• Furbag@lemmy.world
    4·
    22 minutes ago

    I bought like a $30 one at the grocery store a few years ago and it’s still going strong. If I forget to use it for a long time it’ll get a patina of rust, but it scrapes right off. I only seasoned it once when I got it with beef tallow.

    Honestly if I threw it away today and bought a new one it still would have been cheaper than buying a Teflon pan for like triple the price and having it only last maybe a year before it gets completely ruined, and you get those forever chemicals in your body as an added bonus.

    It’s not like it’s some huge investment, just give it a try and see if it works for you. Buy a cheap one at a big box store, season it with oil or fat, and don’t put it in the dishwasher just hand rinse it with lye-free dish soap and a soft sponge. Maybe that’s too much work for you and you prefer your nonstick or stainless, that’s fine too, good quality stainless can last a lifetime if treated properly and ceramic nonstick pans are getting better and cheaper all the time and pretty much outcompeting PFA-based products because people are becoming more aware of how shitty they actually are.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 minutes ago

    Cast iron is cheap, indestructible, gets better with time, does want some care but nothing outrageous. I do have a good stainless skillet as well, call it the “stick pan”, if you want something to stick and then deglaze, it’s good.

    But the cast iron is my joy, my kids joke that I love it more than I love them (it is older than they are) and already argue about who will get it when I die. Have never bought a nonstick pan, they seem unhealthy, and old cast iron is satiny and nonstick. It suits the way I cook, or perhaps the way I cook has been shaped by the pans. I don’t worry about tomatoes or wine sauce but wouldn’t slow cook spaghetti sauce in one, would use stainless or the Le Cruset one for that.

    Mostly I think it’s like flannel, not great at the start but improves with use, ends up better than everything else and then stays better for a long time. In the case of cast iron that could be several generations.

  • THCDenton@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 minutes ago

    My cast iron griddle is the most used thing in my kitchen, after grilling something on it I get it ripping hot, pour water on it, scrub it with a rag until its clean, then coat it in cooking oil and wait for it to smoke. Takes like 2 minutes and it never leaves my stove.

  • ColonelThirtyTwo@pawb.social
    15·
    2 hours ago

    This has been my experience with cast iron. There’s so, so, so much conflicting information on them. Even in this thread.

    I wish the Mythbusters would come back just to test via experimentation all these conflicting claims.

    • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      18 minutes ago

      The water one is definitely false. You just have to dry it and add cooking oil right away.

      Steel wool or a Brillo pad, on the other hand …

    • ThirdWorldOrder
      5·
      1 hour ago

      Cast iron is great if you want to throw the pan in the oven or if you have a grill big enough to fit it. For regular use who gives a shit.

      Been using cast iron my whole life

  • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 hours ago

    In all seriousness my cast iron never looses its seasoning and is the best non stick I have in my house. I refuse to go back to PFSA

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
      9·
      1 hour ago

      People have weird ideas about seasoning. It is literally oil polymerized and bonded to the metal with high heat; but people act like it just rubs off. You can scrape seasoning off, but it’s hard. I need steel wool to do it.

      I think these people complaining aren’t really seasoning their pans - just using dirty pans (i.e. the oil hasn’t fully polymerized).

      • exasperationEnglish
        3·
        41 minutes ago

        Different types of oils form different polymerized surfaces, too. Related to the greentext, some people came up with the idea of flaxseed as the best oil for seasoning cast iron based on some theorycrafting about chemistry at a high school level, and it turned out that flaxseed oil seasoning chips and flakes really, really easily.

        So there are a bunch of people out there doing it wrong and complaining that it’s too fussy.

  • weeeeum@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 hours ago

    I use a wok and I wish I could use it for everything. I love that little damn thing to bits. I have only seasoned it twice (removed the previous one due to rust) and it can fry an egg fine.

    It handles soap, tomatoes and other acidic foods fine as well. Didn’t use any fancy oil, just avocado oil.

    My mom’s 300$ tephlon pans don’t even last more than 8 months without getting nicks. My Lil fella is 15 years old.

    They want to brainwash into using expensive, disposable, products.

    • DJDarren@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      3·
      57 minutes ago

      My sauce pans are stainless and are The Shit. Had them four years now and they’re still in good order.

      My frying pan is cast iron and is The Shit. Had it a year and it’s still as good as when I bought, and I use it every day.

      I will never go back to flaky non-stick bullshit.

    • EatATacoEnglish
      6·
      2 hours ago

      While oil is necessary, It’s more about how you preheat it and your technique, rather than how you oil it; no amount of oil is going to save you from over crowding a cold pan.

      • TranscendentalEmpire
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Yep, the old hot pan cold oil technique you use with a traditional woks works well with cast iron, carbon steel, and stainless steel.

        You basically get the pan as hot as you can, coat with enough to cover the pan with a thin layer of oil, and heat until smoking. Dump out your hot oil and add your cold oil and then your ingredients. If you get good at hot pan cold oil you can make just about anything nonstick.

        • EatATacoEnglish
          1·
          1 hour ago

          I’ve always just used the bead test where you drop a drop of water in a dry pan and if it beads up and rolls around, instead of just sizzles, then the pan is hot enough to add oil (although this also works if it’s too hot, but I have a good sense of how long it takes to get to this temp, so I’m usually testing just before and just after it hits this temp). Then when the oil is shimmering, this is the time to add food.

        • EatATacoEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          I have no idea but those aren’t stainless steel pans. Like if you are using Teflon you don’t want to preheat. Every pan type is used differently.

  • Mpatch@lemmy.world
    172·
    4 hours ago

    Nah my cast only washes with hot water and small Scraper. If you need soap. We’ll you don’t like actualy don’t. Seasoning? Just cook bacon, dump the grease leave a bit in put it back on the stove for a hot minute or while you put your blt together. Done it’s hunk of metal not much you can do to fuck it up. And if food is sticking to it probably cause you didn’t get the pan hot enough before you put the food in.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
      7·
      4 hours ago

      BerlingerHaus uses some kind of artifical stone instead of teflon. I’ve only got a grill pan so far but it’s easier to use and to clean than teflon. Surely wherever you are has something similiar?

          • Ageroth@reddthat.com
            1·
            7 minutes ago

            We found a used older one, used it just about daily for a couple years before my dumb ass left it in an oven that was too hot (some old ones only got to like 400F apparently) and caused a bunch of cracks. We messaged le cruset and after sending them some pictures and a sob story they sent us a brand new one.

            Doesn’t need to be a new one or le cruset, enameled cast iron is just nice generally in my experience

  • Virkkunen@fedia.io
    50·
    7 hours ago

    Don’t these pans last like generations, being passed down? I doubt your grandma and her grandma were bothering to apply 8 coats of flaxseed oil and heating it up to 1000 degrees and the pans would still perform as expected for ages

    • ngwoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      5 hours ago

      Has anyone outside of a commercial kitchen ever actually destroyed a stainless steel pan though

    • lol_idk@lemmy.ml
      25·
      7 hours ago

      I’ve been using the cast iron pan handed down to me for like 30 years. It skipped a generation and went straight from my grandmother to me. I don’t know exactly how old it is though

  • immutable
    761·
    9 hours ago

    I bought a $20 cast iron pan at target, I season it like once a year. I just wash it and make sure to dry it, I’m sure this is against the rules. Seems to work fine for me though. I wouldn’t say it’s nonstick but it’s mostly fine.

    A $20 Teflon pan would be flaking and unusable, so for $20 it’s a good deal.

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
      31·
      1 hour ago

      It’s fine and good to wash cast iron - particularly if you had something corrosive in there. Don’t do it in the dishwasher (change in heat can be bad for it - same reason not to machine wash kitchen knives).

      People who say washing your pan will remove the seasoning have not properly seasoned their pans or see food residue washing out and think it is the polymerized oils bonded to the metal that are washing out. If that’s the case, they are washing way too aggressively.

      • 0ops
        1·
        6 minutes ago

        There used to be some truth to the advise of not washing cast iron because those old-fashioned soaps had lye that could break down the seasoning. So I guess if you like to use boutique soaps you should be mindful if they contain lye. But if you’re just using dawn dish soap like probably 90% of everybody, go to town, you’re not going to remove seasoning with dish soap

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
      28·
      9 hours ago

      I bought those cheap marble coated pan, now entering 2 years of frequent use, other than tiny bit of degraded non-stick capability, it works just fine, didn’t even chip. I bought an expensive teflon once, it only last around half year before it start chipping. Teflon is just bottom tier coating now.

      I also own a cheap cast iron skillet, cook with it frequently, wash with soap and only heat dry it, didn’t even bother with seasoning after washing, it now has a nice, smooth patina on it that mostly non-stick. I genuinely don’t get why people always baby a cast iron, it’s a hilux, not a cybertruck.

    • thefartographer
      132·
      8 hours ago

      I have a cast iron griddle that I use once a year at my mom’s house. I leave it in the outdoor grill when I’m done using it and don’t even clean it. The next time I go to use the grill, I take out the cast iron griddle and just leave it out in the elements and it rusts like crazy.

      Then, the day I’m ready to use it again, I scour the shit out of it, heat it up to 500-600°, throw some oil on it like a greased up whore, and get the lowest quality seasoning on it.

      Then I use it to grill some ears of corn so they don’t turn black from the soot of all the wood I burn to heat the outdoor grill. Once the corn is done cooking, I close off the grill and tell the cast iron griddle to go fuck itself.