As long as you don’t leave it sitting in water you’ll be fine.
The reverence and fear of cast iron cooking pots and pans is stupid on both sides. People have been using cast iron under every condition from the big fire place in a castle’s kitchen to a fire pit in a peasant’s hovel to open fires outdoors to Michelin Star restaurants in Paris and London. And they cooked EVERYTHING in it because it’s what they had and all they had. There is no mystery to seasoning and care of cast iron. Just like there is little to fear from cooking with it.
Those that do worship in the church of cast iron-- just cook in it. There is nothing sacrosanct about it. If your Great Grandmother didn’t worry about it, why should you? Any damage you can do it can be repaired quickly and easily. So get over yourselves.
And those that fear cast iron cookery, get over it…They are often the same ones that are fearful of micro plastics getting ingested and yet have no care or concern while cooking with plastic cutting boards and utensils in plastic coated cookware.
I have no fear of cooking with it, I just want my cookware to be minimally fussy and not require special treatment. If the $10 Walmart skillet can be thrown in the dishwasher and the $100 cast iron one requires me to baby it or it’ll rust, I’ll go with the cheap skillet every day.
First, everyone (not you because you don’t like it) should buy their cast iron at the hardware store, should be ~ $30. It’ll last pretty much forever so that $30 over a lifetime is not much.
If you don’t cook a starch or aromatic in it, just wipe it out and let it get super hot.
If you do cook starch in it, hand wash it with soap, just let it get over 212 degrees on the stove to dry it.
If you want to throw it in the dishwasher, just pull it out at the end of the cycle and throw it on the stove > 212 degrees to dry. A well seasoned pan is generally so easy to clean, this would be a waste of your time, but it won’t kill anyone.
If you want to subscribe to the no soap, scrub off the cooked starches with water and a non scratch scouring pad, re-coat in a fine layer of oil and let it smoke off under high heat. I really don’t bother and just use whatever it takes to get it clean easily.
If the seasoning polymer you get from burning off oil gets cruddy after 6-8 months, re-season.
If you accidentally get a little rust on it, soak it in vinegar until the rust dissapears, scrub the spot with a 3m pad until the spot is clean and re-season.
You can get a rusty ass pan from a yard sale, soak it in vinegar for a day, scrub it down and re-season it. It’ll come out like new.
If over the years, the seasoned surface starts to look super cruddy, soak it in sodium hydroxide until the polymer disolves, then reseason.
Yeah, they’re harder than throwing it in the dishwasher, But they’re wasteless, cheap, pleasant to cook on and give great results.
I keep a teflon pan and a couple different cast iron around. Even found a glass top lid that fits.
Lol this response proves OP’s point. “Bro it’s so easy bro just soak in sodium hydroxide and fill your house with smoking oil it’s easy dude just measure how much starch is in ur meal dude lol ez”
The mystery is that iron will rust if wet. The care instructions are “don’t leave it wet for a long time”.
?
Ruins the patina, or something
Meanwhile, I’m like “huh, maybe you should learn how to cook, but you do your stuff, that’s your own business”.
Ceramic rules.
Ceramic is great for some things.
Like, cooking.
And engines.
And toilet bowls.
And rollerskate bearings
Most toilet bowls are made of porcelain, which is different from plain ceramic.
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Cooking some things.
Ceramic is the equivalent of non stick stuff.
Are we talking the same ceramic here? It sticks less than with teflon.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t cook eggs for shit in ceramic. Give me a stainless steel or teflon pan and I can knock out a perfect french-style omelet, but give me a ceramic pan and suddenly I’m clueless. I genuinely don’t understand what could possibly make such a significant difference, but I swear it’s true.
Well, yes and no. Ceramic is roughly on par with Teflon nowadays.
But for example when your searing meat, inox is usually considered superior (it would be ok for eggs though).
When you’re roasting potatoes, ceramic is definitely at the bottom of the list.
Each dish has its appropriate tool.
The whole cast iron thing is such a cult. Always makes me laugh when someone tries to preach it to me, how it’s great, then there’s all this stuff you need to do that you normally wouldn’t, oh right you can’t do this and you need to do this and yes it’s heavy as all hell but that’s actually a good thing
lol
I’m not a fan boy, I actually resisted getting one for nearly a year before one was gifted to me. There are a couple perks and draw backs I’ve learned. Pros: heating is pretty even, cleaning is actually way easier (IMO), and I can use metal on it. Cons: needs to be seasoned, takes longer to heat, some people get the ick from seeing rust.
TBH it’s pretty much the only pan I use now (cause I find cleaning easier and I’m lazy AF), but people should use whatever suits them.
If you’re drying it properly you really shouldn’t be getting any rust. I sometimes get a bit on the handle loop but that’s it.
I personally don’t get rust but some people do and they can dislike that. Usually I’ll put the stove on low and help it evaporate to avoid rust. Its also really only a concern if (lye free) soap is used because otherwise the seasoning prevents it pretty well
Yeah I got one for free because a family member saw rust and wanted to throw it out.
Scrub, oil, and we’re good to go.
Seasoning is a polymer, which is known for its strong resistance. It is unlikely to breakdown just with one dishwasher wash.
The seasoned surface is hydrophobic and highly attractive to oils and fats used for cooking (oleophilic).
The protective layer itself is not very susceptible to soaps, and many users do briefly use detergents and soaps.[28]
Unless you are dish washing it everyday and refuse to dry/reseason it, you will be fine.
However, cast iron is very prone to rust, and the protective layer may have pinholes, so soaking for long periods is contraindicated as the layer may start to flake off.
This aligns with how I care for mine. Scrub it with a chainmail scrubber, Wash it with soap / watwr, then rinse dry over flame and then drizzle a but of oil and rub with a paper towel.
I have no reverence for my cast iron besides avoiding letting it sit wet for a long time.
In this thread are people trying to use one tool for everything.
You don’t use a screwdriver for everything.
Likewise, in the kitchen, you don’t use the same utensil for everything.
And I’m sorry, for the people that have one fork, one knife one knife, one pan. No. Unless you live on shit food, you can’t cook with just that.
If you actually want tasty food, you’ll need some hardware. There’s just no way around it.
Disclaimer, I’m French, and an actual cook (non practising).
You can use a wok for just about everything. Not great for baking, but anything else can be done in a wok, but even us chinese cooks (I am white, but learned to cook Chinese food) will look at you weird if you actually try to cook everything in a wok.
You aren’t cooking many things if all you’re using is a wok.
A wok is simultaneously a frying pan, a sauce pan, a soup pot, and a deep frier, when not in use. It’s Schrodinger’s kitchen appliance.
I’m a former chef that was trained in over 10 styles of food prep. I just don’t bake much.
Good a non-practising French, thought I could smell you through the screen for a moment.
Ya the smug alert in that one was to high
I was giggling uncontrollably, so I knew that a US guy had to have replied to one of my posts with something hilarious. Of course I wasn’t wrong.
Sometimes you have to use some pot as meat tenderizer…
Sure, if it’s heavy enough.
I feel bad for people who truly can not afford good kitchen stuff, granted most people in my area can. Otherwise yeah, assuming the person were discussing can afford it. There’s no going around spending a little money on good kitchenware if decent results are expected. It’s not like people have to drop thousands, but a few hundred is kinda normal.
Also tip for anyone who’s building up their first kitchen, those gimmicky things that are always on sale are almost always crap. Buying that stuff is worse than gambling, cause at least gambling doesn’t leave you with a kitchen full of worthless clutter.
I feel bad for people who truly can not afford good kitchen stuff
Now there’s a lot of people who can’t.
Because kitchenware is actually hideously expensive. And even here, in France where we have access to the fundamental cooking industry tools - ok maybe slightly less-)
(Ok, I said I was in France, it’s cool, feel free to downvote me now)
I find it amusing that as someone that actually spent years learning how to cook, and that I took the took the time to understand the chemistry and logic of cooking, I’m downvoted because:
- I’m french (because a fair number of users are idiots, and yet I’m still here to face them)
- or they believe they can cook with a microwave (a US affectation)
- or maybe it’s just a jest across the atlantic, since we made them a country, they hate us for some reason as a joke, haha.
Condescending and a pity party. Really a wonder why people aren’t flocking to upvote.
Well now you’re getting downvoted for complaining about downvotes
I don’t really care. Being French here means you’re being downvoted.
Just like I’m donwoting US users.
Lol if you didn’t care you wouldn’t be constantly complaining about it
I mean, as long as it’s your cast iron skillet.
You… hate cast iron? Of all things people could hate, cast iron is the choice here. Mmaight.
Cast iron has a weird cult following. It’s like the jahovas witnesses of cookware
Maybe a cast iron skillet killed his family.
Cast iron skillets don’t kill people, people kill people.
It’s not a cast iron skillet problem, it’s a mental health problem.
Ugh they’re so gross.
I threw my cast iron away about a year ago. Just couldn’t get the hang of it, probably a me problem. Moved to a stainless steel, and my goodness, the crust I get on meats is unparalleled.
Girl I’m with you. It feels like they’re never really clean!
Exactly. It feels like they just ooze dirty oil no matter how much you wipe them.
It’s your expensive quality cookware, if you want to ruin it I can’t do anything about it.
Whispers gently to well seasoned dutch oven
Shh, it’s okay, the bad man can’t hurt you.
In all seriousness I actually have this pumpkin Le Creuset cast iron Dutch oven and it’s in fine shape. The pans that I hate are the gross frying pans my SO brought to this relationship which are disgusting. This Dutch oven can go in the dishwasher no problem actually.
A well-seasoned Dutch oven sounds like a fate worse than death.
🍑💨💀
Unrelated: when did peach start signifying ass? It meant pussy when I was a teenager.
I mean, I think it still does. Like, the word. But the emoji, with the two cheeks clearly sticking out like that, especially with a little peach fuzz, really sells the buttock meaning. 😅
Peach ass has been a thing forever, I never heard people associating peach to the pussy.
As what do you hear people refer to the pussy?
A box
It’s pretty hard to ruin good cast iron. A good cast iron pan could spend a year at the bottom of a lake and all it would need is a good scrub and reseason to be good to go again.
About the only thing I’ve seen that makes them completely irrecoverable is when people use them to melt lead. Also you can crack the cheap ones in half with thermal shock.
It’s going to be a good day.
I see someone has chosen violence today
Setting off the pan nerds should be listed as a war crime by the Geneva Convention.
/s I am indeed unreasonably mad.
Not that you put the cast iron in the dishwasher (enjoy your rust), but the fact that you can actually fit the pan in your dishwasher. I recently spent $350 on a portable dishwasher and your iron skillet is bigger than that. I bought that thing to NOT have to scrub dishes. Thanks for reminding me that I STILL have to scrub pots and pans!
