even putting it on the top rack, instead of the bottom where the pots go. Masterfull attention to detail in trolling.
¯\(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
What weirdo takes a picture of their dirty dishes and posts it to the Internet? I’m unreasonably angry, mission accomplished.
Unseasonably mad
I am in flavor of this.
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.
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.
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
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.
Nothing else can blacken the steak crust to my satisfaction without inadvertently overcooking the middle.
Cooking at such temperatures is really bad for you. It will give you literal ass cancer eventually.
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. :)
Also don’t temp shock them, they can warp
Ah, true. That one’s become so ingrained for cooking in general that I don’t really think about it. Putpan on low/medium heat, toss in a bit of oil and let the heat get even then swirl the oil. Adjust heat to desired level and cook.
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.
I use the washer and then let it sit wet over night to bring out its natural paprika seasoning.
Nazgûl screeches intensify
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.
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.
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).
Modern soaps/detergents don’t contain lye, which is what ruins the seasoning. It’s the humid drying of a dishwasher that causes it to rust. Nothing to with the detergent.
Dawn has lye, that’s why it works so well
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!
Whatsa matter? You don’t like your pancakes to taste like last nights steak?
I just wash it as normal, you just need to re-fry/season it once in in 3-5 months or so. People that don’t wash it usually let it become rusted and dirty as well.
Shouldn’t need to reseason it if you are just using dish detergent like Dawn.
lol I got seasoned by 101 men at an airbnb and cried
Also throw in the metal fork you used to scrape your expensive non-stick pan.
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 champI know you’re a troll but the idea of cooking on a dish soap infused cast iron is filthy lol
I’m not a troll. But the amount of magical thinking around cast iron amuses me to no end.
“dish soap infused” lol. Tell me, are your kitchen knives “infused” with soap, too?
Yeah he’s a panoisseur. I wash mine with soap too lol. But I use the lemon scented shit so my soap infused food is always citrusy fresh.
Yeah, soap doesn’t hurt a fucking thing, If I just cooked with a seed oil or bacon or something I’d be inclined just to let it burn off, But if I cooked noodles or pasta or garlic or anything fragrant on there, I’d soap and scrub the piss out of it. I just make sure to throw it back on the fire and get it past 212 if it’s been wet.
Lol I’m not religious about it or anything, but it’s porous unlike other cooking materials, so yeah, I don’t put soap on it
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.
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.
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.
I wash mine with Dawn soap and hand dry it,
Yeah, I think the big hangup for a lot of people is that detergents used to contain lye which would react with the steel. No longer the case. Folks will seriously refuse to clean their pans which is gross AF.
dawn literally has lye in it
React with the steel… in the cast iron? I’m confused
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think maybe sometimes I burn the seasoning from cooking with too high heat?
That will happen around 450-500F. One method of stripping seasoning is to run it through an oven self-cleaning cycle.
Ahhh I probably get it over 500 for a big sear. Kinda crazy that my stove’s burner can get there even on medium.
If you want it that high, I would suggest using wok seasoning methods instead of cast iron. Basically, you “blue” the pan (develop a black iron oxide layer) by holding it at 550F for an hour or so. You’ll burn off the oil every time you use it, but the black oxide layer is relatively non-stick. This will work better with carbon steel than cast iron.
Alternatively, you might consider an even heavier pan, to hold a 400-450F temperature even longer.
The burner will get well over a thousand. Without something cooling it off, a pan can overheat even on low.
You would probably like cast iron more if you stopped committing war crimes against it.
