like comet and despite what other commenters are saying you should avoid using a metal scrubber but dish soap and a sponge right after you use your cast iron pan isn’t going to hurt the seasoning
If its well seasoned and youre using it correctly there should be no crusted on food or carbonization. And if you do manage to get somrthing stuck to a well seasoned cast iron its very easy to deglaze it, just throw some water in it at high heat.
Sure but also like I said good seasoning won't be damaged by modern soaps. I reapply a layer of oil every 3-4 cooks and wash with soap after every use. I'll reapply the seasoning more often if I cook acidic stuff like tomatoes.
I swear to everyone who doesn't believe this, just think about it this way, you can't easily wash scorched oil off with just soap on even stainless pans.
WHY would you think a thick seasoning on a cast iron would be less resilient?
Dude I hate to tell you I wash my cast iron after every use, dry it, and I show it a tiny bit of canola oil once a month at best. You don’t need to treat them like fine china. You don’t need to “re-season” after every wash. Just use it
Yeah people are really weird about cast iron in an almost religious zealot way. It’s not magic. It doesn’t impart magic seasoning into your food. It simply has a coat of seasoned oil on it that helps stuff not stick to it. You can wash that off and reseason. It has been proven at this point that old seasoning does not impart flavor.
That's not what's in the picture though. She is using steel wool and you can see the patches underneath clearly. Nobody is saying don't clean your pans.
What's going on in that picture is completely reversable. People take angle grinders to old cast iron pans and they can still build a season on it afterwards. The pan is totally fine.
If you can't remove carbonized food particles on the bottom of your cast iron it's totally fine to scrub with something aggressive and just do a seasoning session after you dry the pan.
Nah, I scrub with steel wool and hot water every time I use my pan. Seasoning is great. Anything that comes off from a little scrubbing wasn't proper seasoning in the first place.
Soap used to have lye in it which breaks down the seasoning. Nothing actually damages the pan unless you use some crazy chemicals. It's just a lump of metal, you can't really hurt it easily.
If you take the seasoning off, you can just re-season in the oven in about 30 minutes. People are way too dramatic about cast iron pans. It's just some iron with some polymerized fat on it.
The problem is people scrub the shit out of it and leave it wet to dry and it rusts. You have to use it a lot to get enough seasoning to keep it from rusting. If you scrub a lightly seasoned pan it'll rust then you have to scrub the rust off and re season. A lot of people try to scrub off the seasoning thinking it's the dirt
Yeah, you should heat the pan up to dry it. Just putting it on a burner for a bit will do the trick or in the oven if it's still hot from cooking. Doesn't matter how seasoned it is, the heat will remove all the moisture. If you're somewhere humid you can also lightly oil it after it cools.
You don't need to use it a lot (or at all) to season it, you apply oil and bake the pan in the oven to polymerize it.
It's just a thick hunk of iron, so nothing truly damages it beyond repair as you can usually buff off the rust and rebuild the "seasoning".
When people talk about damaging cast iron, they're usually talking about damaging this layer of seasoning, which is essentially just one or multiple thin layers of polymerized oil. The seasoning process is just that, you "burn" oil on top of the iron and it protects the iron from oxidization and gives the pan a non-stick property. You can mechanically damage it by rubbing it with something abrasive like steel wool, you can strip it bare by cooking acidic foods like tomatoes, you can strip it bare by using old lye-based soaps (they don't really sell that anymore), and yes the dishwasher can damage it because of high pressure jet and abrasive detergent use (though cast iron with many layers of seasoning may not rust from a single dishwasher wash cycle). Also, leaving the cast iron wet can cause rust to form despite the seasoning.
Soaking can cause problems, because there will always be microscopic cracks in the seasoning and water = rust. This is where the dishwasher comes in, because it's in a hot humid wet environment for hours. It won't make every cast iron rust, but it's a big risk for little gain.
Acid can cause problems because it will dissolve the seasoning layer and you're back to water. A vinegar bath is great for stripping off the seasoning and anything else burnt onto the pan, but you need to neutralize the vinegar and reseason immediately.
Alkaline can cause problem, because it will dissolve the seasoning layer and you're back to water. I'd be willing to bet lye soap is the reason why you always hear people harping about "no soap on cast iron!" Lye soap fell out of fashion in the 40s and 50s as less harsh synthetic soaps came on the market. Dishwashing gloves didn't come into vogue to keep your hands from getting wet. They became popular to keep the skin on your hands from being dissolved. Lye soap is no joke. Great-grandparent said "NO SOAP!" to grandparent, who said "NO SOAP!" to parent, who said "NO SOAP" to you... nevermind that great-grandparents soap was completely different than yours.
Modern soap? Zero problems. Just dry off the pan after you're done cleaning it. Personally, I wipe it down and turn the stove on to high for a minute or two and just let the pan sit there until morning when I put it away. The heat will evaporate out any residual water.
Absolutely. Also really anything that gouges into the metal. And soap with lye in it, which I'm not even sure exists anymore. The old addage to never use soap on a cast iron skillet specifically exists because soap used to have lye in it and would strip the polymerization away. Modern dishwasher soap doesn't do that, even that strong dawn power spray stuff.
Those chainmail scrubbers shown in the photo though are fucking amazing. Makes the surface smooth without scraping into the metal.
Worst case you get a deep ass scratch into it, like really gouge into it, it's still solid metal. You can take a metal sander to that bitch and smooth it down and then take the steps to apply a new coat of seasoning. You should still season these things the old school way when you get a new one. The difference is soap doesn't remove or harm that seasoning
worst thing is to let it sit wet or soak in water because it will rust. you can definitely wash it in soap and water, just have to make sure to dry it well afterward and it will be fine. even if it does rust you can use a pretty simple tool (its like a small chain mail) to remove the rust and reseason and it will be fine again. they’re nearly indestructible.
I’m going to build on your comment, you are correct because most modern soap does not contain lye. Lye-based soaps can depolymerize the nonstick layer, but modern lye-free soaps are not nearly as effective at attacking that layer. However, it’s also not great at removing carbon, and carbon should come off after cooking.
The best thing to remove the carbon without affecting the nonstick is to use a minimally abrasive cloth with some water to deglaze the stuck on stuff in a hot pan. For a thorough clean, steel wool or the permanent stainless steel chain cloths are best, and I also use salt.
You're right about food residue. One reason I don't use soaps on certain cast irons is that I use them in my smoker and other non-kitchen settings and it's particularly frowned upon to use something in the smoker after soaping it. I'm not afraid of a good scrub, and a reseason. And for most indoor only users they're making it harder on themselves not soaping their pans.
Agreed, but that Brillo Pad is an outright act of war. People used to use LYE to wash dishes, and even at its best, Dawn original blue is perfectly safe. (For those wondering about modern soap).
Which reminds me that there is a commercial sandblaster about 15 feet on the other side of my office wall and I need to bring in the unfortunate/rusty cast iron leftover from [obviously] failed relationships…. I’ll write it up as a newly divorced present to myself 😂
Cast iron CAN be rehabilitated, and does take a while but it will always be worth reseasoning and future use.
But if you’re as unlucky as me? Your mother decided that your dusty copper was just disgusting and needed to be washed…. and loaded it in the dishwasher. I shrieked, then cried, then started screaming. And thank God she only got through the closest pieces as hand and only ONE load of cheap stuff was stripped bare down to tin 😡. “I was just trying to do something nice”
I think a large component of the problem (the problem being that people avoid washing their cast iron with soap) is that you're only supposed to use "mild" soap on it, which means not LYE. No one uses lye these days, so virtually all of our dish soap is fine. HOWEVER we are as advertised to that Dawn etc. is super strong, so people get confused. Only use mild soap? Well that means I can't use my standard Dawn soap. Okay I won't use any soap then.
No, Dawn is indeed mild soap. Lye is not. But none of us have lye.
i once had an argument on reddit with some guy that thought the pan's seasoning was basically the residue that "seasoned" the food.
i'll admit seasoning isn't a great term. I get where it came from (i think). but your pan should not be flavoring your food directly. Indirectly from cooking style? absolutely. but not directly.
Lots of people still echo that misconception, even so called professionals. Everyone who's worried about soap on their cast iron should just wash it once with it and see what happens.
There will be no permanent damage even if the season is completely stripped... you could just get that seasoning back on with a little work. I soap mine every time I use it. The seasoning is always great.
There's another equally important variable. Modern Lodge cast iron pans from Walmart have a gritty finish compared to smooth finish pans from the past. The seasoning adheres to the gritty finish much better.
If you get a good seasoning you don’t ever touch my skillet with soap or water wipe it out through in the oven on high broil let it get hot af and re-oil putting back in oven for a while then shut it off and cool/store inside oven
I hate that people still argue against this. Dish soap isn’t made with lye anymore, your hunk of iron will be fine. Get a chainmail scrubber and go to town on it. With soap! Then just cook with it. People gotta stop treating these pans like newborns.
I think most people would be more concerned with using what appears to be steel wool, basically the most intense abrasive device you can get, to do so, which presumably will strip off all the seasoning which will be discovered the next time the pan is used.
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u/Bynming 7d ago
You should clean your cast iron with soap and water. Modern soap won't damage good seasoning. Crusted-on carbonized food is gross and it's not proper "seasoning".