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You should be able to see your reflection in it!
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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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And this is how I discovered pan seasoning.
Given the recent horrible things about non-stick pans, I wonder if I should just buy seasoned cast iron pans.
I don't think I'd trust a pan that says it's "pre-seasoned." Get a cast iron pan and learn how to season it yourself. It's kind of an ongoing process anyway; every time you fry something in it with butter or oil you're maintaining the coating.
Meh, one of my pots came pre-seasoned and I just started using it as if I'd seasoned it myself, after the first couple of weeks of simply using it, it now has the exact same surface as everything I seasoned myself, because every time you fry something in it, it just improves the seasoning.
shrug
I mean I'm happy I know how to season my stuff, but if it lowers the entry-barrier to cast iron I think it's worth it.
And see I'm getting to an age where I'm not convinced there's a procedure for anything. Get eight people together, ask them how they season their cookware, you'll get nine different answers and none of them work for you. Half of what that guy said, some of what this guys says but I'll use this detail from the third guy, that works well enough for me and my life improves drastically the instant I stop giving a shit.
Following the full recommendations on every piece of equipment you buy would result in every waking hour of your day being filled with maintenance and busywork.
If the pan works for you, who gives a rat's ass?
There is but most people prefer to pretend they understand rather than seek a scientific understanding.
I have a fair amount of cast iron and the pre-seasoned ones aren't the best. I've always ended up seasoning it further or stripping it down and doing it again from scratch.
I should really switch to cast iron as frying is like the only thing I do lol
I can only tell you about my experience, I've made the switch half a year ago.
Cast iron is heavy, REALLY HEAVY and comparably more expensive than cheap non-stick pans. It's a hassle to work with because it's so heavy, no easy flipping stuff by throwing the pan around (inertia is a bitch), you shouldn't clean it with soap, just hot water and some elbow-grease and you should always keep is slightly oiled. Oh and there is no "the handle doesn't get hot", it always does and you should wrap a cloth around it.
But Oh My Goodness!
I've needed some tries to get the seasoning right, needed some time to adjust my cooking as to not leave acidic food in the pan or pot over night, but now that my pan and pot are very well seasoned and I know how to handle them... nothing sticks, at least not for long. I can make a fried egg or some bacon and after sticking for the first few seconds it just... lift's off the surface and moves freely in the pan. No non-stick pan has ever given me a non-stick experience like this and making steak has become one of my most fun experiences, because the pan keeps its heat when I throw the cold slap of meat into it and evenly browns the beef without any sticking.
Absolute game changer. just don't heat an empty pan too much, because you can burn the seasoning off again.
Soap is ok for washing (as long as it doesn’t contain lye).
And carbon steel pans are a lighter alternative.
I have a carbon steel wok and I absolutely love it. I have a couple cast iron pans but I haven’t used them in a while because of it.
I'll look into carbon steel if I ever need a new one, thanks. But honestly, cast iron is just build to last.
And I don't trust the soap around here, my first seasoning-tries went horribly flakey after I used soap on them. I'd rather just hot water and scrub, stuff usually just wipes off.
The weight, and Alton Brown, are why I started getting carbon steel pans. All the benefits, still the seasoning, a fraction the weight.
Stainless Steel also is great. We have one and not to much really sticks and you can clean it very easily.
Yeah it's basically all the same stuff. A steel (iron) pan without a coating of Teflon that you can throw around anywhere are all great.
Heck even some of the IKEA pans are great if you just get the flat stainless steel. Basically any in that vain will be good enough for most people.
But aluminum for baking.
You can buy pre seasoned cast iron.
My advice, as someone who has owned a cast iron pan for a while, is to take care of the pan. When you use it, wait for it to cool after use, then immediately clean it. Once cleaned, use heat to dry it (just put it back on the stove and heat it up to boil off any water), let it cool again, then add oil to protect the pans surface.
Don't use just any oil for it, there's a specific set of oils used to condition/season cast iron. I use grapeseed oil, but there's plenty of others. A quick Google search should yield some options for you.
The main focus is on keeping the pan protected from water, as it will rust the iron. Using water while cooking/cleaning is fine, but having water standing on the surface of the pan, even microscopic amounts, will cause rust to form. The moisture in the air can also cause the pan to rust, hence the oil coating after cleaning to protect the surface of the pan.
I got rust on my cast iron once after I left the pan for too long after cooking with mushrooms, which are very high in moisture. I had to scrub away the rust, which left a shiny spot on my pan (where the seasoning/conditioning was lost), and I had to re-season the pan.
IMO, cast iron cookware is a pain in the butt to take care of, but well worth it. Easily one of my favorite pieces of cookware. It holds heat really well and it cooks pretty much everything very well. Something that's always bothered me about regular cookware is the thermal cycling, you throw room temperature ingredients into a hot pan and suddenly, the pan isn't hot anymore... It takes a while to get back up to temperature. Not nearly as bad of a problem with cast iron.
By the time my cast iron cools, I've left the kitchen, so tbh i generally clean it before the next time i cook with it, and have never had rust issues no matter what i cooked in it last. Every once in a while i notice the seasoning getting a little thin after scrubbing it, so I reseason it with a single layer on the stove.
With my carbon steel wok, i regularly clean it by tossing it on the wok burner at full blast until it's entirely red hot and everything has carbonized off of it, and maybe splash some water in to help clear that off. Then i wait for it to cool enough and reseason it with a quick wipe of oil while it's still hot enough for the remaining heat to polymerize the oil.
Basically, I've never spent significant effort taking care of my cast iron of carbon steel cookware, and it's all still perfectly functional and non-stick and not rusted.
You and I have had very different experiences.
That's fair. I don't mean to invalidate your personal experience with cast iron rusting, but I do want to present a counter experience so people don't think it's definitely like that.
That's fair. I appreciate the reply.
Just so you know my favorite way to clean cast iron is to run it dry until the bits start to burn then throw in water to deglaze it hot, dump the water and wipe with a cloth then back on the heat to dry and a little bit of oil back in the pan.
I get water is an issue but it shouldn't be that much of an issue.
It's not really an issue if you're paying attention. As long as it doesn't sit to air dry for days, generally rust shouldn't be a problem.
My issue with the mushrooms was that I made a kind of gravy with them after cooking the meal and the combination of the moisture and other stuff in the mushrooms plus the moisture from making it into essentially gravy, then leaving it in the pan for more than a day, did me in.
I just forgot about it after the meal, and didn't look at it for the next few days. It's entirely my fault that it happened. No question about that. Careless cooking habits can ruin cast iron pretty fast.
If you're coming mainly fatty foods in the pan, then there's not a lot of worry there, the natural fats will protect the surface, so you can be, more or less as lazy as you want; but with some foods, you really want to clean it as quick as you're able to prevent any damage to the coating/seasoning/nonstick polymerized layers that protect the pan.
How recent? I thought the more recent non stick are considered safe.
I just bought a stainless steel pan.
Easy to take care of, that thing is indestructible. And to avoid sticking just heat it really high. Inmediatly after using and it's still really hot stick it under cold water. It cleans itself while making a cool noise.
For some meals like eggs or omelette you can have a non-stick only used for those. But steel is good as a daily pan.