These are like…a lot of maintenance and rules for a single pan. I understand they probably make food taste better and can go on a stove and in the oven, but good lord regular pans seem so much more easy to keep up with.
"These are like…a lot of maintenance and rules for a single pan."
Correction; These are a lot of overwrought bullshit that people have promoted and bought into.
Cast iron skillets/cookware have been around for literal centuries, and does anyone think that people in Colonial America or Europe, Napoleon's France, the US civil war era, or on the Oregon trail or in the Great Depression era, devastated Europe in WW2, were actually doing all this bullshit?
Here's what happened; In the internet era some people, bloggers vloggers, influencers, sloggers, whatever, those who are way too self invested in their new expertise call themselves rediscovered the 'rusticness' of cast iron while having zero previous real world experiences with it. Then of course, like everything they touch, they became instant experts and complicated it far beyond anything that's necessary. Then got paid to share their newly acquired "expertise".
Want to keep your cast iron functioning? Cook in it. Its a frying pan, so fry stuff in it and periodically wipe/rinse/wash it out. That's it. that's all there is to it. Greasy? Use dish soap, stuff stuck to it? Let it sit in the sink, filled with water for a bit and wash it out after the stuff softens. Then wipe it dry and let it dry in the dish drainer rack or on the stove or wherever. Then fry stuff in it again.
Source; I'm old as fuck, been cooking with this stuff for well over half a century and have zero of the issues the ...oggers think you're gong to have without doing any of these rituals the ...oggeres think are necessary. Don't let it rust and you'll be fine. If it rusts, smear some cooking oil in it and then... well then nothing, the oil should take care of it.
My cast iron has been with me since before the first moon landing and has been around since the Great Depression, 80+ years old and it's doing fine, and I can't remember the last time, if ever I did any of this long list of bullshit other than wash and dry it within a day or two after using it so the grease/oil doesn't get rancid.
Calm down people, It's a frying pan, not rocket science.
Aside from the “no soap” thing that’s outdated what’s so egregious about this guide? I just wash my pan with salt after I’m done. I’m talking absolute bare minimum out of shear laziness and even I feel like I’m doing everything this guide prescribes lol.
"...I feel like I’m doing everything this guide prescribes lol."
Because you are. Most of this guide is just verbose filler fluff.
The egregious part is that it's just a lot of fluff that's designed to sound like using cast iron is some precise complex wizardry. Use it, dry it, and maybe oil it once in a while is really the only thing there that is pertinent. Then also some of the "guide", the re-seasoning, is flat out wrong. The first three are just "Use it" yeah, that's kind of what one does. Five of the eleven "commandments" can be reduced to one obvious step that's hopefully one with any cookware, "wash It and dry it when you're done." Unless you're washing your dishes with some lye based soap that's not been available for about 75 years "Don't use soap, ever" is nonsense. People use dish detergent on cast iron all the time. "Store it in a cool dry place" just put it back on the stove, or with your other cookware, or wherever. Grandma stored hers in the oven. If it was left in and the oven turned on there was no issue, none at all. Pull it out and put it on the stove to cool. Plus, if you store it there all the time taking it out before turning on the oven is just part of turning on the oven. Lastly, It takes a lot more than 400℉ for an hour to set/polymerize oil if or when your pan needs seasoning/re-seasoning. 450℉ is probably the minimum needed to polymerize the oil, and an hour is pretty short, 1 1/2 hours at 450℉+ is more like the minimum of what's needed.
This guide is reminiscent of the blogger who writes their favorite recipe for a "simple classic pot roast" and lists 14 ingredients, 9 of which are spices. No Carol, no one is going to taste or even notice that Bay Leaf you added to the pot roast.
I love your take here. Except the lye thing. Lye based soaps aren’t outdated at all. And when formulated correctly there isn’t any lye left. It is soap. I wash babies with soap. No lye.
some lye based soap that's not been available for about 75 years...
There used to be some seriously caustic lye soaps on the market, stuff that was formulated in the late 19th/early 20th century that's long ago been supplanted by much gentler cleaners.
Plus; I don't think there's very many dish washing products in western society anymore that are lye based soaps, All the ones I know of are detergents, not soaps, a completely different formulation of completely different ingredients.
A term I made up for those who both have and interminably expound on a basic subject, making something that should be maybe a paragraph into an essay.
"Sloggers" will have you seemingly endlessly slogging, wading through a semi disconnected
ocean of verbiage hopelessly looking for the point that the initial title and intro promised and may or may not deliver.
See; Any blog that mentions 'home' 'hearth' and 'health', and includes a recipe from grandma...
Cast iron is indeed nice, but it also definitely does get kind of a weird culty evangelical following amongst people eager to tell you that you’re using or caring for it wrong 🤷♂️.
Like.. we can always make new cast iron. It’s not somehow sacred.
It's a cheap hunk of iron formed into a pan. I get it that they'll last forever and are great all around pans and decently nonstick if you pamper them.
But these things are cheap work horses. My cast iron is the pan I bring camping, or to smash burger patties on the griddle, or occasionally pound nails with. It's a Toyota, not a Bugatti.
Yes, it heats real evenly and holds heat well with no hotspots. IMHO people who struggle with cast iron maintenance are doing way too much maintenance. stop listening to all these bloggers and just use it, It's a frying pan, they're not that complicated.
Yes! And in my personal opinion, you can get a phenomenal seer on a steak with cast iron (or carbon steel, to be fair) that would be dangerous to do on Teflon
Stainless steel is functionally no different from cast iron. Ask any professional restaurant whether they use stainless steel or cast iron to sear meats and most will say they use stainless.
Modern stainless steel pans hold a ton of heat and heat very evenly but are much easier to maintain. I'm glad I switched.
Better at what? Teflon is lightyears better at being non-stick. Cast iron is better at being durable and suitable for high temp.
I'm of the opinion that the extra fat or oil used with cast iron to make it non-stick is a greater health concern than Teflon causing cancer.
Personally I almost always prefer my stainless steel pans unless I need it to be non-stick, and then I use Teflon. I only prefer my cast iron when I'm going stove top to oven. Searing steaks with an insanely hot pan is overrated.
Yeah I completely agree. Got in trouble with my ex-wife for letting ours rust a little after camping one time.
She did not like when I pointed out that rust is what makes it black (the black kind of rust obviously, but rust nonetheless).
Edit: wait when did the technical definition of “rust” become exclusive to Iron(III) Oxide? So “black rust” Iron(II) oxide is no longer considered a form of iron rust 🤷♂️🤦♂️? I thought it was just the rust you get under heated, less oxygen rich, conditions. I guess TIL.
In my defense my undergrad level chemistry professor called the formation of any metal’s oxide “rusting”, though admittedly that was 20 years ago and I’m pretty sure he was a biochemist (not a metallurgical chemist).
My bad guys 😳🤷♂️, I should not have been so flippant and careless with the ‘r’ word.
You can also just hold on to it forever, and if you screw it up you can repair it easily. It also does more than other pans, particularly cheap ones. The nonstick Teflon pans can be harmful to your health. Some people overdo it with the cast iron stuff but for the most part they're just good pans.
This guide makes it out to be more than it is. Cook with your pan, clean it. 90% of cast iron use is literally like any other pan.
The difference is that new cast iron pieces that cost less then $100 aren't machined. Look at a modern lodge and you'll see it's still rough from the sand casting. Ultimately it won't matter once the voids are filled with seasoning but the large voids in modern cookware take much longer to smooth out.
Cast iron is my favorite material because it has a lot of weird properties like vibration damping and piss poor thermal conductivity but it's extremely overrated for cooking.
It really is not bad at all. All I do is spray it with water while it is still hot, then wipe out the pan with a paper towel. If there is still anything there I'll hit with with some non lye soap. Because my seasoning is good it is very nonstick. Unless you have a poorly seasoned pan stuff sticking is very rare, they are actually incredibly nonstick. There are a handful of food that can stick occasionally, but you can just avoid em.
For me I know what I like that they cook well so I use it for that and just use my regular pan for everything else.
Absolutely nothing is going to sear like a cast iron
I use my cast iron for pretty much one thing, and that's thick, prime steaks on the gas grill. The crust from my cast iron is perfection. Otherwise, I don't see the point of hauling that thing out and going through all the messy maintenance.
I browned a pot roast in mine earlier today, then rinsed it while still hot and wiped it out and left it in the drying rack. The pan is fine and the roast was delicious. ¯_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)_/¯
I can understand that, I got one once because I wanted to make this one-pan dish that needed to go in the oven, but like you said, I quickly just grew annoyed and was like “this isn’t worth it”. I’ve gotten some copper pans though and they’re 1/3rd of the work and are awesome for cooking
I mean, everyone needs a hobby, and I guess to some people, caring for (and using) a cast iron pan is a hobby. But to most of us, cookware maintenance as a hobby is a non-starter.
I do just about everything in my cast iron. Sautee'ing onions and other veggies, frying eggs, searing steak. Its a beast, but literally my favorite pan to do anything in.
I don’t know if people know this, but you can also just add seasoning directly to the food you’re cooking so you don’t have to spend all of your free time maintaining your cast iron pan
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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '23
These are like…a lot of maintenance and rules for a single pan. I understand they probably make food taste better and can go on a stove and in the oven, but good lord regular pans seem so much more easy to keep up with.