Hey everybody, here's a point I make in the video, but I wish I had made a little earlier on (judging by the comments): The easiest way to maintain cast iron is to cook with it all the time. Our great-grandparents didn't obsess over polymerization blah blah blah. They just cooked in the damn thing. They cooked most meals they ate (unlike a lot of us today), and most of those meals they cooked in their cast iron. Cooking in it constantly will maintain a decent seasoning, and iron pans generally only start to rust if you don't use them. So, as I said, if you're gonna use it all the time, I think cast iron is great. That's why you have people commenting here saying, "I never worry about any of this stuff and my pan works great!" That's probably because they're cooking with it all the time, which is awesome. But if you're not gonna cook with it all the time, I do think there are better options, assuming you can afford them.
Can't do it myself yet (haven't graduated) but I can send it another engineer who is a graduate material science student for ya adam. Hopefully Rutgers engineering will answer these questions
yea ive only watched the first few mins so far, and was gonna comment exactly that, guess i'll go finish the video first. I have 2 cast Iron pans my grandmother gave me, one deep and big, and one is a standard frying pan size, and i literally use them for almost everything i cook. I seasoned them once when i got them, and i just rinse them out and maybe put a bit of olive oil on them once a month, and they are always ready to go. I have no need to put them in the dishwasher, and they do not rust. They are perfect.
One additional thing to note: For people who have pet birds (parrots or otherwise), Teflon can be very problematic. I agree that the health implications of Teflon for PEOPLE are probably not a huge concern, but the gasses Teflon releases when heated above a certain temperature are INCREDIBLY dangerous to pet birds and can very quickly kill pet birds even at very low concentrations.
Also, cast iron can make a cartoon character's head mold to the shape of the pan, producing a very comedic effect. This is probably the most important reason to own a cast iron pan.
This takes me back to the days when Maybell would slap Hennery upside his cabbage with the old ACME IRON CO . for sassing her Brussel sprouts . As good ol' Hank would go on out back to ponder his misguided decision to sass sweet honey bee Maybell's sprouts , May would be getting down on her hands and knees to scrub up the blood from just another family decision ? If only Hank learned to say " May we have no sprouts " ??? No ! No , I'm not alright ........hahahah 🤪
Another thing to remember is that cast iron is heavy. This means that if someone breaks into your house while you are cooking dinner, you can hit them with a cast iron pan and it will be far more effective then stainless steel.
after you smackem you can continue to cook with it since it is still perfect not bent and still hot..police will be there in about 15 and the person laying on the ground will be out for 30 mins best, you can have dinner done
As someone who has used cast iron pans for 20 years, I can tell you most people shouldn't use them, and he's absolutely right with his conclusion. I got rid of some of my unusual cast iron pans that I had for specific purposes because I just didn't use them enough. They become a huge headache if you leave them oiled and put away for too long. Next level sticky, hard to clean, and hard to work with. Now I have 2 that I use almost daily and it's exactly right for me.
I was lucky enough to come to the conclusion at 22 that I only need a skillet and a crock pot. I will not play around with the no acid wives tail because then I’m simply not going to use my tools. These two items have changed how I cook many, MANY foods and allow me to appreciate my stainless steel and non-stick even more than ever.
I have thought of getting one. I have been caught out not having something that can both go on top of the stove and in the oven. I can deal with the seasoning if it’s only the one pan I think.
@MissCaraMint I bought one a few months ago and it has provided the highest quality meals I have eaten and the maintenance is super underwhelming. Then again, I have no option but to handwish all of my dishes so who knows how you'll feel about that
@@mouthfulacoque3580 my grandmothers house has no dishwasher so I grew up washing lots of dishes by hand. As it happens I just came across a nice one on sale and bought it. The outside is ceramic so I only need season the actual pan part.
Good idea, but I have only had problems with newer, less polished pans. And after cooking sugar cured bacon, which is always a problem. I'll keep some filters handy.
@Salve Salvana What do you mean “back into university? You just said you are “about to graduate…” - that you haven’t finished your schooling yet. Do you mean that you’ve already finished your graduate paper in order to get your degree and so you don’t have any inclination to do such research?
Salve Salvana Your are NOT a graduate student. A graduate student is someone who is currently pursuing MSc or PhD, and is already in possession of a BSc.
@Anti - Ethnic Cleansing @T He says he’s about to graduate with a BS, and he’s being enticed back into university, as in, tempted to return for his MS so that he could do this research.
I am using my grand mother's cast iron skillet almost exclusively for all my pan frying. My dad used it all of his life, and now that he is gone, I am continuing the tradition. It's an amazing feeling to know that I am using the same skillet as two generations back. I also still use my grand mother's set of fine china, but that's a different topic. Love the video.
I think tradition is an important reason. I make my egg every morning in a 112+ year old pan, I really like the idea of it. It works really well at being non-stick. My Teflon 'non-stick' really don't last that long, I get only a few years of daily use out of them then I have to trash and buy new so I have given up on them. My cast iron will last forever. My mother-in law gave me her 70+ year old cornstick pan. I'm so proud every time I use it. Tradition and family history are extremely important. Cooking and living with cast iron is not for everyone I get that, the cooking methods are different, the care methods are different. But with a bit of care and knowledge they can't be beat.
I don't season my cast iron pans, nor do I hesitate to use sharp implements. I don't avoid cooking acidic things in them or using soap to clean them. Stovetop or oven they are indestructible. They have extended my life, I believe. They are extremely old; in fact I have the 19 cast iron pans that were created by the Noldorin Elven-smiths of Eregion in the Second Age, led by their ruler Celebrimbor. Also I have the master pan that Sauron secretly forged to control all the other Pans. Cast iron my preciousss. Unless you throw them into the cauldron at Mount Doom you literally have nothing to worry about.
I thought this was serious bc my mother genuinely does this, she rarely seasons her pans or cleans them bc she thinks just rinsing the food out is good enough.
I actually find a sharp flat surface to be a great thing to use with cast iron. Even teflon isn't entirely nonstick, and when something does stick you can't easily scrape it off. With cast iron a sharp steel spatula can remove pretty much anything without damaging your pan. In fact, using a sharp flat surface smooths out the surface of your cast iron over time, giving it a much nicer finish.
I really thought when he was going over the "problems" at the beginning he was going to point out all these are myths. Sadly he didn't. I waited just a little while, then left the video. He has no idea what he's talking about. Except the dishwasher, you really don't want to do that one. NO excuse me while I go make lasagna in one cast iron pan, (acidic) and use a sharp steel spatula in another, and then go get a rusty old cast iron pan from the flea market and restore it with a wire brush and elbow grease. Or vinegar if it's really bad. Once its seasoned I pretty much don't have to do any maintenance on it except keeping it clean for the rest of my life, my children's lives, and their children's lives.
There are far too many people who think that if you damage the finish on a cast-iron pan then you've damaged the pan. You just re-season it and it's fine. Or you may have to sand it a bit, and then re-season. The stuff's indestructible. You most certainly don't need to soak rusty pans in some stupid solution, just use a metal brush and sandpaper. It ticks me off that these myths get regurgitated by seemingly smart people like Adam.
That's a pretty good point, I never thought of it that way, almost like burnishing wood by rubbing a hardwood over it. Good to know. I've been using a wooden spatula out of an abundance of caution. But then again, butter in the pan so the over easy eggs don't stick every single morning has been very good to me.
I’m a materials science student and my master’s project is next year so I might consider this EDIT (05/08/21): So many people are asking what's happened but I don't start my next year at uni until October 2021. I am soon to be selecting my master's project but I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to do this project as I need to be supported by an academic. If I'm not able to I may consider trying to do the experiment myself at home though, I'll try to keep ppl updated EDIT (10/11/21): Sorry, I kept meaning to write an update but I kept forgetting. The bad news is that I decided not to go through with it as a project. The main reasons for this are as follows: 1) I don't know which academic I could go to/if there is an academic available to supervise the project (aside to this if I picked my own project I would likely get less support and therefore my final degree grade would be more at risk). 2) It's not very relevant to my career path I want to go down, and I would like to be able to use my project to help me get a job. I am still quite interested in this topic though and since this is getting so much attention, I have been thinking about starting a series of TH-cam videos following an investigation into this. Only problem with this is I probably won't have the time or facilities to do this sort of thing until I graduate. Sorry to disappoint everyone :/
I keep mine on the stove 24/7 and use it 2-3x a week. The main tricks using cast iron to make it non-stick: Go a little high on the heat. Lay down some oil or butter and as it preheats. Make sure the food being cooked is at *room temperature*. Eggs, steak, burgers, etc. Can't stress this enough. The oil used in cooking your last meal just adds to the patina. My cast iron skillet is tied for first place with my air fryer for my #1 cooking vessel.
I inherited my cast iron pan from my grandfather's older brother when he died, and it wasn't even new when he got it. These things last forever if taken care of.
Yes absolutely! I just found ouI last night that the cast iron pan I have was actually my great grandmothers made between 1922-59. The thing is a workhorse and works fantastically well for every day cooking, especially high temp searing when I sous vide!
@@AlbinoAxolotl I’m assuming it’s a Wagner Ware? Is it a smooth bottom or one with a heat ring? Because Wagner made heat ring arch logo pans from 24-35 and smooth bottom versions from 35-59
@@sundstrom193 It’s a smooth bottom. I didn’t realize they made each type during different periods. Thanks for that info! I can narrow down it’s age a bit more. Edit: and yes it’s a Wagner Ware. It’s the large one, I think I can read “10” on the base of the handle.
It's crazy, we don't really do much maintenance with ours. We know we're supposed to season it and such, but honestly, ours hasn't been seasoned in years (oven is broken and we can't afford a replacement). We cook acidic foods in it (if tomato dishes count), we've never had a problem with hard and sharp tools with it, etc. We still use it almost every day and there's no rust on it. The darn Griswold refuses to die.
Cast iron is great, check out Kent Roland's cowboy cookie.i have pans that are 80 too 100 years old , pizza bacon everything goes good in them even on a grill
@@bcubed72 I have a Griswold dutch oven that has been passed down from my great grandmother. I don't think it has ever been re-seasoned. Fabulous for stews and stuff like that. I treasure it.
I didn't like my cast iron pan initially, then I Iearned how to use it. Now the cast iron pan is the most versatile, durable, and low maintenance cookware I have. I do everything from baking bread, pizzas, steaks, to frying delicate eggs. All of this in a couple of $25 skillets and $50 Dutch oven. I have basically eliminated everything else in my kitchen except a couple of pots. I have no problem with "teflon", I used to use them, but they lose effectiveness quickly. My cast iron skillets are the best non stick surface I have ever had. If that surface ever loses effectiveness, I know how to fix it quick !
Cast iron also cooks meat differently. When i cook a steak in my cast iron, the steak sticks to the pan for the first few seconds and then slowly releases as the fat from the steak is rendered. But because of that sticking, you get full contact between steak and pan. In Teflon pans, little pockets of juice form under the steak where it doesnt have direct contact with the pan and you get a grey spot rather than golden brown
Try turning up your heat on the stove top to full blast. Let the pan heat. Insert the thawed, pre-seasoned meat. Once you get color on the meat transfer the whole thing (pan and all) to a preheated 350° oven and cook to your prefered internal temp. I never get dry chicken breasts doing it this way.
@@sfr2107 oh, and use a meat thermometer that can go in the oven with your meat so you don't keep opening the door. I have a digital probe thermometer with a line that hooks up to a reader magnetized to the outside of the oven on the door. It's pretty handy.
I love my super old matching 14" skillets. They are a smidge deeper than most others I've seen. Definitely my go to when the dial is wide open. I have had great results with ghee and grapeseed oil handling that level of heat without breaking down or auto igniting.
My best advice for using cast iron is to almost never clean it. I sear steak and veggies in my all the time and I just wipe it out good while it's still hot and put it right back on the stove top.
@@ringofasho7721 That's pretty much exactly what I do. If they are seasoned properly, cleaning them is as simple as a quick rinse. No soap...I use a stainless brillo and then a thorough drying with a little heat.
In case anyone's interested, most of the cast iron that was shown in the video was Lodge. Adam's skillet he was holding was an old number 8 Lodge skillet which is at least around 25+ years old.
Yep I owned an older Lodge 12" pan which the handle just fell off. They were prompt to replace it but the new pan had the opposing loop handle and the cooking surface was rough. My old pan was smooth and not from the so called seasoning. I ended up sanding out the surface myself. The rep said most people just hang them and didn't have my issues.
@@OhmSteader Even those would get smoother with time with use, but yes if you want to speed up the process take a sander to them. I never did my "newer" design ones just took longer to get the smoothness I was looking for. Use metal utensils and plenty of oil will speed up the smoothness.
@@logic3686 A cordless drill with a wire brush works wonders on renewing a cast iron surface, in just a few minutes. Cast iron is such a durable material that it's surface can be sanded or worked in many ways without damage. Don't try welding it though. If you have broken or cracked cast iron it is easily mended by brazing. Theoretically, cast iron can also be welded, but only someone with solid skills and lengthy experience will produce a satisfactory weld.
As an avid outdoorsman and eagle scout, I developed my love of cast iron cookware through decades of camping and cooking. I just love the way that meat is cooked on it more than steel pans, and its far easier to cook with in a fire too.
I've been using cast iron to cook with almost every day for the past 6-7 years. I've never had to re-season it since the initial seasoning. Once you work your pan in it's more non-stick than teflon, easier to clean, and browns your food better than any other type of pan. You can also use it in the oven and even the camp fire, which is super convenient. And best part of all, you don't have to replace it every few years like you do with the teflon pans. I really can't imagine using anything else to cook with. One thing cast iron taught me is that new technology isn't always an improvement. Sometimes it's just about getting you to open your wallet.
"Once you work your pan in it's more non-stick than teflon" I understand that the quality of nonstick pans may vary, and that the PTFE used to coat them probably has numerous adulterants since PTFE is naturally a cream white color, but, theoretically at least, no material I can pronounce the name of is even capable of being more nonstick than PTFE. The carbon-carbon bonds in the polymer backbone are super strong, as with any polymer, and the fluorine side chains have an extraordinarily hyper strong bond to the carbon backbone as well as a super short bond length. The fluorine side chains shield the underlying carbon backbone so that no chemical interactions may perturb the carbon chain at all, and this is thanks to the short bond length, which, to my knowledge, fluorine has the shortest due to being the strongest oxidizing agent (or, because it's the top right on the periodic table. I'm not quite sure what the rigorous explanation is for the bond length). PTFE for all intents and purposes is 100% inert to basically all chemical interactions at standard conditions - but there's still Van Der Waals forces and shit like that, so nothing's perfect. And there's surface imperfections that can cause things to physically stick rather than chemically. I'm sure my terminology is off, but I believe the basic idea is correct. Please, somebody correct me if I'm wrong about any of that. That's what a cast iron skillet's coating is up against. I'm sure your experience is valid, but I don't think there's a chance in hell that your seasoning would be less sticky than an ideal nonstick pan. Again, there's probably a million reasons why the everyman's nonstick pan is shit in terms of construction, and surely your cookware beats that sort of thing, but I'm just trying to emphasize how bold of a claim it is to say that the cocktail of polymers in the coating are better than PTFE, the most chemically inert material in the world. The acid used to destroy bodies doesn't even react with PTFE; PTFE is truly magical stuff.
@@Joe_Yacketori Thanks for the technical insights. It could be the case that I've never used a high quality teflon pan before. In any case, I've never had issues with food sticking to my cast iron.
That's very different than my experience. I bought a pre-seasoned pan and then did it again myself and still everything sticks. I have up on it after a few months. It's now sitting in a cabinet not getting used.
@@jimv1983 Wow, I have three pans that I really abuse, as far as care goes, all are non stick. I use oil, lard anything that will fry, and still ok. I harshly clean them and store them under my sink, and still they work. Peace be unto you.
I'm from South India where we use cast iron extensively at home to cook things like Dosas on. We actually season our cookware (flat, round griddles similar to a plancha) on the stove by frying bits of onion on them until they are burned black. At this stage, fine salt is added on to absorb excess oil residue and then the surface is wiped clean. This process seems to create a really good patina on on the pan and allows the thick, fermented dosa batter (rice and lentils) to slide off easily with an almost glassy surface-indicating that the seasoning is fairly even. EDIT: eggs work really well too with the prerequisite thin coating of oil wiped on before cooking!
It's pretty much the same in other cultures too. Chinese tend to 'burn' green onions or lemongrass in their wok (and flavor it with ginger). In Western countries it's usually potatoes or potato skins. The idea is always pretty much the same. By burning vegetables you get some ammount of carbon embedded into the seasoning (and absorb residues from the forging process when seasoning handforged skillets).
@@gayatri9438 All you need is a micro thin layer of oil. Otherwise it can't polymerize and turns into a sticky mess instead of hard seasoning. You should preheat the skillet a little and then apply the oil to the warm skillet. That way the oil is easier to apply. You then apply a thin layer of oil across the whole skillet and make sure you get it everywhere. Then you take a clean (!) towel and try to wipe off all the oil again. Wipe the skillet until you can no longer remove any oil and the skillet looks and feels pretty much dry. It must not look shiny wet, it should have a silky matte look. Don't worry, there's still a very thin layer of oil left on the surface. Then you put the skillet into the hot (500-550°F) oven and let it sit for like 15 minutes. Then you may take it out once again and wipe it another time with the dry towel. That step is not mandatory but it will provide a very even surface in the end while you may see slight signs of pooling if you don't wipe it again. Then put the skillet back into the oven and let it sit for another 45 minutes (or 1h in total if you don't wipe it one more time). Then turn the oven off and let the skillet cool down slowly in the closed oven. You should end up with a slightly darker skillet that feels absolutely dry to the touch. It shouldn't stick and the seasoning should be hard like glass. Due to the very thin layer you apply with that method, you should repeat the procedure at least 2 more times for the initial seasoning of a new, uncoated skillet. You may apply up to 6 layers that way, but it's not mandatory. To touch up a used skillet that has suffered some 'damage' to the seasoning, you only need to do the procedure once to refresh the seasoning.
HrWisch Thank you so much for answering in detail! This would help for sure. Cleared a lot of silly little doubts I had. Watched a lot of videos/read articles but most of them missed out on crucial details which I found in your reply. Thank you :)
@@gayatri9438 if you can't fit your tawa in the oven for some reason use like 1tsp of oil or less and add 2tsp of salt in the end. It should absorb most of the oil leaving a thin coating that you will need to continue to burn the onions on. I prefer seasoning my smaller cast iron pan in the oven but my dosa tawa gets the stovetop treatment
I have a cast iron pan that has been passed down in my family over 100 years. We wash it and dry it on the stove and have from the time when the stove was wood.. You "season" it by USING IT. That's it. Use it to cook. Fatty or oily stuff. All the time. That's it. It's the easiest thing to care for if you use it.
Same here. I inherited a few cast irons from my great grandmother. They're gorgeous and I absolutely love using them and thinking of how many hands in my family have touched them over the years.
Exactly, my cast iron set is over a century old and I never need to season it in the oven. People act like they require a ton of maintenance but they don't, just don't put it away wet and it will last several lifetimes. The only time I ever seasoned it in the oven was once when something was burned so badly that I needed to scrub it vigorously with steel wool. Other than that I just cook with it daily using plenty of oil and eventually it becomes non-stick. I've never had a problem with acidic foods stripping away the seasoning or soap leaving a bad taste. The only downsides to cast irons are that they're heavy and the handle gets really hot but those aren't big deals.
One of my neighbors gave us a cast iron pan. She found it in the yard, with just the handle sticking out after hurricane Katrina. My brother cleaned it up and seasoned it and still uses it.
Watching your Teflon video and then this one after made me realize pfas and Teflon coatings are just a modern version of the patina, created from fatty acids by polymerization. However this patina is not only mantained by cooking in oil but it’s components, fatty acids are not an environmental concern, in contrast to Teflon coatings. That makes the case for cast iron for me. There is also carbon steel which is similar to cast iron and can be made thinner and lighter. And I wouldn’t worry with acidic foods, because if you have a good patina then there is no way the acid will go through that and even touch the iron. My grandmother cooks all her life in cast iron, used tomatoes and wine and the pans didn’t corrode. For the same reasons I think PHAs coatings from drying oils can be a very good environmentally friendly replacement for PFAs.
I grew up using cast iron, and have used a carbon steel pan for the past year. It's so far been more non-stick than cast iron, but that may be because it came with a smooth finish and all the cast iron I've used is somewhat rough. My mom frequently cooks acid in cast iron without ruining the seasoning but the food does taste metallic which I hate.
I have one cast iron pan I will use with tomatoes and things. Its seasoned with lard because can get thick. All my other pans are seasoned with things that don’t get very thick and they will crack after a while if I’m not paying attention to what I’m cooking. The lard one sucks at cooking fish. Which a cook all the time. I do have a bacon fat one for eggs. Its smaller and literally only used for eggs. I cook 3-5 times a day for home and a shelter. I have maybe 10 pans and a few pots. Tomatoes kill the seasoning. Its no joke. One scratch and you are back to pulling the batteries out of the smoke detectors and starting over. Go ahead and do it. Treat you pan nice and it’ll be fine. Treat your pan like the tool it was made to be and you’ll cry.
Regardless, personally I'm fine with eating a little corroded or oxidized iron. Teflon and PFAS being a permanent component of the food chain and water cycle, however, is a pretty big deal breaker.
I absolutely agree with this comment. I've used my cast iron for highly acidic foods and it was only showing smallest traces or change in patina after 4 months of daily usage.
In general, cooking with tomatoes isn't too much of a problem - but you wouldn't want to make a tomato-based sauce, like a marinara, in it. They can taste weirdly metallic. I made that mistake before knowing it was an issue. That being said I use cast iron whenever I can. I don't know why - I just enjoy cooking with it. It makes me feel like a badass busting that thing out.
As someone who regularly cooks with and restores cast iron, I would like to point out a few incorrect points. First, you can cook with acidic foods, you simply don't want to do so often and you need to renew the seasoning a bit usually after doing so. That leads into my next point, seasoning isn't nearly as complicated and difficult as people make it out to be. Yes your initial seasoning is a picky, and smelly process. However once that process is done, it usually doesn't need to be repeated. If you strip away some of the seasoning, simply heat the pan up on med-high and use a low smoke point oil like olive oil to restore it. Do not use something like olive oil for the initial seasoning as it isn't nearly as durable as Avocado or Flax seed oil. Yes Flax seed oil is technically the best oil, but it is frankly expensive and Avocado oil is so close and so much cheaper that Flax isn't worth it.That said, even if all you do is wipe a thin layer of oil on the cast iron and don't bother with the heat, just simply bake something in it next round. Generally what I recommend to people in general if they want to get a real high quality seasoning without stinking up the kitchen, just bake lots of high fat dishes. Cornbread is a great example of this. As to the specifics of what temps to create your initial seasoning. 400 degrees is more than hot enough. I've seasoned hundreds of pans and never once taken it above that. As for soap, yes the guy is correct If your seasoning is done properly you can wash with soap and water. Now you shouldn't need to do so with any regularity, but it will not hurt it unless you are scrubbing hard. That said, the plastic scrapers are terrible, chain mail scrubbers are overwhelmingly better. Now honestly most of the benefits of cast iron are trumped by any decent carbon steel skillet. They season easier, they cook at higher temps and they have enough mass that they sear as well. I just about never use my cast iron for searing or skillet type things anymore. I use them for baking and that is about it. I love my cast iron, but carbon steel is just as good or better. Comparing against stainless is comparing apples to oranges. Stainless has its place and doesn't do the same things as carbon or cast iron. I use stainless on any dish where I need to develop fond.
@@cajunfid That doesn't have anything to do with what i wrote. However my stove is a glass top but I also have gas burners on a stand alone cook top. I use my cast iron and carbon steel with both. The glass isn't my favorite to cook on as it's temperature response is abysmal, but it works just fine.
@@OmegaGamingNetwork I Wasn't trying to disparage your comment. Didn't mean for it to come across that way. I've just had bad luck with my two high carbon pans on my induction stove top. Both of them warped even after I babied bringing the heat up slowly on them so now they both spin slightly like tops. Never had that problem on the gas stove. A chef friend of mine basically said it has a lot to do with the way gas heats the whole pan as well as the sides, compared to the induction that heats the hell out of the bottom quickly but doesn't heat the whole pan evenly compared to the gas.
@@cajunfid Don't worry, I didn't take it as disparaging. I was just confused as to where the comment was coming from. Yes the carbon to have a tendency to warp on the bottom, which does make them a little of a pain on glass tops. At least with my heavier ones, it doesn't seem to affect the performance too much, but it can be annoying. I have a variety of them and some warped, some did not and there seems to be little rhyme or reason to it. My primary take away after using dozens of carbon and cast iron skillets on a glass top stove is that glass tops are just all around terrible. Pretty to look at, but honestly just not worth a plug nickle.
I've always used Dawn. It has never hurt my pans, which were my mother's. The only thing that did was my Aunt. She left the pans in the dishwater until they rusted through. Once or twice was easy to fix, but she did it every single time until it was falling apart. That's some serious neglect. And my sincere regret for not being there to prevent it.
I’ve been cleaning my cast iron like this for over 30 years, much to the consternation of housemates and family members. I’ve been vindicated. Thanks, Adam.
My primary cast iron pan is almost 100 years old and still cooks to perfection. It was owned by my grandmother's parents originally and was passed down. Makes the best steaks. Cook with it regularly and there is essentially no maintenance needed.
@@lauralvw8445 If you clean it after it cools with water then dry it and apply some oil to it, that is the extent of maintenance it needs. Takes less than 2 minutes total to clean it after use.
In my youth I loved my cast-iron pan, but when I got a stove with a ceramic top, it seemed too greasy, so I put the pan aside and it rusted. Quite recently, my children discovered the pan and rescued it, apparently inspired by someone like your friend David. I'm now about to start using again, and I'm quite excited about it. I've also bought a carbon steel pan, and the idea is to phase out non-stick pans - not out of health concerns, but environmentally they make no sense. Having to replace a pan every couple of years is totally ludicrous.
Good objective review. I really liked the fact that the host directly acknowledged that there is not enough reliable and proven data behind all the advice one finds on the net. This is how reviews should be made!
Started using cast iron 10 years ago. At that time my wife was anemic since we started using cast iron it leaches iron into all of our meals and she never had that issue again! Even during pregnancy!
From what I can tell, what that article refers to as "carbon deposition" has to do with why seasoning turns black, w/c isn't just because of the polymerization of oil. Polymerized oil is primarily dark brown. It turns black because as you cook with it, tiny particles of the food burn and turn to carbon black, which mixes into the oils that get polymerized. This happens naturally to cast iron, especially since a lot of people don't wash their pans with soap, leaving a lot of those burnt food particles to season into the pan along with the oil. Presumably, the article is saying that thick applications of oil will make a smaller proportion of carbon black into each layer of seasoning. I'm not entirely sold on how much the carbon really helps with the integrity of the seasoning, but I do believe that it is what makes seasoning deep black as it accumulates. Indeed, thick applications of oil risk making the surface of the pan sticky because the oil didn't polymerize completely. It leaving it under heat will eventually harden everything, but by then the layer will probably be very uneven, counteracting the non-stick properties of the seasoning. Those are my observations. I may not have controlled every variable and published my work in a journal, but I've done this obsessively over the past few years and it's what I know, even if I may not know everything about the process definitively. That's really what we mean these days when we say lived experience.
Oh and just a follow up. Your friend is right to have reservations with flaxseed oil. In small quantities like in the initial pre-seasoning, it makes for a good strong and extra shiny layer. But if you pile it on over several (even if really thin) layers, it reaches a point where practically all the seasoning starts to catastrophically flake and peel off in an unstoppable cascade. Kenji Lopez-Alt also claims based on multiple people asking him about this happening that it's the flax that causes it. It's happened to me twice before it occurred to me that its the oil. I treated it as occasion to re-do the seasoning from scratch after taking a wire wheel to smoothen the surface of the bare metal (mine's a modern Lodge, w/c can have really gritty surfaces). I still use flax on occasion to slip in a strong layer or two in between cooking. After all, what else am I gonna use a bottle of flaxseed oil for? But after my bottle runs out, let's just say I don't plan on getting more.
I can't speak on whether that carbon actually helps the seasoning but note that plastic polymers are composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen- which you might recognise as the elements that make up your body because most of the compounds that make up your body, including proteins and DNA, are actually plastic polymers, or as the elements in TNT, because that is why we call them "plastic explosives." Also, because of the nature of plastic polymers (and carbon in general), it's actually pretty easy for carbon atoms or additional plastic molecules to connect to them and form chains. That's part of what makes carbon such a good basis for life- It can attach to itself and a few other extremely common elements in a huge number of configurations.
@@Boyetto-san I agree to more or less everything you wrote. I seasoned more than 35 cast iron and carbon steel skillets. None of them turned black. You usually end up with a bronze like color which varries a little from oil to oil. The dark, black color comes later when cooking. I also had the same experience with flaxseed oil. While it works ok for the initial seasoning of cast iron, I no longer use it for the initial seasoning of carbon steel. The rougher surface of cast iron holds on to that seasoning better while it tends to flake off from smooth carbon steel no matter how thin the layers are. My favorite seasoning oil at the moment is a self made 50:50 blend of canola oil and grape seed oil. Sunflower oil and olive oil also work fine.
Sameeha Eram yeah, definitely a lot of effort. Although, considering how this isn’t the first time he’s given out potential graduate level research topics in videos, maybe having a google doc or something that he adds to whenever he comes across another new topic might be possible? *shrugs* Ultimately it’s up to him ofc.
I've actually wanted this for really anything, not just Adam videos. Sometimes I can't find a scholarly source that can definitively tell me a piece of information I wish existed. It would be great if we just had a place to submit requests: "Hey scientists, do this!"
I cook with cast iron almost exclusively, some very old & some newer (bought in last 15 years or so). I pre-season by 24hr vinegar soak then swipe on solid Crisco, if cool weather it goes outside on bbq to not stink up my house. I even brought one pan to a MX Carribean Island & rust has not been a problem even when I'm gone months at a time. I store in my oven here. Love CI!
I restored one of my family’s cast irons because of this video, we called it the pancake pan when I was a kid because my mom always made pancakes on it (original, I know) but it looks AMAZING. Shiny, blacker than ever, I use it almost every day for veggies, meats, French toast, pancakes of course, and anything else that won’t leak. Love cast iron.
Now, if you didn't cook with it all the time, but only occasionally, say once every few weeks, there would be a lot more maintenance needed. Increasing the duration to once a month or once a few months (depending on the air humidity in the are) might be long enough for rust to appear, which would require even more maintenance.
After I'm done cooking, I throw in water, bring it to a boil to loosen any food residue. While it's boiling I gently scrub with a wire brush and problem areas...then pour the boiling mess into the sink and rinse with hot water...wiping it out under hot water. Then I put it back on the burner and heat it to dry it. I turn off the heat before the last of the residual water boils out. Then while it's still hot, I wipe a light coat of some oil on it with paper towels and let it cool before putting it away. That's worked for me for the last 25 years on my large skillet.
Im a long time cast iron user, and have tons of experience with stainless and carbon steel pans as well. So this was very interesting! I wanted to add/support a few things you said, because like you ive done a lot of looking online, and reading various cooks takes on it, and its super duper not clear. For me, cast iron is the sweet spot compromise (in terms of cooking quality) between stainless and carbon steel. I avoid teflon because i always scratch them and have to buy a new one 2 years later. So wanted to break it down a bit. Stainless steel, like you said, is a lot easier to maintain, and more consistent overall. however, there are just some foods thats its very ill suited too, and this cannot be considered your 'one size fits all pan". Two examples of this--any kind of egg, whether its scrambled or fried, and other sticky gooey items like pancakes. For these, sticking to the pan is the deal knell of the dish, and can ruin a lot of good ingredients. Half the pancake sticks to the pan, then when you flip it, the other side wont brown because of all the stuck on gunk. And especially with fried eggs, its REALLY easy to break a yolk with a stainless steel pan. So essentially, i think they are not very good for American breakfast food. I also agree that if you got a good one, these side effects would be decreased and the pan wouldn't burn as much. But regardless of how nice, it just wont be nonstick at all. The only way to achieve nonstick is to really sear something, like a steak or burger. Then these work just great, because the meat releases once its browned. With more gooey ingredients this doesn't always work. Cast iron, if seasoned, is absolute magic for these breakfast foods like eggs and pancakes. It also works for cornbread, biscuits, sweet rolls.....basically all of the American goodstuff breakfast foods that stainless sucks at. If you maintain a patina, then its pretty non-fussy to cook with. Just heat it up, add oil, throw on stuff. You can even put bacon on cold and it wont stick. You can also transfer to the over or broiler and it wont burn on there either. The handles are usually too short, and the big ones can be a challenge to toss food with--but as long as you don't need to toss it around it works great. It can also get really hot with extended use, and ive burned myself like a million times on one of these. But thats a minor issue. For caring for it, its exactly like you said. heat it up till smoking, add some flax oil (this stuff reallllly works better than normal oil. 10x better IMO), and spread it around until thin. The only other thing id say is that once you apply oil, if you just leave it there till smoking and then turn off the stove, then it can form little droplet patterns from the oil collecting. What ive found is that the metal contracts after you apply the oil, and if you wait 1-2m you can see these droplets forming. So the way to solve this is to wipe it a second time to again wipe off the droplets that form from heating. Lastly, carbon steel is my favorite way to achieve nonstick, as i think the patina is superior to cast iron when seasoned and prepared. You can practically flip an egg without a spatula, and searing steaks in a dream. They are lightweight, you can toss ingredients, and the handle is longer and doesn't heat up and burn you. You can do everything you can with a cast iron, including putting it into the oven or broiler. Seasoning method is near identical. The thing that really busts my balls about these though is that you HAVE to heat them up before applying oil. If you apply oil before is smoking, then it won't achieve nonstick. You simply have to heat the thing up, then apply oil, wait for it to cool, and then proceed with the searing. This is almost identical to a carbon steel wok, where you have to heat it up before stir frying. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but there have been so many times when either i forget, or when someone else is cooking and doesn't know to do that and complains about my nice carbon steel pans. Also, there are some foods you want to add on cold, like duck breast or shoulder bacon, so that the fat renders better. Sometimes, if you do this on a carbon steel, it can stick a bit. With cast iron, its way less finicky because i think the patina is just much more baked into it. The carbon steel's patina is a lot more transient, if not superior at the end. I just wanted to add this to point out that there is an additional benefit to cast iron other than price and nonstick--its the ease of use factor. So long as you are willing to clean and season it often. I use mine 5-6 times a week and its a dream at this point. So you are also correct, if you don't use it often, then its benefits decrease. Love the videos, especially these more recent information laden ones. As a nerd, these are awesome.
I'm curious what oils you're using in your cast iron and carbon steel pans to cook with? I've found out over the years that when I'm using olive oil to cook with, food tends to stick more often in the pan. Where as if I used an animal fat (bacon grease, lard, etc) that food just slides around in the pan. No idea why this would be, but it definitely seems to make a difference at least in my kitchen with my pans.
@@winja2109 I generally use lots of animal fats, like duck fat and lard, and now that you articulated that i think thats part of the reason why.--I always thought it was flavor, but it does seem to slide a little better as well when using those animal fats. I haven't really noticed a difference between olive and other oils in terms of slipperiness, but for shallow frying im a fan of peanut oil rather than lard just because its a lot cheaper. Seems to handle higher temps better than olive oil. This is all subjective though ;)
Fantastic analysis! I use all three, and wanted to add carbon steel to the discussion. But you did such a great job there’s nothing much left to say except thank you
We've always had at least 2 cast iron pans. They still get used on a regular basis. In our early marriage, we supplemented those with Teflon. In the last 5 years, those have been replaced with carbon steel pans. The carbon steel pans are what we most often reach for.
Video is 100% accurate. I got a “pre-seasoned” cast iron and then seasoned it myself in the oven a couple times and it’s basically the only pan I use now. The maintenance is actually much lower than I expected: it’s easy to clean you just have to make sure not to leave it sitting in water or wet and “re-season” with that little bit of oil (I use avocado oil).
That depends, I've had to reseason mine quite a few times over the last couple of years because my inlaws can't fathom that you need to be a bit cautious about how to deal with the seasoning.
Every pan has a different use. My cast iron is good when I want good, consistent heat. Nonstick is good for eggs. Stainless steel is when I WANT stuff to stick.
This video is why I love your channel. You are not afraid to challenge norms or fads. I personally love my cast iron pans and I cook on them all the time. And you nailed it completely - season as you go. Treat your pan well. But I also have a non stick and a stainless for certain dishes. Keep up the great work Adam!
Very informative episode. To get the cast iron skillet to not burn the food, simply heat the skillet on low heat so that it takes time to heat up. Don't start on high heat and then lower the flame. Rather, start with a low flame and let the skillet heat up gradually. Depending on the size of the skillet it may take as much as 20 minutes to reach the goal, but it's worth it.
you can use them for years when handled right, just lika cast iron. Buy a good one, 80 € for an 11 inch (28 cm) is a minimum in my opinion. And dont put them in the dishwasher.
Absolutely love your channel - just found it, and now I'm binge-watching. Very minor correction to something you said: The reason cast iron pans are black isn't their carbon content. When they are first cast, they come out a dull grey, and you can see this in your video where they are making the pans and pre-seasoning them. It's the seasoning process that turns them black.
Learned this myself when I left an empty 5" pan on the burner for about 20 minutes... Came back to a silver CI pan. But they are just hunks of metal, so I seasoned it again and still use it regularly
As you said, I bought a 9” cast iron skillet at the age of 18 and have used and abused it for the last 47 years. Along the way, I acquired 3 more - 10” each - and inherited my great-grandmother’s cast iron Dutch oven. Fortunately, all of these are old enough to have escaped factory “pre-seasoning” which, apparently, requires a pebbled surface. My smooth interior pans have held a seasoning through use on gas and electric stoves and ovens, as well as open wood and charcoal fires. According to Lodge Manufacturing in Tennessee, the best way to remove undesired levels of “patina” - such as char from wood fires - is to put the pan through a self- cleaning cycle, whether gas or electric oven. Yes, I have tried it, and yes, it works like a dream. The only downside is that you then have to sweep up the rust from the bottom of the oven and season the pan; small price to pay for nearly indestructible cookware that absolutely will last for multiple generations. Climb down off that fence and admit the best fried chicken, or cornbread, you ever ate was cooked in cast iron.
@@cjhickspe1399 OK thumb up for your post but thumb down for your wife. Also check the laws in your state. you may have her for this and you will get everything in court. And in some states she may get life. Just out of curiosity how did she do this? There are many ways we all have broke our pans. Sometimes I think its the ghost of our grandmothers punishing us.
Very much this... and nothing sticks to properly seasoned cast iron. The pores in the metal retain some of that oil (what gives it the seasoning) and this prevents food to cook with. As kids, we would always get burnt pancakes stuck to steel/aluminum pans, but for cast iron our burnt pancakes were free to be served!
My cast iron is for outdoor camp cooking, whether it's on an open fire, a wood-fired cookstove, or baking with coals and a Dutch oven. The extra mass of the cast iron helps to smooth out uneven and variable heat from cooking fires and the black color goes better with all the soot that will inevitably build up
I have a single cast iron skillet that I've been using literally every day for almost every meal in the past three years because it is the one of the two pieces of the cooking vessels I own (the other is a pot). The 'use often to avoid problem' explains why I never really encountered any issue with it even though I didn't even know it was supposed to be taken care of.
Great vid as always. I use my cast iron religiously, cook damn near everything in it (unless I'm simmering a tomato sauce for hours or something), and almost never season it except in the dead of winter (1-2 times a year) when I feel justified running my oven at high temperatures for an hour. I use stainless steel utensils, soap, scrub brushes, and a whole host of other things 'You're not supposed to do', and have never wanted any other pan. It even works the exact same way as a pizza steel, and is more versatile than that implement (so long as you aren't cooking too big of a pizza). There's a reason these pans are one of the weapons du jour for any apocalypse movie or video game.
Glad to know I follow the exact same technique to maintain my cast iron pan because this is what seemed to work after lots of trial and error. I'm from India and some food that we make just tastes much better than when cooked on thin nonstick pans. Also over time I've learnt how to maintain the surface really well and can make it as nonstick as nonstick coated pans. After cooking some foods the surface does lose it but it can be easily restored once you know how.
I tried making Naan on a regular Teflon pan, without a lot of oil to fry in it was coming out flat like a pancake. I bet cast iron would make the bread much better because it doesn't lose heat so fast.
Compared to the other materials? Hard sharp items could damage a light layer of seasoning... Otherwise known as unused cast iron. People who use is once a month don't have enough layers of seasoning. Use it all the time? The metal tools are helpful by removing damage and buildup.
@@manspeej , Staub as well as Le Creuset also have cast iron pans which are only enamelled on the outside part . I have three of them which I only need to season from the interior side .
The quality of these videos has gone from remarkable to stellar. This is just fantastic; thanks, Adam. Also, I'm loving this shift towards greater variety of content!
I used to get slightly irritated because he always did such amazing research but then ruined it by saying something mean or snobby. I feel like he's learnt to be a bit nicer and now I'm really enjoying the videos and would actually recommend them to friends.
Don't have a cast iron pan myself, but I do have two carbon steel woks and they have some of the same pros and cons. I love my woks, they are basically indestructible, you can use whatever tools you want without worrying about getting teflon in your food, and if you use them a lot they basically maintain themselves. I should probably get a cast iron pan as well l'd probably like them. Edit: A personal tip for seasoning (at least for woks): Just cook with it. Heat it up first before putting oil in, as described in the video, then put in some oil, swirl it around and chuck your food in, it's not gonna stick if the wok is hot enough and the seasoning will build up over time making it even more non-stick... and then I watch another minute of the video and he literally says the same thing -.- (should really watch the video first before commenting) xD
When I started working in the machine shop at 19, I took my mother's well seasoned (caked on, dirty as hell) pans and dunked them in the caustic tank to clean. It did super clean them, looked like brand new cast iron. If i knew then what I knew now... lol
Basically, cast iron pans are the perfect zombie apocalypse weapon. Heavy and can smash heads in, you can’t bite through it, lasts years, and you can use it to cook!
They'd be bad weapons. Might work for one bash to the zombie head, but then it would probably crack or shatter. Cast iron is quite brittle. Ask anyone who has ever had one split after dropping in the kitchen on a tile floor.
Hah, otherwise known as anthracite coal, the finest home-heating fuel of yesteryear. I found it in the basement of my house, on the other side of a long-sealed iron door where the coal man used to make deliveries.
@@AS-rl5vr Could still be. What unnameable horror will one day slither up to Adam's door and in a voice from beyond the grave, demand the return of its property (or else)? Dunno, but I bet it makes for a great video. Make sure to film it, Adam.
I started using cast iron 2 years ago. Use them on grill. Love them. I got stainless pans for some foods. But egg done right will fall out, wipe pan with paper towel and ready for next use. When i do use dawn its tiny drop in bowl of water then wipe them off. Wipe them dry. 3 or 4 tines a year ill bake them on grill on high to reseason. But normally heat them up. Spray olive oil, cook, wipe off when done. If i do use soap and water ill spray lil olive oil on after and wipe off. Stack them with paper towels between to absorb extra oil. Desicant packs by them in drawer. What i like is i can eat out of them and they keep food hot while i eat. Or take them off hair early and food keeps cooking while on counter. Cast pizza tray makes crispy crust. Great for burgers, fajitas, onions and peppers. Soup that stays steaming hot whole time you eat it from pan
A tip for any rust: white vinegar! Leave it in a vinegar bath overnight if it’s really rusty. Everything will spray off! Metal smiths use it to clean their stock before forging 👍👍
For cast iron it's recommended to use a 1:1 vinegar/water mixture and not to leave it for more than 24 hours (as it can actually damage the pan) but yeah :)
I was scrolling down for this xD I've been waiting/hunting for inspiration to find unresearched cs fields, can't believe the first research-ready material I find is cast iron pans lmao
My parents have a few cast iron items that are used exclusively for camping twice a year at the end of summer. Every single dish that is cooked over the fire is cooked on cast iron with the exception of stew and pasta. When these items are not in use they sit in the garage untouched until we go camping again. We don't "season" them, we cook with them then scrape them with sharp metal spatulas. I don't think any of them have ever been washed with anything more than a damp rag.
Cast iron skillets are so much easier to maintain than what you said. Season them maybe once a year and it's fine, and yes you can use soap but you don't need to. A well seasoned pan just needs hot water and a paper towel or sponge to clean up easily. Cast iron is superior because they're immensely durable. Idk how many non-stick steel pans I've gone through but I still use my family's heirloom pans. The sear is better, you can throw them in the oven, the heat is more evenly distributed and the pan stays hotter longer, which is great when you serve something on cast iron. All in all, cast iron for life. They're all I need
After some experience with teflon coatings that peel off, I've gone with the cast-iron stuff I've inherited for most of my cooking. When they are in daily use, season is not really something you need to think about.
This video was a masterpiece on so many levels. Giving a shout out to Homer and the dissertation idea for studying cast iron pan seasoning. Little things like these make your content that much more full
Us Homers are great at this stuff. I myself is busy trying to build my own girlfriend. The first one I built was a big fauiler. Didn't hold up well. I was shooting for 30 years of age, but slipped and added an extra zero on the age. She did enter government from California and is in congress. I don't mention that to many.
I only have 4 cast irons and I find the best way to season them to start is to actually beat them on a lower temperature; smoke point tends not to work as well for me I’ve been cooking on cast iron for several years and once the initial season is on I reccomend doing a thin coat of oil on the hot pan after every few uses and just warming it on the stove for a few minutes (after washing) I also find that washing the pan decently well acrually helps the seasoning to work best as it seems to get off some bouned proteins or starches which will lead to sticking in later cooks, so wash it and dry it on the stove and then oil it after the initial coat is on
True for veggies as well. Potatoes crisps up much nicer, a full pan of corn cooks more evenly, and you get a much nicer sear on veggies like brussels sprouts, carrots, asparagus, ect.
I don't want to be the party pooper here, but stainless steel and an induction stove can do the same thing a lot easier. Unless you're broke I can't find a justification for the extra work
I bought a new cast iron frying pan last summer. Seasoned it three times with canola oil in the gas grill, did a great job and works very nicely, almost as good as Teflon and it's still basically new.
I have 3 cast iron pans (one round, one griddle, and one grated), and once you've built up the seasoning, they're the best. The nonstick coating gets better over time instead of worse, unlike with Teflon, the thermal mass is unrivaled, and they last forever. The only real downside is cleaning, but even if you mess up the seasoning when cleaning it, an hour in the oven with a light coat of oil is all it takes to fix it up.
I moved to cast iron exclusively last year. I'm not going back. The way it cooks a steak or burger is unmatched by any other pan. Especially with the electric stove I have. Searing a tri-tip and finishing it in the oven in the same pan is super convenient as well. No more teflon. Can't recommend it enough.
Yeah he missed the mark on that part. In fact they used to sell cast iron pans with a cast iron metal spatula and spoon, my grandpa gave me his set which came with both metal utensils. I would never use anything other than wood or metal in my cast iron
David Hernston one of the advantages of cast iron is being able to use metal utensils. Most if his videos are usually very fact full but this one missed the mark in a lot of things as someone who uses one nearly daily there is a lot he got wrong.
Cast iron is my jam! I only have one stainless sautee pan for acidic foods and one large and one small stainless pots for boiling water (you never want to boil water in cast iron). But 90% of my cooking is done in cast iron. It makes everything extra AMAZING and YUMMY! As long as you cook on medium heat, it just sort of does all the cooking for you. A little butter in the skillet, and everything comes out crispy to perfection. Regarding maintenance, I let it cool off, and then I scrub it out with some mild dish soap and water and pat it dry. Put it back on the burner to evaporate excess (just like Adam demos in the vid) and then rub a little coconut or olive oil on it. I use lint-free towels (the blue paper towels that mechanics use or cloth bandannas). My skillets never rust, even the ones I only use infrequently.
I got a cast iron pan like a month ago, cooked with it quite a few times (especially meat like Burgers and Ćevapi (spicy bosnian/serbian "sausages")) and have achieved the best results ever. The crust on the meat is incredible and is cooked thoroughly before it burns (I guess that due to the even heat throughout the cooking process). The cleaning and seasoning took some time to get used and was quite confusing to but is not that big of a problem after you get used to it. Really, give it a go, practise cooking with it and learn from you mistakes. It really is worth it!
You can absolutely cook tomato sauce in a cast iron pan. They're incredibly forgiving and ultra versatile. Also, after you've cleaned them and rubbed on the oil for storage, put the pan on the burner and bring the oil to its smoke point to prevent the oil from going rancid for long term storage (or just do it anyway to build up seasoning). Grapeseed oil is just as good as flaxseed oil.
@@tristancleary years ago I read the post that said flaxseed was supposed to be the best, so I tried it, and like everyone else it flakes off. I went back to crisco.
I'm 52 and been cooking since my 20's. I have been through every kind of pan and I empathize with you Adam. I am very frugal and reluctant to purchase at the time a $110 2.5 quart le crueset. It quickly became our go to cooking vessel. It is not a frying pan and I'm possibly off topic here but none the less is our favorite cooking vessel in the kitchen. After that purchase I thought I would try an expensive rival called Staub and unlike the ceramic coated le creuset, this had a cast iron-ish non-stick bottom. It is my new favorite as it is easy to clean, and has a beautiful exterior finish. I literally leave it on my stove top because I enjoy looking at it. We still use teflon pans and know that we have to replace them and we have come to terms with that. With regards to my cast iron collection, I have a large skillet that I use on rare occasions due to it's enormous surface size and ability to cooks things that require a shallow base. It is a PITA to clean. I use to have this zen approach to caring for it but it was my sole responsibility because my wife did not have the romantic emotions that I had developed early on. So it sits on a shelf in my storage room waiting to be used for that rare occasion of which I'm planning a deep dish chicago pizza in the near future.
I have the Shibata carbon steel pan that was featured on this video, and was very surprised to see it mentioned. I have used it everyday for the past 2 years and absolutely love it. Minor inconvenience is you need something to hold the handles with a mitt. I also recently bought the Staub cast iron enameled dutch oven (sale for $160 in Cherry red going on rn), and am hesitant to use it because I wasn't sure of the advantages over the stainless steel pot I already have. Call it uncertain buyer's remorse. Watching this video and your reply, I am going to do my first cook haha.
My cast iron live on my stove top, I don’t think I’ve ever put them in a drawer and I can say over the past two years of owning them they’ve only got better and more non stick. I’m utterly in love and have drank the cast iron cool aid
That completely ruins the credibility of this video since it's at the start, metal tools are at home with carbon steel, cast iron, stainless steel. I think you should be extremely embarrassed Ragusea. Also the sciencey "electolysis" nonsense give me a break. People who actually used cast iron threw a rusty pan into the fireplace. It would burn off the rust and you season it with any fat. Takes about half an hour of work.
@@julesl6910 On vintage pieces you shouldn't use fire or heat to strip a pan. Can warp or cause heat damage to the pan. Electrolysis or Lye stripping is def the way to do it on older irreplaceable pieces.
The best tip I’ve received for using cast iron is to preheat the pan before cooking in it. Things stick far less in a preheated pan than in one just put on the flame.
I always give it between 5 and 10 minutes to heat up. For the past 3 months, I've used almost exclusively my cast iron pan instead of my other pans for cooking.
Only thing I don’t preheat for is bacon. Putting it on the cold pan and then slowly heating it up seems to be the best way to ensure it doesn’t stick 🥓😋
@@vinstinct He definitely should have mentioned it, especially in the part where he questions why you cant get the benefits of both stainless steel and cast iron. Thats carbon steel! Way lighter than cast iron and even some stainless steel pans, stores better (Ive never had carbon steel go sticky on me), its a lot less finicky to season (America's test kitchen suggests just cooking a bunch of potato skins), works on induction, it has seasoning to make it non stick, its very cheap (at least at restaurant supply stores), only thing missing really is the thermal retention. It bridges a lot of the benefits of both, and its by far the best option for wok cooking. A cast iron wok is absurdly heavy, and stainless steel means food will stick more.
Carbon steel is an interesting alternative to cast iron. But it has the same drawbacks Adam doesn't like about cast iron. Carbon steel has to be seasoned and maintained exactly like cast iron. Most carbon steel skillets don't even come pre-seasoned so you have that additional process before you can start using them. Due to the smooth surface of the usual stamped and drawn carbon steel skillets, you even have to put a little more effort into maintaining that seasoning (especially when cooking on an electric stove top). Don't get me wrong. I got a total of 22 carbon steel skillets (from Turk and DeBuyer) and love all of them. They are my daily go to skillets for cooking. I also got 17 cast iron skillets which I use more occasionally (except for baking stuff like cornbread). A carbon steel skillet might be a good tip for somebody who doesn't like the weight of cast iron. But it's the wrong choice for somebody who doesn't like the seasoning and maintenance process because that's pretty much the same for both materials. There are a few little differences which are mostly due to the usually very smooth surface of drawn carbon steel vs. the rougher cast iron. But in the end both types of skillets need more or less the same amount of care.
@@HrWisch you're absolutely right about all of that. They have the maintenance drawbacks of cast iron and some of the heat drawbacks of stainless. They are the best of both in some ways and the worst of both in others. I just thought that it would have made a really good additional topic for this video.
I've cooked on cast iron all my life. I've never seasoned it, used a hard scrubber and soap, Sharp spatulas the works. Never oil it after I use it, just rinsed in hot water so dried fast. Don't overthink cast!
Dang...you are a cast-iron warrior...your comments amaze me! Is it because you use the pans all the time so the seasoning builds up naturally then? I'm too scared to try that. I'd have to throw out my pan..👀🤦♀️ Serious KUDOS to you for sure.
I definitely neglect mine, if you call it neglect, I just call it life as normal! Not afraid to throw it in the sink full of dish washing liquid, scrub pad to get the gunk off when needed. Rinsed in hot water, it dries itself before it can rust. Just this last month I took an angle grinder with a wire wheel to twenty years of carbonized crud on the outsides and bottom. Cleaned up beautifully and right back to the stove. The perfect thing with plain cast is you can't ruin the pan! You burn something to perdition and back, take a wire wheel to it or throw it in a wood fire and burn it off!
I've been using one for 20+ years by now, сooked most of the fried food on it. At some point the "polimerization" layer got very thick, so I just put it on the gas stove, heated it well, then cleaned and seasoned. I can imagine how many teflon pans I would need for all these years))
@@Nirioonossian It's just cooking superstition much like "organic" foods. Cast iron is actually really bad at basically everything that you want in a pan, but it's old timey so people adore it. It's real virtue is being cheap, but you're getting what you paid for/if it's not Lodge or Victoria it's not actually cheap. They're ridiculously heavy, they conduct heat poorly (aka hot spots and long preheats), and they're not nonstick enough to matter. If you use bad technique it's going to stick anyway, and the pan properties make good technique hard.
@@alexs5814 I'm more into data science and mathematical modelling now than into metallurgic engineering. Not that I don't like engineering, but it's hard to get a job these days. I still could coat a wok though =D
This is a great video, thank you for your work. Seriously folks, I've been watching my mother, adopted grandma, adopted aunties, my wonderful 1st wife (professional chef) use CI. I use it. All the stories you see about how to care, season, don't wash with soap, don't use steel wool to clean, don't use steel utensils are all BS. I presently live in high humidity SE Asia and wash my CI with soap and water, sometimes I need to use steel wool, I let it air dry, don't go through the seasoning BS. I DO put it back on the burner to dry well before putting it away. A very very very important difference between the quality CI in the USA (I don't know about Europe) is that the CI of old days had polished cooking surface. This went away in the 1950's in the USA. I just bought an inexpensive piece from China and spent time to sand it smooth on the cooking surface which in my opinion makes maintenance easier. Did the pioneers in the USA, the old country EU and ancient China have flaxeed oil or other concoctions advertised. Not just no but hello no. As the video pointed out, if you use your cast iron regularly it will reward you. If you use it once in a blue moon, then well, you can keep being frustrated and/or working harder than you need to be.
For anyone cooking with cast iron on a natural gas powered stove, I recommend getting copper diffuser plates to help the cast iron heat more evenly, instead of your food cooking too quickly in a ring, and not enough around the edges. Cast iron retains heat very well, but it doesn't diffuse it very well.
It’s impossible to retain heat very well and not diffuse it very well. It retains very well because it’s constantly diffusing heat from the stove to the food. Iron is a good conductor of both heat and electricity that’s why they use it in a campfire where wood burns unevenly.
@@AkshayKumar-ue1fp you would be incorrect. Cast iron has terrible diffusion. It stays hot because the heat doesn't leave it (to go into the rest of the pan or ambient air). Food cooks on it because it is literally hot enough to burn flesh. It has nothing to do with diffusion. But keep cooking with subpar technique. I'm not going to stop you. Signed, Your friendly neighborhood scientist
indeed, the poor conductivity of cast iron made me go to clad aluminum. It has also twice the thermal capacity, so in theory with half the weight you have similar amount of heat.
I switched to all cast iron and enamel. It was a great decision. My favorite one is a 15 in pizza tray that I got. I make margherita pizzas from scratch and if I let that tray preheat to 525F it only takes like 5 minutes to cook each pizza.
Another excellent vid. My parents have owned a set of cast iron pans over 60 years. Apparently, the older and more seasoned they become (the pans, not my folks) the better cooking you get.
In Spain, when they are seasoning their ceramic cazuelas, traditionally use the oil from a halved garlic. I'm not sure how effective it is at polymerising, but it does give a very easily applied super thin layer.
when I clean MY cast iron I usually use kosher salt and a chainmail sponge that's designed for the pan and I've even cook tomato sauce in my cast iron I cook lots of stuff in it including sausage gravy
My grandma put baking soda and water in hers and boiled it. Dumped it and wiped it out. That's how she cleaned her skillet. She had gas stove and the inside of the skillet was like glass but the outside had 50 years of residue built up on it. I always thought it was kinda gross but I still have it. My grandma cooked spaghetti in her skillet all the time. No other spaghetti tasted like it either.
i just have some table salt a copper wool and some lemons if it gets rusty but it gets the job done i also often cook acidic foods with vinegar even or tomatoes and dairy aswell its usually no problem worst case i just reheat the pan and whipe it down with oil after its cleaned and everything is good as new (or better lol)
@@dr.frankenstein6434 thanks for the tip now I know how to restore my Cast iron if it rusts I didn't know how to restore it now I do I sincerely appreciate the tip
I love my cast iron. I have parrots so Teflon is out for me, but I genuinely don't mind. Seasoning is widely disputed, but for me, it's Crisco or tallow, or lard. Even veggie oil and peanut oil are fine. I normally use a wooden spatula, but metal is alright. I use soap sometimes, and not others. The only thing I am 100% on is that it gets used DAILY and the pan is oiled and put away dry every time it's done. My pan is over 100 years old and still going strong. If you have to buy a modern pan, most of them are rough cast now, so start by sanding them smooth and reasoning. And then just cook on the dang thing! My favorite thing to cook is 5 lbs of bacon on a new pan. First 2 strips will burn, after that it's all fine. Just left it preheat first.
I have successfully restored a cast iron pan without electrolysis. Following my father's advise, you should put the pan in the oven on its self-cleaning cycle (following the oven's maintenance instructions) which will reduce the seasoning on the pan to ash. Once cool, you scrub with an abbrasive scouring pad and soap to remove all the ash and as much of the rust as possible. Once totally clean and free of rust, reapply the seasoning using the method this video demonstrates.
Agree, Brian Koehler. Even thinking about how to start researching electrolysis is hella more work than just sticking it in the self-cleaning cycle if a complete reset is needed. Looks like it’s brand new, unseasoned. Then use thin layers of buzzywax, wipe ‘em in/off as best you can, put upside down in heated oven for a while, turn off oven, let cool, repeat as needed
Hey everybody, here's a point I make in the video, but I wish I had made a little earlier on (judging by the comments): The easiest way to maintain cast iron is to cook with it all the time. Our great-grandparents didn't obsess over polymerization blah blah blah. They just cooked in the damn thing. They cooked most meals they ate (unlike a lot of us today), and most of those meals they cooked in their cast iron. Cooking in it constantly will maintain a decent seasoning, and iron pans generally only start to rust if you don't use them. So, as I said, if you're gonna use it all the time, I think cast iron is great. That's why you have people commenting here saying, "I never worry about any of this stuff and my pan works great!" That's probably because they're cooking with it all the time, which is awesome. But if you're not gonna cook with it all the time, I do think there are better options, assuming you can afford them.
👍
Can't do it myself yet (haven't graduated) but I can send it another engineer who is a graduate material science student for ya adam. Hopefully Rutgers engineering will answer these questions
yea ive only watched the first few mins so far, and was gonna comment exactly that, guess i'll go finish the video first. I have 2 cast Iron pans my grandmother gave me, one deep and big, and one is a standard frying pan size, and i literally use them for almost everything i cook. I seasoned them once when i got them, and i just rinse them out and maybe put a bit of olive oil on them once a month, and they are always ready to go. I have no need to put them in the dishwasher, and they do not rust. They are perfect.
One additional thing to note: For people who have pet birds (parrots or otherwise), Teflon can be very problematic. I agree that the health implications of Teflon for PEOPLE are probably not a huge concern, but the gasses Teflon releases when heated above a certain temperature are INCREDIBLY dangerous to pet birds and can very quickly kill pet birds even at very low concentrations.
@🌟༻🅹🅰🆈🅵🅰༺ ✓ • 5 years ago My cast iron rusts real fast here in Macon. I think humidity is a big factor!
Also, cast iron can make a cartoon character's head mold to the shape of the pan, producing a very comedic effect. This is probably the most important reason to own a cast iron pan.
It is a great home defense weapon. And completely legal.
This takes me back to the days when Maybell would slap Hennery upside his cabbage with the old ACME IRON CO . for sassing her Brussel sprouts . As good ol' Hank would go on out back to ponder his misguided decision to sass sweet honey bee Maybell's sprouts , May would be getting down on her hands and knees to scrub up the blood from just another family decision ? If only Hank learned to say " May we have no sprouts " ??? No ! No , I'm not alright ........hahahah 🤪
Lmao Tom and Jerry
fax
Bro EXACTLY.
Another thing to remember is that cast iron is heavy. This means that if someone breaks into your house while you are cooking dinner, you can hit them with a cast iron pan and it will be far more effective then stainless steel.
@@DetectiveLevi neEd a disPenser HerE
after you smackem you can continue to cook with it since it is still perfect not bent
and still hot..police will be there in about 15 and the person laying on the ground will be out for 30 mins best, you can have dinner done
😂😂
th-cam.com/video/08EqQPIvHOU/w-d-xo.html
And after you can have a good meal as long as they are dead
As someone who has used cast iron pans for 20 years, I can tell you most people shouldn't use them, and he's absolutely right with his conclusion. I got rid of some of my unusual cast iron pans that I had for specific purposes because I just didn't use them enough. They become a huge headache if you leave them oiled and put away for too long. Next level sticky, hard to clean, and hard to work with. Now I have 2 that I use almost daily and it's exactly right for me.
I was lucky enough to come to the conclusion at 22 that I only need a skillet and a crock pot. I will not play around with the no acid wives tail because then I’m simply not going to use my tools. These two items have changed how I cook many, MANY foods and allow me to appreciate my stainless steel and non-stick even more than ever.
I have thought of getting one. I have been caught out not having something that can both go on top of the stove and in the oven. I can deal with the seasoning if it’s only the one pan I think.
@MissCaraMint I bought one a few months ago and it has provided the highest quality meals I have eaten and the maintenance is super underwhelming. Then again, I have no option but to handwish all of my dishes so who knows how you'll feel about that
@@mouthfulacoque3580 my grandmothers house has no dishwasher so I grew up washing lots of dishes by hand. As it happens I just came across a nice one on sale and bought it. The outside is ceramic so I only need season the actual pan part.
@@MissCaraMint awesome! I hope it serves you for generations to come
i'm anemic and my doctor actually recommended cooking with acidic ingredients in cast iron to take advantage of the iron leaching.
Cool
Lmao
Nice
Dafuk
Just take pills
When spreading the oil, use a coffee filter instead of a paper towel. It spreads just as well, but leaves no paper lint.
just blow the lint off later. or eat it. it's just lint.
@@fullawful130 or burn it off, it is flammable afterall
Good to know! Thanks!
Good idea, but I have only had problems with newer, less polished pans. And after cooking sugar cured bacon, which is always a problem. I'll keep some filters handy.
I oil my pan all the time with a piece of a paper towel and it leaves no lint. However she buys good paper towels.
"Graduate student, please figure this out"
Yep, sounds like a university professor.
I’m about to graduate with a BSc in Material Science and now I feel like he’s enticing me back into university 😂😂
@Salve Salvana
What do you mean “back into university? You just said you are “about to graduate…” - that you haven’t finished your schooling yet. Do you mean that you’ve already finished your graduate paper in order to get your degree and so you don’t have any inclination to do such research?
Proof left as exercise
Salve Salvana Your are NOT a graduate student. A graduate student is someone who is currently pursuing MSc or PhD, and is already in possession of a BSc.
@Anti - Ethnic Cleansing @T He says he’s about to graduate with a BS, and he’s being enticed back into university, as in, tempted to return for his MS so that he could do this research.
I am using my grand mother's cast iron skillet almost exclusively for all my pan frying. My dad used it all of his life, and now that he is gone, I am continuing the tradition. It's an amazing feeling to know that I am using the same skillet as two generations back. I also still use my grand mother's set of fine china, but that's a different topic. Love the video.
If you take care of cast iron, they last forever. I have a cast iron from my grandmother as well.
I love 💕 cast iron I us it all the time, I got a lot of cast iron, use it more than my other pan's,
I think tradition is an important reason. I make my egg every morning in a 112+ year old pan, I really like the idea of it. It works really well at being non-stick. My Teflon 'non-stick' really don't last that long, I get only a few years of daily use out of them then I have to trash and buy new so I have given up on them. My cast iron will last forever. My mother-in law gave me her 70+ year old cornstick pan. I'm so proud every time I use it. Tradition and family history are extremely important. Cooking and living with cast iron is not for everyone I get that, the cooking methods are different, the care methods are different. But with a bit of care and knowledge they can't be beat.
This is one reason why a lot of people love cast iron. I have mine that I have from my grandparents.
what a wonderfully sentimental and sweet comment. I still use my grandpaw's old stone buttplug for the same reason!
I don't season my cast iron pans, nor do I hesitate to use sharp implements. I don't avoid cooking acidic things in them or using soap to clean them. Stovetop or oven they are indestructible. They have extended my life, I believe. They are extremely old; in fact I have the 19 cast iron pans that were created by the Noldorin Elven-smiths of Eregion in the Second Age, led by their ruler Celebrimbor. Also I have the master pan that Sauron secretly forged to control all the other Pans. Cast iron my preciousss. Unless you throw them into the cauldron at Mount Doom you literally have nothing to worry about.
The reference is thicc on this
Underrated comment
l would not recommend them if you are elderly and have a ceramic stove top, l have cracked to tops by dropping the heavy pan
I thought this was serious bc my mother genuinely does this, she rarely seasons her pans or cleans them bc she thinks just rinsing the food out is good enough.
Good pasta
My mom has some cast iron that came with her family over the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon. We use it for everything.
That’s crazy
That's wild man, how well does it cook? Do you notice any difference from modern cast iron?
Thebular not really. It is very smooth from wear over the years.
That's awesome. That stuff is probably worth thousands. I might check into it.
That is AMAZING
The reason I love my cast iron: it is nearly 130 YEARS OLD!! History being made every time I cook.
also the flavour bulids up over time
Same here! Though mine isnt quite that old. I think mine 60-70
Is it a Griswold?
@@Mari-sd5mw Close, an Erie. 😄
@@playgroundchooser mine is too
I actually find a sharp flat surface to be a great thing to use with cast iron. Even teflon isn't entirely nonstick, and when something does stick you can't easily scrape it off. With cast iron a sharp steel spatula can remove pretty much anything without damaging your pan. In fact, using a sharp flat surface smooths out the surface of your cast iron over time, giving it a much nicer finish.
Fish spatulas my beloved
I really thought when he was going over the "problems" at the beginning he was going to point out all these are myths. Sadly he didn't. I waited just a little while, then left the video. He has no idea what he's talking about. Except the dishwasher, you really don't want to do that one. NO excuse me while I go make lasagna in one cast iron pan, (acidic) and use a sharp steel spatula in another, and then go get a rusty old cast iron pan from the flea market and restore it with a wire brush and elbow grease. Or vinegar if it's really bad. Once its seasoned I pretty much don't have to do any maintenance on it except keeping it clean for the rest of my life, my children's lives, and their children's lives.
There are far too many people who think that if you damage the finish on a cast-iron pan then you've damaged the pan. You just re-season it and it's fine. Or you may have to sand it a bit, and then re-season. The stuff's indestructible. You most certainly don't need to soak rusty pans in some stupid solution, just use a metal brush and sandpaper. It ticks me off that these myths get regurgitated by seemingly smart people like Adam.
That's a pretty good point, I never thought of it that way, almost like burnishing wood by rubbing a hardwood over it. Good to know. I've been using a wooden spatula out of an abundance of caution. But then again, butter in the pan so the over easy eggs don't stick every single morning has been very good to me.
also the teflon can be nicked and cause issues
"Electrolysis is really popping at this point."
THAT'S a sentence you don't hear every day.
Same with "opening up the pores of the iron"
I was exactly thinking that 🤣🤣👌🏽
If you hear that everyday
WHERE DO YOU LIVE WHERE YOU HEAR THAT
1st time that sentence has ever been used
@@gamerbreadbaker my dad used to be a plater?
Here before all the “why I season my cast iron pan, not my steak” comments
Why i season my flame, not my iron.
@@snarkylive you don't season your flame?
Your pfp is good
Go watch the pan pizza video. it's been done for real.
i died laughing at this 😂
I’m a materials science student and my master’s project is next year so I might consider this
EDIT (05/08/21): So many people are asking what's happened but I don't start my next year at uni until October 2021. I am soon to be selecting my master's project but I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to do this project as I need to be supported by an academic. If I'm not able to I may consider trying to do the experiment myself at home though, I'll try to keep ppl updated
EDIT (10/11/21): Sorry, I kept meaning to write an update but I kept forgetting. The bad news is that I decided not to go through with it as a project. The main reasons for this are as follows:
1) I don't know which academic I could go to/if there is an academic available to supervise the project (aside to this if I picked my own project I would likely get less support and therefore my final degree grade would be more at risk).
2) It's not very relevant to my career path I want to go down, and I would like to be able to use my project to help me get a job.
I am still quite interested in this topic though and since this is getting so much attention, I have been thinking about starting a series of TH-cam videos following an investigation into this. Only problem with this is I probably won't have the time or facilities to do this sort of thing until I graduate.
Sorry to disappoint everyone :/
Yes please
Do it and I'll even help proof it.
ooh that'd be amazing!
That would be cool
We'll be awaiting an update
I keep mine on the stove 24/7 and use it 2-3x a week. The main tricks using cast iron to make it non-stick: Go a little high on the heat. Lay down some oil or butter and as it preheats. Make sure the food being cooked is at *room temperature*. Eggs, steak, burgers, etc. Can't stress this enough. The oil used in cooking your last meal just adds to the patina. My cast iron skillet is tied for first place with my air fryer for my #1 cooking vessel.
That is awesome. My cast iron is currently in my brevil air fryer being baked to re-season. :)
I inherited my cast iron pan from my grandfather's older brother when he died, and it wasn't even new when he got it. These things last forever if taken care of.
Yes absolutely! I just found ouI last night that the cast iron pan I have was actually my great grandmothers made between 1922-59. The thing is a workhorse and works fantastically well for every day cooking, especially high temp searing when I sous vide!
@@AlbinoAxolotl That thing managed to evade the draft! (In ww2 so very very many everyday metal objects were melted down to make war materials)
@@AlbinoAxolotl I’m assuming it’s a Wagner Ware? Is it a smooth bottom or one with a heat ring? Because Wagner made heat ring arch logo pans from 24-35 and smooth bottom versions from 35-59
@@sundstrom193 It’s a smooth bottom. I didn’t realize they made each type during different periods. Thanks for that info! I can narrow down it’s age a bit more.
Edit: and yes it’s a Wagner Ware. It’s the large one, I think I can read “10” on the base of the handle.
It's crazy, we don't really do much maintenance with ours. We know we're supposed to season it and such, but honestly, ours hasn't been seasoned in years (oven is broken and we can't afford a replacement). We cook acidic foods in it (if tomato dishes count), we've never had a problem with hard and sharp tools with it, etc. We still use it almost every day and there's no rust on it. The darn Griswold refuses to die.
They make a really excellent weapon hit people who season their steak, that’s why people love them.
Edit: I mean instead of their cutting board.
The balance is a little too forward heavy, but it has enough heft to cause a concussion. 7/10
Sergeant Rainstorm yeah I prefer a Chrissy Teigan pan but it’s an ok substitution. Long live the empire.
BONK
This is how they were introduced in Europe. Years later people figured out they were cooking implements.
I think I got that right from the video.
as an avid tf2 gamer,
yes.
Found a rusted old pan in my grandfather’s barn.
Restored it and found out it’s an Erie PA pan from 1895.
Still cooks perfectly
Cast iron is great, check out Kent Roland's cowboy cookie.i have pans that are 80 too 100 years old , pizza bacon everything goes good in them even on a grill
My mother found a rusted pan under her cottage from the 1800s. She restored it and cooks with it regularly. Great find!
A Griswold? That's worth some cash!
bcubed72 about $180 or so. But I’ll never sell it.
@@bcubed72 I have a Griswold dutch oven that has been passed down from my great grandmother. I don't think it has ever been re-seasoned. Fabulous for stews and stuff like that. I treasure it.
I didn't like my cast iron pan initially, then I Iearned how to use it. Now the cast iron pan is the most versatile, durable, and low maintenance cookware I have. I do everything from baking bread, pizzas, steaks, to frying delicate eggs. All of this in a couple of $25 skillets and $50 Dutch oven. I have basically eliminated everything else in my kitchen except a couple of pots. I have no problem with "teflon", I used to use them, but they lose effectiveness quickly. My cast iron skillets are the best non stick surface I have ever had. If that surface ever loses effectiveness, I know how to fix it quick !
This is me as well. I don't see the point of nonstick. I don't even need to use oil to flip a fried egg with my cast iron!
Cast iron also cooks meat differently. When i cook a steak in my cast iron, the steak sticks to the pan for the first few seconds and then slowly releases as the fat from the steak is rendered. But because of that sticking, you get full contact between steak and pan. In Teflon pans, little pockets of juice form under the steak where it doesnt have direct contact with the pan and you get a grey spot rather than golden brown
Yeah. I keep a small cast iron pan just for steak. Nothing else gets that crust.
Try turning up your heat on the stove top to full blast. Let the pan heat. Insert the thawed, pre-seasoned meat. Once you get color on the meat transfer the whole thing (pan and all) to a preheated 350° oven and cook to your prefered internal temp. I never get dry chicken breasts doing it this way.
@@danieljacobson74 stainless steel?
@@sfr2107 well seasoned cast iron.
@@sfr2107 oh, and use a meat thermometer that can go in the oven with your meat so you don't keep opening the door. I have a digital probe thermometer with a line that hooks up to a reader magnetized to the outside of the oven on the door. It's pretty handy.
My cast Iron pan never leaves the stove top. My favorite thing to cook with. My grandmother's cast iron pot is decades old and still a champ.
I love my super old matching 14" skillets. They are a smidge deeper than most others I've seen. Definitely my go to when the dial is wide open.
I have had great results with ghee and grapeseed oil handling that level of heat without breaking down or auto igniting.
Same!
My best advice for using cast iron is to almost never clean it. I sear steak and veggies in my all the time and I just wipe it out good while it's still hot and put it right back on the stove top.
@@ringofasho7721 That's pretty much exactly what I do. If they are seasoned properly, cleaning them is as simple as a quick rinse. No soap...I use a stainless brillo and then a thorough drying with a little heat.
In case anyone's interested, most of the cast iron that was shown in the video was Lodge. Adam's skillet he was holding was an old number 8 Lodge skillet which is at least around 25+ years old.
My pan is about 25 years old as well i got it form a farmer it could be older tho
I dont think you need to constantly season.
Yep I owned an older Lodge 12" pan which the handle just fell off. They were prompt to replace it but the new pan had the opposing loop handle and the cooking surface was rough. My old pan was smooth and not from the so called seasoning. I ended up sanding out the surface myself. The rep said most people just hang them and didn't have my issues.
@@OhmSteader Even those would get smoother with time with use, but yes if you want to speed up the process take a sander to them. I never did my "newer" design ones just took longer to get the smoothness I was looking for. Use metal utensils and plenty of oil will speed up the smoothness.
@@logic3686 A cordless drill with a wire brush works wonders on renewing a cast iron surface, in just a few minutes. Cast iron is such a durable material that it's surface can be sanded or worked in many ways without damage. Don't try welding it though. If you have broken or cracked cast iron it is easily mended by brazing. Theoretically, cast iron can also be welded, but only someone with solid skills and lengthy experience will produce a satisfactory weld.
As an avid outdoorsman and eagle scout, I developed my love of cast iron cookware through decades of camping and cooking. I just love the way that meat is cooked on it more than steel pans, and its far easier to cook with in a fire too.
I've been using cast iron to cook with almost every day for the past 6-7 years. I've never had to re-season it since the initial seasoning. Once you work your pan in it's more non-stick than teflon, easier to clean, and browns your food better than any other type of pan. You can also use it in the oven and even the camp fire, which is super convenient. And best part of all, you don't have to replace it every few years like you do with the teflon pans. I really can't imagine using anything else to cook with. One thing cast iron taught me is that new technology isn't always an improvement. Sometimes it's just about getting you to open your wallet.
Perfectly said and very true.
"Once you work your pan in it's more non-stick than teflon"
I understand that the quality of nonstick pans may vary, and that the PTFE used to coat them probably has numerous adulterants since PTFE is naturally a cream white color, but, theoretically at least, no material I can pronounce the name of is even capable of being more nonstick than PTFE. The carbon-carbon bonds in the polymer backbone are super strong, as with any polymer, and the fluorine side chains have an extraordinarily hyper strong bond to the carbon backbone as well as a super short bond length. The fluorine side chains shield the underlying carbon backbone so that no chemical interactions may perturb the carbon chain at all, and this is thanks to the short bond length, which, to my knowledge, fluorine has the shortest due to being the strongest oxidizing agent (or, because it's the top right on the periodic table. I'm not quite sure what the rigorous explanation is for the bond length). PTFE for all intents and purposes is 100% inert to basically all chemical interactions at standard conditions - but there's still Van Der Waals forces and shit like that, so nothing's perfect. And there's surface imperfections that can cause things to physically stick rather than chemically. I'm sure my terminology is off, but I believe the basic idea is correct. Please, somebody correct me if I'm wrong about any of that.
That's what a cast iron skillet's coating is up against. I'm sure your experience is valid, but I don't think there's a chance in hell that your seasoning would be less sticky than an ideal nonstick pan. Again, there's probably a million reasons why the everyman's nonstick pan is shit in terms of construction, and surely your cookware beats that sort of thing, but I'm just trying to emphasize how bold of a claim it is to say that the cocktail of polymers in the coating are better than PTFE, the most chemically inert material in the world. The acid used to destroy bodies doesn't even react with PTFE; PTFE is truly magical stuff.
@@Joe_Yacketori Thanks for the technical insights. It could be the case that I've never used a high quality teflon pan before. In any case, I've never had issues with food sticking to my cast iron.
That's very different than my experience. I bought a pre-seasoned pan and then did it again myself and still everything sticks. I have up on it after a few months. It's now sitting in a cabinet not getting used.
@@jimv1983 Wow, I have three pans that I really abuse, as far as care goes, all are non stick. I use oil, lard anything that will fry, and still ok. I harshly clean them and store them under my sink, and still they work. Peace be unto you.
I'm from South India where we use cast iron extensively at home to cook things like Dosas on. We actually season our cookware (flat, round griddles similar to a plancha) on the stove by frying bits of onion on them until they are burned black. At this stage, fine salt is added on to absorb excess oil residue and then the surface is wiped clean. This process seems to create a really good patina on on the pan and allows the thick, fermented dosa batter (rice and lentils) to slide off easily with an almost glassy surface-indicating that the seasoning is fairly even.
EDIT: eggs work really well too with the prerequisite thin coating of oil wiped on before cooking!
It's pretty much the same in other cultures too. Chinese tend to 'burn' green onions or lemongrass in their wok (and flavor it with ginger). In Western countries it's usually potatoes or potato skins. The idea is always pretty much the same. By burning vegetables you get some ammount of carbon embedded into the seasoning (and absorb residues from the forging process when seasoning handforged skillets).
How much oil is to be used to season for the first time? I have been trying to season my roti iron tawa but it always becomes sticky in the end
@@gayatri9438 All you need is a micro thin layer of oil. Otherwise it can't polymerize and turns into a sticky mess instead of hard seasoning.
You should preheat the skillet a little and then apply the oil to the warm skillet. That way the oil is easier to apply. You then apply a thin layer of oil across the whole skillet and make sure you get it everywhere. Then you take a clean (!) towel and try to wipe off all the oil again. Wipe the skillet until you can no longer remove any oil and the skillet looks and feels pretty much dry. It must not look shiny wet, it should have a silky matte look. Don't worry, there's still a very thin layer of oil left on the surface. Then you put the skillet into the hot (500-550°F) oven and let it sit for like 15 minutes. Then you may take it out once again and wipe it another time with the dry towel. That step is not mandatory but it will provide a very even surface in the end while you may see slight signs of pooling if you don't wipe it again. Then put the skillet back into the oven and let it sit for another 45 minutes (or 1h in total if you don't wipe it one more time). Then turn the oven off and let the skillet cool down slowly in the closed oven.
You should end up with a slightly darker skillet that feels absolutely dry to the touch. It shouldn't stick and the seasoning should be hard like glass. Due to the very thin layer you apply with that method, you should repeat the procedure at least 2 more times for the initial seasoning of a new, uncoated skillet. You may apply up to 6 layers that way, but it's not mandatory. To touch up a used skillet that has suffered some 'damage' to the seasoning, you only need to do the procedure once to refresh the seasoning.
HrWisch Thank you so much for answering in detail! This would help for sure. Cleared a lot of silly little doubts I had. Watched a lot of videos/read articles but most of them missed out on crucial details which I found in your reply. Thank you :)
@@gayatri9438 if you can't fit your tawa in the oven for some reason use like 1tsp of oil or less and add 2tsp of salt in the end. It should absorb most of the oil leaving a thin coating that you will need to continue to burn the onions on. I prefer seasoning my smaller cast iron pan in the oven but my dosa tawa gets the stovetop treatment
I have a cast iron pan that has been passed down in my family over 100 years. We wash it and dry it on the stove and have from the time when the stove was wood.. You "season" it by USING IT. That's it. Use it to cook. Fatty or oily stuff. All the time. That's it. It's the easiest thing to care for if you use it.
Exactly same has been taught by my mother. Season it by using it.
Same here. I inherited a few cast irons from my great grandmother. They're gorgeous and I absolutely love using them and thinking of how many hands in my family have touched them over the years.
Exactly, my cast iron set is over a century old and I never need to season it in the oven. People act like they require a ton of maintenance but they don't, just don't put it away wet and it will last several lifetimes. The only time I ever seasoned it in the oven was once when something was burned so badly that I needed to scrub it vigorously with steel wool. Other than that I just cook with it daily using plenty of oil and eventually it becomes non-stick. I've never had a problem with acidic foods stripping away the seasoning or soap leaving a bad taste. The only downsides to cast irons are that they're heavy and the handle gets really hot but those aren't big deals.
One of my neighbors gave us a cast iron pan. She found it in the yard, with just the handle sticking out after hurricane Katrina. My brother cleaned it up and seasoned it and still uses it.
Watching your Teflon video and then this one after made me realize pfas and Teflon coatings are just a modern version of the patina, created from fatty acids by polymerization. However this patina is not only mantained by cooking in oil but it’s components, fatty acids are not an environmental concern, in contrast to Teflon coatings. That makes the case for cast iron for me. There is also carbon steel which is similar to cast iron and can be made thinner and lighter. And I wouldn’t worry with acidic foods, because if you have a good patina then there is no way the acid will go through that and even touch the iron. My grandmother cooks all her life in cast iron, used tomatoes and wine and the pans didn’t corrode. For the same reasons I think PHAs coatings from drying oils can be a very good environmentally friendly replacement for PFAs.
I grew up using cast iron, and have used a carbon steel pan for the past year.
It's so far been more non-stick than cast iron, but that may be because it came with a smooth finish and all the cast iron I've used is somewhat rough.
My mom frequently cooks acid in cast iron without ruining the seasoning but the food does taste metallic which I hate.
I have one cast iron pan I will use with tomatoes and things. Its seasoned with lard because can get thick. All my other pans are seasoned with things that don’t get very thick and they will crack after a while if I’m not paying attention to what I’m cooking. The lard one sucks at cooking fish. Which a cook all the time. I do have a bacon fat one for eggs. Its smaller and literally only used for eggs.
I cook 3-5 times a day for home and a shelter. I have maybe 10 pans and a few pots. Tomatoes kill the seasoning. Its no joke. One scratch and you are back to pulling the batteries out of the smoke detectors and starting over. Go ahead and do it. Treat you pan nice and it’ll be fine. Treat your pan like the tool it was made to be and you’ll cry.
Teflon is an endocrine disruptor. It has the same effect in your body as it does in the environment. Don't believe everything you see on youtube.
Regardless, personally I'm fine with eating a little corroded or oxidized iron. Teflon and PFAS being a permanent component of the food chain and water cycle, however, is a pretty big deal breaker.
I absolutely agree with this comment. I've used my cast iron for highly acidic foods and it was only showing smallest traces or change in patina after 4 months of daily usage.
I switched to cast iron a few years ago, and now I do everything with it. Even stuff with tomato in it, and no problem, no stick, nothing
Yeah , You know what's good , right on ! 👍🤘
In general, cooking with tomatoes isn't too much of a problem - but you wouldn't want to make a tomato-based sauce, like a marinara, in it. They can taste weirdly metallic. I made that mistake before knowing it was an issue.
That being said I use cast iron whenever I can. I don't know why - I just enjoy cooking with it. It makes me feel like a badass busting that thing out.
Refried beans in cast iron seem to suck the oil from the pan. Thats the only thing I don't cook in cast iron.
i agree, me too. theres nothing you can't do in cast.... even scrambled eggs... you just gotta know how to use it.
As someone who regularly cooks with and restores cast iron, I would like to point out a few incorrect points.
First, you can cook with acidic foods, you simply don't want to do so often and you need to renew the seasoning a bit usually after doing so. That leads into my next point, seasoning isn't nearly as complicated and difficult as people make it out to be. Yes your initial seasoning is a picky, and smelly process. However once that process is done, it usually doesn't need to be repeated. If you strip away some of the seasoning, simply heat the pan up on med-high and use a low smoke point oil like olive oil to restore it. Do not use something like olive oil for the initial seasoning as it isn't nearly as durable as Avocado or Flax seed oil. Yes Flax seed oil is technically the best oil, but it is frankly expensive and Avocado oil is so close and so much cheaper that Flax isn't worth it.That said, even if all you do is wipe a thin layer of oil on the cast iron and don't bother with the heat, just simply bake something in it next round. Generally what I recommend to people in general if they want to get a real high quality seasoning without stinking up the kitchen, just bake lots of high fat dishes. Cornbread is a great example of this.
As to the specifics of what temps to create your initial seasoning. 400 degrees is more than hot enough. I've seasoned hundreds of pans and never once taken it above that. As for soap, yes the guy is correct If your seasoning is done properly you can wash with soap and water. Now you shouldn't need to do so with any regularity, but it will not hurt it unless you are scrubbing hard. That said, the plastic scrapers are terrible, chain mail scrubbers are overwhelmingly better.
Now honestly most of the benefits of cast iron are trumped by any decent carbon steel skillet. They season easier, they cook at higher temps and they have enough mass that they sear as well. I just about never use my cast iron for searing or skillet type things anymore. I use them for baking and that is about it. I love my cast iron, but carbon steel is just as good or better. Comparing against stainless is comparing apples to oranges. Stainless has its place and doesn't do the same things as carbon or cast iron. I use stainless on any dish where I need to develop fond.
You must have a gas stove top.
@@cajunfid That doesn't have anything to do with what i wrote. However my stove is a glass top but I also have gas burners on a stand alone cook top. I use my cast iron and carbon steel with both. The glass isn't my favorite to cook on as it's temperature response is abysmal, but it works just fine.
@@OmegaGamingNetwork I Wasn't trying to disparage your comment. Didn't mean for it to come across that way. I've just had bad luck with my two high carbon pans on my induction stove top. Both of them warped even after I babied bringing the heat up slowly on them so now they both spin slightly like tops. Never had that problem on the gas stove. A chef friend of mine basically said it has a lot to do with the way gas heats the whole pan as well as the sides, compared to the induction that heats the hell out of the bottom quickly but doesn't heat the whole pan evenly compared to the gas.
@@cajunfid Don't worry, I didn't take it as disparaging. I was just confused as to where the comment was coming from.
Yes the carbon to have a tendency to warp on the bottom, which does make them a little of a pain on glass tops. At least with my heavier ones, it doesn't seem to affect the performance too much, but it can be annoying. I have a variety of them and some warped, some did not and there seems to be little rhyme or reason to it. My primary take away after using dozens of carbon and cast iron skillets on a glass top stove is that glass tops are just all around terrible. Pretty to look at, but honestly just not worth a plug nickle.
@@OmegaGamingNetwork Agreed. If I owned the place I'm in now I'd rip the stove out and run a gas line myself.
I've always used Dawn. It has never hurt my pans, which were my mother's.
The only thing that did was my Aunt. She left the pans in the dishwater until they rusted through.
Once or twice was easy to fix, but she did it every single time until it was falling apart. That's some serious neglect. And my sincere regret for not being there to prevent it.
I’ve been cleaning my cast iron like this for over 30 years, much to the consternation of housemates and family members. I’ve been vindicated. Thanks, Adam.
My primary cast iron pan is almost 100 years old and still cooks to perfection. It was owned by my grandmother's parents originally and was passed down. Makes the best steaks. Cook with it regularly and there is essentially no maintenance needed.
Dam now that's a man money's worth 🤣
I've had mine for 35 years, it belonged to my parents before that.. It must be around 50 years old by now...
How no maintenance?
@@lauralvw8445 If you clean it after it cools with water then dry it and apply some oil to it, that is the extent of maintenance it needs. Takes less than 2 minutes total to clean it after use.
To think how many heads that pan has smacked or been used to threaten.
In my youth I loved my cast-iron pan, but when I got a stove with a ceramic top, it seemed too greasy, so I put the pan aside and it rusted. Quite recently, my children discovered the pan and rescued it, apparently inspired by someone like your friend David. I'm now about to start using again, and I'm quite excited about it. I've also bought a carbon steel pan, and the idea is to phase out non-stick pans - not out of health concerns, but environmentally they make no sense. Having to replace a pan every couple of years is totally ludicrous.
I love my carbon steel pan! I use it almost daily.
Good objective review. I really liked the fact that the host directly acknowledged that there is not enough reliable and proven data behind all the advice one finds on the net. This is how reviews should be made!
Started using cast iron 10 years ago. At that time my wife was anemic since we started using cast iron it leaches iron into all of our meals and she never had that issue again! Even during pregnancy!
Baby is going to be strong as iron 💪💪💪
I suppose that is one way to make good use of side effect of iron pan
@@thisandthat1233 And perhaps will be next Iron Man.. 😄
Too much iron in health people causes dementia. Be careful with it
eat more meat
From what I can tell, what that article refers to as "carbon deposition" has to do with why seasoning turns black, w/c isn't just because of the polymerization of oil. Polymerized oil is primarily dark brown. It turns black because as you cook with it, tiny particles of the food burn and turn to carbon black, which mixes into the oils that get polymerized. This happens naturally to cast iron, especially since a lot of people don't wash their pans with soap, leaving a lot of those burnt food particles to season into the pan along with the oil. Presumably, the article is saying that thick applications of oil will make a smaller proportion of carbon black into each layer of seasoning. I'm not entirely sold on how much the carbon really helps with the integrity of the seasoning, but I do believe that it is what makes seasoning deep black as it accumulates. Indeed, thick applications of oil risk making the surface of the pan sticky because the oil didn't polymerize completely. It leaving it under heat will eventually harden everything, but by then the layer will probably be very uneven, counteracting the non-stick properties of the seasoning. Those are my observations. I may not have controlled every variable and published my work in a journal, but I've done this obsessively over the past few years and it's what I know, even if I may not know everything about the process definitively. That's really what we mean these days when we say lived experience.
Oh and just a follow up. Your friend is right to have reservations with flaxseed oil. In small quantities like in the initial pre-seasoning, it makes for a good strong and extra shiny layer. But if you pile it on over several (even if really thin) layers, it reaches a point where practically all the seasoning starts to catastrophically flake and peel off in an unstoppable cascade. Kenji Lopez-Alt also claims based on multiple people asking him about this happening that it's the flax that causes it. It's happened to me twice before it occurred to me that its the oil. I treated it as occasion to re-do the seasoning from scratch after taking a wire wheel to smoothen the surface of the bare metal (mine's a modern Lodge, w/c can have really gritty surfaces). I still use flax on occasion to slip in a strong layer or two in between cooking. After all, what else am I gonna use a bottle of flaxseed oil for? But after my bottle runs out, let's just say I don't plan on getting more.
Dude chill
I can't speak on whether that carbon actually helps the seasoning but note that plastic polymers are composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen- which you might recognise as the elements that make up your body because most of the compounds that make up your body, including proteins and DNA, are actually plastic polymers, or as the elements in TNT, because that is why we call them "plastic explosives." Also, because of the nature of plastic polymers (and carbon in general), it's actually pretty easy for carbon atoms or additional plastic molecules to connect to them and form chains. That's part of what makes carbon such a good basis for life- It can attach to itself and a few other extremely common elements in a huge number of configurations.
@@Boyetto-san I agree to more or less everything you wrote. I seasoned more than 35 cast iron and carbon steel skillets. None of them turned black. You usually end up with a bronze like color which varries a little from oil to oil. The dark, black color comes later when cooking. I also had the same experience with flaxseed oil. While it works ok for the initial seasoning of cast iron, I no longer use it for the initial seasoning of carbon steel. The rougher surface of cast iron holds on to that seasoning better while it tends to flake off from smooth carbon steel no matter how thin the layers are. My favorite seasoning oil at the moment is a self made 50:50 blend of canola oil and grape seed oil. Sunflower oil and olive oil also work fine.
@@1qwertyrewq1 Sorry, it's a typo. I meant grape seed oil.
Hi Adam, would you ever make a list of all the research you’d like done that hasn’t been done yet for students to possibly take inspiration from?
Oh my god, yes. Although it's a herculean endeavour which quite possibly may not be worth Adam's time.
Sameeha Eram yeah, definitely a lot of effort. Although, considering how this isn’t the first time he’s given out potential graduate level research topics in videos, maybe having a google doc or something that he adds to whenever he comes across another new topic might be possible? *shrugs* Ultimately it’s up to him ofc.
I'd love that, Adam probably comes up with multiple ideas that could become dissertations each day
I've actually wanted this for really anything, not just Adam videos. Sometimes I can't find a scholarly source that can definitively tell me a piece of information I wish existed. It would be great if we just had a place to submit requests: "Hey scientists, do this!"
Maybe someone should make a website for research ideas.
I cook with cast iron almost exclusively, some very old & some newer (bought in last 15 years or so).
I pre-season by 24hr vinegar soak then swipe on solid Crisco, if cool weather it goes outside on bbq to not stink up my house.
I even brought one pan to a MX Carribean Island & rust has not been a problem even when I'm gone months at a time.
I store in my oven here.
Love CI!
Deborah, what is the purpose of the vinegar pre-seasoning you do?
@Melissa Lee The soak is remove old, splotchy seasoning from pans that are new to me.
@@deborahdeclusin9389 Gotcha. Makes sense. Thx
ive got a large cast iron pot, we basically use it once a year or less, and it doesnt rust so imn a bit confused on that point in the video.
I restored one of my family’s cast irons because of this video, we called it the pancake pan when I was a kid because my mom always made pancakes on it (original, I know) but it looks AMAZING. Shiny, blacker than ever, I use it almost every day for veggies, meats, French toast, pancakes of course, and anything else that won’t leak. Love cast iron.
I also make pancakes in my cast iron pan. I even fry eggs in it. And I've never had any problems with it. Not getting rid of this pan ever!!
I bake bread on it as well.
It can crack lol and it's heavy
@@lindafredriksen7402 and your great grandchildren can be using it in the next eon.
@@AlphineWolf Have you ever seen a cast iron pan crack?
I've done most of my cooking in cast iron for a good couple years now. They're not anywhere near as high maintenance as some people make it seem like.
yeah, this guy opened it up like a bad infomercial
because you cook with it all the time lmao. he literally said that in the video.
Now, if you didn't cook with it all the time, but only occasionally, say once every few weeks, there would be a lot more maintenance needed. Increasing the duration to once a month or once a few months (depending on the air humidity in the are) might be long enough for rust to appear, which would require even more maintenance.
@@SapioiT why would anyone not cook with their cast iron all the time? 😅
After I'm done cooking, I throw in water, bring it to a boil to loosen any food residue. While it's boiling I gently scrub with a wire brush and problem areas...then pour the boiling mess into the sink and rinse with hot water...wiping it out under hot water. Then I put it back on the burner and heat it to dry it. I turn off the heat before the last of the residual water boils out. Then while it's still hot, I wipe a light coat of some oil on it with paper towels and let it cool before putting it away. That's worked for me for the last 25 years on my large skillet.
Im a long time cast iron user, and have tons of experience with stainless and carbon steel pans as well. So this was very interesting! I wanted to add/support a few things you said, because like you ive done a lot of looking online, and reading various cooks takes on it, and its super duper not clear. For me, cast iron is the sweet spot compromise (in terms of cooking quality) between stainless and carbon steel. I avoid teflon because i always scratch them and have to buy a new one 2 years later. So wanted to break it down a bit.
Stainless steel, like you said, is a lot easier to maintain, and more consistent overall. however, there are just some foods thats its very ill suited too, and this cannot be considered your 'one size fits all pan". Two examples of this--any kind of egg, whether its scrambled or fried, and other sticky gooey items like pancakes. For these, sticking to the pan is the deal knell of the dish, and can ruin a lot of good ingredients. Half the pancake sticks to the pan, then when you flip it, the other side wont brown because of all the stuck on gunk. And especially with fried eggs, its REALLY easy to break a yolk with a stainless steel pan. So essentially, i think they are not very good for American breakfast food. I also agree that if you got a good one, these side effects would be decreased and the pan wouldn't burn as much. But regardless of how nice, it just wont be nonstick at all. The only way to achieve nonstick is to really sear something, like a steak or burger. Then these work just great, because the meat releases once its browned. With more gooey ingredients this doesn't always work.
Cast iron, if seasoned, is absolute magic for these breakfast foods like eggs and pancakes. It also works for cornbread, biscuits, sweet rolls.....basically all of the American goodstuff breakfast foods that stainless sucks at. If you maintain a patina, then its pretty non-fussy to cook with. Just heat it up, add oil, throw on stuff. You can even put bacon on cold and it wont stick. You can also transfer to the over or broiler and it wont burn on there either. The handles are usually too short, and the big ones can be a challenge to toss food with--but as long as you don't need to toss it around it works great. It can also get really hot with extended use, and ive burned myself like a million times on one of these. But thats a minor issue. For caring for it, its exactly like you said. heat it up till smoking, add some flax oil (this stuff reallllly works better than normal oil. 10x better IMO), and spread it around until thin. The only other thing id say is that once you apply oil, if you just leave it there till smoking and then turn off the stove, then it can form little droplet patterns from the oil collecting. What ive found is that the metal contracts after you apply the oil, and if you wait 1-2m you can see these droplets forming. So the way to solve this is to wipe it a second time to again wipe off the droplets that form from heating.
Lastly, carbon steel is my favorite way to achieve nonstick, as i think the patina is superior to cast iron when seasoned and prepared. You can practically flip an egg without a spatula, and searing steaks in a dream. They are lightweight, you can toss ingredients, and the handle is longer and doesn't heat up and burn you. You can do everything you can with a cast iron, including putting it into the oven or broiler. Seasoning method is near identical. The thing that really busts my balls about these though is that you HAVE to heat them up before applying oil. If you apply oil before is smoking, then it won't achieve nonstick. You simply have to heat the thing up, then apply oil, wait for it to cool, and then proceed with the searing. This is almost identical to a carbon steel wok, where you have to heat it up before stir frying. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but there have been so many times when either i forget, or when someone else is cooking and doesn't know to do that and complains about my nice carbon steel pans. Also, there are some foods you want to add on cold, like duck breast or shoulder bacon, so that the fat renders better. Sometimes, if you do this on a carbon steel, it can stick a bit. With cast iron, its way less finicky because i think the patina is just much more baked into it. The carbon steel's patina is a lot more transient, if not superior at the end.
I just wanted to add this to point out that there is an additional benefit to cast iron other than price and nonstick--its the ease of use factor. So long as you are willing to clean and season it often. I use mine 5-6 times a week and its a dream at this point. So you are also correct, if you don't use it often, then its benefits decrease.
Love the videos, especially these more recent information laden ones. As a nerd, these are awesome.
I'm curious what oils you're using in your cast iron and carbon steel pans to cook with? I've found out over the years that when I'm using olive oil to cook with, food tends to stick more often in the pan. Where as if I used an animal fat (bacon grease, lard, etc) that food just slides around in the pan. No idea why this would be, but it definitely seems to make a difference at least in my kitchen with my pans.
@@winja2109 I generally use lots of animal fats, like duck fat and lard, and now that you articulated that i think thats part of the reason why.--I always thought it was flavor, but it does seem to slide a little better as well when using those animal fats. I haven't really noticed a difference between olive and other oils in terms of slipperiness, but for shallow frying im a fan of peanut oil rather than lard just because its a lot cheaper. Seems to handle higher temps better than olive oil. This is all subjective though ;)
Fantastic analysis! I use all three, and wanted to add carbon steel to the discussion. But you did such a great job there’s nothing much left to say except thank you
We've always had at least 2 cast iron pans. They still get used on a regular basis. In our early marriage, we supplemented those with Teflon. In the last 5 years, those have been replaced with carbon steel pans. The carbon steel pans are what we most often reach for.
Video is 100% accurate. I got a “pre-seasoned” cast iron and then seasoned it myself in the oven a couple times and it’s basically the only pan I use now. The maintenance is actually much lower than I expected: it’s easy to clean you just have to make sure not to leave it sitting in water or wet and “re-season” with that little bit of oil (I use avocado oil).
That depends, I've had to reseason mine quite a few times over the last couple of years because my inlaws can't fathom that you need to be a bit cautious about how to deal with the seasoning.
Every pan has a different use. My cast iron is good when I want good, consistent heat. Nonstick is good for eggs. Stainless steel is when I WANT stuff to stick.
When you want stuff to stick?
Enough said.
@@marcelobulhoes6180 I think he's referring to fond
@@marcelobulhoes6180 to build a fond for pan sauces.
@@marcelobulhoes6180 Potstickerssssssssss
This video is why I love your channel. You are not afraid to challenge norms or fads. I personally love my cast iron pans and I cook on them all the time. And you nailed it completely - season as you go. Treat your pan well. But I also have a non stick and a stainless for certain dishes. Keep up the great work Adam!
Very informative episode. To get the cast iron skillet to not burn the food, simply heat the skillet on low heat so that it takes time to heat up. Don't start on high heat and then lower the flame. Rather, start with a low flame and let the skillet heat up gradually. Depending on the size of the skillet it may take as much as 20 minutes to reach the goal, but it's worth it.
Got tired of the "non-stick" scam; throwing out cookware after 6 months, 1 year, whatever, when they lose their "non-stick".
you can use them for years when handled right, just lika cast iron. Buy a good one, 80 € for an 11 inch (28 cm) is a minimum in my opinion. And dont put them in the dishwasher.
@@3tytty Cast iron doesn't just last years, it lasts forever.
Same happened to me. Then I bought All Clad and ended the charade..
I've been using my T-Fal for 2 years now yeah it's about a "year.7" lifespa
My nonstick egg pan is at least 15 years old. It’s a Vollrath N7007. Longevity comes from not abusing the pan.
Absolutely love your channel - just found it, and now I'm binge-watching.
Very minor correction to something you said: The reason cast iron pans are black isn't their carbon content. When they are first cast, they come out a dull grey, and you can see this in your video where they are making the pans and pre-seasoning them. It's the seasoning process that turns them black.
Learned this myself when I left an empty 5" pan on the burner for about 20 minutes... Came back to a silver CI pan. But they are just hunks of metal, so I seasoned it again and still use it regularly
its not the seasoning sorry. it.s the fe3o4 formed on the surface
As you said, I bought a 9” cast iron skillet at the age of 18 and have used and abused it for the last 47 years. Along the way, I acquired 3 more - 10” each - and inherited my great-grandmother’s cast iron Dutch oven. Fortunately, all of these are old enough to have escaped factory “pre-seasoning” which, apparently, requires a pebbled surface. My smooth interior pans have held a seasoning through use on gas and electric stoves and ovens, as well as open wood and charcoal fires. According to Lodge Manufacturing in Tennessee, the best way to remove undesired levels of “patina” - such as char from wood fires - is to put the pan through a self- cleaning cycle, whether gas or electric oven. Yes, I have tried it, and yes, it works like a dream. The only downside is that you then have to sweep up the rust from the bottom of the oven and season the pan; small price to pay for nearly indestructible cookware that absolutely will last for multiple generations. Climb down off that fence and admit the best fried chicken, or cornbread, you ever ate was cooked in cast iron.
I bought in college and was on the way to 47 years when my wife broke it. Yes, she managed to break the handle off my cast iron skillet. *palmface*
@@cjhickspe1399 OK thumb up for your post but thumb down for your wife. Also check the laws in your state. you may have her for this and you will get everything in court. And in some states she may get life.
Just out of curiosity how did she do this? There are many ways we all have broke our pans. Sometimes I think its the ghost of our grandmothers punishing us.
@@cjhickspe1399 did she drop it? I feel like it is so hard to break a cast iron pan. You'd have to almost throw it on the ground as hard as you can
Very much this... and nothing sticks to properly seasoned cast iron. The pores in the metal retain some of that oil (what gives it the seasoning) and this prevents food to cook with. As kids, we would always get burnt pancakes stuck to steel/aluminum pans, but for cast iron our burnt pancakes were free to be served!
@@andretsang7337 Thermal shock can hurt cast iron -- going from hot to cold or cold to hot.
My cast iron is for outdoor camp cooking, whether it's on an open fire, a wood-fired cookstove, or baking with coals and a Dutch oven. The extra mass of the cast iron helps to smooth out uneven and variable heat from cooking fires and the black color goes better with all the soot that will inevitably build up
Adam looks like John Wick's cottage core brother.
A combination of words i never thought I'd ever read, tbh 🤣
He looks like that one guy in every extremist ideology
He ain't pretentious enough to be cottagecore.
@@CallanElliott pretentious?
@@issabellamerie7139 Cottagecore seems to be city dwellers who have romantic ideas of what the country life is like.
I have a single cast iron skillet that I've been using literally every day for almost every meal in the past three years because it is the one of the two pieces of the cooking vessels I own (the other is a pot). The 'use often to avoid problem' explains why I never really encountered any issue with it even though I didn't even know it was supposed to be taken care of.
You probably also have very good iron levels in your blood because of this.
@@_g7085Great I love being magnetic
@@_g7085 I think it's better to have iron than Teflon.
@@GlossaMETeflon is inert.
@@_g7085myth. The food doesn't actually touch the iron due to the seasoning.
Great vid as always. I use my cast iron religiously, cook damn near everything in it (unless I'm simmering a tomato sauce for hours or something), and almost never season it except in the dead of winter (1-2 times a year) when I feel justified running my oven at high temperatures for an hour. I use stainless steel utensils, soap, scrub brushes, and a whole host of other things 'You're not supposed to do', and have never wanted any other pan. It even works the exact same way as a pizza steel, and is more versatile than that implement (so long as you aren't cooking too big of a pizza). There's a reason these pans are one of the weapons du jour for any apocalypse movie or video game.
Glad to know I follow the exact same technique to maintain my cast iron pan because this is what seemed to work after lots of trial and error. I'm from India and some food that we make just tastes much better than when cooked on thin nonstick pans. Also over time I've learnt how to maintain the surface really well and can make it as nonstick as nonstick coated pans. After cooking some foods the surface does lose it but it can be easily restored once you know how.
I tried making Naan on a regular Teflon pan, without a lot of oil to fry in it was coming out flat like a pancake. I bet cast iron would make the bread much better because it doesn't lose heat so fast.
"You can't use hard sharp objects on them"
Me who has beat my cast iron to hell and back: uh oh
Right? All of my utensils are metal. 😅
Yeah I was taught the opposite - use metal tools to gradually wear down the rough texture of the iron.
Getting a sharp metal fish flipper was a game changer for me, with my cast iron.
Compared to the other materials? Hard sharp items could damage a light layer of seasoning... Otherwise known as unused cast iron. People who use is once a month don't have enough layers of seasoning. Use it all the time? The metal tools are helpful by removing damage and buildup.
Yeah, I use a fish spatula and make pasta sauce in my pans but I use them like every other day for dinner so
"Cast iron pans are cheaper "
French brands like Staub, Le Creuset: *looks at each other uncomfortably*
*Smithey and Finex have entered the chat*
dafuq did you expect from French companies? Affordability?
Lodge, Victoria and child labour factories in Asia:
am I a joke to you?
also he meant regular cast iron not enamelled
@@manspeej , Staub as well as Le Creuset also have cast iron pans which are only enamelled on the outside part . I have three of them which I only need to season from the interior side .
@@norberttietjen6506 I'm not Elon Musk so I only have Lodge
The quality of these videos has gone from remarkable to stellar. This is just fantastic; thanks, Adam.
Also, I'm loving this shift towards greater variety of content!
I used to get slightly irritated because he always did such amazing research but then ruined it by saying something mean or snobby. I feel like he's learnt to be a bit nicer and now I'm really enjoying the videos and would actually recommend them to friends.
Don't have a cast iron pan myself, but I do have two carbon steel woks and they have some of the same pros and cons. I love my woks, they are basically indestructible, you can use whatever tools you want without worrying about getting teflon in your food, and if you use them a lot they basically maintain themselves. I should probably get a cast iron pan as well l'd probably like them.
Edit: A personal tip for seasoning (at least for woks): Just cook with it. Heat it up first before putting oil in, as described in the video, then put in some oil, swirl it around and chuck your food in, it's not gonna stick if the wok is hot enough and the seasoning will build up over time making it even more non-stick... and then I watch another minute of the video and he literally says the same thing -.- (should really watch the video first before commenting) xD
When I started working in the machine shop at 19, I took my mother's well seasoned (caked on, dirty as hell) pans and dunked them in the caustic tank to clean. It did super clean them, looked like brand new cast iron. If i knew then what I knew now... lol
Basically, cast iron pans are the perfect zombie apocalypse weapon. Heavy and can smash heads in, you can’t bite through it, lasts years, and you can use it to cook!
@stockart whiteman lol
They'd be bad weapons. Might work for one bash to the zombie head, but then it would probably crack or shatter. Cast iron is quite brittle. Ask anyone who has ever had one split after dropping in the kitchen on a tile floor.
getting close enough to a zombie to smack it with a pan is such a stupid idea. shotguns were invented for a reason.
@@BloodSprite-tan thatd atteact more, just find a different melee weapon and have a rifle or shotgun as a backup
@@jasonquinn4516 They basically explode. Including shrapnel wounds if your foot happens to be too close to the point of impact.
Nobody:
Adam: *pulls out a whole Carbon Block in the middle of his kitchen*
That was coal
@@nickh6076 Anthracite coal
Hah, otherwise known as anthracite coal, the finest home-heating fuel of yesteryear. I found it in the basement of my house, on the other side of a long-sealed iron door where the coal man used to make deliveries.
"on the other side of a long-sealed iron door" sounds like the plot of a horror movie.
@@AS-rl5vr Could still be. What unnameable horror will one day slither up to Adam's door and in a voice from beyond the grave, demand the return of its property (or else)? Dunno, but I bet it makes for a great video. Make sure to film it, Adam.
I started using cast iron 2 years ago. Use them on grill. Love them. I got stainless pans for some foods. But egg done right will fall out, wipe pan with paper towel and ready for next use. When i do use dawn its tiny drop in bowl of water then wipe them off. Wipe them dry. 3 or 4 tines a year ill bake them on grill on high to reseason. But normally heat them up. Spray olive oil, cook, wipe off when done. If i do use soap and water ill spray lil olive oil on after and wipe off. Stack them with paper towels between to absorb extra oil. Desicant packs by them in drawer.
What i like is i can eat out of them and they keep food hot while i eat. Or take them off hair early and food keeps cooking while on counter. Cast pizza tray makes crispy crust. Great for burgers, fajitas, onions and peppers. Soup that stays steaming hot whole time you eat it from pan
My 3-set of iron skillets has been passed down longer than anyone really knows. My great grandmother got it from her mother, that's all we know.
It's probably REALLY smooth, as by the sounds of it it's over 100 years old, when they made cast iron better
A tip for any rust: white vinegar! Leave it in a vinegar bath overnight if it’s really rusty. Everything will spray off! Metal smiths use it to clean their stock before forging 👍👍
Thank you for this tip. Do you have to re-season the whole pan afterwards or will cooking something help?
For cast iron it's recommended to use a 1:1 vinegar/water mixture and not to leave it for more than 24 hours (as it can actually damage the pan) but yeah :)
Me, a CS graduate: I should totally do thesis about cast iron pans.
Lmao literally same
I was scrolling down for this xD
I've been waiting/hunting for inspiration to find unresearched cs fields, can't believe the first research-ready material I find is cast iron pans lmao
Please actually do jt
Why would a Computer Science grad do a thesis on material science?
@@RonJohn63 its a joke
My parents have a few cast iron items that are used exclusively for camping twice a year at the end of summer. Every single dish that is cooked over the fire is cooked on cast iron with the exception of stew and pasta. When these items are not in use they sit in the garage untouched until we go camping again. We don't "season" them, we cook with them then scrape them with sharp metal spatulas. I don't think any of them have ever been washed with anything more than a damp rag.
I'll be a grad student in material science in a couple years. I'll keep this in mind.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 you better get through undergrad first bud. You've got no idea what's coming
Studying chemistry? I'm studying that lol
@@XvSKINNYvX oh yeah wait for (Material Defects) and (Mechanical Behaviors of Materials) courses
Cast iron skillets are so much easier to maintain than what you said. Season them maybe once a year and it's fine, and yes you can use soap but you don't need to. A well seasoned pan just needs hot water and a paper towel or sponge to clean up easily.
Cast iron is superior because they're immensely durable. Idk how many non-stick steel pans I've gone through but I still use my family's heirloom pans. The sear is better, you can throw them in the oven, the heat is more evenly distributed and the pan stays hotter longer, which is great when you serve something on cast iron. All in all, cast iron for life. They're all I need
Exactly. I restored a old cast iron dutch oven and only had to fully season once. After that it is all maintenance.
If you use them regularly and know what you're doing, you don't even need to reseason.
After some experience with teflon coatings that peel off, I've gone with the cast-iron stuff I've inherited for most of my cooking. When they are in daily use, season is not really something you need to think about.
This video was a masterpiece on so many levels. Giving a shout out to Homer and the dissertation idea for studying cast iron pan seasoning. Little things like these make your content that much more full
Don't forget the sublte "stamp-ed"
Us Homers are great at this stuff. I myself is busy trying to build my own girlfriend. The first one I built was a big fauiler. Didn't hold up well. I was shooting for 30 years of age, but slipped and added an extra zero on the age. She did enter government from California and is in congress. I don't mention that to many.
I only have 4 cast irons and I find the best way to season them to start is to actually beat them on a lower temperature; smoke point tends not to work as well for me I’ve been cooking on cast iron for several years and once the initial season is on I reccomend doing a thin coat of oil on the hot pan after every few uses and just warming it on the stove for a few minutes (after washing) I also find that washing the pan decently well acrually helps the seasoning to work best as it seems to get off some bouned proteins or starches which will lead to sticking in later cooks, so wash it and dry it on the stove and then oil it after the initial coat is on
Quick answer: Meat sears way better
Matthew Lawton beef is meat
True for veggies as well. Potatoes crisps up much nicer, a full pan of corn cooks more evenly, and you get a much nicer sear on veggies like brussels sprouts, carrots, asparagus, ect.
I don't want to be the party pooper here, but stainless steel and an induction stove can do the same thing a lot easier. Unless you're broke I can't find a justification for the extra work
Major Fallacy most people don’t have an induction stove
@@Wolf_ManJack You can get cheap portable induction stoves nowadays, like from IKEA. Although yes IKEA is not available for everyone.
I bought a new cast iron frying pan last summer. Seasoned it three times with canola oil in the gas grill, did a great job and works very nicely, almost as good as Teflon and it's still basically new.
12:42 Saying "FWIW" is actually more work than saying "for what it's worth"
Same thing with world wide web and WWW
LOL! I was just about to comment how saying the letters is 8 syllables vs 4 for the actual words.
W is the only letter in English that has more than one syllable
GSW...gun shot wound
@@xxxBradTxxx Everyone who reads your comment will drop what they're doing to test those other 25 letters.
I have 3 cast iron pans (one round, one griddle, and one grated), and once you've built up the seasoning, they're the best. The nonstick coating gets better over time instead of worse, unlike with Teflon, the thermal mass is unrivaled, and they last forever. The only real downside is cleaning, but even if you mess up the seasoning when cleaning it, an hour in the oven with a light coat of oil is all it takes to fix it up.
Someone : you have to season the cast iron all the time
Adam : My time has come
Min tid är här.
I moved to cast iron exclusively last year. I'm not going back. The way it cooks a steak or burger is unmatched by any other pan. Especially with the electric stove I have. Searing a tri-tip and finishing it in the oven in the same pan is super convenient as well. No more teflon. Can't recommend it enough.
Tefal unlimited is the best
"shouldn't use metal tools..." Wrong. A flat-ended steel turner is a cast iron pan's best friend. Smooths it out over time, and makes cleanup a snap.
That was my same thought at that part.
One of the big advantages over Teflon. That and a three year old Teflon pan isn't non stick.
Yeah he missed the mark on that part. In fact they used to sell cast iron pans with a cast iron metal spatula and spoon, my grandpa gave me his set which came with both metal utensils. I would never use anything other than wood or metal in my cast iron
David Hernston one of the advantages of cast iron is being able to use metal utensils. Most if his videos are usually very fact full but this one missed the mark in a lot of things as someone who uses one nearly daily there is a lot he got wrong.
@@caseyhayes4590 and is probly cracked and chipped and revesling the aluminum underneath 0.0
Cast iron is my jam! I only have one stainless sautee pan for acidic foods and one large and one small stainless pots for boiling water (you never want to boil water in cast iron). But 90% of my cooking is done in cast iron. It makes everything extra AMAZING and YUMMY! As long as you cook on medium heat, it just sort of does all the cooking for you. A little butter in the skillet, and everything comes out crispy to perfection. Regarding maintenance, I let it cool off, and then I scrub it out with some mild dish soap and water and pat it dry. Put it back on the burner to evaporate excess (just like Adam demos in the vid) and then rub a little coconut or olive oil on it. I use lint-free towels (the blue paper towels that mechanics use or cloth bandannas). My skillets never rust, even the ones I only use infrequently.
I got a cast iron pan like a month ago, cooked with it quite a few times (especially meat like Burgers and Ćevapi (spicy bosnian/serbian "sausages")) and have achieved the best results ever. The crust on the meat is incredible and is cooked thoroughly before it burns (I guess that due to the even heat throughout the cooking process).
The cleaning and seasoning took some time to get used and was quite confusing to but is not that big of a problem after you get used to it. Really, give it a go, practise cooking with it and learn from you mistakes. It really is worth it!
You can absolutely cook tomato sauce in a cast iron pan. They're incredibly forgiving and ultra versatile. Also, after you've cleaned them and rubbed on the oil for storage, put the pan on the burner and bring the oil to its smoke point to prevent the oil from going rancid for long term storage (or just do it anyway to build up seasoning). Grapeseed oil is just as good as flaxseed oil.
I've never heard good about flaxseed oil.
@@fryloc359 ABSOLUTE LEGEND Kenji alt lopez says that flaxseed oil tends to peel off. I just use vegetable oil. seems to be working a treat.
@@tristancleary years ago I read the post that said flaxseed was supposed to be the best, so I tried it, and like everyone else it flakes off. I went back to crisco.
And here we are back to 'a million different answers.'
@@squidge903 A million different answers means you can't go wrong. Everybody tried one thing and it worked. So they swear by it.
I'm 52 and been cooking since my 20's. I have been through every kind of pan and I empathize with you Adam. I am very frugal and reluctant to purchase at the time a $110 2.5 quart le crueset. It quickly became our go to cooking vessel. It is not a frying pan and I'm possibly off topic here but none the less is our favorite cooking vessel in the kitchen. After that purchase I thought I would try an expensive rival called Staub and unlike the ceramic coated le creuset, this had a cast iron-ish non-stick bottom. It is my new favorite as it is easy to clean, and has a beautiful exterior finish. I literally leave it on my stove top because I enjoy looking at it. We still use teflon pans and know that we have to replace them and we have come to terms with that. With regards to my cast iron collection, I have a large skillet that I use on rare occasions due to it's enormous surface size and ability to cooks things that require a shallow base. It is a PITA to clean. I use to have this zen approach to caring for it but it was my sole responsibility because my wife did not have the romantic emotions that I had developed early on. So it sits on a shelf in my storage room waiting to be used for that rare occasion of which I'm planning a deep dish chicago pizza in the near future.
I have the Shibata carbon steel pan that was featured on this video, and was very surprised to see it mentioned. I have used it everyday for the past 2 years and absolutely love it. Minor inconvenience is you need something to hold the handles with a mitt.
I also recently bought the Staub cast iron enameled dutch oven (sale for $160 in Cherry red going on rn), and am hesitant to use it because I wasn't sure of the advantages over the stainless steel pot I already have. Call it uncertain buyer's remorse. Watching this video and your reply, I am going to do my first cook haha.
PITA?, you mustn't use soap/detergent and a scrubby lightly.
My cast iron live on my stove top, I don’t think I’ve ever put them in a drawer and I can say over the past two years of owning them they’ve only got better and more non stick. I’m utterly in love and have drank the cast iron cool aid
Actually using metal tools on a cast iron is totally okay. In fact, it can help smooth out the surface in combination with good seasoning
That completely ruins the credibility of this video since it's at the start, metal tools are at home with carbon steel, cast iron, stainless steel. I think you should be extremely embarrassed Ragusea. Also the sciencey "electolysis" nonsense give me a break. People who actually used cast iron threw a rusty pan into the fireplace. It would burn off the rust and you season it with any fat. Takes about half an hour of work.
@@julesl6910 Not everyone has a fireplace tho
What is true though is using metal tools on enameled pans will damage the coating.
@@julesl6910 On vintage pieces you shouldn't use fire or heat to strip a pan. Can warp or cause heat damage to the pan. Electrolysis or Lye stripping is def the way to do it on older irreplaceable pieces.
I'd be more worried about the metal tools than the cast iron
The best tip I’ve received for using cast iron is to preheat the pan before cooking in it. Things stick far less in a preheated pan than in one just put on the flame.
I always give it between 5 and 10 minutes to heat up.
For the past 3 months, I've used almost exclusively my cast iron pan instead of my other pans for cooking.
Only thing I don’t preheat for is bacon. Putting it on the cold pan and then slowly heating it up seems to be the best way to ensure it doesn’t stick 🥓😋
Preheating your pan is generally better for anything you cook, except for high fat foods like bacon
Should have had a bit on carbon steel pans too, would have been an interesting counterpoint
Yeah i have a carbon steel frying pan - not super common but Im actually loving it so far.
Yes I'm surprised he didn't mention them.
@@vinstinct He definitely should have mentioned it, especially in the part where he questions why you cant get the benefits of both stainless steel and cast iron. Thats carbon steel! Way lighter than cast iron and even some stainless steel pans, stores better (Ive never had carbon steel go sticky on me), its a lot less finicky to season (America's test kitchen suggests just cooking a bunch of potato skins), works on induction, it has seasoning to make it non stick, its very cheap (at least at restaurant supply stores), only thing missing really is the thermal retention. It bridges a lot of the benefits of both, and its by far the best option for wok cooking. A cast iron wok is absurdly heavy, and stainless steel means food will stick more.
Carbon steel is an interesting alternative to cast iron. But it has the same drawbacks Adam doesn't like about cast iron. Carbon steel has to be seasoned and maintained exactly like cast iron. Most carbon steel skillets don't even come pre-seasoned so you have that additional process before you can start using them. Due to the smooth surface of the usual stamped and drawn carbon steel skillets, you even have to put a little more effort into maintaining that seasoning (especially when cooking on an electric stove top).
Don't get me wrong. I got a total of 22 carbon steel skillets (from Turk and DeBuyer) and love all of them. They are my daily go to skillets for cooking. I also got 17 cast iron skillets which I use more occasionally (except for baking stuff like cornbread). A carbon steel skillet might be a good tip for somebody who doesn't like the weight of cast iron. But it's the wrong choice for somebody who doesn't like the seasoning and maintenance process because that's pretty much the same for both materials. There are a few little differences which are mostly due to the usually very smooth surface of drawn carbon steel vs. the rougher cast iron. But in the end both types of skillets need more or less the same amount of care.
@@HrWisch you're absolutely right about all of that. They have the maintenance drawbacks of cast iron and some of the heat drawbacks of stainless. They are the best of both in some ways and the worst of both in others. I just thought that it would have made a really good additional topic for this video.
I just took the cast iron pill recently and I'm hooked. The added maintenance somehow makes it more enjoyable.
I've cooked on cast iron all my life. I've never seasoned it, used a hard scrubber and soap, Sharp spatulas the works. Never oil it after I use it, just rinsed in hot water so dried fast. Don't overthink cast!
Dang...you are a cast-iron warrior...your comments amaze me! Is it because you use the pans all the time so the seasoning builds up naturally then? I'm too scared to try that. I'd have to throw out my pan..👀🤦♀️ Serious KUDOS to you for sure.
Cast Iron is easy as long as you don't neglect it.
@@ladykoiwolfe me. I neglect it. But even if it gets rusty, you can still diy it to its previous condition (or near to) unlike teflon 😞
Same, just use the yellow side of the sponge and dry it off, if you get rust you cam use vinegar amd salt to remove
I definitely neglect mine, if you call it neglect, I just call it life as normal! Not afraid to throw it in the sink full of dish washing liquid, scrub pad to get the gunk off when needed. Rinsed in hot water, it dries itself before it can rust. Just this last month I took an angle grinder with a wire wheel to twenty years of carbonized crud on the outsides and bottom. Cleaned up beautifully and right back to the stove. The perfect thing with plain cast is you can't ruin the pan! You burn something to perdition and back, take a wire wheel to it or throw it in a wood fire and burn it off!
I've been using one for 20+ years by now, сooked most of the fried food on it. At some point the "polimerization" layer got very thick, so I just put it on the gas stove, heated it well, then cleaned and seasoned. I can imagine how many teflon pans I would need for all these years))
that was the cleanest sponsorship transition I've ever seen. 10/10
Check out LegalEagle's videos, his transitions are magical.
I own a forged steel pan, which is my favorite for frying steaks. It's a lot easier to maintain than my cast iron pans.
What makes it easier to maintain?
Yes, people don't seem to understand we've been out of the iron age for a while now.
Where does one forge a steel pan!?
@@DarkDodgers Mostly in large factories, but some are still handmade in smithies.
@@Nirioonossian It's just cooking superstition much like "organic" foods. Cast iron is actually really bad at basically everything that you want in a pan, but it's old timey so people adore it. It's real virtue is being cheap, but you're getting what you paid for/if it's not Lodge or Victoria it's not actually cheap. They're ridiculously heavy, they conduct heat poorly (aka hot spots and long preheats), and they're not nonstick enough to matter. If you use bad technique it's going to stick anyway, and the pan properties make good technique hard.
I'm a metallurgical engineering student and I love cooking. I'm just loving this video.
@MassCityMadman Thank you so much. It's gone by now, but I grew it for glorious 3 years :)
soooo? when's the dissertation?
@@alexs5814 Soon...
@@nixboaski cool! Please tag me when u do. I wanna try and give that patina coat to my outdoor wok.
@@alexs5814 I'm more into data science and mathematical modelling now than into metallurgic engineering. Not that I don't like engineering, but it's hard to get a job these days. I still could coat a wok though =D
This is a great video, thank you for your work. Seriously folks, I've been watching my mother, adopted grandma, adopted aunties, my wonderful 1st wife (professional chef) use CI. I use it. All the stories you see about how to care, season, don't wash with soap, don't use steel wool to clean, don't use steel utensils are all BS. I presently live in high humidity SE Asia and wash my CI with soap and water, sometimes I need to use steel wool, I let it air dry, don't go through the seasoning BS. I DO put it back on the burner to dry well before putting it away. A very very very important difference between the quality CI in the USA (I don't know about Europe) is that the CI of old days had polished cooking surface. This went away in the 1950's in the USA. I just bought an inexpensive piece from China and spent time to sand it smooth on the cooking surface which in my opinion makes maintenance easier.
Did the pioneers in the USA, the old country EU and ancient China have flaxeed oil or other concoctions advertised. Not just no but hello no. As the video pointed out, if you use your cast iron regularly it will reward you. If you use it once in a blue moon, then well, you can keep being frustrated and/or working harder than you need to be.
For anyone cooking with cast iron on a natural gas powered stove, I recommend getting copper diffuser plates to help the cast iron heat more evenly, instead of your food cooking too quickly in a ring, and not enough around the edges.
Cast iron retains heat very well, but it doesn't diffuse it very well.
Pro tip!
Great (and actually relevant) tip
It’s impossible to retain heat very well and not diffuse it very well. It retains very well because it’s constantly diffusing heat from the stove to the food. Iron is a good conductor of both heat and electricity that’s why they use it in a campfire where wood burns unevenly.
@@AkshayKumar-ue1fp you would be incorrect. Cast iron has terrible diffusion. It stays hot because the heat doesn't leave it (to go into the rest of the pan or ambient air). Food cooks on it because it is literally hot enough to burn flesh. It has nothing to do with diffusion.
But keep cooking with subpar technique. I'm not going to stop you.
Signed,
Your friendly neighborhood scientist
indeed, the poor conductivity of cast iron made me go to clad aluminum. It has also twice the thermal capacity, so in theory with half the weight you have similar amount of heat.
I switched to all cast iron and enamel. It was a great decision. My favorite one is a 15 in pizza tray that I got. I make margherita pizzas from scratch and if I let that tray preheat to 525F it only takes like 5 minutes to cook each pizza.
Another excellent vid. My parents have owned a set of cast iron pans over 60 years. Apparently, the older and more seasoned they become (the pans, not my folks) the better cooking you get.
But, also true of your folks, if I had to guess.
I’m inheriting my grandmas cast iron 😁
In Spain, when they are seasoning their ceramic cazuelas, traditionally use the oil from a halved garlic. I'm not sure how effective it is at polymerising, but it does give a very easily applied super thin layer.
when I clean MY cast iron I usually use kosher salt and a chainmail sponge that's designed for the pan and I've even cook tomato sauce in my cast iron I cook lots of stuff in it including sausage gravy
My grandma put baking soda and water in hers and boiled it. Dumped it and wiped it out. That's how she cleaned her skillet. She had gas stove and the inside of the skillet was like glass but the outside had 50 years of residue built up on it. I always thought it was kinda gross but I still have it. My grandma cooked spaghetti in her skillet all the time. No other spaghetti tasted like it either.
@@ttjohns4821 never tried that before thanks for the tip I totally appreciate it
i just have some table salt a copper wool and some lemons if it gets rusty but it gets the job done
i also often cook acidic foods with vinegar even or tomatoes and dairy aswell its usually no problem worst case i just reheat the pan and whipe it down with oil after its cleaned and everything is good as new (or better lol)
@@dr.frankenstein6434 thanks for the tip now I know how to restore my Cast iron if it rusts I didn't know how to restore it now I do I sincerely appreciate the tip
I love my cast iron. I have parrots so Teflon is out for me, but I genuinely don't mind.
Seasoning is widely disputed, but for me, it's Crisco or tallow, or lard. Even veggie oil and peanut oil are fine. I normally use a wooden spatula, but metal is alright. I use soap sometimes, and not others. The only thing I am 100% on is that it gets used DAILY and the pan is oiled and put away dry every time it's done. My pan is over 100 years old and still going strong.
If you have to buy a modern pan, most of them are rough cast now, so start by sanding them smooth and reasoning. And then just cook on the dang thing! My favorite thing to cook is 5 lbs of bacon on a new pan. First 2 strips will burn, after that it's all fine. Just left it preheat first.
I have successfully restored a cast iron pan without electrolysis. Following my father's advise, you should put the pan in the oven on its self-cleaning cycle (following the oven's maintenance instructions) which will reduce the seasoning on the pan to ash. Once cool, you scrub with an abbrasive scouring pad and soap to remove all the ash and as much of the rust as possible. Once totally clean and free of rust, reapply the seasoning using the method this video demonstrates.
Agree, Brian Koehler. Even thinking about how to start researching electrolysis is hella more work than just sticking it in the self-cleaning cycle if a complete reset is needed. Looks like it’s brand new, unseasoned. Then use thin layers of buzzywax, wipe ‘em in/off as best you can, put upside down in heated oven for a while, turn off oven, let cool, repeat as needed