People treat their cast irons as if they're fine china. The reality is they've been used for hundreds of years for cooking, without complicated maintenance routines. You can do pretty much whatever you want with them (within reason) and they'll still turn out fine. Yes, soap is fine, as is a mildly abrasive scrub.
A few years ago while visiting a friend, we made some mongolian bbq after a long day of hiking. I started chopping up veggies and asked him to get his skillet. He pulled out the nastiest monstrosity I'd ever seen: a fuzzy green skillet that by volume was more alive than not.
It turns out he takes his cast iron abuse to a new level: as soon as he's done with it and it's cooled, he puts it away, not even scraping food into the garbage. When he needs it again, he just cranks up the heat until it's billowing smoke, at which point he scrapes the char away from it.
I can't get behind that approach, but knowing my friend, I have no doubt that he's been doing that for two decades or more.
There is a huge difference between "incredibly carcinogenic" and "potentially carcinogenic".
Basically everything that comes out of a pan or fryer and is even slightly darker than "basically raw" will have some carcinogenic compounds. Frying any biomatter will create some measurable quantity of carcinogens, depending on the temperature and composition. First you will get the likes of Acrylamide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (e.g. Furan), Amines. In the presence of salt, spices, certain oils you can get even nastier stuff like Dioxines. And if you heat it even further, getting a few black spots, you are left with basic carbon. Even that isn't harmless, carbon modifications that you will produce in some minute quantity, like nanotubes and fullerenes, are carcinogenic.
Denaturing hydrocarbons like in cooking will inevitably produce some of the above compounds, there is no way around it. You can try to avoid producing some of them by carefully steering conditions in a way that reduces some of the above compounds. But usually that increases the risk of other ones being produced. You can also undercook everything, but then you'll be left with unsafe food because of the bacterial risk.
All of the above are carcinogenic in (comparatively) huge quantities. Usually "in mice". The link to cancers caused by preparation of food is vague at best, totally speculative at worst. I don't worry about it, and neither should you.
If you really want to learn about risky foodstuff, read up about cyanide in almonds and other fruits with a stone (people even eat that stuff "for health reasons"..., e.g. https://www.webmd.com/cancer/cancer-apricot-seeds ), coumarin (basically an anticoagulant, in higher doses rat poison) in cinnamon, tonka beans and woodruff, and the funny flourinated compounds you get from overheated PTFE-coated cookware (the presence of acid lowers the "fun" temperature but at least might prevent production of gaseous hydroflouric acid). There, the risky dose is much much much closer to the usual kitchen use. In comparison, all of the kitchen cancer scare is harmless.
> Denaturing hydrocarbons like in cooking will inevitably produce some of the above compounds, there is no way around it. You can try to avoid producing some of them by carefully steering conditions in a way that reduces some of the above compounds. But usually that increases the risk of other ones being produced. You can also undercook everything, but then you'll be left with unsafe food because of the bacterial risk.
You can use the sous vide approach, cooking to the safe temperature and no higher.
But browning is tasty and the cancer contribution is very low.
Yep the "sous-vide" thing has been reported to me as the safest approach by a lab specializing in the design of new food for top cooks and industrial food.
But you have to buy new cookware... And theses things are not exactly cheap (if you want something that works reliably)...
When I was low on funds I prepared a quasi sous vide with an ice chest and just manually adding hot water every ~20min (hot tap water is close to enough, you only have to boil like one extra pot). I cooked it a few degrees (F) hotter because the temperature variation was greater than a commercial unit and I was a bit concerned about food safety, but the outcome was similar.
Nowadays you can get a model that clips onto one of your pots and works great for under $70. It is a bit specialized, but I use mine a lot.
Sous vide is relatively inexpensive. You just need a container big enough (plenty of people use plastic or styrofoam coolers) and entry level Sous vide machine are a little over $100 last I checked. All the device does is recirculate water and it heat up to a certain temp for a few hours. Not much to them.
"It's incredibly carcinogenic" if you go completely overboard when using vegetable oils. As the ift.org article you linked to explains:
> First of all, cooking with vegetable oil in the home (frying or sautéing) presents very little risk as the oil is typically used only once and heated for a short period of time (often less than 10 min). It is also possible to control the temperature of the oil, which should not exceed 190°C (374°F) and is best heated to 180°C (356°F) or lower. The oil should also not be heated at or above the oil’s smoke point.
Then it explains that the actual risk is from frequently consuming deep fried meals produced commercially.
I appreciate where you are coming from but I have seen cast iron that folks "did what they wanted with it" and it wasn't pretty. From rusted through holes to massive pitting that made them food safety nightmares.
My point being that, as with any tool, there are practices that will limit the lifetime of the tool and eventually render it unfit for its intended purpose. Learning about the best practices for using a tool can help avoid that fate.
My experience, as long as you cook with plenty of fat each time, the pan gets a kind of a re-season when you cook with it, and it'll hold up to most kinds of cleaning.
People who don't cook with plenty of fat, they have problems.
Exactly. It’s pretty normal for Chinese families to boil or steam with iron wok and then wash with liquid soap. Many cook for years without knowing iron wok can rust. I guess it’s because the main dishes here are mostly high-temperature sir-fries. On the other hand, when I started to reduce fat consumption and cooking temperature, my wok began to rust pretty quick.
Agreed, we typically put about 1/2" of water in them, bring it to a vigorous boil, pour it off and then wipe down the pan with a few drops of olive oil.
in my experience that's fine as long as you don't cook a lot of acidic food in it or a short period of time, like simmering tomatoes multiple days in a row and end up eating the seasoning off the bottom of the pan. (curry with a tomato base one day, spaghetti sauce the next, and then more for some south western dish i don't recall, it ate all the seasoning and had to completely re-season it)
Been there, tried that. It's based on faulty observations and conclusions, and results in a fragile seasoning that flakes off easily.
Matfer Bourgeat and De Buyer both recommend frying up a batch of potato peels in plenty of oil and too much salt, until the peels are very dark. Doesn't matter which kind of oil, salt or potatoes. Move them around and scrub them on the pan with your spatula while frying. When done, clean the pan with hot water.
Then just use the pan. The only things you really shouldn't do are soaking it or putting it in the dishwasher. Simmering acidic foods like tomato sauce is not great, but also not the end of the world.
The biggest contributing factor to make food not stick is to properly preheat the pan and not be afraid of oil/butter.
I have successfully seasoned two cast iron pans with flax oil. That was 6 layers, baked on, and it was 15 years ago. The seasoning is still solid, doesn't flake, and is pretty much non-stick. If your flax oil seasoning is flaking, I think you are probably using too much oil - after oiling and before baking, you need to wipe off as much oil as you can; the pan shouldn't glisten at all.
I also have a De Buyer carbon-steel pan, which I tried to season the same way; total failure. I had to strip off the failed seasoning. I now just use it with fat, clean it with hot water and detergent, and dry it carefully. All is good.
Please don't assume that I don't know what I'm doing, that's very impolite.
I seasoned the pan exactly as recommended: Very clean pan, stripped of previous seasoning, super thin layers of oil, barely visible on the surface, heat for 1 hour, cool for 1 hour, then repeat oil and heat/cool. And I used high-quality fresh flaxseed oil, not some old oxidized stuff.
It's a complete waste of time, when frying up some potato peels takes ~15 minutes and gives a sturdier result. It may not be as pretty or uniform, but it works, and how cast iron/carbon steel pans are prepared in every professional kitchen I know of. They don't have time to faff about, seasoning pans doesn't pay the bills. Cooking does.
I tried that, multiple very thin coats, and it all flaked off down to bare metal. Flaxseed is too hard. Regular old canola oil works great. I make scrambled eggs in mine when we go camping. I got a nice, food-grade flaxseed oil.
The other myth is that the pebbly surface is non-stick. I used to work at a casting plant, that's the natural finish from sandcasting. That doesn't mean it's functional. Sanding down the casting surface to a smooth working surface takes less than an hour and lasts a lifetime.
This isn’t seasoning. This is painting on a layer of polymerised oil. You may get good results but it’s a different technique to fully saturating the iron with liquid oil.
Heating while you do it makes a convection pattern that hinders the process. Air drying for a few days between coats works better but, again, traditional seasoning by regularly oiling (using) the pan is more trad for iron / steel.
For oak though, drying oils that produce a polymerised surface make a fantastic finish. Add thistle oil, sunflower oil and soya oil to your flaxseed (linseed) oil, or just buy this:
Is this polymerisation thing a proven fact ? Is this chemically right ? I saw that quite often but nobody ever sounded like a chemist, so I'm a little scared of burning oil in my cookware...
The point is to have the pan well-seasoned, which requires fat but doesn't add (significant?) fat to your food, then it doesn't take as much fat to keep the food from sticking.
Some users claim flaxseed oil is the ideal oil for seasoning cast iron, as it is a drying oil w/ a high smoke point. https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5820-the-ultimate-w... Others claim the "drying oil" is an incorrect theory, and that the polymerized oil from a drying oil is a coating that would flake off, rather than the desired bonding with the cast iron.
Point of order: linseed oil is flax oil. The flax plant is where we get the fibers that become linen. Linen seed -> linseed.
There are a couple other drying oils, but my understanding is that they're more used in oil painting than wood finishing [0].
Also note that modern boiled linseed oil is not the same as the historic product, which as I understand it, was made by boiling linseed oil with white lead. The modern stuff is partially polymerized by heating it in the absence of oxygen.
Disclaimer: I am not a chemist or finish chemistry expert. I'm just a woodworker who sometimes reads about this stuff. Bob Flexner is an excellent author for anybody interested in further reading.
I googled some pictures, and yeah, that's appalling. I just have no idea how it happens. I have abused my Lodge cast iron for the better part of a decade and it's totally fine.
Perhaps a lot is implicit in my "within reason" that some people willfully violate.
I suppose putting them through a dishwasher cycle, then putting them into pantry dry with no oil, and then leaving it there for a few weeks would be one way to get there.
This is so true. I picked up a "ruined" cast iron griddle for free at a garage sale and used a surface grinder on it to get back to the metal, re-seasoned it, and now its the camping griddle.
I think the food safety concerns are a bit exaggerated. I guess you could get some sort of mold in there. Most safety concerns are alleviated because the pan is presumably heated through regularly on account of it being a pan. Maybe I suffer from a lack of imagination regarding the magnitude of the pitting.
> The reality is they've been used for hundreds of years for cooking, without complicated maintenance routines.
But they have been used routinely: They seasoned themselves just by being used and they never saw strong detergents. "Iron rusts" was obvious to everyone because one was confronted with it every day and thus the drying for the night or oiling/greasing to protect against humidity was a natural task.
Nowadays, when we don't use our one cast iron pot every day, we need to replace the routinely usage with a maintenance routine.
We have three cast iron skillets that see nearly daily use.
You are exactly right on this. Ours get, scrubbed, wiped, soaped, and cleaned as needed but just use and constant reseasoning is all it takes to make them look and cook gorgeously.
Our parents (in particular) are terrified of the damn pans. Of caring for them of using them. They have this trope in their heads that is just a feedback loop… they see them as fragile so they treat them as fragile so they become fragile.
Just cook at home more, preferably bacon. Lots of mechanical things are meant to be used, pans, cars, homes. Letting them sit unused causes more decay
Same. The only rule I have for mine is "oil it when you're done." I'm a guy who just never washed it. Scrape it, heat it with oil, rub it down...and done. My wife insists on washing it normally. Though well seasoned, it will absolutely surface rust in lot of places if not oiled after dried.
Our cast irons have a good seasoning and we never need to scrape them, no matter what we cook. A hard rub with a wet cloth, if necessary a few minutes soaking before that is the worst we do.
We did an initial oil (sunflower or rapeseed) or two, either on the flame or more likely in the oven, and my partner cooks with a lot of oil. No expert at all so maybe we have just been lucky so far, but it works.
It really depends on what you cook, and when you clean it.
If you can stay on top of it, you can usually just wipe it down with oil cloth while it's hot, and presto, like new.
If you run it too hot and dry and start burning something, and let it sit and cool...get the hammer and chisel.
I usually don't preseason my pans, as just cooking will take care of it over time. I do however take an angle grinder to the inside to get it glassy when new. Much easier to cook eggs on than that sandpaper Lodge gives you.
Today's soaps aren't damaging to cast iron and aren't powerful enough on their own to remove baked on seasoning. This myth persists because it used to be true, old soaps used lye and vinegar, which were effective at doing things you didn't want with a cast iron skillet/pan.
Did you try it? I didn't know better and tried it long time ago. Cast iron skillet that was used for years. After few times in dishwasher significant chunk of seasoning was gone.
While stainless steel is “dishwasher safe”, dishwasher detergent is still overly harsh, can cause discoloration, and will prematurely wear the pan surface.
> People treat their cast irons as if they're fine china. The reality is they've been used for hundreds of years for cooking, without complicated maintenance routines.
Cleaning with water and not-too-abrasive tool plus initial and periodic long heating with oil aren't complicated, they are just different from the convenient methods applied for more modern cookware.
+1 for chainmail scrub. Just a gentle, circular motion keeps the surface even and smooth, and removes any blackened food. I mostly cook with (salted) butter, and only ever use beech wood spatulas to lift. I also have a ribbed square pan which is more of a challenge...
I've had one for years. I use soap and a steel wool pad on it, dry it off on the stove and use some oil and maybe a bit of garlic in it afterwards. It's fine. No rust, no sticking or anything. Never had any problems.
As long as you don't leave it sitting wet there should really be no problem with them.
Makes things taste better. Garlic's tasty and full of oil. The flavour of the garlic infuses into the oil.
Depends on what you plan to cook though, probably wouldn't add it if I was planning on cooking pancakes or something. But a stirfry or anything like that.
I dunno I mean try it and see. It makes the oil you're seasoning the pan with taste like garlic, imparting garlic flavour into the food you cook. I'm not sure how else to say this more clearly. I enjoy the taste of garlic, so i like the extra garlic flavour, if you enjoy extra garlic flavour, this is a way to impart some extra while seasoning your pan. And you end up with a bit of extra crispy browned garlic to add to the meal.
I don't understand why cast iron skillets receive so much attention. They're great sure, but you straight up cannot do particular dishes well with them, like you can with stainless steel pans or a basic non-stick pan. You need all three in my opinion.
How you'd do pan sauces with anything but a stainless steel pan is beyond me. You can do it, but if you took care of your cast iron skillet the way people suggest, you can't get any fond to create the pan sauce.
And you cannot cook good eggs on anything but a non-stick pan if you're not working on a commercial, well-oiled skillet, which is a different beast all together. Shakshouka doesn't count.
No clue what people are talking about when they say you shouldn't clean your cast iron either, it's disgusting to me. It makes no chemical sense. Sure, you've got the pan seasoned, but as soon as you cook anything in it, it will transfer, and there's no amount of wiping that will prevent that. None. If you salt it, you will transfer salt.
Cook with it, clean it thoroughly with soap like you would anything else, dry it immediately, and then just use it again. Any amount of neutral oil you use to cook with it in the future is going to effectively do the same job as seasoning it. Occasionally seasoning it should be fine if you have to restore it for some reason, but you'll end up washing it again anyway.
I agree with the notion that it's strange to treat cast iron with such esteem when it's far easier to screw up stainless steel and have to restore that, which is far more labor intensive.
>> And you cannot cook good eggs on anything but a non-stick pan.
Disagree completely. And I’m not the worlds biggest cast iron fan that swears by them either, I usually prefer stainless. But for eggs I will 100% of the time reach for my cast iron. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve reached that “mythical” non-stick level in my cast iron or what, but any thing from scrambled to sunny side up work great in mine, and I never have problems, and the pan acts pretty much non stick. Heat the pan to the correct temp (I don’t over heat like u suggest is necessary), and use of butter are probably they key. Along with a “well seasoned” pan. Which as u can tell from this thread, there is much debate on how to get there…
> And you cannot cook good eggs on anything but a non stick pan if you're not working on a commercial, well-oiled skillet, which is a different beast all together.
Disagree strongly on this. I cook fantastic over-easy egg on my cast iron skillet.
> No clue what people are talking about when they say you shouldn't clean your cast iron either, it's disgusting to me. It makes no chemical sense.
These people are wrong (and were likely misled by bad internet articles. I know I was about 15 years ago)
The main reason I started using cast iron was because I switched from a gas stove to an electric and my food just would not turn out. I could not get a good amount of browning. Cast iron mysteriously fixed the issue. I tried a clad pan with little improvement.
It took some time to figure out but I realized I was crashing the pan temperature. This wasn't an issue as much with gas because the heat was always on. But an electric stove cycles. Many clad pans are built with an inadequate amount of core material. Such is the case with All-Clad's D3 pan wich only has about 1.6mm of aluminum if I recall.
I now use a mixture of iron and clad pans. But it took some research to find a clad pan with a thick core of aluminum. I use All-Clad D7s which are out of production but can be found on overstock sites or used occasionally.
I love my D7s too. These are the only clad pans I’ve found that are almost as good as cast iron when searing or browning. There’s apparently a Demeyere line sold in Europe that’s on par with D7 as well.
I totally think you can. You just have to bring the heat up on cast iron in a way that you do not have to do on non-stick, and I don't want fry-crusted edges on my over easy (or over medium) eggs.
I often reach for stainless for sauces because the fond comes right off and you can scrub it clean, but you can absolutely get a fond on cast iron, even deeper than stainless. It’s just more of a mess to clean up if it doesn’t come off completely.
> And you cannot cook good eggs on anything but a non-stick pan
Pretty sure humanity cooked eggs before we decided to put Teflon on everything. Either iron or steel, you just need to preheat very well and use a bit of oil.
Now that you mention it, I think you probably could do nearly everything with just those two. I'm just not used to using a stainless in the oven whereas I instinctively turn to cast for that.
I have all three, for steaks/burgers I exclusively use the cast iron. Just doesn't brown as nicely on the stainless steel. Not sure if the same applies on gas/induction ovens though.
I've written pretty extensively in various cooking groups about caring for and maintaining cast iron. This article is pretty much true, but I take issue to some degree with their preference for "a little soap".
The author is absolutely right that most folklore about cast iron is grade A BS. Soap is one of those things. The thing most people seem to have missed is that dish soaps in the current era are significantly different from dish soaps even 30-40 years ago, much less at the turn of the century when most of the folklore of cast iron started being passed down from our great-great grandparents to their children.
You cannot damage the seasoning of a cast iron skillet using any amount of modern dish soap (Dawn, Palmolive, or similar) and a sponge designed for non-stick cookware (blue scotch sponge, not the green scratch pads). It simply cannot happen, because modern soaps are not caustic like lye-based soaps of the past, they are primarily synthetic surfactants and various alcohol-type solvents. Dawn and most dish soaps are specifically formulated to have a PH between 7-8, as a neutral cleaner.
Use as much soap and elbow grease as you need to make your pan clean. The most important thing to do is to ensure it's /really/ dry after you finish washing the pan, which can be done easily just by putting it back on a burner on low for 15-20 minutes while you do other things and then just turn the burner off. Water is the enemy of iron, because it causes rust. The seasoning helps prevent rust by creating a barrier against water, but if you soak a cast iron pan or fail to dry it sufficiently it can and will rust. Rust is what you're trying to avoid for surfaces other than the cooking surface. For the cooking surface, seasoning also builds to create a natural non-stick surface.
Cleaning shouldn't require much effort. For most cases, it's sufficient to pour some sea salt on the pan, scrub with a paper towel, heat the pan until it's quite hot, and then steam it with hot water from the tap, wiping dry (and removing the salt). Nonetheless, using modern dish soap is not going to hurt your cast iron in any way.
> Cleaning shouldn't require much effort. For most cases, it's sufficient to pour some sea salt on the pan, scrub with a paper towel, heat the pan until it's quite hot, and then steam it with hot water
That only works so-so for me. What always works is baking soda with a little bit of water and heat. The fat and meat residue just cooks off into the water and cleaning after that is a breeze.
Has anybody done a back of the envelope calculation regarding the energy efficiency of various cookware? Watt-hours delivered to the food / Watt-hours delivered to the cookware (+ Watt-hours spent for cleanup)
Maybe microwaves would win? Note that I'm not saying that should be the be all end all. I'm just curious. Although the amount of recipes that want you to crank up the oven just to brown half a cup of almond slivers is pretty annoying.
> Although the amount of recipes that want you to crank up the oven just to brown half a cup of almond slivers is pretty annoying.
I would definitely do that on the hob. Not even for energy efficiency, just.. why not? You can see them better, keep moving better, avoid burning better.
Also, not something you could do in a microwave! So the suggestion you didn't make really doesn't fly anyway, they have their place (defrosting and reheating something I made a batch of, for me) but they don't really replace anything. Arguably a kettle, but then so does a hob (and better).
It's not necessarily harmful, and it depends on your situation. Until very recently I cooked on a glass cooktop, and if you go straight to high with a cold pan you have a high risk of warping it (which you'll know if it spins on a flat surface) which makes it heat unevenly. If you use a gas cooktop, you kind of don't have to care as much. A warped cast iron pan still can cook just fine on gas, but it won't work as well on a ceramic cooktop.
Low temps guarantee you won't warp or crack the pan. But if you're not super worried about it, go ham.
I spent years messing around with cast iron pans (even restoring some beat up rusted ones).
My favorite cast iron pan is a pan that I literally polished SMOOTH with with a rotary sander.
It's impossible to build up a thick layer of seasoning on it, but it doesn't matter, because the surface is smooth. All you have to do is oil it before cooking. When you are done cooking, it's super easy to clean, and I have zero qualms about stripping all of the seasoning off the main bed using soap and water and whatever scrubber I want. The only important thing to remember is to lightly oil it before putting it away in the cupboard.
Being able to use soap on a smooth, non-stick, cast iron skillet is a game changer.
I also adopted this same approach when dealing with my carbon steel pans. I basically just don't even worry about seasoning anymore. Just make sure you oil the pan before you put it away.
I milled a pan flat once upon a time. Not worth it. The smooth iron with the thin coating is a nifty party trick but it doesn't outperform the other four crappy eBay pans in the set that I didn't do that to and which built up a coating.
I don't do any preheat, post heat or regularly scheduled seasoning BS, I just have a terrible diet that's high in fat. Not even eggs stick. I clean with soap and a sponge if that matters.
I used to have a Finex pan that was glass smooth. Eggs stuck to it like it was stainless steel (which is also very smooth). And I could never get a good season on it.
You have to preheat the pan, just like you do with steel. I make eggs almost every day in either an All-Clad D7 skillet or a Field cast iron skillet. You need to pre-heat the pan and then add fat/oil. You also should avoid high temperatures for delicate foods. I've been cooking this way for years and never have problems with eggs sticking. On my stove the burner goes to 10, I use 5-6 with a steel pan, maybe as low as 4, for eggs. After it gets hot enough (can tell by feel) I add a small pat of butter and swirl it around the pan and then set it back on the burner and wait for the butter to start to foam/bubble. Crack in your eggs, use a turner/spatula with a narrow enough edge you can get under without tearing them to flip. Easy peasy.
I have no problem with any of my Lodges. I was just commenting that I don't think smoothness has anything to do with non-stick. But you're right, going in hot is absolutely one of the keys.
Well, the myth says that cast iron is thicker and heavier, so the thought process is that if you get it nice and piping hot and then slap a steak in it, you will get a good sear as all that latent heat energy is released into the steak.
I never did any actual experiments to back this up though, so it's hard to say if it's true or not.
I did end up buying a set of stainless steel pans from Costco that were 5 layers of stainless steel and aluminum (basically Costco's answer to All Clad d5 pans), and those worked equally well for searing. Food stuck to them like crazy though, and I ended up just taking them back to the store.
My new favorite pans are my Misen carbon steel pans. They are truly incredible. I'm seriously considering just giving away all my other pans.
https://misen.com/products/carbon-steel-pan
> the main benefit of cast-iron cookware is its thick, heat-retaining material
The main benefit was that cast-iron could be made before steel was invented, it does not retain heat better than aluminum alloys. Cast-iron pans heat less evenly and must be made thicker than their aluminum counterparts.
Many stainless pans will have cast-iron handles because it conducts heat worse than steel or aluminum, and will not get hot to the touch as quickly.
> it does not retain heat better than aluminum alloys
You're missing the forest for the trees. Cast iron pans retain heat better than aluminum pans because cast iron pans are 4mm thick and aluminum pans aren't 6mm thick.
(Also it does retain heat better. [EDIT: by thickness, not by weight. The comment below is also correct.])
Thick aluminum can be amazing though, I have a nonstick pan with a near half inch thick aluminum disc base and it's a fantastic pan. It heats up up to medium and higher heat in about the time it takes me to turn on the range and get ingredients out of the refrigerator.
True. I borrowed a friend's top of the line Demeyere. It is a clad pan with a 4-5mm aluminum core. That pan could hold a lot of heat and dump it fast. It was too easy to burn your wrist just glancing it over the rim, even at conservative heat levels.
In the end, it didnt cook that much better than my All-Clad D7. So I just stayed with that. But I have never cooked with anything so brimming with heat and ready to pour it into absolutely anything that came into contact with it.
For most day-to-day cooking where you're ingredients are in direct contact with the pan over a burner (sautés, searing etc) heat retention can actually be bad (it's difficult to adjust the temperature). For specific tasks, cast iron excels, that's why you don't see a lot of copper deep fryers.
(This is mentioned in the 2 experiments that person runs in their kitchen that you posted)
>The main benefit was that cast-iron could be made before steel was invented, it does not retain heat better than aluminum alloys
Actually, both "steels" and "cast iron" are iron-carbon alloys, and we have evidence of quench hardened carbon-alloy "steels" thousands of years before the first cast iron pieces.
While we tend to think of bronze age as not featuring iron, the truth is that steel production dates back almost 4,000 years.
While cast iron cookware predates other steel cookwares, it's likely because it was far cheaper and easier to cast cast-iron into pot or pan shapes than it was to work mega-hot steels, which was reserved for much more expensive and important uses.
Isn't that wrought iron production? Too low of carbon content because the iron doesn't melt?
We started getting cast iron once we could get the temperature up to melting, then the optimized steels once we figured out how to add oxygen to the cast iron and burn out the excess carbon.
It's still possible to get higher carbon content out of a bloomery to get steel, but highly unlikely... And you'd get what, a nail's worth from 3 people's labour over a couple of days? {Mine the ore/grab it from a swamp, bake it, make charcoal, make the bloomery, run the bloomery, consolidate the bloom}
No, because they don’t mean “retain heat” in the same way you do. The goal is so that when you put something cold on a hot pan, it doesn’t immediately cool down, but rather that the surface stays hot and keeps searing your food. Thus, if the pan is not very conductive, the surface will cool down, and the heat “retained” in the interior of the pan will not be useful. In other words, the goal is to retain the hot surface, not the heat in general.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-metals-d_15... says that aluminum has twice the specific heat capacity of cast iron, and another page on that site says that it has about four times the thermal conductivity. So if your goal is to dump as much heat into your food as fast as possible, aluminum is definitely the way to go. But if you want slower heating, iron may be better.
When using pans, I don't particularly care if they are too thick bit I do care if they are too heavy. Aluminium pan could be lighter while having equal or greater heat capacity, if it were thick enough.
I don't know if such thick aluminium pans are available, though.
Internet Shaquille's video on this feels like it sums the whole thing up pretty well as well while having an above-average serving of sass free of charge.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGSDqXjoAsM
I bought a couple of cast iron skillets last year after decades of cooking on traditional non stick pans, and I must say I love them and regret not doing so much earlier.
It is amazing how, when well cared for they actually work better than most non stick pans I've used over the years. Sure there is a tiny bit more 'maintenance' required after use, but I actually enjoy the process (even if it was hard for me to deliberately NOT use soap during the cleaning process - a simple scrub out with a hot water & a stiff brush is all I do now before re-heating and re-coating with oil).
(The big secret for me was using high quality olive or flaxseed oils).
When you're ready for the next upgrade experience, try a clad pan (stainless on the outside, aluminum in the middle). You get the even heating of aluminum with the durability and ease of cleaning of stainless steel.
I cooked on cast iron for years before switching to clad. Cast iron's poor conductivity causes hot spots underneath the burner. With clad pans, you find yourself pushing the food around less to get even heat.
I often hear people say that cast iron conducts heat well, but that is easy to disprove if you have a gas burner: put some water in the pan and turn the heat up. You will see the water boiling in a pattern that matches where the flame hits the pan.
I like to fry frozen chicken in the cast iron pan, but it is always a bit of a nuisance that the center of the pan gets much less hot than the perimeter. My gas range has a fairly large burner with no flame in the middle.
There are a bunch of techniques to see the heating pattern of a pan and to show how poor cast iron is in that regard. I remember someone using parchment paper (maybe Harold McGee?). In looking I found someone suggesting a light dusting of flour [1]. Of course, an IR camera is the most obvious. I've also noticed water boiling in unique patterns, like you mention.
Be wary of clad cookware if you have a flat smoothtop electric range. In my experience clad cookware much more easily warps and refuses to sit flat, thus losing out on a lot of conductivity and efficiency. Clad is great with gas or induction though where sitting perfectly flat doesn't matter.
Or just stop using 7-10 on the dial (except for a boil). If there was a single thing that improved my cooking, it was learning to stop using Hi all the time.
The flat bottom clad cookware is the best for me on our smooth top electric range (which I do not like at all). Everything else has some amount of cupping so it’s just hot spot management even with our fancy heavy copper French cookware. But yes I make dang sure I do not warp our clad pans. They must be flat!
> even if it was hard for me to deliberately NOT use soap during the cleaning process
Not using soap is just a myth. The hard surface is not oil anymore. You don't want to abrade it off, but it isn't going to come off with a little bit of soap. My big "ah moment" came when i realized why our teflon pan was ruined. It became "seasoned" after someone overheated it with some low-smoke point oil in it. The black layer that formed in it is the same "seasoned" layer you get from oil in a cast iron pan.
I find my cast irons to be much lower maintenance than any other pan I’ve had. Cleaning is super easy, they are super durable and I’ve scrubbed them super hard with a bit of soap when necessary and the seasoning is still perfect.
Extra Virgin Olive oil is the one you definitely should NOT use as it does have a low smoke point. Pure olive oil has a higher smoke point and can be used, although other oils may be better.
The smoke point of Extra virgin olive oil (374–405) is too close to the temp you need to fry (350-375) and EVO has a very distinct taste which is not welcomed in most fried foods. Find some recipes or chefs that recommend frying with it - you wont.
The majority of chefs from countries bordering the Mediterranean would laugh at your claim that extra virgin olive oil is not suitable for frying. Obviously you shouldn't go using your fancy $100 bottle for deep frying, but mostly because it would be a waste of money, and because frying dulls the flavor. You want to save the really flavorful and expensive oils for salads and as a finishing touch.
I've been pan frying eggs, onions, pork chops, chicken, potatoes, fish, basically anything interchangeably in extra virgin olive oil and butter/ghee for decades. There is certainly a flavor difference, but that's because the olive oil is much milder in flavor than butter, and the process of frying dulls the flavor of the olive oil, as mentioned.
I - along with millions of people in countries bordering the Mediterranean - enjoy the flavor of food cooked in olive oil.
Adam Ragusea did a great video on the topic, with cited sources. I highly recommend watching it:
The bottom line is that extra virgin olive oil is more heat stable than other cooking oils with higher smoke points. Just don't use it to sear steaks or something.
So much of the conventional wisdom around cooking is not based on scientific fact, but rather on unsubstantiated observations and gut feelings. The viability of extra virgin olive oil for cooking is one of those pieces of faulty conventional wisdom, the need to sear steaks to "seal in the juices" used to be another big one, until we finally got the record set straight.
Welp, I took your recommendation and owe you an apology. Adam’s video was eye opening. I was clearly wrong on this and I’m glad you took the time to share these sources. Thank you.
It's an extremely interesting subject of research, which may hold a large part of the explanation for the apparent health benefits of the Mediterranean diet :-)
I believe the cheaper blended olive oils cause a lot of problems. I now use only pure, high quality olive oil (from Kalamata, Greece, where I visited a couple of years back and saw them make (and drink) the stuff) and have experienced far less oil burning issues in all my pans.
I often use salt and a sponge/paper towel to clean my pans. Works super well, doesn’t strip the seasoning, and this “secret” also works with enamel & non-stick cookware without damaging it.
It seems like a lot of people are cooking with poorly seasoned cast iron. Once it is actually seasoned, you can wash with soap, scrub it, store it without oil, and cook eggs in it without sticking. Poorly seasons pans are hard to clean, rust easily, and are a pain. I think modern cooks use lower heat and less oil, so are less likely to get a good seasoning.
Funny how this thread basically proves the author's point. Even with most of the replies that claim to agree with her, they include one or two "tips" on how to handle cast iron. If you collected all of the advice and tips in this threads into a single set of instructions, it would make zero sense. Somehow the internet has turned most basic piece of cookware into the most confusing thing in the kitchen.
I think what's fun about cast iron is that you have all this nonsense, and you basically have no choice but to figure it out as you go. There are no best practices because you can read the opposite advice from two reputable sources. It's almost like a pre-internet environment, and you just gotta try some stuff out and see what non-sticks.
There's a whole nonsense mythology that has been built up about how to treat cast iron (and carbon steel).
I think one of the biggest reasons is that people want an easy shortcut, when in reality the best thing to do is simply to use the pan a lot, and respect that it is iron and that iron will rust if you strip away the protective layer, so don't do that.
> There's a whole nonsense mythology that has been built up about how to treat cast iron (and carbon steel).
Yes but sorting out the sense from the nonsense is effectively impossible. You can find arguable authorities/experts that will say whatever point of view you want to find and validate: Soap is bad, soap is okay in small quantity, soap is fine; Use salt and oil to rub it clean, don't use salt and oil because you'll dig into the seasoning; you have to strip it down to re-season it, no you don't. It goes on and on. Literally everything about cast iron care is contested, and by people who are professionals in the kitchen/cooking business and "use them all the time and get great results" so they must be right, etc etc.
As a general rule of thumb, anyone who says you need to baby the pan and that the seasoning is "delicate", is wrong.
If it can't stand up to ordinary dish soap and even a bit of salt scrubbing to get out burnt bits, it is not properly polymerized and therefore not fit to cover the inside of my pan.
So keep using that pan, including washing it by hand, until a proper strong seasoning is achieved. Some things can't be rushed.
People don't want an easy shortcut (that's what modern stainless and nonstick are for). They want the yuppie street cred from doing it the Hard But Authentic(TM) way.
Except the "Hard Way" isn't hard; satainless isn't non-stick; and seasoned cast iron doesn't shed weird fluorine products into your food (when the PTFE flakes off, as it inevitably does within 5-10 years, it must be going into the food you eat).
I agree on all points but once you start talking about a class of consumer who could afford to (not that any specific one does) shop at Whole Foods facts matter far less than perception/reputation.
I don't agree that rough surface is no big deal. I bought a Lodge cast iron pan 20 years ago when Alton Brown was hyping them up on Good Eats. It's of the 'newer' generation from Lodge that come with a rougher casting from the factory compared to their much older and beloved pans. Even after 20 years of regular use it's still a rough surface and nowhere near as slick and shiny and nice as a pan you might find from an antique store.
It's still a great pan, but after using a slick surface pan I realized there is a big difference and better option out there. I still can't cook scrambled eggs in this 20 year old pan without a bit sticking and staying behind on the rough surface. Ultimate I switched to using carbon steel pans which are just as nice with heating but perfectly smooth and slick from the factory.
I bought an old Griswold cast iron skillet. It’s not my go-to pan for eggs, but for most everything else it is.
Excellent to sear meat from the sous-vide and surprisingly easy to clean compared to what I expected.
I did do a full strip with lye then intense heat and season essentially from scratch, but in retrospect I probably didn’t have to. (I was operating under the misconception that I had to in order to get a good low-stick surface.)
I believe the difference is that the inner surface has been milled flat using a milling machine.
One thing I wonder is if it's possible to get similar results by buying a cheap Lodge skillet and flattening the surface with a milling machine or a random-orbit sander.
I have about six pieces of cast iron. I milled one of them flat. I didn't do the others because the performance increase wasn't enough to be worth it. But my diet is full of fat and oil so ymmv.
It does appear that it was a post-casting milling step (the inside is smoother than the outside and handle), so you probably could replicate it. However, cast iron dust is abrasive (so it’s a pain for machine operators) and legacy cast iron is still fairly plentiful so it’s probably not worth the time and expense unless you were doing it for curiosity rather than to end up with a finished pan.
I cook eggs in a cast iron pan, and rarely have sticking.
- Heat the pan to cooking temperature (about 265 F for eggs) before adding butter. Don't overheat, eggs are not hamburgers. You don't need to sear them.
- You can basically just wipe the pan to clean it. Use hot water/bristle brush for any stuck-on remains.
Yeah, I've cooked eggs in cast iron for several years and I think a lot of the advice I see is wrong. You really have to get the pan fairly hot IMO, if they don't bubble as soon as you pour them in then I get a lot more sticking. But like you said, definitely not sear!
On my electric stove I let the pan warm up on medium heat for 5 minutes or so until the edges of the pan are good and hot, then add butter, let it almost brown for 30 seconds or so (if it burns the butter, too hot), then toss in the scrambled eggs which should immediately bubble and start cooking. Some quick stirring and you're done cooking in about 1-2 minutes for 2-6 eggs.
You can find other people in this thread swearing that the problem is using too much heat, and they cook their over-easy eggs on cast iron perfectly every time using low heat for longer, etc. Cast iron care and use opinions are a special class of amazing. You can find almost everything argued almost every which way.
Yeah, this is crazy to me. There is no difference between carbon steel, stainless steel clad, or cast iron in this respect. You preheat the pan until it reaches Leidenfrost and add fat or oil. Every single one, it’s the same.
This has been known scientifically for almost 50 years at this point. More people should get off the Internet and read Harold McGee
I also cook eggs and omelettes in cast iron and they basically never stick, even when I use little oil. The most important thing is learning to regulate heat. A cold or scorching hot pan can easily lead to avoidable disasters.
My cast-iron is perfectly non-stick (for eggs too) given I don't raise the temperature too much. In my experience, given enough heat, food will fuse to anything. If your food is sticking try cooking for longer at lower temps.
Of course sometimes you want the extra heat, like when you're searing a steak. In that case, to clean up I'll bring some water to a simmer and gently scrape the pan with my steel spatula. Then I pour the water out and dry/season. This seems more effective than soap/scrubbing and seems to better preserve the seasoning.
Often though, I won't even need to use water or the steel spatula. It's sufficient to bring the skillet to high heat and let the stuck food burn off, but this can sometimes cause air quality issues, so be sure to have a well-ventilated space.
For anything that has some level of moisture in it or is completely wet like eggs, you want the pan hot enough to show the Leidenfrost effect. Then you add an adequate amount of fat and crucially, the fat should also be allowed to preheat after you add it, until it's shimmering and maybe even has wisps of steam rising from it, for fats like olive oil and butter, which have some water content.
You know how people sometimes say "the first pancake never turns out right" or similar things? That's because the pan isn't preheated enough yet.
More food sticks because of too low heat, than because of too high heat, unless you turn your pan to really scorchingly high.
Solid article. A commenter here gave me some similar and excellent advice: just don’t clean up very much.
Iron is a sponge that simply needs to soak up oil. c.f. Oilite™ bearings, or your feet. Keep them constantly moisturised with oils and don’t let them dry out.
On another note, I love the look and feel of cast iron but the heat dissipation is crap compared to sandwiched metal pans. If you can make me a cast iron skillet with a copper core I will throw my money at you.
Does anyone know what the coating of 'granite' cookware is made from? On Wikipedia there's nothing, and I've noticed it seems to have replaced non-stick teflon pans in supermarkets. It's usually marketed as 'eco-friendly' and 'PFOA free'. I stayed in a couple of airbnbs that had this type of pans, and they seemed to work just like any other non-stick pan. The base seems to be a mixture of aluminium and steel (as it works on induction).
I exclusively cook on cast iron or stainless steel. They don't have any non-stick coatings and if Dark Waters taught me anything, I don't trust any non-stick coatings. In fact, one study found the Teflon alternatives to be a lot worse.
An alternative method for fully stripping a cast iron pan
is to put it in the oven and run a full self-cleaning cycle,
removing the pan when it is stilly fairly warm,
dusting out any carbon residue, and
then immediately seasoning it before it rusts.
Works well in an electric
oven, haven’t tried it in a self-cleaning gas oven. Search
online for more details, other opinions, videos. Still skeptical? Try it on the ugliest & cheapest thrift store
pan you can find as a test.
I received a cast iron pan from a college roommate 10 years ago. My wife and I still use the pan most days, and we know how to care for it with minimal work.
Apparently the pan is a classic Griswald. I was shocked that you can buy it for $600 on Ebay. The pan is better than my similarly sized carbon steel pans, but not by a great deal.
Honestly, I do that, and I'm just now finally getting a gas range (delivery is tomorrow) after 10 years with a ceramic radiant cooktop. My old cooktop looks pretty much pristine for 10 years of use, and I definitely jiggle the pan around and flip the contents to help distribute the contents or the heat evenly (or both). Just like myths about cast iron, people are way more afraid of scratching their glass cooktop than they need to be. Most scratches are microfine and can be removed anyway using any glass cooktop cleaner, since it's essentially a polishing compound.
I've used one of those. It's nice for getting very large pieces of food off the pan, but I found a finer chain mail was more effective overall. I believe this is what I have: https://thebakerspin.com/knapp-cm-dishcloths-7x5-inch.html
Basically a wok is typically made of stainless steel and people tend to season those. So, yes that works. The main point with cast iron is that it is not stainless steel (i.e. it rusts). So, seasoning them is not optional. Well used stainless steel pans tend to get a bit of coloring on them that is hard to clean. That's basically a form of seasoning.
I have a couple stainless steel skillets, one of which I use several times a week for eggs. I wash them by hand with soap and water after each use, which is not something I would do with cast iron. If I cook something that gets the skillet really nasty, I simmer some water and baking soda for a while, and then while it's still on the stove I use a silicone spatula to scrape off all the stuff that's stuck to it. This has worked well enough for me for as long as I've done it.
I know some people do season stainless steel, but I've never tried it myself. I do cook with coconut oil, though, so maybe they've kind of self-seasoned over the years.
Yes, you want a carbon steel pan. They are slightly less thick but just as heavy and good as cast iron pans. They season like cast iron too (after you remove an initial wax coating they come with from the factory to protect from rust). They aren't expensive either--about $30 or so for a 12" pan that isn't some boutique brand. Many commercial and restaurant kitchens are loaded with carbon steel pans.
Yes! I started with cast iron pans and used them with middling results. I switched over to carbon steel and I'm in love. They're everything I wanted my cast irons to be.
A while ago I looked up the company that made mine, think they closed down in 1966 or around there. So it's at least that old, but could be 10 or 20 years older or even more. Use it every week :)
The oven is great for drying and touch-up and also serves as a safe place for a hot skillet to cool away from small kids. A very thin coat of canola oil @ 425F works fine. Sheet pans get the same treatment.
Clean with water and scrubbing, then place o the fire and add about a glass of salt, move it around whole the pan as if you were looking it. Toss away the salt and store the pan somewhere dry and clean.
Don't worry about having to cook at low temperatures, or with lots of fat, or to make sure it dries perfectly, or one of the 1000 other comments in this thread. Easy as heck to use and clean.
I think some people have reservations about the chemicals that make up the non-stick coating.
Others don't want to deal with buying new pans every few years due to the flaked off coating. Not to mention that buying new pans every few years is a bit of wasteful consumerism.
Either way you probably don't want to be cooking on high heat unless you're doing a saute. Your meat is going to be charged outside and raw inside. It takes time to move that heat into the middle regardless of the pan.
Non-stick pans need to be replaced regularly because the nonstick coating is not permanent, it will come off eventually. As a bonus if you accidentally overheat nonstick pans (>~570°) you get toxic fumes that kill birds and make humans sick ("polymer fume fever")
What this article is missing, since he has done hundreds of reviews, is his opinion on _how_ to re-season. Since I own several cast iron skillets and pots, I end up doing this every now and then, and every search online turns up 20 different ways. Which is "best", who is "right", am I doing this correctly or optimally? Who knows. I really thought the article would shed light on that, other than "use a teaspoon of oil". The search continues...
His opinion seems to be that you don’t need to re-season. Just scour it clean as much as possible and start using again.
To which I agree. I’ve had more success just making sure I cook a bunch of fatty foods in a row, then continue using the pan normally, vs intentionally seasoning it (oven method or not) which is slow, messy and never seems to really give the same kind of deep patina.
I agree with this, from not being afraid to use soap, to you are putting too much oil on it when you are done with it.
When I purchased my most recent new cast iron, I did power sand the interior with a drill attachment. I prefer the smooth interior to the rough interior that they come with, and for me they stay rough for a very long time. It also gave me the opportunity to know what exactly the inside cooking surface is seasoned with (crisco).
I don't agree with the claim that simply cooking fatty food results in a seasoned pan. Nor does oiling it before putting it away - that just deters rust.
I don't know what mixture of oils they're using at the moment in Crisco, but I doubt any of the ingredients is a drying oil. Drying oils polymerise readily when exposed to air, and especially when heated. Linseed oil is the most-prominent example. If you smear linseed oil on wood, it will harden into a tough finish in a few days.
Flax seed oil was mentioned up-thread; that's the same stuff, but food-grade.
If you have to season from scratch, invest in some flax oil, apply VERY thinly, and bake for an hour, then cool. Repeat 5 times.
If you need to strip it, caustic soda does a pretty thorough job.
> I don't agree with the claim that simply cooking fatty food results in a seasoned pan.
I'm sorry to say that you disagree with every professional kitchen that uses cast iron or carbon steel cookware.
Regular cooking with adequate amounts of fat is absolutely what maintains and strengthens the seasoning. The initial layer you bake/fry on is only a starter to get the pan ready for use. For carbon steel pans, it also serves to prevent it from rusting, after you remove the protective wax/lacquer that was put on it for shipping.
> If you have to season from scratch, invest in some flax oil, apply VERY thinly, and bake for an hour, then cool. Repeat 5 times.
You can do this, and it results in a very pretty deep dark golden coating that would look great on a display piece. Unfortunately the resulting coating is brittle and doesn't bind very well to the surface, so it's fragile and will flake off. It's more of a lacquer coating than an actual polymerization of fat molecules onto the iron.
To be clear, I tried this exactly as the common advice tells you to: by meticulously cleaning and drying the pan, then wiping on a super-thin almost dry layer of oil, then heating in the oven, then repeating several times. The coating was very pretty, but it was no match for the normal method I use, which is the one recommended by Matfer Bourgeat and De Buyer for their carbon steel pans.
Just clean the pan well, then fry up a batch of potato peels in plenty of oil and salt, until the peels are very dark. Clean out the pan and start using it. It will get better and better the more you use it. That's all there is to it, and it's so much quicker than repeated applications of flaxseed oil and baking cycles.
Yes, many people have great success with flax seed oil. However, many experience flaking from either improper seasoning, poor quality oil, or simply using too much.
I stick to vegetable oils and shortenings because it's what my grandparents and their parents used. I find that it works well, is cheap ($3/16oz vs $12/8oz), and readily available. I choose crisco because of its shelf life and high smoke point.
Seasoning cast iron with crisco is the same process as flax seed oil, but you don't have to repeat the process as many times and it is forgiving if you use too much. You still should use very little oil and season the pan upside down so any excess oil doesn't pool on the surface.
"Lye" is the same as caustic soda? I saw the word used several times up-thread.
In my lexicon, lye is made from wood-ash; the stuff I'm referring to comes as white pellets, and it's nasty stuff indeed - rubber gloves and goggles. I keep it because my drains tend to get blocked, and caustic works better than supermarket drain-cleaner.
I also keep a bottle of "Spirits of Salts", which is 30% HCl in water. It's better at removing scale than supermarket toilet cleaners.
I imagine a vigorous reaction would occur if I were ever to mix these two sustances.
Frankly, I don't like paying a premium for a proprietary product, when these simple chemicals just work better and go further.
"Lye" is now frequently used for any kind of strong alkali. Nowadays caustic soda is much cheaper than caustic potash, so "lye" is applied more frequently to caustic soda.
The original sense of the word "lye" was referring, as you said, to the lye obtained from wood ash (or other vegetable ash), whose main component was caustic potash.
Caustic soda, having similar properties, was obtained from soda (sodium carbonate) extracted from evaporite mineral deposits.
Before the end of the 18th century, when the names of potash and soda (formerly just commercial names) were adopted in the chemical language, for many centuries the scientific names for lye (caustic potash) and caustic soda were vegetable alkali and mineral alkali, because of their different preparation methods.
one bit of info i feel is missing from this, is that flaxseed oil is very good for cleaning your pan (better than soap). So when done, wipe with flaxseed. It's now clean, rust-proofed and seasoned.
