Perpetual stew vibes
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Clean it, don't clean it, oil it, salt it, water it, "season it", season it by not cleaning it so your french toast gets all that good hamburger flavor from the night before...
I've read so many different ways to treat cast iron that at this point I'm convinced that it's all just superstition.
Leave it outside for 2 years, use acid and scrubbing to get the rust off, reseason. Good as new!
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I'm just going to keep cleaning mine with three drops of goat's blood, drying it with a linen towel, then storing it in a humidity-controlled cabinet with the handle pointing north, just like my guidance counselor taught me.
You don't rotate the handle in sync with the precession of the vernal equinox? Your cast iron's going to be fucked when the age of Aquarius begins. I'll bet the Priestmunty who proclaimed your pans wasn't even a bake-borne by the eight transcendental Broilers of Avalon. Poser.
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Honestly, depending on the specifics here, not the worst. If they're using an oil that will polymerize, then as they oil/heat/cool cycle it, the seasoning will further develop over time, as long as they're somewhat scraping off remnants of their cooking as they finish, leaving it as clean as it can be without actually washing it, and then heat cycling it to sanitize any bacteria that might be there, I don't really see a problem with it....
It's not exactly up to modern hygienic standards, or social standards.... And I'm pretty sure if any restaurant or food joint did the same they would get shut down by the health inspector before long.... But you do you buddy.
For anyone not in the know, the thing with cast iron and cleaning is no longer a problem. Clean your cast iron. When cast iron was just about the only cookware, soaps included lye. Lye will erode the non-stick "seasoning" on cast iron. Modern soaps do not contain lye, so go ham.
Cleaning, however, introduces water.... And water causes iron to rust, so it is generally advisable to clean your cast iron cookware, then immediately heat it up past the boiling point for water, to vaporize any liquid water and carry it off the surface of the iron. Once past that temperature, let the cookware cool, then treat it with a thin layer of oil. This will protect the surface from atmospheric moisture and allow the cookware to work over much longer periods of time without needing to be "re-seasoned" (which is removing the layers of polymerized oil on the cast iron, and then re-applying it using a slow method of oiling, then heating the cookware, allowing it to cool, oiling then heating again)...
Don't be afraid of cast iron, it needs a little more attention than other cookware, but it's a joy to actually cook with.
I've got a ceramic and it has all the advantages of cast iron without the disadvantages.
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I've got a ceramic and it has all the advantages of cast iron without the disadvantages.
Ceramic coated cast iron is very nice.
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Leave it outside for 2 years, use acid and scrubbing to get the rust off, reseason. Good as new!
Why would you wait two years when you can just melt it down in a crucible and re-cast it after every use?
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lye (sodium hydroxide) has all sorts of uses and for cleaning your pan you don't need it dry. Just buy a cleaning agent containing it.
It is one of the most used chemical products and i strongly doubt that anyone having normal uses for it will ever get a government visit.
It depends. Usually no, but if there are any mysterious disappearances in your area, a person that has recently bought large amounts of lye will certainly be questioned at least.
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Which is apparently why burritos from old-school eateries taste so good: they don’t wash the griddle, and the secret sauce is the essence of the entrails of generations of pigs and chickens
They don't scrub them with soap and water, but they do scrape them clean with a razor sharp spatula after every portion is cooked.
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You don't necessarily need to do that every time. The thing about cast iron is that even if you actually "ruin" it, you can just redo the seasoning.
So it's fine to be a little lazy about it. The one thing you want to avoid is rust, as you mentioned. I wash mine with a tiny amount of soap involved and most of the time I just dry them off with a paper towel. If I put on a coat of oil, I leave the pan on the induction stove for a bit, with the stove timer on. Easier than the oven.
Only if the seasoning looks like it might need a couple more layers, do I go the oven route.
Yes to oil and stove.
Totally forgot about the stove timer thanks!
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Why would you wait two years when you can just melt it down in a crucible and re-cast it after every use?
Why not just do your cooking directly in the crucible at that point? I heard it's great for pizza
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It depends. Usually no, but if there are any mysterious disappearances in your area, a person that has recently bought large amounts of lye will certainly be questioned at least.
Why would you do that? For getting the cast iron pan completely clean, just use oven cleaner or furnace glass cleaner. They contain sodium hydroxide and are meant to deal with burnt in residues.
There is no reason to buy dry lye for that, leave alone a large quantity.
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I mean, iron is a part of our nutritional diet.
Unironically starting in the mid 40’s Norway began to add iron to their “Myseost” as they didn’t use ironpots to make it anymore and myseost was a substantial part of their diet.
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I've got a ceramic and it has all the advantages of cast iron without the disadvantages.
My ceramic pan isn't even close on nonstick properties, it can cook eggs but needs more oil than cast iron. My smithey cast iron is king, so smooth the eggs slide around by default.
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Not sure about the soap thing. It definitely strips more of the "seasoning" than just water in my experience. And it's my understanding modern dish soap contains some synthetics, and cast iron is very porous (I use the cheap kind, I think the kind for camping, lol), so I avoid soap. I just use very warm water and sometimes mechanical means (stainless steel scrubbers) to clean my cast iron. Tbf, just cooking very fat/oil heavy stuff restores much of the seasoning whenever it's lost.
So I HAVE to cook this bacon to fix this pan? Oh noooo
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No, but I'm also not bringing oil to its smoke point when I'm doing normal cooking.
So the problem is oil smoke... Seems like ventilation would help with that
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My ceramic pan isn't even close on nonstick properties, it can cook eggs but needs more oil than cast iron. My smithey cast iron is king, so smooth the eggs slide around by default.
Yeah I feel like people who say that about ceramic haven't cooked on well-seasoned cast iron. Both of my cast iron pans are nearly as nonstick as Teflon, and eggs slide around like you said. Cooking runny-yolked eggs on my ceramic is a pain without an egregious amount of oil though.
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It's not about teflon, but the chemicals used to attach this (or any other) extremely non-sticky plastic to a pan.
Imagine the kind of chemistry needed to make a thing that a cooked egg slides off on it's own stick to a metal surface in high temperatures.
* This is mostly incorrect, I don't want to spread misinformation.Teflon is otherwise inert and shouldn't have health implications on it's own (that we know of).
Obviously I'll still avoid ingesting any more plastic myself, as much as I can help it. Not suggesting anyone chews on PTFE tubes.
No, it's about the Teflon too. Teflon becomes chemically unstable around 400-500F, temperatures well within the reach of a modern home oven or range, and releases polymer fumes that are damaging to your health.
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Eh, just turn up your stereo and open a window. You'll get used to the smoke.
Seriously, what's with posters these days! I used to smoke 20 pans a day in the 90s
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PSA be careful buying lye. It has other uses than soap making, including stripping of carcasses to the bone, and then turning the fat into soap. If you order enough you might get a visit from your friendly government agent.
Corrected as to what it does.
It doesn’t turn bone to soap, it turns fat to soap
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Clean it, don't clean it, oil it, salt it, water it, "season it", season it by not cleaning it so your french toast gets all that good hamburger flavor from the night before...
I've read so many different ways to treat cast iron that at this point I'm convinced that it's all just superstition.
I scrape the crud off while it's still hot and then rinse it with dish soap and water. Never had an issue.
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It's not about teflon, but the chemicals used to attach this (or any other) extremely non-sticky plastic to a pan.
Imagine the kind of chemistry needed to make a thing that a cooked egg slides off on it's own stick to a metal surface in high temperatures.
* This is mostly incorrect, I don't want to spread misinformation.Teflon is otherwise inert and shouldn't have health implications on it's own (that we know of).
Obviously I'll still avoid ingesting any more plastic myself, as much as I can help it. Not suggesting anyone chews on PTFE tubes.
Check out this amazing video all about Teflon. I know, nearly an hour long... Worth it!
