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I use my 3 cast-iron on a rotation near daily, use soap and water to wash them, and season maybe once every 6 months to re-up it?
I'll cook tomato shit in there no problem, just don't fucking let it sit on there and get stuck or you'll have issues. Never worry about food sticking
Chainmail + warm water + dot of soap and 15s of rubbing and I'll have a perfectly clean pan ready to go for another use immediately if I really wanted. Hand dry, warm over stovetop to evaporate any remaining liquid to avoid rust
Tbh it's less work than my stainless steel was because things get stuck WAY less often, and I'm an ADHD mess who never does dishes
You have to be amazingly shit with kitchenware to fuck them up
My biggest gripe with Teflon, after the whole PFAS problem, is that you have to baby it. I never was able to find a plastic spatula that worked well for any application. At worst, some are so darn floppy it's like trying to flip an fried egg with another fried egg. Not to mention, the leading edge would eventually melt and deform sending plastic shreds everywhere over time.
The things you can do cooking-wise with metal tooling just get you more control and better results. Any pan/pot that lets you do that is going to help your overall cooking experience. Plus, even if you don't go carbon steel or iron - say, stainless or even glass - de-glazing the pan with some water and heat from the range can make short work of cleaning.
One last point to this rant: your favorite cooking shows are lying to you softly. Your cookware are tools - they're gonna get fucked up. Used things eventually get scratched, stained, singed, dented, and that's okay; I promise you they're not unsanitary because they're in this state. Those stainless pans with mirror-perfect surfaces, or carbon steel skillets with that pristine golden hue, they're new; you usually see new product on camera thanks to sponsors and the general optics of the thing. Teflon pans hold out this false promise of pristine cook surfaces that just aren't realistic. And in practice, even those awful things do not go the distance. So yeah, reject modernity and all that. You'll be okay.
I like to avoid the hassle of taking special care of a cast iron and just use a stainless steel pan from IKEA. Spray on cooking oil works really well to keep food from sticking if your don't crank up the heat and anything that does get stuck can be easily scrubbed off with a copper scouring pad. Best part is that there's no need to worry about rust. Ultimately just use what you like most.
Hey, if your meat is sticking it might just need to sit longer at a slightly lower temp if you are worried about burning. Letting pork sit for longer has done a lot for me for it sticking.
And then also for cleaning heating up the pan dry on the burner than throwing in some warm water to boil while scraping the bottom has been way faster than scrubbing it all.
Especially for steak, pork, and fish, the cast iron heats up better and sticks far less than steel. Also much easier to clean.
But for anything that's saucy (pasta) or could benefit from a good deglazing (scallops particularly but also for veggie dishes), stainless steel works best.
I just have to commit myself to cleaning up immediately after the meal or consign myself to a lot of scrubbing.
I like to have both on hand. Really depends on the dish.
I love when people that can't be asked to learn something new complain about the people that have.
The pan isn't the problem 🤷
Edit: I see this comment has reached it's intended audience. PS: your struggles to season a pan are pitiful.
My gf got me a cast iron pan. I despise it. It's so much work compared to my other pans and I don't see any benefits. I only bring it out if she's watching me cook over my shoulder, so now I cook I tell her to relax on the sofa with some streaming or a book.
My biggest complaint is the smoking oil really upsets my air purifier, that stuff can’t be good to breathe in. I only season my pans outside and that is not even annually, only as needed and it is basically never needed.
After cooking I wipe the pan out with a dry rag and if it is just oily I let it ride. If there’s any crust stuck to the pan I’ll scrape it and wash with hot water in the sink. Dry it with a towel, light spray of avocado oil, wipe it off, put it away.
I’d like to upgrade my hood over the externally exhausted microwave vent I have, but until then I don’t use them inside in anything hot enough to smoke so we’re not breathing that crap in. Good enough for eggs or browning a sautee but I’m not going to sear meat indoors.
Edit: bacon! I love cooking bacon on cast iron but just can’t do it anymore. The smoke is too much, it coats the entire house in a sheen of oil vapor, and splatters all over the stove. I recently got a blackstone and exclusively cook bacon outside.
it's so much better than stainless
debatable but i think so
it takes a little maintenance
everything needs maintenance in the sense that you have to clean it. jokes aside, the only maintenance it needs is to burn oil in it if the seasoning got a little damaged for any reason
can't cook anything tomato based
you can, it's not great but won't ruin it
eight coats of oil you have to burn onto it before you can use it
that's not true, all cast iron pans come pre-seasoned from the factory
you can cook fried eggs and steak
that is true
even after seasoning it everything will still stick to the pan
not really, it's pretty non-stick
to clean it you gotta heat it up then dry salt scrub then re-season
not really, you only need to do that if the seasoning got damaged
if water ever touches it the entire thing will disintegrate
that's not true, you'd have to leave it in water for days to get it to rust
things that aren't mentioned: you gotta use it regularly otherwise it gets sticky; you can use metal tools like knives and spatulas directly in the pan that would demolish any teflon; the seasoning is more resilient than people think, you can even wash it with dish soap; the seasoning actually gets stronger when you fry fatty things in it (grilled cheese, steaks, eggs, sausages); it's very simple, durable, rustic, old technology, and incredibly cheaper than skillets of a similar quality (excluding cheap teflon pans); you can unrust it in your garage and even weld it back together if it breaks, which is sick as hell.
I'm with you 100%.
I'll add that I rarely use my cast iron in the kitchen, preferring to use it on camping trips or the grill. Why? The sheer heft of the thing could accidentally cause my glass cooktop some trouble. For those occasions, I reach for my well-seasoned carbon steel pans: much lighter with most of the same non-stick situation as the iron skillet.
I don't know your glass cooktop, but i'd be shocked if the weight of a cast iron was enough to damage it. Does this mean you also wouldn't put a cooking pot full of water on it? Mine had no problem, didn't even get scratched which i was worried it might.
That said i do think cast irons can be too heavy for some people, especially when it's full
Here's the thing: I'm a klutz, and do not always watch my hands (damn ADHD). So this whole thread is semi-rational at best. Still, I'm certain that I'm the guy that would drop it one or more inches onto the cooktop by accident. I honestly don't know how resilient these things are, but I'm not about to find out.
That said, I looked up some numbers for weights and well, it's really not too different from a full pasta pot. I may just have to work up the courage. Thanks.
I've stopped using cast iron after some experimentation. It has some uses, but none of which can't be done equally well in a stainless steel or carbon steel pan.
I find these respond to temperature changes better and so are easier to control. My big iron pan also doesn't heat evenly enough, so extra care is needed to cook things consistently if it spans a wide area of the pan.
I think the best place for iron cookware is for oven pots, not for hobs and frying.
I've only found 1 carbon steel pan i actually like (and I love it) due to the crappy thin flat handles most of them have that hurt to hold. Bit pricy tho:
That is beautiful. I am now in the phase of convincing myself not to buy it even though it's obviously only going to end one way...
The handle is so nice. I didn't know the Deep varient of it existed until after i got mine, and i think i might've liked that better. I got mine on a sale at an in-person cookware store which knocked a good $100 or so off.
They have/had a hammered (flat-bottom) Wok, but the handle was awful and flat, and way too tall above the pan.