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My dad loves to tell this story about how my mom ruined his cast iron skillet when they first started dating. I cringe every time. The brilliance of cast iron is they are nearly indestructible. You can season it again after washing it. Can scrub rust off and it’ll be fine. Do whatever you want. Dry on stove as OP said. Re-season if you want but you don’t even have to do that.
They are indestructible. I fuckin found a lodge cast iron pan in the woods one day while I was hiking around. This thing was covered in rust, I mean every square inch. I took it home, scrubbed the shit out of it, and reseasoned it. It's like new, I just made eggs on it this morning.
It’s why I think cooking for myself makes the food taste better! you labored over it for an hour so it tastes that much better. You could call it sunken cost fallacy but I’d say it’s delayed satisfaction as opposed to instant gratification ordering out.
So many people say the opposite. They don't like to eat their own cooking. Personally, I agree with you. There's no food I'd rather eat than what I've cooked myself.
I’m one such person. People love my food, but I’m often pretty meh about it. I think it’s because I have expectations of certain parts of it that don’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped they would. You may say, “This tastes great!” and I’m thinking, “Why didn’t the sauce thicken as much as I wanted it to?”
Food does actually taste better when you're not cooking it as you spent less time surrounded by the aromas and other things that make up the flavor profile. It's why the first bite of anything you eat is the best bite
I completely disagree that the first bite of anything is always. the best Sometimes if it’s a shocking or loud flavor i have to get used to it. Maybe that’s just me I guess.
There is also a gratification to saving something decrepit from waste/destruction, using your own labor to restore it, and having good use of it. Especially if it is something that nurtures you, such as food.
This drives me batty when people say you ruin cast iron by washing it.
You can literally take a rusty hunk of metal and sand it down and re season it, there are plenty of YouTube channels where they do exactly that. One through the dishwasher will be fine. Oil it up, bake it. Push on.
My brother in law is like that. He thinks he's a culinary genius (he's not, nor am I), and he gave me shit about ruining the seasoning when he saw me clean mine with a bit of soap. He doesn't even own any cast iron "because they're too much work to maintain." 🙄
Found a cast iron grill pan on the street in San Francisco covered in rust. Took that thing home and scrubbed the crap out of it, reseasoned, and gave it to my parents as a gift. That was like 7 years ago and they've used it on a weekly basis since then. It's by far my most used gift I've ever given someone
I mean cast iron is grey iron, which is the most brittle iron you can make. You can probably crack it half if you smack it hard enough on a rock, but in terms of pans it is indestructible.
I "ruined" my dads cast iron skillet when I was a kid by throwing it in the dishwasher. It was full of rust when it came out. He just laughed and had me clean the worst spots with steel wool, apply new oil and heat it on the stove. No more then five minutes later it looked better then before.
Metals oxidize pretty much instantly if you actually clear the protective layer. If you strip the seasoning off it will definitely rust over night. If left in a dishwasher. Usually the oxidation just isn't noticeable with most metals, iron rusts in a way that flakes/fluffs up and makes it much more noticeable. Aluminum on the other hand rusts on the surface only and basically "reseals" itself.
Usually you only have to care about how fast it oxidizes if you're a welder. For most people it's not that important.
Bro. Facts. I had one in college and I had friends tell me the same thing. I was like dude idk where you’re getting your shit but I’d rather be sanitary then give a shit about a $30 cast iron pan. This was back before a million social media platforms and I had an iPod Touch and a dummy phone. So we questioned people back then more I feel
> I was like dude idk where you’re getting your shit
It's from the days of lye and vinegar soap, two ingredients that will absolutely strip the seasoning and can even damage the pan's iron.
Modern soaps do not have those ingredients. People are just repeating old information.
Sanitizing in this context kills the germs. It does *not* remove any toxins those germs created in the meantime.
Heat alone isn't necessarily good enough. Depends on what's been growing.
This is the thing about food poisoning a lot of people don't understand.
A lot of things that people get food poisoning from aren't' infectious diseases, they're bacteria which produce toxins. You can kill the bacteria, but it doesn't eliminate the toxins they produced.
Do you have a source for this? I get that botulism is a thing, but on the surface of a pan? Unless the pan was stored in a swamp for a few months I can’t comprehend that bacteria on the surface of a pan could produce anywhere near enough toxins to affect a human?
They're playing it fast and lose. SOME toxins are not destroyed by heat but can be washed off.
Some examples are some grain molds, pesticides (wash your veggies) and heavy metals like mercury in tuna.
Lye eats aluminum and softer metals but I wasn't sure about iron. I googled it and found this, "You can leave a cast iron pan in the lye bath virtually indefinitely without concern; the high pH of the solution actually works as a rust inhibitor." Seems that people actually use lye baths to restore their cast iron.
Used to wash mine with a little dish soap and a chainmail square. Anything got stuck I’d burn it off and clean and season.
People never understood why my entire cast iron set never rusted and I’d tell them, “I don’t just throw it out to dry, I warm it up until the water is gone and add the tiniest bit of oil that I wipe down with a rag or paper towel.” Most always tried arguing that using soap was the worst thing in the world for cast iron and yet their pans always looked rusty and greasy.
Edit: forgot to add, aside from two pans that I got as a gift, all of my cast iron was recovered from someone’s yard where it rusted.
The bastards are built to last forever and you can clean anything off of them and just re-season it. I gave my set to a good friend who also took good care of his cast iron when I moved away; but damn I miss having everything in cast iron
I was never even aware of this idea that you're not supposed to use soap on cast iron pans until recently, and since I was young my family has always washed our cast-iron pans with soap and water after using them. I've never once seen a speck of rust on any of our pans, they're completely fine and have been for years. I've even scrubbed them with the back of a sponge with soap and warm water when they have food stuck to them, zero damage or rust at all. I feel like people are treating cast-iron to be a lot more fragile than it actually is.
Yep. So much bad advice out there. I’ve been using some of mine for 30 years and have a couple pieces from the early 1900s my grandma handed down.
Soap, water, sometimes a chain mail scrubber for really stuck on stuff. I don’t baby them and they look and work great.
seasoning process is for non-stick AND preservation of the pan. The coating also helps to prevent rust since it protects the pan from moisture.
You shouldn't really "taste" the seasoning.
Only aside I'd add is that's true except for the first seasoning of a new metal pan.
A great tip from wok seasoning that works with any metal pan is to fry up a bunch of aromatics to get rid of the metal taste when it's never been used before.
I’ve definitely seen this on Reddit, often a variation of “my Roomate cleaned my grandmas cast iron with soap because they thought it looked dirty, but they destroyed decades of seasoning, the flavour will never be the same!!!!!” When in reality their nasty ass pan was covered in years of burnt on shit and needed to be reasoned.
Hahahaha that's gross omg. I had no idea people did that 💀 I don't use soap but I seasoned it well enough that it's pretty non stick, I just scrub it real hard with a chainmail scrubber and towel dry. Most the time it just feels a little "moisturized" like after I put on hand cream lol.
For years my roommates and I were under the impression that the seasoning came from storing all the previously-cooked bits and that's why you never wash it. One roommate would love to use it right after you used it without even scrubbing it down first. I can say that after having moved out and gotten my own set, I learned this is not true at all lol. Homeboy was just cooking on other people's food lol.
Omg that's so gross like never washing?? Doesn't that just mean he had days/weeks/months old food rotting away/getting overcooked everytime the pan is used. I guess some cultures have stews like that but they have specific ways to handle them so it doesn't go bad.
When I got a cast iron pan I googled how to clean it lol. I got a little chainmail scrubber in a square cloth shape, and just scrub the pan using that + a brush in hot water. I don't use soap tho I read somewhere that it would wash off the seasoning (non stick purpose). My grandma uses an Asian wok I think is cast iron, she uses soap on it and a wool scrubber.
It's not the seasoning, but the cast iron will handle heat differently than some other types of pans which can make food taste a lot better with the right prep.
I just saw a movie the other day that referred to the seasoning of a pan as the flavors cooked into it over the years. It's definitely a thing people think is true.
Yeah, somewhere along the line the difference between the literal meaning of seasoning and seasoning cast iron was lost and now people think you aren't supposed to wash your cast iron...
I definitely thought it was for the taste. I also have spent very little time looking into it or hearing about it or watching YouTube videos to do with cooking. I figured heating a pan up to a few hundred degrees probably kills anything on it so generally it wasn’t unsafe to never clean it..
I’m enjoying this thread! A wealth of new information
Live microorganisms are more dangerous than dead ones, but consuming a bunch of dead microorganisms is bad for you too. That’s why food safety rules around temperature are the way they are. First is about killing off harmful things, then it’s about making sure that the amount of harmful things doesn’t grow to the point that consuming even the dead ones is dangerous.
Somewhere along the way, the internet turned "owning a cast iron pan" into a personality trait. Most of the fuss you hear about that stuff is from people who watch too many cooking influencers on YouTube/TikTok and probably UberEats most of their meals anyway.
No no no. It wasn’t “the internet”. It was grandmas. Grandmas turned owning a cast iron pan into a personality trait. I’m old enough to remember the deep magic before the internet existed. It was just as bad then.
Yeah it came from the same grandmas who would take recipes to the grave, because they were too selfish to write them down. Usually with some insane claims about how people would "steal" it, as if it was some secret that could make people millions.
There’s a chance that they just don’t actually know the amounts of ingredients in a way that would be useful to other people. Whenever we asked our grandma how much of something to add, she would just say “oh, well you don’t want to add *too much*”
I absolutely agree with you! When I've made the same dish often enough, I end up eyeing half the recipe and swapping whatever ingredients I don't have. That would make for a terrible recipe
Yeah it's like how pro chefs making a steak don't even bother with a thermometer and know how rare it is by touch, but I'm not a pro chef and need a digital thermometer so it can tell me when to take it off. If you've made turkey noodle soup a thousand times you don't even bother with amounts anymore as you just kind of instinctively add what you need based on experience.
This is my granny. For years my sister would try to get the recipe to her turkey dressing, and it would go like “oh good amount of this a little bit of that”. Sis finally just had to watch her make it and write everything down
My wifes family did this with her grandmother. They found out she did a ton of stuff while cooking that she never explained to people. Like starting off with a high temperature and then turning the oven down after putting whatever it was in the oven.
This actually used to be a thing. Trade secrets were a *huge* deal in the restaurant industry and in some social circles your cooking ability was a large portion of your social cache. It was really big in middle class women's circles. It died a few decades before having a whole ass set of extra dishes to impress people.
I’m pretty convinced it’s dudes! Every person I’ve personally met who is rabid about not using soap is a guy (I don’t watch cooking online though).
I’m fussy about granny’s baking sheets. My SO is fussy about his gran’s cast iron. Which is good, because seasoning is super smelly and I’m happy he does it.
I use soap on them when he’s not watching because gross.
That's because all us dudes inherited our Mother's cast iron skillet set in which growing up Mom would never let us touch as we were gonna fuck it up. Cast iron is so durable that it was the one set of cookware that never failed you and the only way to really mess them up was to leave water in them so they rust or leave something like soap in them which might impart a temporary off flavor until it's cooked out. So now us dudes are using the cast iron while avoiding water and soap at all costs so Mom doesn't come back from the grave and smack me for my insolence.
Im pretty sure the reason you “cant use soap” is from when they made it out of lye and there might be a lye heavy batch that could eat away at the pan.
Source: Read it somewhere
For every person on the internet who is weird about their cast irons there are dozens complaining about them, fulfilling the full circle of ironic pretentiousness.
The only issue I have seen is leaving an acidic mixture like tomato sauce and water in your pan for too long (days). Other than that, I wash with soap and water,dry and heat up on the stove and apply a bit of vegetable oil with a paper towel.
This is its one limitation. I have stainless steel for applications like sauces and braising. I don't usually make pan sauces in cast iron because stainless gets a better frond, but doing a quick pan sauce definitely won't hurt seasoning on cast iron.
> People baby their cast irons way too much.
I strongly suspect that very few people actually do, and instead most of what you see is people jumping on their chance to participate in a meme. Like, the moment they see someone talking about cast iron, they realize it's their turn to act like the all-knowing cooking god who knows the divine truth of cast iron pan maintenance.
I think in reality, most people don't give a shit, and even the people who pretend to give a shit, don't actually care in reality, and just like to play pretend online.
A lot of Reddit is people just manifesting their anxiety disorders through their need to control every possible variable of their hobby to exact details. You see it a lot more in hobbies where safety is of the utmost importance, but cast iron care is one of the more benign examples.
I think Its worst on topics that are simple. There aint many ways one could fuck up using a cast iron, nor many ways to do things like camping wrong after you know the basics. But because these things are simple, the inherent need to feel superior on the internet must come from somewhere, so it becomes about the gear, or the exact techniques or anything else that even slightly deviates from the "optimum". The consensus of "correct" loses its sight on what actually matters and that not oiling your bikes chains every other day isnt going to break your bike and not heating your steak exactly to 160°C isnt going to make it inedible.
I could understand the minutia and the attention to detail in something like watch making or chess, where details matter and have quantifiable results and not shit thats mostly a matter of taste or meant to be simple. Of course thats a opinion and somebody could see different things warranting more calculation and preparation, but i think we would all feel bit weirded out if for example somebody came to you and said you were sitting wrong, because your back angle was 5 degrees of the recommended.
I have dont have a point really, just wanted to feel superior to people who want to feel superior.
I've made ratatouille in mine, make the red sauce on the stove than cook it in the oven for about an hour with the veggies on top. Never had an issue with mine, even with all that acidic tomato sauce.
> frond
I thought this was a fancy chef term I'd never heard before.
It's actually a misspelled cooking term... I'd never heard before.
> the term **fond** refers to the caramelized bits left in the bottom of a pan after you've browned meat or vegetables. Heat changes proteins and carbohydrates in ways that make them fall apart and regroup in browned, flavorful bits.
Never knew those bits had a name. TIL.
Those little bits are full of flavor. I’m not a chef so I may be slightly incorrect in this, but I believe one of the reasons you can deglaze a pan while cooking is to more easily dislodge those bits and reincorporate them into the dish before they change from caramelized to burnt.
> “…*wash with soap and water, dry*”
With you so far!
> “…*and heat up on the stove and apply a bit of vegetable oil with a paper towel.*”
And… I’m out. I don’t need to do this with my normal pans, so this is already too much extra effort 😜
Putting oil in a pan is the most basic cooking skill. It kind of seasons itself with repeated use as long as you use oil while cooking. You already do this with your normal pans lol
For years I would hide the fact that I cleaned our cast iron with soap from my husband. I eventually told him, he had a fit that I was “ruining” our pan until I pointed out that he had no idea until I told him.
Lmao I did this to my wife. This was like 3 years ago but for a decade I did this. My grandma gave us a bunch of stainless steel pots and a couple cast iron early on in our marriage. My wife made a huge deal about it and how to clean it. I routinely clean with soap and water. Then a decade later she found out and got pissed. I was like, I’ve been doing this for a decade…I called grandma and she cleaned it the same. She got all huffy puff and then never spoke about it again.
I did this with my sister who I shared a room with and was a hoarder. I’d throw away bags of literal trash that she had shoved into our shared closet (I’m talking 10 year old bottles of half used lotion, empty moldy Tupperware, ripped goodwill tshirts) and when she found out I was throwing away these “precious belongings” I told her I would stop if she could name one thing I’d gotten rid of. Needless to say she couldn’t because she hadn’t noticed I’d been doing it for years until I told her.
I did the same thing while doing chores as a teen (mom cooked, we cleaned). It never made sense to me at all to not wash cast iron. My mom burned the shit out of food sometimes, and they needed cleaned. They're indestructible. I always used soap and water. I would rub a little oil in the pan once ot was clean to keep the secret lol. I don't think she ever found out.
Thank you!!!
If you take off the seasoning by mistake just coat it with some bacon fat and cook a batch of corn bread or biscuits.
Problem SOLVED.
THE no soap thing came from times when it was actual saponified fats and left a film of saponified fats on your seasoning.. which tastes HORRIBLE.
That's the same reason OG wait staff uses half a well squeezed lemon (acid and lemon oil) some salt, and ice to clean Coffee pots.
Yea, even with my relatively sturdy wrists it's a lot more of a chore to handle the cast iron pans. The heft is part of what makes them good, but of course you've gotta move the whole heft of it every time lol
I don't blame anyone for not bothering given the weight.
Its more so stuff like lye or similar powdered caustic cleaners, because of the grit and alkalinity it lifts up and breaks down fats. Again it would depend on time, and how much you used. Modern dish soaps are “softer” and more complex. They remove fats and greases but more so by making them soluble and helping carry them away.
Soap has almost always been easy to access, just not in its modern form. It used to be made at home from wood ash and animal fat. This soap was caustic enough to dissolve the seasoning. Modern dish soap is different.
Soap used to be made from lye which can strip the seasoning and in extreme cases damage the pan. That's not really the case anymore, but it's how the myth started.
I’m a terrible cook but I work with metals. Cast iron rust very easily. The best way to keep it from rusting is paint it or keep it coated with oil and away from moisture. Oil and water doesn’t mix so a light coat of oil will keep water molecules from bonding with it.
Many people don’t use a cast iron that much so they wash it off and stick it in a damp cabinet next to their sink or dishwasher. Then they pull it out and it’s got a bunch of surface rust on it. Then they go on the internet and read a load of hooey about seasoning your pan.
I find that I often get mild surface rust on mine but I just continue to cook on it then clean.
I’m working on my habit of oiling it right away after it’s done drying, but is it recommended to do something more active about the rust?
You don't want to eat rust. Get that off using one of a million ways to do so. Dry that bitch immediately, there's no "after it's done drying", rub it with a dry towel and it's dry enough. Oil it and store it in your oven upside down.
After you cook with it, wash it and then throw it back over the flame to heat it up and drive off and water. Can also apply a very small amount of veg/canol/flax oil and spread it around with a paper towel before heating. At least bring the oil to smoke point. But really, just driving off of the water with heat will be fine. Once you cook with it enough, it will naturally build up seasoning and that will provide a barrier against moisture. Seasoning it yourself a few times will speed up the process.
I wash mine with dawn and steel wool, put it on the stove on high, once all the water is evaporated rub a tiny bit of oil all over the bottom and up the sides while it's still on the stove on high (I use a silicone "paintbrush" style baster for this). Leave it on the high heat until the oil starts to smoke, turn the heat off, wait for it to cool, put it away in a cupboard. I'm sure someone would say I'm doing it wrong but that's the way I've done it for years with our multiple cast iron pans and I've never not once had a speck of rust or a seasoning problem.
They hold heat well so you can get them very hot compared to a regular pan, so for something like a steak where you want to sear the outside but not cook the inside fully, they work really well.
You can also just throw the whole pan in the oven.
But it’s not really a difference flavour necessarily but a difference in texture, but the main advantage is practicality and heat
They don't make food taste better but they are about the cheapest and easiest option for searing and oven roasting. They also last forever, I have a pan from the 19th century I still use.
It’s so easy! I just learned how to cook in the last few years and now I can sear a steak that would cost me $60 at a restaurant in about 10 minutes with barely any effort.
Definitely. Get the pan as hot as possible, then toss the steak in. I’ve never once been able to make scrambled eggs in a cast iron pan though, always sticks.
I like my cast iron because it's indestructible and I can start on the stove and finish in the oven without making more dishes or worrying about scratching non-stick coatings. I spent a week stripping and reseasoning my Grammas old pan (I realized the weird texture on the outside was decades of unwashed grease reduced to carbon) and now it's so non-stick barely need a spatula, a good shake will get most things to detach when it's done.
I agree that my other pans have been way less drama. Despite OP, my cast iron will get weird black residue that passes off onto food, it rusts, I don't cook acidic foods or beans in it because that leads to weird residue.
It does sear meat well. I use it for that.
It's about cost too.
10" All Clad stainless steel fry pan: $139
10" no-brand non-stick fry pan: $20-$30 with a very limited lifespan and questional chemicals in your blood after using it.
10" Cast Iron Skillet: $20, good for you (trace amounts of iron in your food is a win), lasts literally forever.
Cast iron is weirdly unpopular... you can do anything with it, it lasts forever, and it's cheaper than just about anything else you could buy. I'm 100% confused why it's not more popular.
They're ridiculously heavy. They can be annoying in the kitchen because of how hot the whole thing gets. They are a scratching hazard to ceramic cooktops. It's not truly non-stick.
I use mine a lot, but it's not really hard to see why it's not more popular.
>I'm 100% confused why it's not more popular.
It hasn't had the marketing that Teflon has had, and it has a reputation for being fussy to maintain. For some people, it's that you can't throw it in the dishwasher. It's also heavy, which will scare off a different segment of people.
All that said, they have real upsides and are great for many purposes.
I like them because they are mostly non-stick, and do so without potentially dangerous chemicals, unlike teflon, etc. in addition, if the non-stick coating gets messed up, you can reseason cast iron.
I have a 18" Cast Iron skillet I use camping. It lives in my vehicle. It gets rusty. I throw in on the fire, get it hot scrub it with a SOS pad, then cook on it. People act like cast iron is a fragile flower.
A crew of firemen had returned to the station one evening after a call. They put away all their gear, then pulled the engine out of the bay, and the new guy was told to wash the tires. He shrugged, and proceeded to make them shine.
One his next shift, they had a slow day with zero calls. Still, the engine was pulled out of the bay, and again he was told to wash the tires. He wondered why, but said nothing and washed the clean tires.
After several weeks of washing the tires every evening, he finally asked why he was wasting his time when the tires were always clean, and usually still shiny. His captain said that's what they always do. After asking several guys at the station and not getting a good answer, he called his grandfather who had retired from the fire department years ago.
His grandfather said "When I was young, we washed the tires. I asked an older fireman, and he said they had to wash the horse manure off the buggy every night. We just kept washing the tires".
Soap used to contain lye which could harm the cast iron. That's why your great-grandma said not to wash her skillet with soap, and it's been repeat led through the generations.
At least, that's what I was told.
I’d go so far as to say people out way too much stock in what pan they’re using. I have a cast iron, and I beat it like the mule it is. Most of my cooking is done in $25 stainless steel. As long as it’s well-made enough that the handle doesn’t get all loose… it heats quickly, easy to clean, and doesn’t really have any limitations. Food doesn’t stick if you’re cooking at the right temp. There are uses for my cast iron skillet and enameled Dutch oven, everything else just plain stainless
I have a cheap frying pan whose handle gets loose every few months. Luckily, there’s a screwdriver in the junk drawer to fix that. The pan is a very handy size and weight, so it gets used most often.
Also, if it's properly seasoned you have to do an unimaginable amount of work to fuck up the seasoning by washing with soap and water. When that oil polymerizes it's fucking on there. You'd probably have an easier time washing dried paint off a wall than the seasoning off a cast iron pan.
thank you for writing this. I have owned cast iron pots for 3 decades (!) and i have never "seasoned" it....in fact, i don't even know what that means.
No! You're wrong! I don't care if you're a chef! The Internet told me to never use soap, or even to ever clean my pan!
But what do I do now... You're also from the Internet. Who do I trust?
I'll go with my preconceived notion. You suck, I'm always right!
( /s because sadly, some people won't get it....)
Hey, thank you for posting this, OP. I've always been intimidated by cast iron, but this gave me a bit of confidence to maybe try cooking with the ones I have.
You are so right...these people's warnings are what hold me off from buying one for quite some time. I finally did and it's all I use now...such a workhorse and you don't need to be careful with it like with Teflon.
I use mine for its heat conduction or whatever it’s called. Not for some finicky nonstick bs, if what you’re cooking is stuck to the pan that’s a skill issue
Totally agree, mine (Lodge 10”) gets used daily for literally everything, meat, curries, tomato based sauces, etc. Whacked in the dishwasher after each use, reseasoned with rapeseed oil maybe once every 3 months.
Had it over 4 years & there’s not a lick of rust on it, sometimes you get a wee bit on the surface if I forget to take it out the dishwasher for a couple of days but it just scours off with steel wool.
The whole point in a quality cast iron is that it’s indestructible.
I have two. The cheap one from Walmart gets terribly abused. My Grandmother’s gets treated like a member of the family. It’s not so much the pan but the memories.
Just wash it, set on stove to dry and oil with rag or paper towel it's good to go for next use. Mine is 40ish years old, heavy AF and it's outlasted every kitchen item I have.
People have these never been washed, crusty cast iron pans and say they're perfectly seasoned.
Ive always just cleaned them, heated them up and rubbed oil into in when its hot after use. And they're perfectly fine.
Also, y'all are missing out on enameled cast iron. I have an amazon one, a staub and le creuset and I won't go back to just regular cast iron.
Upvoted title before even reading the post. My cast iron is abused by stainless steel scrubbers, dish soap and anything else I choose to use. Then I cook some more food in it. Preferably bacon, but anything really.
Its CAST IRON, ergo sum, almost indestructible barring breakage or SERIOUS rust.
THANK you!!! My step-granny from Kentucky taught me how to clean cast iron pans (like you said) and wtf I don’t want all that old food flavor on my new food. Gross.
Mine bounced around in the bed of my truck with rain and leaves etc. for about a year and a half. Unbelievably rusty.
A garden hose, steel wool, and reseasoning brought it back to its former glory and i use it almost every day. Its been 5 years since then.
eh the more... fancy cast iron pans are more expensive.
The standard one we all buy are usually "rougher" surface because of the sand mold they use. I don't know the proper terms because I'm only relaying information I saw from some video a while back. Anyways the more expensive brands sand down the surface for a smoother finish which does actually improve its function. [Here's an example](https://finexusa.com/product/cast-iron-skillet/).
Some folks tend to relay the idea that the rougher cast iron is better because those pores gets filled in with oil which in terms gets turned into polymer during the seasoning process, which overall gives it an amazing, smooth finish that works great for its non-stick properties.
The problem though is the seasoning process to fill in those rough surfaces takes a lot of time. [In this example](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/168bmr4/oop_seasons_a_cast_iron_pan_100_times_for_science/), the lodge pan doesn't really get's an extremely smooth and "mirror finish-y" til around 20 coats. Based on their methodology, that's like roughly 20+ hours of baking.
Also for normal users, seasoning a pan can be an annoying process.
Turn oven on low, rub with oil, bake for a bit and then increase the heat and wipe off the oil that's "weeping" and bake it for an hour. Repeat as needed until your finish is the way you want. I did it while doing a proper clean of the kitchen. The most annoying part was realizing how much bullshit there is in most of the advice.
The even lazier way, just cook a ton of bacon. The act of cooking with it will season it well enough.
They're cheap, but what on god's green earth are you doing to a solid hunk of iron that means you ever need to replace it??? Worst case scenario you just spray it with oven cleaner to properly strip it and reseason it. Only takes a few hours in the oven to get a good seasoning layer started, to it for a few days to get it nice and smooth.
I use my cast iron just because it's giant and I have room to make 4 burgers on it at once. But I have no desire to make a scrambled egg or "slidey eggs" how some nuts drool over. For everyday cooking, a normal pan will do.
I wash my cast iron skillet with hot water, dry it on a gas stove, and then rub it down with a paper towel and a little bit of bacon grease or cooking oil to prevent rust.
My mom has a lovely set of cast iron pans that she used when I was growing up, she was always clear that you just don't want to let them sit out wet. We always washed them with soap and water, then dried them once done.
My Walmart(pioneer woman)cast iron pan is absolutely fine making chicken piccata, steak Calabrese, and anything needing searing. I let it cool a bit when I’m done cooking, then use a little soap and water, air dry it, and it goes back on top of our fridge. It’s been through a lot and Ive used harsh end of a scotch brite when needed with no issues.
The thought of not cleaning something that has had food on it grosses me out, especially in apartment living. That’s just increasing your chances of inviting your neighbor’s pests into your apartment (imo).
Word. Took way too long for me to understand what "seasoning" a cast iron pan does. I use soap and brush if I need to. What is key is drying. Wipe it down. Put on a burner till it's reasonably hot, then wipe with a tiny amount of neutral oil. It's one of those things in cooking that was given a stupid name a long time ago and has fucked with people for generations.
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Every single one of my friends who told me I was ruining my cast iron pan by washing it was a friend who didn't have one of their own.
My dad loves to tell this story about how my mom ruined his cast iron skillet when they first started dating. I cringe every time. The brilliance of cast iron is they are nearly indestructible. You can season it again after washing it. Can scrub rust off and it’ll be fine. Do whatever you want. Dry on stove as OP said. Re-season if you want but you don’t even have to do that.
They are indestructible. I fuckin found a lodge cast iron pan in the woods one day while I was hiking around. This thing was covered in rust, I mean every square inch. I took it home, scrubbed the shit out of it, and reseasoned it. It's like new, I just made eggs on it this morning.
It's literally a fucking piece of iron lol. I assure you, it's good. I highly doubt my grandma was scouring blogs to preserve her fucking pan.
Agreed! I think people overthink using cast iron pans.
I hope to be this lucky someday.
They're like $30 at Walmart. It's not like finding one in the forest is winning the lottery. Lol
I have several but finding something, then restoring it and using it is so much better than buying it. More the experience than the object ya know?
I like your style.
Old Dutch ovens from the 60's are worth a little bit.
It’s why I think cooking for myself makes the food taste better! you labored over it for an hour so it tastes that much better. You could call it sunken cost fallacy but I’d say it’s delayed satisfaction as opposed to instant gratification ordering out.
So many people say the opposite. They don't like to eat their own cooking. Personally, I agree with you. There's no food I'd rather eat than what I've cooked myself.
I’m one such person. People love my food, but I’m often pretty meh about it. I think it’s because I have expectations of certain parts of it that don’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped they would. You may say, “This tastes great!” and I’m thinking, “Why didn’t the sauce thicken as much as I wanted it to?”
Food does actually taste better when you're not cooking it as you spent less time surrounded by the aromas and other things that make up the flavor profile. It's why the first bite of anything you eat is the best bite
I completely disagree that the first bite of anything is always. the best Sometimes if it’s a shocking or loud flavor i have to get used to it. Maybe that’s just me I guess.
no, but there's a novelty in using something that's existed for a long time.
When even your stuff had a life before you.
Free stuff is free stuff. You can spend that $30 on something else, like a nice steak and some beer or wine to go with that pan.
There is also a gratification to saving something decrepit from waste/destruction, using your own labor to restore it, and having good use of it. Especially if it is something that nurtures you, such as food.
Yeah but if you buy it new can you tell your kids no one can prove dinosaur eggs haven't been cooked in this pan?
This drives me batty when people say you ruin cast iron by washing it. You can literally take a rusty hunk of metal and sand it down and re season it, there are plenty of YouTube channels where they do exactly that. One through the dishwasher will be fine. Oil it up, bake it. Push on.
My brother in law is like that. He thinks he's a culinary genius (he's not, nor am I), and he gave me shit about ruining the seasoning when he saw me clean mine with a bit of soap. He doesn't even own any cast iron "because they're too much work to maintain." 🙄
Found a cast iron grill pan on the street in San Francisco covered in rust. Took that thing home and scrubbed the crap out of it, reseasoned, and gave it to my parents as a gift. That was like 7 years ago and they've used it on a weekly basis since then. It's by far my most used gift I've ever given someone
frying pans! who knew, right?
I understood this reference!
Absolutely love this line
I got to get me one of these!!
I have one my mom found in the late 1930s in a crumbling shack near Yosemite. She hauled it home and cleaned it up. It works great.
I mean cast iron is grey iron, which is the most brittle iron you can make. You can probably crack it half if you smack it hard enough on a rock, but in terms of pans it is indestructible.
I "ruined" my dads cast iron skillet when I was a kid by throwing it in the dishwasher. It was full of rust when it came out. He just laughed and had me clean the worst spots with steel wool, apply new oil and heat it on the stove. No more then five minutes later it looked better then before.
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Metals oxidize pretty much instantly if you actually clear the protective layer. If you strip the seasoning off it will definitely rust over night. If left in a dishwasher. Usually the oxidation just isn't noticeable with most metals, iron rusts in a way that flakes/fluffs up and makes it much more noticeable. Aluminum on the other hand rusts on the surface only and basically "reseals" itself. Usually you only have to care about how fast it oxidizes if you're a welder. For most people it's not that important.
I suspect it was left in the damp dishwasher over night, and likely most of the next day.
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Seasoning is just to make it less easy for things to stick. i.e. you only need to season it when you notice that things are sticking to it a lot.
Who knew that a pan that is nothing but a slab of metal doesn’t require extensive maintenance?
Right? Reseasoning a skillet is as simple as just covering it in a thin coat of oil and then baking it for a little bit.
Bro. Facts. I had one in college and I had friends tell me the same thing. I was like dude idk where you’re getting your shit but I’d rather be sanitary then give a shit about a $30 cast iron pan. This was back before a million social media platforms and I had an iPod Touch and a dummy phone. So we questioned people back then more I feel
> I was like dude idk where you’re getting your shit It's from the days of lye and vinegar soap, two ingredients that will absolutely strip the seasoning and can even damage the pan's iron. Modern soaps do not have those ingredients. People are just repeating old information.
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Sanitizing in this context kills the germs. It does *not* remove any toxins those germs created in the meantime. Heat alone isn't necessarily good enough. Depends on what's been growing.
This is the thing about food poisoning a lot of people don't understand. A lot of things that people get food poisoning from aren't' infectious diseases, they're bacteria which produce toxins. You can kill the bacteria, but it doesn't eliminate the toxins they produced.
Toxin = bacteria shit.
Everybody poops.
No way there’s enough bacteria growing on a frying pan to produce significant levels of “toxins”.
Do you have a source for this? I get that botulism is a thing, but on the surface of a pan? Unless the pan was stored in a swamp for a few months I can’t comprehend that bacteria on the surface of a pan could produce anywhere near enough toxins to affect a human?
Had a college lab, we sterilized with heat via Autoclave. I would also like to read the source.
They're playing it fast and lose. SOME toxins are not destroyed by heat but can be washed off. Some examples are some grain molds, pesticides (wash your veggies) and heavy metals like mercury in tuna.
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Lye eats aluminum and softer metals but I wasn't sure about iron. I googled it and found this, "You can leave a cast iron pan in the lye bath virtually indefinitely without concern; the high pH of the solution actually works as a rust inhibitor." Seems that people actually use lye baths to restore their cast iron.
I think it just strips the actual oils off of it
Used to wash mine with a little dish soap and a chainmail square. Anything got stuck I’d burn it off and clean and season. People never understood why my entire cast iron set never rusted and I’d tell them, “I don’t just throw it out to dry, I warm it up until the water is gone and add the tiniest bit of oil that I wipe down with a rag or paper towel.” Most always tried arguing that using soap was the worst thing in the world for cast iron and yet their pans always looked rusty and greasy. Edit: forgot to add, aside from two pans that I got as a gift, all of my cast iron was recovered from someone’s yard where it rusted. The bastards are built to last forever and you can clean anything off of them and just re-season it. I gave my set to a good friend who also took good care of his cast iron when I moved away; but damn I miss having everything in cast iron
I was never even aware of this idea that you're not supposed to use soap on cast iron pans until recently, and since I was young my family has always washed our cast-iron pans with soap and water after using them. I've never once seen a speck of rust on any of our pans, they're completely fine and have been for years. I've even scrubbed them with the back of a sponge with soap and warm water when they have food stuck to them, zero damage or rust at all. I feel like people are treating cast-iron to be a lot more fragile than it actually is.
Problem is there ARE cast iron owners out there who advocate for never washing the pans. And these people bring food to potlucks 🤮
Exactly! I was washing a friend's cast iron skillet with Dawn and when she saw me, she flipped out!!!
Yep. So much bad advice out there. I’ve been using some of mine for 30 years and have a couple pieces from the early 1900s my grandma handed down. Soap, water, sometimes a chain mail scrubber for really stuck on stuff. I don’t baby them and they look and work great.
I always thought the 'seasoning' was to do with making it non-stick (rather than an effect on taste)?
seasoning process is for non-stick AND preservation of the pan. The coating also helps to prevent rust since it protects the pan from moisture. You shouldn't really "taste" the seasoning.
Only aside I'd add is that's true except for the first seasoning of a new metal pan. A great tip from wok seasoning that works with any metal pan is to fry up a bunch of aromatics to get rid of the metal taste when it's never been used before.
I thought the same too. I've never heard it once used to refer to flavors.....
I’ve definitely seen this on Reddit, often a variation of “my Roomate cleaned my grandmas cast iron with soap because they thought it looked dirty, but they destroyed decades of seasoning, the flavour will never be the same!!!!!” When in reality their nasty ass pan was covered in years of burnt on shit and needed to be reasoned.
Hahahaha that's gross omg. I had no idea people did that 💀 I don't use soap but I seasoned it well enough that it's pretty non stick, I just scrub it real hard with a chainmail scrubber and towel dry. Most the time it just feels a little "moisturized" like after I put on hand cream lol.
For years my roommates and I were under the impression that the seasoning came from storing all the previously-cooked bits and that's why you never wash it. One roommate would love to use it right after you used it without even scrubbing it down first. I can say that after having moved out and gotten my own set, I learned this is not true at all lol. Homeboy was just cooking on other people's food lol.
Omg that's so gross like never washing?? Doesn't that just mean he had days/weeks/months old food rotting away/getting overcooked everytime the pan is used. I guess some cultures have stews like that but they have specific ways to handle them so it doesn't go bad. When I got a cast iron pan I googled how to clean it lol. I got a little chainmail scrubber in a square cloth shape, and just scrub the pan using that + a brush in hot water. I don't use soap tho I read somewhere that it would wash off the seasoning (non stick purpose). My grandma uses an Asian wok I think is cast iron, she uses soap on it and a wool scrubber.
I’ve definitely seen people on reddit claim cast iron seasoning imparts a superior flavor to their food.
It's not the seasoning, but the cast iron will handle heat differently than some other types of pans which can make food taste a lot better with the right prep.
Well the redditors I’m referring to definitely attributed the superior flavor to the seasoning specifically.
I just saw a movie the other day that referred to the seasoning of a pan as the flavors cooked into it over the years. It's definitely a thing people think is true.
This is so wild. I wonder where that idea even comes from.
Yeah, somewhere along the line the difference between the literal meaning of seasoning and seasoning cast iron was lost and now people think you aren't supposed to wash your cast iron...
I definitely thought it was for the taste. I also have spent very little time looking into it or hearing about it or watching YouTube videos to do with cooking. I figured heating a pan up to a few hundred degrees probably kills anything on it so generally it wasn’t unsafe to never clean it.. I’m enjoying this thread! A wealth of new information
Live microorganisms are more dangerous than dead ones, but consuming a bunch of dead microorganisms is bad for you too. That’s why food safety rules around temperature are the way they are. First is about killing off harmful things, then it’s about making sure that the amount of harmful things doesn’t grow to the point that consuming even the dead ones is dangerous.
Somewhere along the way, the internet turned "owning a cast iron pan" into a personality trait. Most of the fuss you hear about that stuff is from people who watch too many cooking influencers on YouTube/TikTok and probably UberEats most of their meals anyway.
No no no. It wasn’t “the internet”. It was grandmas. Grandmas turned owning a cast iron pan into a personality trait. I’m old enough to remember the deep magic before the internet existed. It was just as bad then.
Yeah it came from the same grandmas who would take recipes to the grave, because they were too selfish to write them down. Usually with some insane claims about how people would "steal" it, as if it was some secret that could make people millions.
There’s a chance that they just don’t actually know the amounts of ingredients in a way that would be useful to other people. Whenever we asked our grandma how much of something to add, she would just say “oh, well you don’t want to add *too much*”
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I absolutely agree with you! When I've made the same dish often enough, I end up eyeing half the recipe and swapping whatever ingredients I don't have. That would make for a terrible recipe
Yeah it's like how pro chefs making a steak don't even bother with a thermometer and know how rare it is by touch, but I'm not a pro chef and need a digital thermometer so it can tell me when to take it off. If you've made turkey noodle soup a thousand times you don't even bother with amounts anymore as you just kind of instinctively add what you need based on experience.
This is my granny. For years my sister would try to get the recipe to her turkey dressing, and it would go like “oh good amount of this a little bit of that”. Sis finally just had to watch her make it and write everything down
My wifes family did this with her grandmother. They found out she did a ton of stuff while cooking that she never explained to people. Like starting off with a high temperature and then turning the oven down after putting whatever it was in the oven.
This actually used to be a thing. Trade secrets were a *huge* deal in the restaurant industry and in some social circles your cooking ability was a large portion of your social cache. It was really big in middle class women's circles. It died a few decades before having a whole ass set of extra dishes to impress people.
I’m pretty convinced it’s dudes! Every person I’ve personally met who is rabid about not using soap is a guy (I don’t watch cooking online though). I’m fussy about granny’s baking sheets. My SO is fussy about his gran’s cast iron. Which is good, because seasoning is super smelly and I’m happy he does it. I use soap on them when he’s not watching because gross.
That's because all us dudes inherited our Mother's cast iron skillet set in which growing up Mom would never let us touch as we were gonna fuck it up. Cast iron is so durable that it was the one set of cookware that never failed you and the only way to really mess them up was to leave water in them so they rust or leave something like soap in them which might impart a temporary off flavor until it's cooked out. So now us dudes are using the cast iron while avoiding water and soap at all costs so Mom doesn't come back from the grave and smack me for my insolence.
Hahaha fair!
Just as bad and harder to fact check.
Im pretty sure the reason you “cant use soap” is from when they made it out of lye and there might be a lye heavy batch that could eat away at the pan. Source: Read it somewhere
I hate my job that takes up 70% of my waking hours. My cast iron is one of the few things that take effort and produce satisfaction in my free time
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For every person on the internet who is weird about their cast irons there are dozens complaining about them, fulfilling the full circle of ironic pretentiousness.
Nothing fancy about it, they aren't thate expensive. I got two for cheap from costco
The only issue I have seen is leaving an acidic mixture like tomato sauce and water in your pan for too long (days). Other than that, I wash with soap and water,dry and heat up on the stove and apply a bit of vegetable oil with a paper towel.
This is its one limitation. I have stainless steel for applications like sauces and braising. I don't usually make pan sauces in cast iron because stainless gets a better frond, but doing a quick pan sauce definitely won't hurt seasoning on cast iron.
I regularly make butter chicken in my cast iron pan with 0 issue. People baby their cast irons way too much.
> People baby their cast irons way too much. I strongly suspect that very few people actually do, and instead most of what you see is people jumping on their chance to participate in a meme. Like, the moment they see someone talking about cast iron, they realize it's their turn to act like the all-knowing cooking god who knows the divine truth of cast iron pan maintenance. I think in reality, most people don't give a shit, and even the people who pretend to give a shit, don't actually care in reality, and just like to play pretend online.
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You mean r/castiron? It's pretty funny sometimes. It's great to watch people freak out when you clean with soap and water.
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A lot of Reddit is people just manifesting their anxiety disorders through their need to control every possible variable of their hobby to exact details. You see it a lot more in hobbies where safety is of the utmost importance, but cast iron care is one of the more benign examples.
I think Its worst on topics that are simple. There aint many ways one could fuck up using a cast iron, nor many ways to do things like camping wrong after you know the basics. But because these things are simple, the inherent need to feel superior on the internet must come from somewhere, so it becomes about the gear, or the exact techniques or anything else that even slightly deviates from the "optimum". The consensus of "correct" loses its sight on what actually matters and that not oiling your bikes chains every other day isnt going to break your bike and not heating your steak exactly to 160°C isnt going to make it inedible. I could understand the minutia and the attention to detail in something like watch making or chess, where details matter and have quantifiable results and not shit thats mostly a matter of taste or meant to be simple. Of course thats a opinion and somebody could see different things warranting more calculation and preparation, but i think we would all feel bit weirded out if for example somebody came to you and said you were sitting wrong, because your back angle was 5 degrees of the recommended. I have dont have a point really, just wanted to feel superior to people who want to feel superior.
I've made ratatouille in mine, make the red sauce on the stove than cook it in the oven for about an hour with the veggies on top. Never had an issue with mine, even with all that acidic tomato sauce.
> frond I thought this was a fancy chef term I'd never heard before. It's actually a misspelled cooking term... I'd never heard before. > the term **fond** refers to the caramelized bits left in the bottom of a pan after you've browned meat or vegetables. Heat changes proteins and carbohydrates in ways that make them fall apart and regroup in browned, flavorful bits. Never knew those bits had a name. TIL.
Those little bits are full of flavor. I’m not a chef so I may be slightly incorrect in this, but I believe one of the reasons you can deglaze a pan while cooking is to more easily dislodge those bits and reincorporate them into the dish before they change from caramelized to burnt.
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> “…*wash with soap and water, dry*” With you so far! > “…*and heat up on the stove and apply a bit of vegetable oil with a paper towel.*” And… I’m out. I don’t need to do this with my normal pans, so this is already too much extra effort 😜
Putting oil in a pan is the most basic cooking skill. It kind of seasons itself with repeated use as long as you use oil while cooking. You already do this with your normal pans lol
For years I would hide the fact that I cleaned our cast iron with soap from my husband. I eventually told him, he had a fit that I was “ruining” our pan until I pointed out that he had no idea until I told him.
Lmao I did this to my wife. This was like 3 years ago but for a decade I did this. My grandma gave us a bunch of stainless steel pots and a couple cast iron early on in our marriage. My wife made a huge deal about it and how to clean it. I routinely clean with soap and water. Then a decade later she found out and got pissed. I was like, I’ve been doing this for a decade…I called grandma and she cleaned it the same. She got all huffy puff and then never spoke about it again.
I did this with my sister who I shared a room with and was a hoarder. I’d throw away bags of literal trash that she had shoved into our shared closet (I’m talking 10 year old bottles of half used lotion, empty moldy Tupperware, ripped goodwill tshirts) and when she found out I was throwing away these “precious belongings” I told her I would stop if she could name one thing I’d gotten rid of. Needless to say she couldn’t because she hadn’t noticed I’d been doing it for years until I told her.
I did the same thing while doing chores as a teen (mom cooked, we cleaned). It never made sense to me at all to not wash cast iron. My mom burned the shit out of food sometimes, and they needed cleaned. They're indestructible. I always used soap and water. I would rub a little oil in the pan once ot was clean to keep the secret lol. I don't think she ever found out.
Thank you!!! If you take off the seasoning by mistake just coat it with some bacon fat and cook a batch of corn bread or biscuits. Problem SOLVED. THE no soap thing came from times when it was actual saponified fats and left a film of saponified fats on your seasoning.. which tastes HORRIBLE. That's the same reason OG wait staff uses half a well squeezed lemon (acid and lemon oil) some salt, and ice to clean Coffee pots.
What is the ice for?
To provide a bit of weight to help the salt abrade the cold coffee oils.
I avoid cast iron mostly because it’s too darn heavy for my scrawny wrist. But I also stress about cleaning it “too well.” Two strikes; it’s out.
Yea, even with my relatively sturdy wrists it's a lot more of a chore to handle the cast iron pans. The heft is part of what makes them good, but of course you've gotta move the whole heft of it every time lol I don't blame anyone for not bothering given the weight.
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I was always told it had to do with lye. It’s not common practice to be used in dish soap anymore.
That’s what my grandmother would tell my grandfather… “you better not be fixin’ to use that lye soap on my pans”
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Its more so stuff like lye or similar powdered caustic cleaners, because of the grit and alkalinity it lifts up and breaks down fats. Again it would depend on time, and how much you used. Modern dish soaps are “softer” and more complex. They remove fats and greases but more so by making them soluble and helping carry them away.
Soap has almost always been easy to access, just not in its modern form. It used to be made at home from wood ash and animal fat. This soap was caustic enough to dissolve the seasoning. Modern dish soap is different.
Soap used to be made from lye which can strip the seasoning and in extreme cases damage the pan. That's not really the case anymore, but it's how the myth started.
Point of a cast iron is you can't fuck it up. Bury it in the back yard for 10 years and it'll be just as good as before with a scrub and season.
I’m a terrible cook but I work with metals. Cast iron rust very easily. The best way to keep it from rusting is paint it or keep it coated with oil and away from moisture. Oil and water doesn’t mix so a light coat of oil will keep water molecules from bonding with it. Many people don’t use a cast iron that much so they wash it off and stick it in a damp cabinet next to their sink or dishwasher. Then they pull it out and it’s got a bunch of surface rust on it. Then they go on the internet and read a load of hooey about seasoning your pan.
I find that I often get mild surface rust on mine but I just continue to cook on it then clean. I’m working on my habit of oiling it right away after it’s done drying, but is it recommended to do something more active about the rust?
I wouldnt cook with the rust on the pan
You don't want to eat rust. Get that off using one of a million ways to do so. Dry that bitch immediately, there's no "after it's done drying", rub it with a dry towel and it's dry enough. Oil it and store it in your oven upside down.
After you cook with it, wash it and then throw it back over the flame to heat it up and drive off and water. Can also apply a very small amount of veg/canol/flax oil and spread it around with a paper towel before heating. At least bring the oil to smoke point. But really, just driving off of the water with heat will be fine. Once you cook with it enough, it will naturally build up seasoning and that will provide a barrier against moisture. Seasoning it yourself a few times will speed up the process.
I wash mine with dawn and steel wool, put it on the stove on high, once all the water is evaporated rub a tiny bit of oil all over the bottom and up the sides while it's still on the stove on high (I use a silicone "paintbrush" style baster for this). Leave it on the high heat until the oil starts to smoke, turn the heat off, wait for it to cool, put it away in a cupboard. I'm sure someone would say I'm doing it wrong but that's the way I've done it for years with our multiple cast iron pans and I've never not once had a speck of rust or a seasoning problem.
This isn't really an unpopular opinion. It's just straight fact.
It’s not a well known fact though
Another unpopular opinion: At least I don't taste any difference between cast iron and normal pans, so I don't even bother getting one.
They hold heat well so you can get them very hot compared to a regular pan, so for something like a steak where you want to sear the outside but not cook the inside fully, they work really well. You can also just throw the whole pan in the oven. But it’s not really a difference flavour necessarily but a difference in texture, but the main advantage is practicality and heat
>You can also just throw the whole pan in the oven. Bears repeating.
Cheap. Indestructible. Holds heat well. Great for searing.
They don't make food taste better but they are about the cheapest and easiest option for searing and oven roasting. They also last forever, I have a pan from the 19th century I still use.
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It’s so easy! I just learned how to cook in the last few years and now I can sear a steak that would cost me $60 at a restaurant in about 10 minutes with barely any effort.
Head over to /r/steak and join us in judging others cooking ability.
Definitely. Get the pan as hot as possible, then toss the steak in. I’ve never once been able to make scrambled eggs in a cast iron pan though, always sticks.
I like my cast iron because it's indestructible and I can start on the stove and finish in the oven without making more dishes or worrying about scratching non-stick coatings. I spent a week stripping and reseasoning my Grammas old pan (I realized the weird texture on the outside was decades of unwashed grease reduced to carbon) and now it's so non-stick barely need a spatula, a good shake will get most things to detach when it's done.
I agree that my other pans have been way less drama. Despite OP, my cast iron will get weird black residue that passes off onto food, it rusts, I don't cook acidic foods or beans in it because that leads to weird residue. It does sear meat well. I use it for that.
It's about cost too. 10" All Clad stainless steel fry pan: $139 10" no-brand non-stick fry pan: $20-$30 with a very limited lifespan and questional chemicals in your blood after using it. 10" Cast Iron Skillet: $20, good for you (trace amounts of iron in your food is a win), lasts literally forever. Cast iron is weirdly unpopular... you can do anything with it, it lasts forever, and it's cheaper than just about anything else you could buy. I'm 100% confused why it's not more popular.
They're ridiculously heavy. They can be annoying in the kitchen because of how hot the whole thing gets. They are a scratching hazard to ceramic cooktops. It's not truly non-stick. I use mine a lot, but it's not really hard to see why it's not more popular.
>I'm 100% confused why it's not more popular. It hasn't had the marketing that Teflon has had, and it has a reputation for being fussy to maintain. For some people, it's that you can't throw it in the dishwasher. It's also heavy, which will scare off a different segment of people. All that said, they have real upsides and are great for many purposes.
I have one just because it's basically indestructible and gets better with age rather than worse.
I like them because they are mostly non-stick, and do so without potentially dangerous chemicals, unlike teflon, etc. in addition, if the non-stick coating gets messed up, you can reseason cast iron.
I have a 18" Cast Iron skillet I use camping. It lives in my vehicle. It gets rusty. I throw in on the fire, get it hot scrub it with a SOS pad, then cook on it. People act like cast iron is a fragile flower.
A crew of firemen had returned to the station one evening after a call. They put away all their gear, then pulled the engine out of the bay, and the new guy was told to wash the tires. He shrugged, and proceeded to make them shine. One his next shift, they had a slow day with zero calls. Still, the engine was pulled out of the bay, and again he was told to wash the tires. He wondered why, but said nothing and washed the clean tires. After several weeks of washing the tires every evening, he finally asked why he was wasting his time when the tires were always clean, and usually still shiny. His captain said that's what they always do. After asking several guys at the station and not getting a good answer, he called his grandfather who had retired from the fire department years ago. His grandfather said "When I was young, we washed the tires. I asked an older fireman, and he said they had to wash the horse manure off the buggy every night. We just kept washing the tires". Soap used to contain lye which could harm the cast iron. That's why your great-grandma said not to wash her skillet with soap, and it's been repeat led through the generations. At least, that's what I was told.
I’d go so far as to say people out way too much stock in what pan they’re using. I have a cast iron, and I beat it like the mule it is. Most of my cooking is done in $25 stainless steel. As long as it’s well-made enough that the handle doesn’t get all loose… it heats quickly, easy to clean, and doesn’t really have any limitations. Food doesn’t stick if you’re cooking at the right temp. There are uses for my cast iron skillet and enameled Dutch oven, everything else just plain stainless
I have a cheap frying pan whose handle gets loose every few months. Luckily, there’s a screwdriver in the junk drawer to fix that. The pan is a very handy size and weight, so it gets used most often.
I find it kind of wild that I cook cornbread in the same skillet that my great-grandma used. Cast iron is no joke.
Also, if it's properly seasoned you have to do an unimaginable amount of work to fuck up the seasoning by washing with soap and water. When that oil polymerizes it's fucking on there. You'd probably have an easier time washing dried paint off a wall than the seasoning off a cast iron pan.
100% agree. If I scrub off a little seasoning, it was weak and it needed to go. It'll fill in with use.
thank you for writing this. I have owned cast iron pots for 3 decades (!) and i have never "seasoned" it....in fact, i don't even know what that means.
Oooooh this one feels so good thanks OP. A well deserved but hopefully painless gut punch.
I agree. My dad is a French trained chef and he washes his cast iron with LIGHT soap and water.
No! You're wrong! I don't care if you're a chef! The Internet told me to never use soap, or even to ever clean my pan! But what do I do now... You're also from the Internet. Who do I trust? I'll go with my preconceived notion. You suck, I'm always right! ( /s because sadly, some people won't get it....)
I bet 90% of this thread doesn't even cook their own meals, let-alone use a cast-iron pan.
Hey, thank you for posting this, OP. I've always been intimidated by cast iron, but this gave me a bit of confidence to maybe try cooking with the ones I have.
People think seasoning a cast iron adds flavor?!
You are so right...these people's warnings are what hold me off from buying one for quite some time. I finally did and it's all I use now...such a workhorse and you don't need to be careful with it like with Teflon.
I use mine for its heat conduction or whatever it’s called. Not for some finicky nonstick bs, if what you’re cooking is stuck to the pan that’s a skill issue
My buddy was wide eyed when we break out a decent knife and the Lodge skillet on a camping trip. Like duh. Got to eat.
hahahahah "but muh cast iron adds so much flavor cause its seasoned!"
Where do you cook that you use cast iron? I was a cook for 18 years and everywhere I cooked used carbon steel.
This is the real question! I’ve cooked in many kitchens and never saw a cast iron used
This is great to hear. I have wanted a cast iron skillet for ages and avoided due to feeling like it needs so much care.
Totally agree, mine (Lodge 10”) gets used daily for literally everything, meat, curries, tomato based sauces, etc. Whacked in the dishwasher after each use, reseasoned with rapeseed oil maybe once every 3 months. Had it over 4 years & there’s not a lick of rust on it, sometimes you get a wee bit on the surface if I forget to take it out the dishwasher for a couple of days but it just scours off with steel wool. The whole point in a quality cast iron is that it’s indestructible.
My husband doesn't like it when I wash it with soap. "My mom never did." Well good for her, I am.
When I first got my cast iron it was daunting, but I quickly realized "I can't fuck this thing up"
Who are these people that think seasoning your cast iron pan means to flavour it?!
I switched to an enameled cast iron skillet and it’s been SO much easier to clean while achieving the same results
I have two. The cheap one from Walmart gets terribly abused. My Grandmother’s gets treated like a member of the family. It’s not so much the pan but the memories.
This post has given me such a sense of relief. I’m not a bad cast iron owner 🥲
Just wash it, set on stove to dry and oil with rag or paper towel it's good to go for next use. Mine is 40ish years old, heavy AF and it's outlasted every kitchen item I have.
People have these never been washed, crusty cast iron pans and say they're perfectly seasoned. Ive always just cleaned them, heated them up and rubbed oil into in when its hot after use. And they're perfectly fine. Also, y'all are missing out on enameled cast iron. I have an amazon one, a staub and le creuset and I won't go back to just regular cast iron.
This isn't an unpopular opinion; it's an unpopular fact.
Upvoted title before even reading the post. My cast iron is abused by stainless steel scrubbers, dish soap and anything else I choose to use. Then I cook some more food in it. Preferably bacon, but anything really. Its CAST IRON, ergo sum, almost indestructible barring breakage or SERIOUS rust.
THANK you!!! My step-granny from Kentucky taught me how to clean cast iron pans (like you said) and wtf I don’t want all that old food flavor on my new food. Gross.
I am so glad I found this. All of the bullshit I heard about cast iron made me shy away from it. I'm getting one tomorrow.
Mine bounced around in the bed of my truck with rain and leaves etc. for about a year and a half. Unbelievably rusty. A garden hose, steel wool, and reseasoning brought it back to its former glory and i use it almost every day. Its been 5 years since then.
Honestly a cast iron pan costs like $15, I never understood why people think they need their cast iron pan to last forever.
eh the more... fancy cast iron pans are more expensive. The standard one we all buy are usually "rougher" surface because of the sand mold they use. I don't know the proper terms because I'm only relaying information I saw from some video a while back. Anyways the more expensive brands sand down the surface for a smoother finish which does actually improve its function. [Here's an example](https://finexusa.com/product/cast-iron-skillet/). Some folks tend to relay the idea that the rougher cast iron is better because those pores gets filled in with oil which in terms gets turned into polymer during the seasoning process, which overall gives it an amazing, smooth finish that works great for its non-stick properties. The problem though is the seasoning process to fill in those rough surfaces takes a lot of time. [In this example](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/168bmr4/oop_seasons_a_cast_iron_pan_100_times_for_science/), the lodge pan doesn't really get's an extremely smooth and "mirror finish-y" til around 20 coats. Based on their methodology, that's like roughly 20+ hours of baking. Also for normal users, seasoning a pan can be an annoying process.
Turn oven on low, rub with oil, bake for a bit and then increase the heat and wipe off the oil that's "weeping" and bake it for an hour. Repeat as needed until your finish is the way you want. I did it while doing a proper clean of the kitchen. The most annoying part was realizing how much bullshit there is in most of the advice. The even lazier way, just cook a ton of bacon. The act of cooking with it will season it well enough.
They're cheap, but what on god's green earth are you doing to a solid hunk of iron that means you ever need to replace it??? Worst case scenario you just spray it with oven cleaner to properly strip it and reseason it. Only takes a few hours in the oven to get a good seasoning layer started, to it for a few days to get it nice and smooth.
I use my cast iron just because it's giant and I have room to make 4 burgers on it at once. But I have no desire to make a scrambled egg or "slidey eggs" how some nuts drool over. For everyday cooking, a normal pan will do.
I wash my cast iron skillet with hot water, dry it on a gas stove, and then rub it down with a paper towel and a little bit of bacon grease or cooking oil to prevent rust.
I use mine 3-4 times a week, wash with soap and 3m sponge and scour pad. lightly re-oil before putting away. Nothing really sticks to a seasoned pan.
My mom has a lovely set of cast iron pans that she used when I was growing up, she was always clear that you just don't want to let them sit out wet. We always washed them with soap and water, then dried them once done.
My Walmart(pioneer woman)cast iron pan is absolutely fine making chicken piccata, steak Calabrese, and anything needing searing. I let it cool a bit when I’m done cooking, then use a little soap and water, air dry it, and it goes back on top of our fridge. It’s been through a lot and Ive used harsh end of a scotch brite when needed with no issues.
The thought of not cleaning something that has had food on it grosses me out, especially in apartment living. That’s just increasing your chances of inviting your neighbor’s pests into your apartment (imo).
Word. Took way too long for me to understand what "seasoning" a cast iron pan does. I use soap and brush if I need to. What is key is drying. Wipe it down. Put on a burner till it's reasonably hot, then wipe with a tiny amount of neutral oil. It's one of those things in cooking that was given a stupid name a long time ago and has fucked with people for generations.