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Cast iron rule
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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more expensive?
I once had a girlfriend whose mom bought a 300€ cast iron pan that she was talked into at one of those marketing events. Eastcon is a fucking con.
I have a set of cast-iron I found under an abandoned trailer next to a junkyard. They cost exactly nothing and I got to have nerdy fun restoring them over a weekend afternoon, I have been using them for 20 years.
That sounds like the best set of cast iron.
Lol a few minutes with an angle grinder and a flap wheel will take it back down to metal real fast.
Sure, but not having those tools, I used the wonders of SCIENCE.
Some washing soda, a steel rod, a 12v battery charger and a tub of water and overnight all the rust had migrated to the steel rod.
That is a much cooler way than simple abrasives.
300€ WTFFFFFFFFF!????!! For a pan??
So what they do is they tell you you won a free lunch (the irony is not lost on me) from like a raffle or something, which you can claim at location x at time y. Aaaaand then it turns out the free lunch is actually a marketing event where they make you (and the people who come with you) barely any food, while extolling the virtues of their ridiculously overpriced products.
I'd just gone through it with my grandma who's luckily a moderately sharp pencil and invited me and my mom along. We just outright refused to buy anything and ate the cookies and shit (they were demonstrating a cookie maker lmao, made like 3 cookies). But my ex's mom went there I think either alone or with someone who yes-manned her into spending money on the pan. And I think she did it in installments too.
This was like 10 years ago. It's a proper scam, idk if they still do it, but I bet they do.
And yes, the pan was excellent, it came with a removable handle and a kinda cone shaped lid that had a hole in the center, which was useful (lets humidity out, but fat doesn't splatter everywhere). But I was still flabbergasted to hear someone would spend 300€ on a pan. In like 2015 or 2016 Estonia. Her net salary was under 1000€ a month.
It's in the name.
Yeah, I understood that, but try saying that to a woman in her 50s in eastern Europe ~10 years ago lol, it's not like she spoke English
I can be tempted by cast iron with a nice image on the base, though probably not for that much.
Vintage, or nicely finished pans with polished surfaces or extra greebles and nubbins can be expensive.
Something liked a lodge pan will be cheap but the bottom of it kind of sucks without being ground down ether by long usage or by tools.
My gigantic cast iron had a rather annoying raised ring around the bottom. It was fine on a coil electric range, gas stove, or campfire, but when I moved into a place with a flat top, it was annoying since it didn't actually make contact. I took an angle grinder to it and ground it flat. Night and day differerence.
I cook on gas, couldn't care less about the smoothness of the bottom but I get people would if cooking on glass top
In general thought, cast iron is cheaper than any pan equivalent in performance... the cheaper stufq they sell at grocery stores are practically dispossable
They don't mean the underside.
They mean smooth on the inside. The bottom as In where tu out your food to cook.
My brother has one like that that was ground smooth brand new. I had mixed opinions when I uses it.
I mean like, the interior cooking surface is rough.
I'm not sure if you are joking or not but when you buy the pan you are supposed to do the first seasoning in the oven a half dozen times. By the end of that the pan should be smooth. I tend not to look at new cast iron since I have so many I yhrisfted over the years. I suppose the import mass produced stuff might look awful on close inspection.
Nah, you’re not gonna smooth that out with seasoning. Like, it’s the texture of the sand mold just like the rest of it, zero sanding or grinding on the cooking surface to smooth it out and this isn’t a “cheap import” kind of thing, the brand I’m thinking of, lodge, are made in America. Like, they’re functional pans, but the roughness makes them harder to use than something with a polished or even sanded cooking surface, stuff just catches on the nooks and crannies regardless of seasoning. Like a quick pass with a sander or grinder improves them immensely, but that’s not really something most people are going to bother with.
I'll keep an eye out then. Wild that something that quality survives on the market.
What they're talking about sounds like the pan I have. Bought it in the camping aisle, and it was much cheaper than the ones in the kitchen aisle. I haven't found the roughness to be much of an issue; I probably have to use more oil than I would otherwise. It has gotten smoother over many years of use.
I mean, there are a bunch of American cast iron companies still making really good stuff, most are just kinda pricy, like 100 bucks for a skillet. Lodge is just notable for being super cheap, 20 bucks for a skillet, and having a very crude finish compared to the others.
I absolutely love my Smithy pans.
But if you have an orbital sander, just get a lodge, spend a few minutes smoothing it out, throw it in the oven on self cleaning mode, then season it with grapeseed oil a few times.
The glass cooktops are insanely scratch resistant. I use a metal scraper to clean mine.