![Husband Killed In Cleaning Dispute [540x760 - 37KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/Sd7qdk.jpg){kind=link}
So..... I've been reading about cast iron and your paint metaphor resonates. It sounds like you are saying it builds a non stick layer of many many many thin coats of grease, which essentially burn to the pan to create an ultra smooth surface?
Is there a good online resource like "the science of cast iron for dummies"?
I only ever hear "cast iron good" and "season it"
And without context I'm hearing that a bunch of olive oil and hundreds of uses will eventually allow me to cook fried eggs and pour them outta the pan, like my Teflon does.
I stopped washing my cast iron, I just wipe it out with a paper towel and some olive oil or bacon grease. If stuff gets stuck to the bottom it gets scraped out with a metal spatula and some more oil/grease…
This is more or less it. You can season by rubbing a thin layer of oil on it, turning it upside down in the oven and baking it in (keep foil on the rack below to catch drips), but this just gives you a base.
It's nice because it's natural fats and oils that season it instead of chemicals. Plus it can be built up and replenished vs teflon that eventually breaks down from scratches and use, becoming useless.
Teflon is also unhealthy when you get it stuck in your food you're eating. It should never have been allowed. Iron at least adds minimal iron to your food that is not poisonous in those amounts. Hell aluminum is linked to Alzheimer's disease.
You've got it pretty well. Plastic is polymerized petroleum, right? When you burn the oil to the pan, you are creating polymers. (It's not plastic because plastic means malleable. Seasoning is actually pretty brittle.) They are a bunch of polymerized fatty acids tangled together, like strings in a wad. (If they were like woven strings, it would be crystalline.) A thin layer of tangled strings is smooth. A big pile of tangled strings is not.
The other wrinkle is cast iron vs carbon steel. Both need to be seasoned. Cast iron is porous. The second function of seasoning is to fill in those pores. Those pores expand when the pan is hot and contract when the pan cools. That is why cast iron needs to be hot to clean it properly. After it cools, those pores close up around the ook left on the pan. Being well seasoned means that those pores are full of polymers rather than ook, so it is easier to clean.
The other side is carbon steel. Those are the thin black pans you see all over the place in restaurants. They need to be seasoned as well, but entirely for non-stick and rust reasons. They don't have the same pores. They can get as slick or slicker than cast iron. (I do most of my cooking in carbon steel.) The season on a carbon steel pan is relatively thin (no pores to grab into) and much easier to damage. The other side is, it's much easier to replace, because it's thin. If I cook eggs, I cook them in a carbon steel skillet. The pan temp is easier to control (less inertia), the surface is slicker, and the pan is light enough to flip the eggs without a spatula (which breaks more eggs for me than flipping.) Carbon steel is really your teflon equivalent. Also, if it gets too hot it doesn't give off poison gas like teflon. (Also most authentic-ish to authentic woks are carbon steel. Treat them the same way.)
This is a decent write up:
https://devilsfoodkitchen.com/2018/04/14/the-science-of-cast-iron/
I use cast iron all the time, primarily for meat and braises. When you want a rocket hot pan to properly brown meat, one that you can then park in the oven to finish cooking your chop, cast iron all the way. Ditto for long simmering meat sauces (one I also tend to do in the oven to not have to constantly check the burner.) If it's something acidic like tomatoes, I use stainless steel or enameled cast iron. Everything else I tend to use carbon steel (including eggs and almost all vegetables.)
Great reply with the science I was looking for. Thank you
Also, carbon steel pans are safe in the oven (as long as they have oven safe handles.) NEVER put teflon in the oven. It literally might kill you. I have a teflon pan that I use for scrambled eggs and the occasionally really sticky protein. I use it very sparingly because of the poison potential.
My only addition to the video is that you can skip the two part drying, and just wipe the damp pan with oil. It will set the oil while driving off the moisture at the same time. If you have an electric stove, if you clean it as soon as you are done with it, the eye is probably still hot enough to do this while it's off.
(post is archived)