I only go to Reddit for two things: cast iron and pf2e. Slidey eggs never gets old
I only go to lemmy for two things. Tasty memes and to see people talk about Reddit.
And I’m all out of bubblegum.
And Linux
And people moaning about people that like Linux.
The linux people here are the worst. I’ve blocked all major linux communities but they still seep into other communities
And people informing me they use arch btw
I use arch BTW!
I use mint btw
Slidey eggs are highly represented in both categories
I bet she was so grateful. It takes a ton of scrubbing.
War
Scrolled past this before reality set in after a few seconds
You mean “ex-wife”…😵
And this post will be exhibit A in the divorce proceedings
I knew nothing about cast iron pan care when I met my SO and I did his dishes for him one day and washed it with soap and water. I still hate the damn things and think they’re filthy and nasty.
They don’t need the hell scrubbed out of them like stainless steel and they don’t cause cancer like Teflon. They also sear meats way better than any other pans.
Then as others have already said, it’s fine to gand wash them if you’d like. You just don’t grind/scrub off the carbonized oil layers.
I’ve never had to scrub the stainless steel ones actually, they are terrific.
Well what the ueck are you doing, because I sure have. We have a higher end ss pan and it’s way worse than our cast iron skillets. Cook scrambled eggs in it and you’ll need a power sander to get that thing clean.
Maybe it’s a quality thing. We bought these really high end ones the chef recommended. I only have to sometimes run the scrubby over a patch of food now and again.
MinuteFood on youtube did a video just yesterday talking about the science of cast iron, and why they’re not dirty like many people seem to think.
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Oh this helps xD.
Weird english people and their weird words just to confuse others.
Minute Food did a video on this recently.
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It’s actually fine to use soap and water, otherwise it is in fact, filthy and nasty. Don’t believe the indoctrinated
It forms a thin layer of ‘plastic’ when you season it. The oil polymerizes afaik.
It’s both true and not true. Using something like dawn or similar is fine, using a lye soap will fuck your shit up.
Thanks for the details on this, luckily modern soap doesn’t have lye anymore.
You’re not lyeing to us, are you? ;)
Go to bed, dad!
Bruh.
I was young and had never touched cast iron.
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It’s fine to wash them with modern dish soaps. The reason people say not to is because dish soaps used to have lye in them, which would destroy the seasoning. Just make sure you wipe the water off instead of letting it air dry or it can rust.
I keep reading the word seasoning, and for non native speakers this is hard. What are you all meaning? You put some garlic, salt and pepper on the pan and let it be?
English is dumb. We got the term “seasoned” to mean like a veteran fighter, something aging properly and using salt and spice from the French “assaisoner” which means “to ripen / to improve with time” which we expanded upon by being like “when things become tastier” which is how we started applying it to using spices and salt…
In this case it means sort of speed running getting the oil sheen a cast iron cooking implement used to naturally get by just using it over and over when cooking over wood or peat hence “ripening” the pan. Way back in the day in England and France they didn’t really use soap for dishes. You washed them with water and left them outside in UV light to sterilize them so all iron cooking things tended to naturally develop that nice carbon coat. Time and use made them better hence “seasoned”.
In this context, it means to coat the cast iron with oil and/or fat and heat it until the oils polymerize as a thin film stuck to the surface of the pan. This prevents the cast iron from rusting and presents a non-stick surface. It’s honestly more like varnishing the pan than “seasoning” it.
Seasoning in this specific context means the residue of the food oil which forms a surface coating when heated up to a certain temperature. It protects the surface from rusting.
It does protect from rust somewhat(water can still cause rust if left on it) but the big deal is it makes the cookware non-stick without Teflon.
It’s more like like a seasoned veteran, not cooking seasoning.
You aren’t throwing garlic on the pan and then putting it in the cupboard. You build up layers of polymerized oil on the pan as you cook on it.
Oil is placed on the pan and then it is heated to form a non-stick coating. This layer can have small holes in it, so the process is repeated many times. The holes do not line up, which makes the path for water to get through much longer or blocks it. This means water can not easily make it through all of the layers. That also means any water that gets in can’t easily get out, and it can cause rust to form if it makes it through the coating and is left on there.
I too watched the MinuteFood video on this yesterday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0R1jVN3LaY
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What if you have a new cast iron and accidentally let a wet dish sit on it in a drawer and it rusted? Hypothetically of course…
Steel wool to take off the rust and re-season
Thank you. Do you have any seasoning tips or recommendations?
There’s this old cowboy on YouTube that has a good video on restoring cast irons I forget his name though
Cowboy Kent Rollins? I like that guy.
Avocado oil is really good, and it’s important to have a super thin layer of oil. Just put a little in the pan and then evenly coat it with a papertowel and wipe out as much oil as possible… and then wipe it out some more. It will look like there’s nothing there and thats how you want it. Place in the oven on its highest setting like 450+ for 45min, let it cool a bit and then do it again. You should do this 3-4 times for a nice seasoning.
That’s the cool part- no matter what happens to your cast iron pans, it can be fixed. You scratch or chip a non-stick coating and the pan is pretty much ruined.
Not OP, but the Lodge seasoning guide is a pretty good starting point. Cast iron being used forever is proof of how resilient it can be, there’s not too many things you can do that are irreparable.
Also, you don’t really need to baby it as much as most people say. Just keep using it and it’ll keep getting better.
I just put it back on the stove on full heat for a minute to dry off the water.
Spray a little high smoke point oil on it and wipe it down with a towel while it’s hot
Don’t do this if you have hard water.
Oh shit I didn’t know that!
Just burn it on the highest flame after every use. The grime will be all disinfected by the heat. You can stop when you smell the specific odor of burning rubber and see black fumes, this means your burnt oil coating is denaturating.
I wish you said it’s supposed to be cleaned before using. What good is it in knowing it was disinfected after it’s last use … 10 months ago?
Then you simply wash with dish soap and hot water before you use it. This ain’t rocket surgery.
You burn the grease after cooking so that your skillet won’t stink with rotten lard when you don’t use it for a year.
Reapplying the oil coating before cooking is a good practice, you’ll also burn all the dust. But you then need to let it cool to allow oil to polymerize and lock all that cancer below the coating.
As someone allergic to dust and averse to cancer, I’ll mute this cursed thread and sign up to a normie cooking sub 😂
I used to think that was the way, but medium heat for longer is better. Less cancerous too.
Divorce? People have been murdered for less…
coat that sucker with avocado oil and bring it up to 200°C for a few minutes. Allow it to cool, repeat until the sides don’t hold any oil, then switch to crisco solid shortening for a few rounds.
What does the avocado oil base do? I’ve never seasoned a cast iron pan from scratch before.
You can use various different food oils, the important part is that it can leave a (food safe) polymerized coat that binds to the surface, protecting it from rusting as well as making it non-stick
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Did you mean to say avocado oil there? I love the stuff.
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I love that everyone is showing up to give real advice to this post.
It’s the goal of the original picture, people can’t help but give cast iron advice.
The thing is, if you take care of it, the pan will outlive the owner. There’s just not many products with that kind of life these days.
Btw, copper sponge is really good for such things. Hard enough for cooked-in stuff but soft enough to not scratch.
I find the scrub daddy brushes to be the perfect fit for cleaning my cast iron as well.
He’s dead
The best thing to season a cast iron pan with is blood.
I love my cast iron pan, but I really cannot get the perfect sheen that everyone else seems to get. The bottom of mine is non-stick now, and I season regularly, but the sides always seem to chip away eventually. Once the chipping starts, I have no idea how to stop other than to strip it entirely and start again.
I think you need to resurface it when that happens.
Now don’t dry it off and keep it in the cupboard for a few days
But you gotta soak it then go on a vacation for a couple weeks first
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god damn i love relevant xkcds
I’ve got one that I need someone to do this to so I can start over. It’s older than I am and was poorly taken care of for several years before I got it.
The cast iron I bought for myself is all in good condition. That one means a lot because of where it comes from but I don’t have the patience to scrape all that shit off. I wish someone would do it for me so I could enjoy the pan my grandaddy cooked me bacon in.
Drill with an abrasive scubbing pad on it will sort it out real quick.
That really depends on the condition of the pan. I’ve had some where power tools were insufficient.
I have yet to see any kind of powered abrasive that WON"T get to the bare metal in a right quick manor. It’s kind of what the stuff is made for…
Right, that is your experience. And I’m telling you that there are cast iron fry pans that can defeat wire brushes, both manual and ones you attach to your power drill. (Of course it’s up to you if you want to believe me. There’s no particular reason to believe some random stranger online, but then again, there’s no obvious benefit for me to lie about it.)
Wet/dry sandpaper is fast and will easily get you down to the fresh bare metal again. Then you simply re-season and start cooking that delicious bacon in it again. A rainy Saturday afternoon will easily get it done.
Follow guides on using the yellow lid can of oven cleaner in a trash bag. Works perfectly fine and reduces the scraping to almost nothing.
Just put it in the oven on cleaning mode if you have a self cleaning oven
My oven uses some weird “eco-friendly” self-cleaning process that involves pouring water into it and steaming the dirt off, which doesn’t sound like it would be good for the pan. Got any alternatives? I found a Griswold at the thrift store a few years back and I’d like to be able to restore it without damaging it.
Hey everybody posting advice, go liven up this community!
https://lemmy.world/c/castiron
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