This guy is misinformed.
That’s his ex-wife.
I also choose this guy’s ex-wife
ew a reddit meme 🤢
“the food was always sliding around the pan! Now it stays right where you put it!” Lol
“I now know what rust tastes like”
Skillet issue.
At least, the pan as such is not ruined. You’ll just have to season it back into the proper condition.
And this is how I discovered pan seasoning.
Given the recent horrible things about non-stick pans, I wonder if I should just buy seasoned cast iron pans.
I don’t think I’d trust a pan that says it’s “pre-seasoned.” Get a cast iron pan and learn how to season it yourself. It’s kind of an ongoing process anyway; every time you fry something in it with butter or oil you’re maintaining the coating.
Meh, one of my pots came pre-seasoned and I just started using it as if I’d seasoned it myself, after the first couple of weeks of simply using it, it now has the exact same surface as everything I seasoned myself, because every time you fry something in it, it just improves the seasoning.
shrug
I mean I’m happy I know how to season my stuff, but if it lowers the entry-barrier to cast iron I think it’s worth it.
And see I’m getting to an age where I’m not convinced there’s a procedure for anything. Get eight people together, ask them how they season their cookware, you’ll get nine different answers and none of them work for you. Half of what that guy said, some of what this guys says but I’ll use this detail from the third guy, that works well enough for me and my life improves drastically the instant I stop giving a shit.
I can only tell you about my experience, I’ve made the switch half a year ago.
Cast iron is heavy, REALLY HEAVY and comparably more expensive than cheap non-stick pans. It’s a hassle to work with because it’s so heavy, no easy flipping stuff by throwing the pan around (inertia is a bitch), you shouldn’t clean it with soap, just hot water and some elbow-grease and you should always keep is slightly oiled. Oh and there is no “the handle doesn’t get hot”, it always does and you should wrap a cloth around it.
But Oh My Goodness!
I’ve needed some tries to get the seasoning right, needed some time to adjust my cooking as to not leave acidic food in the pan or pot over night, but now that my pan and pot are very well seasoned and I know how to handle them… nothing sticks, at least not for long. I can make a fried egg or some bacon and after sticking for the first few seconds it just… lift’s off the surface and moves freely in the pan. No non-stick pan has ever given me a non-stick experience like this and making steak has become one of my most fun experiences, because the pan keeps its heat when I throw the cold slap of meat into it and evenly browns the beef without any sticking.
Absolute game changer. just don’t heat an empty pan too much, because you can burn the seasoning off again.
Soap is ok for washing (as long as it doesn’t contain lye).
And carbon steel pans are a lighter alternative.
I have a carbon steel wok and I absolutely love it. I have a couple cast iron pans but I haven’t used them in a while because of it.
The cast iron subreddit drama is one of the few things I miss from reddit. Even got me to buy a few more and cook more often with them!
I was super precious about all my cast iron for a long time. Then I had a thought watching this “cowboy” YouTuber wash his cast iron with some specialty thing.
“This fucking guy is like pretending to be out on the pasture or whatever. In the actual 1800s, this shit was probably just wiped out, or they used lye soap or something ridiculous! Why the fuck am I being so fucking careful?!?”
Now I do not care, like I’ve had my shit get rusty, crusty, “overheated”, the reality is that it’s a big ass chunk of metal! Short of deformation or intentional or extreme neglect (leaving it in the rain uncovered for 40 years) you will not destroy it.
If it gets too “sticky”, you oil it up and heat it, and bingo, it’s fine again.
I used to hike to a mountain lake in New Hampshire for trout fishing. On the wall of the Adirondack shelter next to the lake was a large cast iron skillet. Random people used it for decades to cook fish over a wood campfire. The only cleaning it got was being scraped with a flat rock, rinsed in the lake, and picked at by woodland critters. It always worked just fine, and the fish tasted great.
Ok. But should you never put citrus in your garbage disposal because it summons the pipe demon, or are you supposed to put citrus in your garbage disposal because it repels the pipe demon?
You guys need to lay off the pipe demon. He’s just doing his job like the rest of us.
But he does prefer oranges over lemons.
You should rip your garbage disposal out and replace it with a normal drain, then put your food waste in the compost or trash instead.
Yeah, food scraps belong in a landfill, where they can be sealed over and fester for years, perhaps preserved for future archeologists to study. Disposals just add your food waste where it can decompose and rejoin the cycle of life. We don’t need that
What part of
then put your food waste in the compost
did you not understand?
This part
or trash
Yes, disposal can take care of the same subset of foods as composting and in pretty much the same way.
- composting is a better choice if you garden but otherwise is extra steps
- disposal is much more convenient, but if you don’t know what’s appropriate you may clog your plumbing. Or if you have a septic system, it probably wasn’t designed for that and will clog.
I rest easy knowing the food I put in the disposal is ground up and mixed with biological waste so is quickly digested on the way to the sewage treatment plant. I further know we have advanced treatment such that any remaining food sits in a digester for 30 days before being filtered and the remaining indigestible fraction sent to a landfill. I also have a reasonable handle on what to use it for, so have never had a plumbing issue.
Coffee is the only problem area. The grounds would be good to compost but bad to put in the disposal
Isn’t that the whole point of cast iron pans?
they can be treated like shit and still work?
I’ve graduated from cast iron to ceramic coated cast iron.
All of the benefits of cast iron with the added appeal of never having to reseason it.
I have a LeCruset enameled cast iron pan and love it. So easy to clean, doesn’t need seasoning.
Funny enough, I made the opposite journey. Bought a LeCreuset a while back and had to toss it after 1.5 years, because the enamel started to flake off, despite great care handling/cleaning it. Replaced it with a cast iron skillet and am thoroughly enjoying its simplicity.
There’s a huge difference between the low end LeCreuset and the high end ones.
I don’t even understand why they make the cheap stuff, the ceramic just flakes off and it’s garbage. The high end $$$$$ stuff lasts forever tho.
Oh this was a high-end model (medium-sized pan, wooden handle, cost about 200€). This is why I was so disappointed that it didn’t last very long.
Damnit, you ruined it! Cast iron skillets aren’t meant to be clean like that after many uses.
Are you simple?
My ex is obsessive about cleanliness and genuinely enjoyed doing the dishes. She was also a terrible cook. So we had an arrangement where I’d cook and she’d do the dishes.
We quickly had to ammend the rules so that I also cleaned the cast iron because she’d obsessively scrub the pan for an hour and ruin it.
I trained (for lack of a better word) my husband to wash the cast iron without wrecking the finish. He used to leave it soaking, I didn’t freak out but told him that was bad for them and he could just toss them into the oven dirty if needed and I’d deal with them (like you, I am the cook not the clean) but then he’d want to make eggs or something and the pan would be dirty so he asked how to. I got a chainmail scrubber and he loves doing it now because he loves the chainmail scrubber. Like - I will sometimes use soap on mine because I can judge the finish but he will not put soap now, will only scrape and has begun to love the pans too, after so many years he realizes because they never wear out just get better.
I did have to reset a couple of mine once, burn off the seasoning and sand them and restore and yes they looked like this picture. It was terrifying but they got great again. Such durable goods they are!
I can usually boil water in them to soften stuff.
It helps that I’ve got an inductive stove that will boil water in like 30 seconds, so there really isn’t any reason to soak them.
That was not cast iron, was it?
That is what cast iron looks like if you strip it down to the bare metal. It’s not actually ruined, but it will be unusable until someone goes through the process of re-seasoning it
My co-workers wife did this once.
My co-workers exwife did this once.
Cringe
