Cast iron rule

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.
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.
- 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

I put mine in the dishwasher like maniac. And I don't season it, I just spray pam on it. Works fine, purists are just being weird about it.

A good seasoning should withstand some pretty brutal punishment. And even if it doesn't, you can easily reseason the pan which you'll have to do from time to time regardless.
I season my cookie sheets the same way. I've put them in the dishwasher, hit them with those steel wire soapy things, used barkeeper's friend, not much has taken the seasoning off once it's on there.
Except for lemon juice. Lemon juice fucks it right up.
I thought the concern was rust more than anything
There are a lot of myths and legends around cast iron that are due to older circumstances that are no longer applicable. And spray on oil seems like a pretty efficient way to season given that it’ll apply a fairly light and even.
- I seen a quote yesterday that I liked and it seems fitting here.
  Tradition is not an excuse to not think critically.

If you consider the lifetime, it's the cheapest type of pan by far.

Also you can clean them stop spreading misinformation pls 😘

If it's too heavy for you there is stainless steel or carbon steel which also last but those aren't as cheap.

Yeah I've been using my mom's cast iron pan since she died like 7 years ago. Barring a level of fuck up I don't think I can manage it should last the lifetime of the person who inherits it from me
The lifetime is usually about 1 week. I can leave all my other pans soaking in the sink for a day without rusting.... I don't have the time or energy to do dishes every day.
- Lol.
  A) yes you do. You're conflating not wanting to slightly alter your habits with not possible.
  B) you can also leave it on the counter or the stovetop. You shouldn't leave any metal object soaking in the sink for a day. Leave them on the counter and then put them in the sink to soak like 5 min before you start cleaning them.
- I usually put water right into the hot pan. Flakes all the food off instantly, and it's a lot of fun to quench it. Then a squirt of dishsoap (I keep a bottle of diluted dish soap by the sink, super handy!), scrub, rinse, and you're done in actual seconds.
- Don’t soak it if you aren’t going to wash it… like just leave it on the counter or if you want to really get ahead for it pour some salt in the pan and let that sit until you feel like cleaning it. Because you can use metal on it without damaging it it’s not even hard to clean.
  Teflon pans are disposable with a limited life that releases toxins into your body which is bad
  Stainless steel is much less non stick but can at least stand up to soaking
  Carbon steel also shouldn’t be soaked
  Copper is expensive and also has care requirements
- If you’re soaking it to get stuck on stuff out of it… well stuff shouldn’t be sticking to it that aggressively. and if you’re soaking it to keep stuff from drying on, well, just rinse it out before leaving it to clean later.

I saw some greentext about some list of caring for castioron/developing and maintaining seasoning. The list was some collection of a bunch of progressively more absurd tips. The comments were:

I own cast iron, and none of these are true.

I own cast iron, and all of these are true.

I own cast iron,, and some of these are true.

The thing is, cast iron cookware is a criminally under researched segment of metallurgy and food science. Like, most of what is known is just oral tradition and folklore. It’s mystical in a sense, we preform these old practices and rituals in an attempt to coax an outcome in to being, not based on rigorous testing or knowledge based conjecture, but on myths and ancestral knowledge.
Like we can draw parallels from other areas of metallurgy to get a rough idea of what is going on but most of the modern research is for industrial uses (not cooking) and not for cast iron specifically because it’s not a super common material in engineering anymore.
Some of these old rituals and practices were developed in specific circumstance that are different from the modern day, and from each other, leading to conflicting ideas and practices as different traditions run In to each other. Some old knowledge is applied incorrectly, like people saying you can’t wash it with soap because that will damage it, which is true in the context of an 1800s homestead where they’d be using lye and fat based soap which would strip away the polymerized oil coating, but most dish soap is surfactant based and won’t strip the seasoning.
- This level of mystery is not true. It's just a hunk of iron that gets a polymerizered coating of oil on it. That used to be hard to achieve before we had reliable ovens and cooking oil. Now it's easy.
  That's all there is to it.
  They've continued to today because some people are paranoid / like to feel special / don't understand things well, so default to perpetuating rules they heard someone say confidently rather than questioning why that rule was created in the first place.
- Thank you!

…why are you not cleaning your cast iron pan?

It's old wisdom from way back when soap was made from lye.
That kind of soap is much harsher and can dissolve the seasoning, which is just a bunch of layers of polymerized oil that protects the metal from rust and gives it a glossy, almost non-stick coating.
Modern dish soap is nowhere near that harsh and is completely safe to use on a seasoned cast iron pan. It's just that your grandparents and great grandparents beat that lesson into their kids and it stuck.
Cast iron is fine to cook on, but I much prefer stainless steel. It's a bit harder to get the results you want, but it's way easier to maintain.
- There's a good chance the dry detergent for a dishwasher can still strip the seasoning off cast iron. Especially generic brands. They're supposed to have buffers in them to prevent it, but every additive, and mixing time, adds cost.
  Your typical hand dish soap is probably safe as long as you're not scrubbing with steel wool.
- Thats interesting, I heard it was a smear campaign by marketing companies to sell Teflon pans.
- Godort’s grandma probably: come here Godort. Grandpa’s gotta beat you again for using soap on the cast iron pan
- They say high temp stainless basically becomes non stick. I just get stuff sticking then immediately burning and smoking out my kitchen.
sEaSoNinG

They last forever and don’t contain forever chemicals.

IIRC the forever chemicals are not the coating that stays on the pan. The Teflon coating is inert, the toxic part is the water soluble PFAS they use to apply it that would go away (away meaning everywhere, each and every corner of the planet) while or shortly after manufacturing, or with the first uses.
So if you already own non-sticky pans don't get rid of them, but look for another alternative when you buy a new one tho.
- It's not quite inert, a too-hot Teflon pan will release toxic gasses that can kill smaller pets like birds.
Everything contains chemicals, and if it lasts forever it must contain forever chemicals.
But it doesn’t have PFAS which is good.
- no, cus it is just iron. the "seasoning" is the cover you make yourself which is why most people say you can't clean it.
- Holy crap, people really don't get your joke it seems. Guess my upvote can only give so much relief, but I thought it was funny if that helps.

I have one that I only use to make cornbread. Cornbread doesn't make it dirty and cast iron is the only thing that will give you a proper crust on the cornbread.

I use mine for steaks. Since I can put the whole thing in the oven after searing them.
- Yeah, I use mine on the grill for the same reason. It's the only pan I have that can just get tossed on without worrying about anything melting or cracking
- Yeah, I don't really eat steak. Or any meat in slab form actually.
That’s why it was originally called a cornbread pan. Cast iron is actually a miss translation.
- Little Miss translation, we called 'er.
- Keeping the old tradional of cast iron misinformation alive.

For the big stuck on pieces, you use a stainless steel chainmail scrubber. For cast iron pans you can scrub as hard as you can with that and you aren't hurting the pan. Try doing that on your aluminum, Teflon non-stick pan, or your nicely polished stainless steel pan and let me know how that goes (don't do this). For cleaning off oils and grease off cast iron, regular liquid dish soap (like Dawn) works great and is totally okay to use for cleaning cast iron.

For your cast iron, don't use lye based cleaners and don't put your cast iron in the dishwasher.

They retain and distribute heat well. Also I can move it directly from my stove to my oven or vice versa

Heat retention is true but when it comes to evenness of heat distribution cast irons are not great. I remember trying out different pots and pans when I first got an induction hob with a FLIR camera and being really surprised.
- Copper with stainless steel interior has the best of both worlds. However, it's nearly as heavy and very expensive.
- Yup. I’m an enameled cast iron guy. They just soak up heat, but they don’t distribute it well. They have high heat capacity but low conductivity.

The truly enlightened use carbon steel pans.

Not enough thermal mass in most carbon steel pans which is why the super truly enlightened use multiple different materials depending on what they are trying to cook

I paid $25 for a new Lodge...

IDK anything about cooking really but... being heavier is a big deal. You kinda charge up the pan with stored heat and then when you plonk your steak or whatever on there it's going to sizzle and give you that nice crusty crispified outside.

It's the difference between something that looks like this picture, and the steak your grandma makes.

More expensive? There's always a few at every thrift store for cheap p

Cast iron dorks are just skill issue people that can’t handle using a $20-40 stainless pan from a restaurant supply store. It’s an objectively worse pan that holds onto heat forever. Pan got too hot? Too fucking bad, guess you’re waiting a bit. Need to toss something or slide it around? Good thing the pan weighs 800 pounds. They have a role and purpose but the cast iron cult will come out in any cooking thread and be like “you should only use cast iron or you’re a goddamn fool”.

bro's mad he ain't swole like us
- Bro's mad he ain't swole like a grandma
Aaaw is itty bitty stainless pan user on bad mood. Did you got a bad sear? Or did you notice your pan has uneven bottom? Poor little weak armed stainless pan user.
But seriously. Use what ever you want :D both pans have good thing going for them. And nobody says you need to use only one pan for all the cooking.
- I mean if you want to use a cast iron pan more power to you but they are objectively worse for 90% of cooking tasks.
  Why do you think if you go into literally any restaurant in the entire world 99% of the pans are either stainless steel or carbon steel woks with the occasional cheap nonstick pan thrown in for a crappy cook that sucks at doing eggs and fish
  But if you go onto like a cooking subreddit, twitter thread, youtube post, etc I guarantee any post about cookware will have a bunch of cast iron zealots that are like “just get a cast iron pan, season it, end of story, no other pans, other pans are stupid, anyone who recommends another pan is an idiot”. It’s a goddamn cult of people who bought a lodge at target.
  Also fwiw I do have a cast iron tamagoyaki pan and I have a 16” carbon steel wok. I highly recommend the (awesomely named) powerflamer wok burner if anyone is ever into wok cooking and has outdoor space. 160k btu and my Chinese food finally has that wok hei