this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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You can buy pre seasoned cast iron.
My advice, as someone who has owned a cast iron pan for a while, is to take care of the pan. When you use it, wait for it to cool after use, then immediately clean it. Once cleaned, use heat to dry it (just put it back on the stove and heat it up to boil off any water), let it cool again, then add oil to protect the pans surface.
Don't use just any oil for it, there's a specific set of oils used to condition/season cast iron. I use grapeseed oil, but there's plenty of others. A quick Google search should yield some options for you.
The main focus is on keeping the pan protected from water, as it will rust the iron. Using water while cooking/cleaning is fine, but having water standing on the surface of the pan, even microscopic amounts, will cause rust to form. The moisture in the air can also cause the pan to rust, hence the oil coating after cleaning to protect the surface of the pan.
I got rust on my cast iron once after I left the pan for too long after cooking with mushrooms, which are very high in moisture. I had to scrub away the rust, which left a shiny spot on my pan (where the seasoning/conditioning was lost), and I had to re-season the pan.
IMO, cast iron cookware is a pain in the butt to take care of, but well worth it. Easily one of my favorite pieces of cookware. It holds heat really well and it cooks pretty much everything very well. Something that's always bothered me about regular cookware is the thermal cycling, you throw room temperature ingredients into a hot pan and suddenly, the pan isn't hot anymore... It takes a while to get back up to temperature. Not nearly as bad of a problem with cast iron.
By the time my cast iron cools, I've left the kitchen, so tbh i generally clean it before the next time i cook with it, and have never had rust issues no matter what i cooked in it last. Every once in a while i notice the seasoning getting a little thin after scrubbing it, so I reseason it with a single layer on the stove.
With my carbon steel wok, i regularly clean it by tossing it on the wok burner at full blast until it's entirely red hot and everything has carbonized off of it, and maybe splash some water in to help clear that off. Then i wait for it to cool enough and reseason it with a quick wipe of oil while it's still hot enough for the remaining heat to polymerize the oil.
Basically, I've never spent significant effort taking care of my cast iron of carbon steel cookware, and it's all still perfectly functional and non-stick and not rusted.
You and I have had very different experiences.
That's fair. I don't mean to invalidate your personal experience with cast iron rusting, but I do want to present a counter experience so people don't think it's definitely like that.
That's fair. I appreciate the reply.
Just so you know my favorite way to clean cast iron is to run it dry until the bits start to burn then throw in water to deglaze it hot, dump the water and wipe with a cloth then back on the heat to dry and a little bit of oil back in the pan.
I get water is an issue but it shouldn't be that much of an issue.
It's not really an issue if you're paying attention. As long as it doesn't sit to air dry for days, generally rust shouldn't be a problem.
My issue with the mushrooms was that I made a kind of gravy with them after cooking the meal and the combination of the moisture and other stuff in the mushrooms plus the moisture from making it into essentially gravy, then leaving it in the pan for more than a day, did me in.
I just forgot about it after the meal, and didn't look at it for the next few days. It's entirely my fault that it happened. No question about that. Careless cooking habits can ruin cast iron pretty fast.
If you're coming mainly fatty foods in the pan, then there's not a lot of worry there, the natural fats will protect the surface, so you can be, more or less as lazy as you want; but with some foods, you really want to clean it as quick as you're able to prevent any damage to the coating/seasoning/nonstick polymerized layers that protect the pan.