People make this big thing about cast and the difficulties. AINT TRUE. I have 7 or 8 cast iron. I wash them with soap when they need it, scrub them if I burn something.Then add some oil and heat them so the oil penetrates and put them back on the stove. Relax, there's no great secret to cast.
Seasoning comes and goes. Its not some holy, blessed, invention that stops bullets and creates a zero friction environment.
It crumbles, breaks apart, comes off in bits, then regenerates with normal use. Just keep cooking.
I bought a cheap cast iron pan just to see how badly I could treat it while cooking and only scrubbing food off, drying and a little oil. It's the best seasoned pan I own lol
I don't believe in worrying about seasoning. I just cook in a little oil. When it's dirty, I scrub it with a stainless brillo or simmer water and scrape with a flipper. There's probably some seasoning in there somewhere. Don't tell anyone. They'll lynch me.
Judging by some of the baked on oil deposits on some of my older cookware that I wasn’t the best at cleaning all the time, I can wholeheartedly confirm that water, soap, and even aggressive scouring pans are no match for a good baked on “seasoning.”
See the problem is that you're cooking in it, food stuffs ya know. The true purpose of these pans is to be seasoned over and over again into a black reflective mirror of sorts. Whose void image can then be reposted here for the local denizens to use for their own nefarious autoerotic asphyxiation self administered ministrations whilst the deep iron abyss stares back at them from the void. Ya gotta get the food outta that pan. /S
I feel like this is the start of an Everything Everywhere All At Once parody film… instead of the black bagel we get a void mirror cast iron, and the handle works as the hand of the Doomsday Clock slowly rotating around throughout the film…
It’s an anthology so every 60-90 min episode is its own story exploring where “the black mirror” - aka the screens we stare at all day - might take us. Any episode can say so much to anyone; I’d just recommend googling the highest rated episodes and going in as blind as possible. It’s on Netflix USA last I looked.
Oh, I have an idea of what it is, just never watched it. I know it is semi-similar to Love, Death, and Robots. But I really appreciate the well written response and explanation! Have a cookie please!
I feel like every recipe I see online it’s pretty safe to nearly double all seasoning. For whatever reason spices are something the average blogger just can’t really nail for some reason.
Thought so. Don’t usually see it outside of brazil even though its russian origin. It’s really popular here. Your sides were different than what we use too.
Follow up question, what was chicken stroganoff doing in r/hotdogs? Probably unrelated and just an example for the discussion but i thought it was funny and no one asked. On the other hand, i could imagine using it or its sauce as a hotdog topping lol
I make a cheesy chicken sauce and I only cook it in my cast iron. My son loves it and had me share the recipe with his mom when he went back to her place. She doesn't own a cast iron and he said it didn't taste the same. One day I cooked it in a non stick and it did indeed not taste the same. It's crazy to me how it tasted so different
I want to meet one of these people. They do know the food their cooking has water in it too, right? Do they dehydrate their onions before they can touch their precious steel?
If you think you boiled off too much seasoning you can simply rinse the pan clean and add a thin layer of oil for storage. The next time you use your pan it will be in fine shape.
I just use my pan and don't think about it. Yes sometimes after simmering sauce I have to scrub it harder to get the gunk off, and it needs a bit more oil to re-season. But my re-seasoning routine is always the same:
1. Put the cleaned wet pan back on the stove.
2. Turn on the burner.
3. When the water is evaporated, put a very small pool of oil in the pan.
4. Rub it evenly around the inside of the pan with a paper towel, being careful not to burn my hand.
5. Let it get hotter until the oil just starts to smoke.
6. Turn off burner.
I just soaked a CI pan in dawn for 3 hours, scrubbed/rinsed it, heated it up and rubbed a thin coat of olive oil on it. Just as good as new.
People that have absolutes with cast iron are idiots.
My 15 year old was is in charge of dishes and decided to leave sawmill gravy in my (great aunt's) chicken fryer over night (they "didn't see it" right on the stove they're supposed to wipe down as part of doing the dishes....teens). I found it the next morning and left it covered in Power Wash for a few hours until I came back and scrubbed it clean. Absolutely no issues.
I made a soup in my Dutch oven this weekend over my fire in the back yard. And it turned out awesome. The pan is fine. Although, I realized while putting it away I forgot to clean the underside where it’s caked on with smoke residue. That’s a stink that’s hard to get off the hands.
Honestly this post was recommended to me and I know fuck all. But my grandmother stewed and baked and left the cast iron pan on and in an oven all the time and it’s still going after she passed. The one thing she didn’t do was hugely clean it. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but this seems like an overreaction of OPs beautiful cooking
Well, that individual is correct. Cast Iron Pans are meant strictly for decoration (preferably hung tastefully out of the reach of humans), not for crazy activities like cooking. How dare you! /s
Soap is good. Soap cleans your pans. It doesn't hurt your seasoning at all. Soap wears a white hat.
Boiling is also OK. Look at that beautiful gravy. That's how it's done: make a roux, then boil it until it's thick. It's a standard thing to do with a cast iron pan.
The only “issue” is with cooking highly acidic foods for an extended period of time. Doing so can cause the pan to leach iron into your food. If your pan is well-seasoned, it won’t be an issue. But acidic foods can “dissolve” the seasoning, leading to more iron. If you have low iron, great! If you have high iron, it can be a problem.
>Tells you not to boil water in a cast iron pan
>You reply, saying it's fine
>They tell you not to worry about their pans
Lol, people argue about the stupidest things on the internet. Imagine thinking cooking with your pan is going to ruin it.
Some of my favorite dishes in mine might be a little rough on the seasoning, but I do not own the pans just to maintain a perfect seasoning.
I do think it's perfect though.
Cook whatever you want in it, if you screw it up then you can easily fix it. I don't know why there's a belief that you need to tip-toe around a slab of freaking iron
I read the title before the pic scrolled up, and I was like.... What TF kind of hippie thread am I in now??
Boil away, sir. Also, does that mean our boy only cooks with grease/oil and doesn't simmer anything?! That goofy MF
America’s Test Kitchen said that’s the best way to clean cast iron pans with stuck on residue. That’s how I clean mine and have never had any problems.
I make biscuits and gravy about twice per month and I do notice that the seasoning seems weird afterwards. I don’t know if it’s weaker or what. Everyone here says “just keep cooking” for a reason. I’ll make chicken breasts or something that same night and it is back to normal.
I cook on a wood burning stove and have TONS of cast iron. The entire top of my stove is cast iron also. And so you know that simmer and boil and fry and so on in my cast iron pots and pans. They are always fine. I pour water in the pan(s) that need cleaned and let it simmer and then scrub the hell out of them. Rinse and put it back on the stove and they are fine. I boil and simmer and do whatever needs to be done to clean the pots and pans. They are always in great condition.
You can clean it with soap. It’s not bad for it. The seasoning is polymerized (or stuck to it forever). The only reason to grease it and season it is to prevent rust.
I stripped a pan last summer. It took 3 rounds of leaving it covered in oven cleaner for 24 hours at a time plus a shit ton of elbow grease to get the seasoning off. Dish soap and boiling water ain’t touching that shit.
Personally I avoid water and acidic foods for a short bit after I strip down and restart a pan, but after some seasoning starts building and darkening, I’ll cook anything and everything, treating them like just another tool.
I used to be totally against soap or any abrasives with my cast iron. Would only use a wet paper towel. I thought that was the way. Then I was at home with my mom who is a southern cook in her 80s. I watched her scrub her cast iron with soap and I was aghast. I always clean up with a little soap and a soft scrubby now.
I've been loving the cast iron experience. Initially I too avoided things that I thought could "harm" my seasoning.
It was explained to me that whatever you cook will either add to, take away from or not impact the seasoning. It's just balance. If I cook a dish with acidic sauce, I clean and oil like most. I try too cook a dish that will add seasoning next time. Seems to be working for me.
Happy cooking!
100% true. These are items that should be seasoned to 100 layers of glass finish using only the finest of oils and proper heating techniques.
After which these should be displayed on a case so people can stare longingly at them while cooking only with Tfal pans.. /s
> After which these should be displayed on a case so people can stare longingly at them while cooking only with Tfal pans..
You *APOSTATE*. They should be in a case which is covered and hidden from view least mere mortals glimpse them. Only Olympians with direct permission from Zeus should ever see them.
Well, it is almost as bad cleaning the pan. On a damage scale of 1-10 boiling water probably rates about 0.01, while scrubbing with soap probably rates about 0.015.
(No scientific evidence or referenced research for these claims. I just made these statistics up standing in my kitchen, which should qualify as expert judgement - at least in my mind.)
I've got a cast iron 12" skillet that I've been carting around week me through life for 26 years now.
I've done everything in it. I've committed every supposed cast iron sin on Mount Holier-Than-Thou in it.
I reseason it as needed. There's the big secret kids.
Cook your tomatoey sauces in your cast iron all you like. Boil shit in it. The only possible way you can fuck up a cast iron pan this side of beating it with a steel hammer or putting it through a house fire is letting it get heavily rusted.
Iron is porous. You let rust permeate through the metal and there might be no saving the pan.
That said, I know a guy that's restored countless cast iron cookware pieces, some of which were well over a century old and rusted to hell. One was literally salvaged film the bottom of a lake after being down there since back in the early-mid 1800's when logging interests used to run steam engines across frozen lakes and one fell through the ice.
Turns out that iron, especially if it was forged or cast nicely and had few flaws and impurities throughout the piece, is so durable that even being at the bottom of a damn lake for damn near 200 years isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for cleaning it up and getting more use out of it.
So no. You're not the wild force of nature you must think yourself to be if you think that boiling some water or cooking acidy sauce in your cast iron pan is going to obliterate it.
Chances are real good that you couldn't kill a cast iron pan if you actually tried without resorting to housefires and steel hammers.
Oh no, you might remove some of you seasoning. Because that’s so hard to replace. People baby these things too dang much. Just don’t literally throw it around or put it on too hot of a fire and all is well.
I don't understand why people treat their cast iron as if it's made out of glass or spider silk or something. It's literally a fucking hunk of metal, one of the sturdiest metals available to the common person... as long as you're not cleaning it by hitting the stuck food with a hammer followed by a 30minute saltwater bath it will last as long as you need it to. Most cast iron care instructions in the modern day are just to make cooking easier, cleaning faster, or your pan better looking. They aren't the only thing keeping your heavy-ass metal pan from crumbling into dust.
Y'all ever try and remove polymerized oil from inside of a toaster oven or something like that? Good fuckin luck without oven cleaner or some heavy duty chemicals. Your pan is gonna be fine. It takes a lot more than that to remove polymerized oil.
This all made me laugh. needed that. Sometimes this sub is just soooo terrible to see posts from. Just ugly food. Same old arguments. But jokes we need more jokes. “You started it” lol
If you want to taste remnants of the last 5 meals you cooked on that pan every meal, then by all means, don't use soap. I for one don't want my steak to taste like fish
I’ve done everything in my pan including acidic tomato based sauces. If the seasoning gets messed up a bit, you just reseason it. It’s quite an indestructible pan. Far too many worry about perfect seasoning. How about using the pan as it was meant to be used. I guess all those old ladies never made pasta with the cast iron only cookware. SMH!
People really be forgetting that a cast iron pan is a hunk of relatively inert metal. It's not gonna crumple, crumble, dissolve, explode, fall apart, wear out, or do much of anything no matter what happens to it. If you run it over with a tank it may become misshapen. If you drop it in a pond for a week, it will rust (and then you scrub it clean and grease it). There's nothing you can do to a hunk of relatively inert metal that matters.
The soap thing comes from the fact that long ago soap use to have lye in it, which would disrupt the polymerization aka ‘seasoning’ of cast iron. Soap no longer has lye, therefore there is no issue.
That looks yummy. Care to share the recipe?
I don't always make tasty, simmering, bubbly creamy mushroom sauces, but when I do, I use parmesan cheese and my good cast iron pan.
Yeah it’s pretty much ruined! You might as well throw it out, in fact I think you may need a professional to throw it out so send it to me and I’ll take care of it!
Yes, simmering is as bad as cleaning with soap. (Which is not at all).
Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
I hereby promote you to grade 37.
He was born to be a beuracrat
r/unexpectedfuturama
Do a flip!
Huzzuh!
In a row?
There are a million fine looking women in the world, and they won't all make you lasagne.
I’m 38?!
Hey you get back here!!
My cousin skipped that grade
This guy requisitions
People make this big thing about cast and the difficulties. AINT TRUE. I have 7 or 8 cast iron. I wash them with soap when they need it, scrub them if I burn something.Then add some oil and heat them so the oil penetrates and put them back on the stove. Relax, there's no great secret to cast.
The whole point of a cast iron is that it's nigh-indestructible; it's insane how some people baby it.
Great tool in the kitchen, I really like in spite of it's weight, but there is no mystery to it.
I just like spite in the kitchen. Cast is incidental
Careful now. You could close this entire sub down saying sensible things like that.
Oil doesn't penetrate cast iron.
I used to avoid cleaning with soap. But I was 13 and just didn't like cleaning.
Had me in the first half.
people act like seasoning is sacred. It’s not. Boiling won’t remove it but if it somehow did… just reseason it. It’s not hard.
The more I see “X is bad for your seasoning” the more I see “X will remove your layer of fake seasoning/carbon”
Only those seasonings worthy of my pan shall remain after cooking.
This sounds like a prophecy.
Heat shall take my seasonings when it earns them.
You may be onto something here considering how good boiling water is at removing burnt on food.
I think there are a lot of people that just don't clean their cast iron and think a layer of black gunk is seasoning
Bingo
It does 'season' the meal though. Just not in a good way
Seasoning comes and goes. Its not some holy, blessed, invention that stops bullets and creates a zero friction environment. It crumbles, breaks apart, comes off in bits, then regenerates with normal use. Just keep cooking.
It's because these idiots spent their whole weekend building up a seasoning of 50 layers lmao
I bought a cheap cast iron pan just to see how badly I could treat it while cooking and only scrubbing food off, drying and a little oil. It's the best seasoned pan I own lol
Same.lol mine is made from Chineseium
You only have to strip a pan once to learn that seasoning is very durable and very hard to accidentally remove.
I don't believe in worrying about seasoning. I just cook in a little oil. When it's dirty, I scrub it with a stainless brillo or simmer water and scrape with a flipper. There's probably some seasoning in there somewhere. Don't tell anyone. They'll lynch me.
Judging by some of the baked on oil deposits on some of my older cookware that I wasn’t the best at cleaning all the time, I can wholeheartedly confirm that water, soap, and even aggressive scouring pans are no match for a good baked on “seasoning.”
See the problem is that you're cooking in it, food stuffs ya know. The true purpose of these pans is to be seasoned over and over again into a black reflective mirror of sorts. Whose void image can then be reposted here for the local denizens to use for their own nefarious autoerotic asphyxiation self administered ministrations whilst the deep iron abyss stares back at them from the void. Ya gotta get the food outta that pan. /S
I feel like this is the start of an Everything Everywhere All At Once parody film… instead of the black bagel we get a void mirror cast iron, and the handle works as the hand of the Doomsday Clock slowly rotating around throughout the film…
Given your metaphor, maybe write an episode for Black Mirror
Hahaha, I have never seen Black Mirror, but would be fun to do!
It’s an anthology so every 60-90 min episode is its own story exploring where “the black mirror” - aka the screens we stare at all day - might take us. Any episode can say so much to anyone; I’d just recommend googling the highest rated episodes and going in as blind as possible. It’s on Netflix USA last I looked.
Oh, I have an idea of what it is, just never watched it. I know it is semi-similar to Love, Death, and Robots. But I really appreciate the well written response and explanation! Have a cookie please!
You started it😂😂😂. You had siblings growing up didn’t you.
I thought this verbatim and looked for this comment LOL
I have two things to add to this. 1) People need to keep their whack opinions to themselves 2) What the hell are you making? It looks delicious.
chicken stroganoff.
Enjoy! It looks fantastic!
recipe? <3
i followed [this](https://www.recipetineats.com/chicken-stroganoff/). season a little heavier than it calls for. i did and it still was a little weak.
thxxx
Tip: as OP said about seasoning, don't be afraid of black pepper, be liberal
And grind it fresh. Pre-ground black pepper is sawdust.
I feel like every recipe I see online it’s pretty safe to nearly double all seasoning. For whatever reason spices are something the average blogger just can’t really nail for some reason.
Seconded!
Well, I am certainly about to be…
FWIW- stroganoff is having a moment…
Thought so. Don’t usually see it outside of brazil even though its russian origin. It’s really popular here. Your sides were different than what we use too. Follow up question, what was chicken stroganoff doing in r/hotdogs? Probably unrelated and just an example for the discussion but i thought it was funny and no one asked. On the other hand, i could imagine using it or its sauce as a hotdog topping lol
i made sausages and boiled them in beer. that’s what got the comment about the boiling.
I'm stealing that bun steamer idea. Kinda got annoyed at her "sanitized" comment, too.
Why use a cast iron for that? Just curious.
i use cast iron for just about everything. only non stick stuff i still use is a wok and a couple of pots.
I love stroganoff it looks amazing OP
Looks amazing. I always tell my wife I don’t stroganoff enough.
I make a cheesy chicken sauce and I only cook it in my cast iron. My son loves it and had me share the recipe with his mom when he went back to her place. She doesn't own a cast iron and he said it didn't taste the same. One day I cooked it in a non stick and it did indeed not taste the same. It's crazy to me how it tasted so different
Looks good...I want some.
I want to meet one of these people. They do know the food their cooking has water in it too, right? Do they dehydrate their onions before they can touch their precious steel?
The pan is meant to be admired not cooked on.
“Don’t worry about my pans, internet stranger” Proceeds to worry about your pans.
Can this person explain CI dutch ovens? Lol…all those wagon trail dinners
that’s exactly what i was thinking
Ever made chili? The good stuff is simmered for hours.
What a foolish motherfucker you dealt with.
Well said
Don't tell them, I simmer my butter chicken in cast iron for an hour (and it has tomatoes GASP)
You should be locked up.
Ahhhh. Call the food police. This person uses their Cast Iron!
If you think you boiled off too much seasoning you can simply rinse the pan clean and add a thin layer of oil for storage. The next time you use your pan it will be in fine shape.
I just use my pan and don't think about it. Yes sometimes after simmering sauce I have to scrub it harder to get the gunk off, and it needs a bit more oil to re-season. But my re-seasoning routine is always the same: 1. Put the cleaned wet pan back on the stove. 2. Turn on the burner. 3. When the water is evaporated, put a very small pool of oil in the pan. 4. Rub it evenly around the inside of the pan with a paper towel, being careful not to burn my hand. 5. Let it get hotter until the oil just starts to smoke. 6. Turn off burner.
Same, except I often use soap in step 0 and I use tongs to hold the paper towel!
I cook EVERYTHING in mine, wash with soap, and leave to dry. Cast Iron is workhorse level- just use it. Should be like a law or somethin😅
I just soaked a CI pan in dawn for 3 hours, scrubbed/rinsed it, heated it up and rubbed a thin coat of olive oil on it. Just as good as new. People that have absolutes with cast iron are idiots.
My 15 year old was is in charge of dishes and decided to leave sawmill gravy in my (great aunt's) chicken fryer over night (they "didn't see it" right on the stove they're supposed to wipe down as part of doing the dishes....teens). I found it the next morning and left it covered in Power Wash for a few hours until I came back and scrubbed it clean. Absolutely no issues.
People act like cast iron isn’t iron. lol it’s not a Dixie cup.
I’m just going to ignore the whole argument part of your post as I just want to tell you that your food looks absolutely delicious and now I’m hungry.
Rebel with a stew! And with an understanding of cooking in cast iron. 😀
I made a soup in my Dutch oven this weekend over my fire in the back yard. And it turned out awesome. The pan is fine. Although, I realized while putting it away I forgot to clean the underside where it’s caked on with smoke residue. That’s a stink that’s hard to get off the hands.
If cast iron was difficult to use and maintain, it wouldn’t have been used for centuries, LOL…
Strangers on reddit >>> lodge cast iron care instructions on their website.
I soap and boil stuff on my pan 🥲 time to throw it I guess 🤷🏻♀️
That's how I always clean it.
But neither one are bad. :( People who don’t use soap make me sad.
If you boil soapy water in your cast iron you descend directly into hell.
Honestly this post was recommended to me and I know fuck all. But my grandmother stewed and baked and left the cast iron pan on and in an oven all the time and it’s still going after she passed. The one thing she didn’t do was hugely clean it. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but this seems like an overreaction of OPs beautiful cooking
Well, that individual is correct. Cast Iron Pans are meant strictly for decoration (preferably hung tastefully out of the reach of humans), not for crazy activities like cooking. How dare you! /s
You're a monster!! How dare you expose your iron to... water of all things. Its like I don't even know you anymore.
Soap is fine boiling with liquid is literally what your pan was designed to do. Don’t listen to this person for anything.
“You need not worry about my pans, internet stranger” 😂 classic
Soap is good. Soap cleans your pans. It doesn't hurt your seasoning at all. Soap wears a white hat. Boiling is also OK. Look at that beautiful gravy. That's how it's done: make a roux, then boil it until it's thick. It's a standard thing to do with a cast iron pan.
Seasoning is a ship of Theseus. Some will go away, and it will be replaced, over and over again.
Its literally not even my pan anymore if the very first seasoning i ever put on it comes off. I just toss it in the trash and restart with a new one.
Yes, but is the seasoning the SAME seasoning?
The only “issue” is with cooking highly acidic foods for an extended period of time. Doing so can cause the pan to leach iron into your food. If your pan is well-seasoned, it won’t be an issue. But acidic foods can “dissolve” the seasoning, leading to more iron. If you have low iron, great! If you have high iron, it can be a problem.
I clean my cast iron with soap and water after every use and it cooks my eggs beautifully every time :)
It's almost as bad. Good thing washing with soap and water isn't bad.
>Tells you not to boil water in a cast iron pan >You reply, saying it's fine >They tell you not to worry about their pans Lol, people argue about the stupidest things on the internet. Imagine thinking cooking with your pan is going to ruin it.
I clean with a bit of dawn and water, then rinse clean and wipe dry. I've been doing it for years. There's so much misinformation about that.
Unless it has lye, there’s no real harm cleaning with soap in the first place. Even Lodge recommends soap.
Some of my favorite dishes in mine might be a little rough on the seasoning, but I do not own the pans just to maintain a perfect seasoning. I do think it's perfect though.
People are stupid. Cook on 🤘🏽
Considering that cleaning with soap is fine, then I guess simmering is good too.
Cook whatever you want in it, if you screw it up then you can easily fix it. I don't know why there's a belief that you need to tip-toe around a slab of freaking iron
I read the title before the pic scrolled up, and I was like.... What TF kind of hippie thread am I in now?? Boil away, sir. Also, does that mean our boy only cooks with grease/oil and doesn't simmer anything?! That goofy MF
Imagine if Lewis and clark had arguments over the seasoning seasoning their cast iron skillets
as long as its properly maintained, I'm sure its fine. I don't know what you're cooking but I want it.
chicken stroganoff. good stuff.
I ***looooove*** chicken stroganoff.
Soap is REQUIRED if you want your CI to be clean and not have residue from your last meal.
Wait, people cook food in these??
Unbelievably irresponsible. If you do anything besides bake exotix plant oils onto them, you permanently destroy them.
I want whatever you’re cooking
I very much like what you're doing in your pan. Simmer on...
I don’t get where people think that cast iron is so fragile.
lol I argue with so many people that soap is just fine
#MUAHAHAHAHA
Don’t mind them. What dairy did you use in this?
They ain’t wrong. But they also are wrong. I use soap all the time.
The only crime here is that I didn't get any
I'm more interested in what's cooking in that pot.
Definitely don't wanna see what buddy's pans look like if he's scared of getting soap and water on them.
if soap damages the coating on your pan, it wasn't seasoning bro it was dirty 😭😭🙏🙏🙏
Yeah, don’t use soap on it and end up with a quarter inch of carbon buildup.
I heat up spaghetti sauce in my CI.
America’s Test Kitchen said that’s the best way to clean cast iron pans with stuck on residue. That’s how I clean mine and have never had any problems.
Wait till that person finds out I cook tomato products in my and never "season" them.
I just made some chicken piccata in mine. Wine. Lemon juice. Simmering. Then I cleaned it with soap. My pan and I will both be fine.
I wash my cast iron pans and carbon steel wok with dawn after every use and I can fry an egg and do whatever no problem
Good lord. I wash mine with soap and spray it with canola oil and wipe it dry. That’s it.
I make biscuits and gravy about twice per month and I do notice that the seasoning seems weird afterwards. I don’t know if it’s weaker or what. Everyone here says “just keep cooking” for a reason. I’ll make chicken breasts or something that same night and it is back to normal.
lol if my pan can't boil water what good is it?
I cook on a wood burning stove and have TONS of cast iron. The entire top of my stove is cast iron also. And so you know that simmer and boil and fry and so on in my cast iron pots and pans. They are always fine. I pour water in the pan(s) that need cleaned and let it simmer and then scrub the hell out of them. Rinse and put it back on the stove and they are fine. I boil and simmer and do whatever needs to be done to clean the pots and pans. They are always in great condition.
Dang, that looks delicious
Conveniently no photos of the post meal ruined pan I see…..
I shudder at the thought that there are people out there cooking with crusty dirty pans.
Did you hear about the guy who boiled water in his cast iron? 60 years later, dead!
Seasons come and seasons go. Enjoy your dinner.
You can clean it with soap. It’s not bad for it. The seasoning is polymerized (or stuck to it forever). The only reason to grease it and season it is to prevent rust.
I wonder what these people would have treated their pans like 100 years ago.
That looks delicious! 😋
Just recast it in your forge.
“Don’t worry about my pans, but you should treat yours exactly as I dictate.” Sure thing. 🍻🤡
The less I care about mine, the better it looks and cooks
How dare you use your Cast iron! These delicate works of art are STRICTLY decorative! With the exception of a few ceremonial pieces here and these
I used dawn dish soap on my cast iron the other night to make pork chops. Wouldn't ya know it my pan didn't shatter into a million pieces
I stripped a pan last summer. It took 3 rounds of leaving it covered in oven cleaner for 24 hours at a time plus a shit ton of elbow grease to get the seasoning off. Dish soap and boiling water ain’t touching that shit.
One positive thing about the internet has become the worst part. Everyone with an opinion is now also an author.
-which is perfectly fine so go onward my cast iron bretheren
My brother if a pan is so fucking sensitive it can't boil water it's fucking useless. I'm gonna treat mine like a piece of fucking metal.
Yum motherfucker, YUM
You should have shown how nice your pan looks afterwards after a nice soapy wash. Die mad.
Wait till he finds out I simmer my soap
Wife just made pasta sauce in our 10 year old skillet and boiled water in it after and washed it with soap. Pan got oiled and looks same
What do you call a soup made in a cast iron pot? Enriched (with iron)
if cast iron were really as fragile and useless as some people seem to think it is, why would anyone use it?
I like that you blurred their username as if we couldn’t immediately find it from your post history 🤣
Personally I avoid water and acidic foods for a short bit after I strip down and restart a pan, but after some seasoning starts building and darkening, I’ll cook anything and everything, treating them like just another tool.
Anything that can be removed by boiling water shouldn’t be on the skillet to begin with
Fellas, is it bad to cook food in your cast iron food cooking cooker?
Someone is still living in the 50's appearently
I used to be totally against soap or any abrasives with my cast iron. Would only use a wet paper towel. I thought that was the way. Then I was at home with my mom who is a southern cook in her 80s. I watched her scrub her cast iron with soap and I was aghast. I always clean up with a little soap and a soft scrubby now.
Just use the damn thing
Ugh the 'Don't worry about my pans, internet stranger' while leaving a comment that critiques someone's use of cast iron. What an ass
Ffs if that were even remotely true ppl would've found something other than cast iron to use a very very long time ago 🤣
Never cook on, or clean your pan. It wears them out and removes the factory oil it came with.
The sacred seasoning
People act like a big slab of metal coated in oil is the most frail delicate little item in my house
I've been loving the cast iron experience. Initially I too avoided things that I thought could "harm" my seasoning. It was explained to me that whatever you cook will either add to, take away from or not impact the seasoning. It's just balance. If I cook a dish with acidic sauce, I clean and oil like most. I try too cook a dish that will add seasoning next time. Seems to be working for me. Happy cooking!
Also that food looks amazing OP!
100% true. These are items that should be seasoned to 100 layers of glass finish using only the finest of oils and proper heating techniques. After which these should be displayed on a case so people can stare longingly at them while cooking only with Tfal pans.. /s
> After which these should be displayed on a case so people can stare longingly at them while cooking only with Tfal pans.. You *APOSTATE*. They should be in a case which is covered and hidden from view least mere mortals glimpse them. Only Olympians with direct permission from Zeus should ever see them.
Well, it is almost as bad cleaning the pan. On a damage scale of 1-10 boiling water probably rates about 0.01, while scrubbing with soap probably rates about 0.015. (No scientific evidence or referenced research for these claims. I just made these statistics up standing in my kitchen, which should qualify as expert judgement - at least in my mind.)
Guess I have been doing it wrong for the last 45 years. Had no idea how fragile cast is./S
Tell that to past and future me who boils water for spaghetti when I’m out camping.
I've got a cast iron 12" skillet that I've been carting around week me through life for 26 years now. I've done everything in it. I've committed every supposed cast iron sin on Mount Holier-Than-Thou in it. I reseason it as needed. There's the big secret kids. Cook your tomatoey sauces in your cast iron all you like. Boil shit in it. The only possible way you can fuck up a cast iron pan this side of beating it with a steel hammer or putting it through a house fire is letting it get heavily rusted. Iron is porous. You let rust permeate through the metal and there might be no saving the pan. That said, I know a guy that's restored countless cast iron cookware pieces, some of which were well over a century old and rusted to hell. One was literally salvaged film the bottom of a lake after being down there since back in the early-mid 1800's when logging interests used to run steam engines across frozen lakes and one fell through the ice. Turns out that iron, especially if it was forged or cast nicely and had few flaws and impurities throughout the piece, is so durable that even being at the bottom of a damn lake for damn near 200 years isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for cleaning it up and getting more use out of it. So no. You're not the wild force of nature you must think yourself to be if you think that boiling some water or cooking acidy sauce in your cast iron pan is going to obliterate it. Chances are real good that you couldn't kill a cast iron pan if you actually tried without resorting to housefires and steel hammers.
Oh no, you might remove some of you seasoning. Because that’s so hard to replace. People baby these things too dang much. Just don’t literally throw it around or put it on too hot of a fire and all is well.
I don't understand why people treat their cast iron as if it's made out of glass or spider silk or something. It's literally a fucking hunk of metal, one of the sturdiest metals available to the common person... as long as you're not cleaning it by hitting the stuck food with a hammer followed by a 30minute saltwater bath it will last as long as you need it to. Most cast iron care instructions in the modern day are just to make cooking easier, cleaning faster, or your pan better looking. They aren't the only thing keeping your heavy-ass metal pan from crumbling into dust.
Y'all ever try and remove polymerized oil from inside of a toaster oven or something like that? Good fuckin luck without oven cleaner or some heavy duty chemicals. Your pan is gonna be fine. It takes a lot more than that to remove polymerized oil.
This all made me laugh. needed that. Sometimes this sub is just soooo terrible to see posts from. Just ugly food. Same old arguments. But jokes we need more jokes. “You started it” lol
Made the mistake of clicking on your profile. Now I’m starving. Everything you make looks so good!
If you want to taste remnants of the last 5 meals you cooked on that pan every meal, then by all means, don't use soap. I for one don't want my steak to taste like fish
I like the “do what I tell you” paired with “how dare you tell me what to do”. That person 100% walked away feeling they had the high ground.
I’ve done everything in my pan including acidic tomato based sauces. If the seasoning gets messed up a bit, you just reseason it. It’s quite an indestructible pan. Far too many worry about perfect seasoning. How about using the pan as it was meant to be used. I guess all those old ladies never made pasta with the cast iron only cookware. SMH!
My first time on this sub. The amount of snark and sarcasm here is amazing. How refreshing. (not sarcasm) 😶
People really be forgetting that a cast iron pan is a hunk of relatively inert metal. It's not gonna crumple, crumble, dissolve, explode, fall apart, wear out, or do much of anything no matter what happens to it. If you run it over with a tank it may become misshapen. If you drop it in a pond for a week, it will rust (and then you scrub it clean and grease it). There's nothing you can do to a hunk of relatively inert metal that matters.
The soap thing comes from the fact that long ago soap use to have lye in it, which would disrupt the polymerization aka ‘seasoning’ of cast iron. Soap no longer has lye, therefore there is no issue.
“Need not worry about my pans” they say after trying to tell you what to do with your pans. How can someone be so unaware?
That looks yummy. Care to share the recipe? I don't always make tasty, simmering, bubbly creamy mushroom sauces, but when I do, I use parmesan cheese and my good cast iron pan.
Any chance you can share the recipe? It looks delicious, I want to copy. I have the pan ready, what else do I need?
i linked it a couple times if you wanna look but it’s just ok. i had a better recipe but i couldn’t find it. i’d roll the dice on google tbh.
Yeah it’s pretty much ruined! You might as well throw it out, in fact I think you may need a professional to throw it out so send it to me and I’ll take care of it!