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As I understand it, most (all?) nonstick coatings on pans are chemicals in this general category - some variant of fluorine compounds that hold together well. The biggest problem particularly with older ones is that they start to get less stable as heat gets higher - like it may if you leave an empty nonstick pan over a burner, where it can give off fumes that are particularly toxic to pet birds.

Avoiding those compounds likely accounts for at least some of the increased trendiness of cast iron in the past decade or two, including the increase in new "artisanal" cast iron makers like Stargazer, Finex, Butter Pat, Smithey, Field Co and probably a few others (for reviews of a bunch of those, check out Kent Rollins on Youtube). There's also quite a bit of information on improving/smoothing less expensive cast iron.

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I looked at some of those brands to see what made them different from Lodge. One had a different handle, while another one had a thicker bottom and thinner sides for better searing, but they're also in the hundreds of dollars. A 12" Lodge skillet is $40, that's at least half the price of the 12" skillets for the other brands. For the price, I don't think that Lodge can be beat.

The primary difference between vintage, “artisanal” and modern cast iron (eg: lodge) is the former is machined and the latter isn’t.

Cast iron, seasoned, is supposed to be slicker than non stick. You should be able to fry an egg in it.

With lodge you have to build up that non stick over the sand casting “bumpies” that are left over from the iron casting process.

They used to machine those out, especially on the cook surface. Until this latest crop of modern cast iron manufacturers, one would typically have to retreat to vintage or perhaps machine your own.

I think most people just look at the sorry state of “lodge” then grab a pfa laden non stick and go home.

+1. I have a lodge cast iron and I prefer a $25 TFal Titanium. Everything sticks to the former, nothing (not even oil!) sticks to the latter. No PFOA in TFal either.

They use reinforced PTFE, versions of which are potentially also toxic, but not banned yet. From Tefal/T-fal's FAQ:

>All non-stick coatings contain PTFE, the abbreviation for polytetrafluorethylene, a plastic polymer. It is a slippery ingredient, made up of molecules of tetra fluoro ethylene that only contain carbon and fluorine.

Tefal/T-fal have been one of the main proponents and suppliers of teflon cookware (hence their name), switching formulas every so often, once the toxicity of the various generations of coating have become an issue.

Everything is "potentially toxic", especially in California. Currently, however, "scientific consensus" suggests PFTE is safe.

I’ll reconsider after a millennium or two of usage.

I got a cheapo Lodge for this reason, but I wonder if the more expensive makes add some postprocessing steps to smooth the casting. I found the rough Lodge finish to be unworkable since food kept sticking, and it was hard to clean. I ended up sanding it down to a glass finish and reseasoning it, and now it works properly.

How do you refinish a lodge skillet? Someone accidentally used the rough side of a sponge on it and there's a shiny metal peeking through now. Also, is it safe to cook with before refinishing with that spot?

I'm a little late to this, but it's called seasoning (or reseasoning) and you can either try to take it down all the way to bare metal or just work on building up additional layers. Plenty of articles available for either, I'm sure I'm leaving things out. Don't get too distracted by fancy processes, remember this is something people have been doing for hundreds of years.

If you want to go bare-metal and have an oven with a self-cleaning cycle, that's probably the simplest way to go - put the cast iron in there open-side down and run that cycle. I'm not sure just how much smoke this will release, but you might not want to do it on a day when you can't open windows. I've also seen notes that this can sometimes cause warping, so buyer beware.

To build up the seasoning, it's basically going to be multiple repetitions of putting on a thin layer of a high-smoke-point food-safe oil, heating and repeating. Darker color generally just indicates more layers.

In some ways it's almost like you're varnishing the cookware with an oil-based varnish, but without some of the other components of varnish. A lot of guides will recommend flaxseed oil for seasoning, it's also known as linseed oil and used to be pretty common in varnishes and wood finishes. For a contrary (and easier and cheaper) view, see https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5owtnm/why_i_dont...

(see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil about oil-based varnishes)

Clean it. Put cooking oil on it. Heat it to 170-180°C (depends on oil type, and I use infrared thermometer to check). Keep it at that temerature for 30min or so. It's non-sticky again. That's what I do with my cast iron pan.

Alternatively you can put it into oven and bake it at that temperature.

Interesting. How much oil should I use for a 9" pan? Looks like 170-180 is below the smoking point of any oils I'd potentially use, but does the actual oil matter? Is vegetable, canola, or peanut totally fine?

Very very little oil (no poodles). I use a paper towel to spread it thin. You can even bake the pan upside down to ensure no poodles can form if you have non-level bottom of the pan. Use some refined oil or lard.

Goal is to keep it below smoking point.

It works to reseason the pan after minor damage (not yet rusted, but lacking non-sticky surface). I use the pan almost every day, so I don't have experience with fixing heavier damage.

If the pan gets sticky to the finger afterwards (it shouldn't if you avoid poodles of oil), don't worry. It will resolve itself after a few cooking cycles.

I think that's the go-to process with any new Lodge product. I did it too with similar results. I hear that Lodge actually gives their pans a rough finish precisely to make it harder to clean - and thus more likely to retain oils used in cooking - for the benefit of normal people who don't know that you need to season cast iron.

How did you sand iron? (sorry if this is a naive question)

Same way you sand anything, as long as the grit is harder than what your sanding it works just fine. Iron is only 4 on the Mohs Scale which is below glass, so many types of sandpaper work fine.

Check assorted youtube videos. Abrasive disks of various sorts are easy to come by, though you're likely going to want a plug-in drill or angle grinder - maybe an 18v 6AH battery would give you the oompf you'd need, but I wouldn't count on it.

The key things I'm going to highly highly highly recommend are a good filter mask, good ventilation (or excellent ventilation and a big shop fan blowing past if you have a beard) and a way to securely hold the piece you're working on. I don't have a link, but I like what one guy put together with a heavy duty board - a hook at one end through a hole, and a hook at the other through a slot that could be adjusted to fit the piece. Don't tighten down hard at all unless you want to risk breaking things, just enough to keep what you're working on from shifting around as you sand.

I tried by hand first, but it was going too slow so I used an angle grinder with a sandpaper wheel.

I’ve been to the Lodge factory in rural South Pittsburg Tennessee and I don’t understand what makes “artisanal” cast iron any different from Lodge. It’s pretty much just a marketing hook to convince hipsters to spend hundreds more. The folks that make Lodge are just as “artisanal” as the fancy-pants brands. Lodge has been doing this for over a hundred years. They were “artisanal” before anyone ever used that work. I agree, Lodge can’t be beat. Their iron isn’t any better or worse than the more expensive brands, they just don’t have some bearded “skillet master” in their marketing department convicting people about how good their products are.

Others have covered this as well, but I believe they're all significantly lighter than the comparable Lodge products, and some of the handles apparently actually work pretty well - although the review I've seen of whichever one has that coil handle wasn't very impressed. I have a couple of Lodges that I use weekly, and neither has a handle that's impressed me.

They're also all machined to a smooth finish after molding, where the Lodges are cleaned, possibly sanded a bit to get rid of any lingering material from the mold, then seasoned. Part of the reasoning I've heard for the rougher finish on Lodge pans is that it makes that initial factory seasoning much easier to get on there. If you look around in the cast iron arena you'll come across a fair amount of information on how to do your own machining at home with drills, abrasive pads, hand sanders, etc.

Beyond that, some of them have different configurations of spouts, secondary handles, etc. - they're all somewhat different.

Also, cast iron is known to cure anemia in women, and it has been tested for thousands of years and is well understood. It is not experimental. Also, really, how hard is it to put some oil in a pan and let that coat the pan before you start cooking? My friends complain that their food burns in an iron pan, which I think is a surprising complaint. The solution to burning has been known for centuries: just put some oil or butter in the pan, and use a reasonable flame.

It's about saving time and work. Cast iron takes a lot of work compared to even plain old stainless steel plans in prep and cleaning. They are very heavy to handle and can't use such foods as tomatoes because they are too acidic.

An informal survey as to why you would use a cast iron is "it make meat taste better" and it "heats more evenly".

I will say, the only work my cast iron requires is cooking a really fatty food in it once a month.... my stainless pans require scouring if I do some searing (even with a good deglaze) which is a huge hassle. My cast iron, I just wipe out lightly and never scrub. I have never noticed adverse effects from this and it's well seasoned.

I do hear the weight complaint - I'm a big guy so it's not too bad but my girlfriend needs two hands.

Same here - I have a bigger stainless steel skillet that always needs steel wool to get some pesky things out of it after any frying, but my cast iron cleans up much easier. Though, I make liberal use of dish soap and the scouring side of my sponge. Never had a problem with seasoning other than roommates messing it up a bit here and there.

I used to believe that cast iron were more work, but I moved house, got a (cheap, $20) cast iron pan - and it's less work. I t sticks less than non-stick pans. Very notable when frying eggs. I hadn't have an egg stick yet, while I had it all the time in the non-stick. Also, you can be rough with metal tools without worrying about damaging the non stick coating. And can overheat without damaging the pan.

It's also easy to clean, if you get over the impulse to use detergent. Just clean it in hot water and then a towel or paper towel. If one uses detergent, it needs to be oil coated and heated again, which is annoying.

I'll never use anything but cast iron again. It is heavy though.

So the whole you can’t use soap on cast iron is incorrect. It used to be, when soap was made wit lye, but normal dish soap is not nerely strong enough to remove the coating on cast iron.

I have 5 cast iron pots and pans and use a little soap on all and have no issues with removing coating.

I feel like you must cook a very narrow range of food and/or have very little space / money for more pans. Cast iron is lovely and versatile (see my sibling post) but there is a tool for every job and cast iron is not always that tool,

I have very little space AND when I moved house I got super annoyed over sooo many annoying trinkets. I don’t want more stuff.

You can certainly use a little dish soap, but not with anything abrasive. I used to use a stiff-bristled brush on mine, but these days I'm actually using a little square of stainless steel chainmail intended for cleaning cast iron. There are no sharp edges to dig into the finish, but it's hard enough and flexible enough to get a good scrub going.

You can cook tomatoes in cast iron. I wouldn't spread tomato paste around the pan and leave it in the sink with water in it for a week, but that's no reason to avoid cooking with tomatoes in cast iron.

It's not because it damages the pan, it's not good for you. A significant amount of iron breaks down from the acid and leaches into your food.

It's not the iron either - it's because if you cook too much with acidic liquids in cast iron you'll get some of the seasoning coming off and it may turn your food blackish and unappealing. If you do a lot of cooking like that or don't have it properly seasoned you'll eventually have problems with going all the way through the seasoning and then you'll get rust.

If you want to use cast iron for soups, stews, braises, chilis, etc. that you're going to be cooking a long time, get an enameled cast iron pan - that'll get you a lot of the heat retention but with a more durable (but not nonstick) finish.

Ditch the Lodge, don't even think about the artisanal cast iron, and go straight for the DeBuyer Mineral B. It's much cheaper than the crap artisanal things, much more options in pan sizes, and finished better.

More generally - if they don't sell it at a restaurant supply store (or a store catering toward the restaurant business), you are going to be overpaying for it. This is true for almost everything you really need in the kitchen.

They're not the same thing. That De Buyer is thin carbon steel, not cast iron. I have one (an identical Paderno actually) and it's by far my favorite pan for crepes, but it sucks for everything else. It's no good for searing because it lacks the necessary heat capacity, and the thin steel causes hot spots even worse than cast iron.

Deeper carbon steel pans are great for stir frying, but I have yet to find another use for very shallow carbon steel skillets.

Note that Lodge makes skillets that it calls "carbon steel" which are actually just especially thin cast iron, and I love these. They are thick enough to perform like cast iron, but much lighter. I have 10 and 12 inch skillets (Lodge model numbers CRS10 and CRS12), and they're my go-to skillets for almost everything: pancakes, omelets and fried eggs, sauteing, and shallow frying. The only thing I don't use cast iron for is scrambled eggs.

EDIT:

Nope, nevermind, I'm wrong. I just checked my pans, and my Lodge thin cast iron skillets are the same thickness as those Mineral B pans -- 2.5mm. My crepe pan is thinner. So you're right, those De Buyer pans probably are excellent replacements for cast iron -- lighter, cheaper, similar performance.

EDIT 2:

Damn you batbomb, now I have to go shopping for pans. Restaurant supply store you say? Maybe ebay?

Not to mention carbon steel is what all restaurants use. Cast iron is too heavy.

Consumer ranges put out 1/3 the BTUs of a typical commercial range. Would that impact the success of carbon steel you think?

The lower power of consumer ranges is mitigated somewhat by heavier steel and iron construction with greater heat capacity. A more powerful restaurant range can keep thin metal pans from cooling too much when food is dumped into them.

This only really matters for searing and shallow frying, where temperatures need to stay high and stable. For lower temperature activities like sauteing, evenness of heat is more important. Delicate things like crepes and egg dishes are sort of special cases, requiring both evenness and a surface that releases the food without sticking.

Yes, and anecdotally I can tell you it's quite possible to kill a bird with non-stick cookware even it's not overheated.

It's important to note that birds can easily be injured or killed by all kinds of cooking smoke and fumes, regardless of origin, and all cooking smoke is known to be carcinogenic. But normal cooking fumes are nowhere near as dangerous as the shit that comes out of overheated PTFE.

I switched to ceramic pans because of these concerns. More sticky than teflon but much better than traditional iron or stell pans.

Ceramic pans unfortunately get sticky with age. My Zwilling J. A. Henckels pans [1] were amazing the first year or so, and then they started to get worse. Now I can no longer cook eggs in them -- complete mess. They're fine for plenty of things, like sauces and vegetables, but not eggs, crêpes, omelets or anything that needs a non-stick surface.

This is unfortunate, because the ceramic process doesn't use PFAs like PFOA, and they don't use PTFEs. Some people claim you can preserve ceramics' non-stickiness by not using oil, but I have my doubts. The short lifespan of ceramics is a pretty common complaint. From what I can tell, there's no way to get the non-stick back -- scrubbing the coating only makes it worse.

[1] https://www.crateandbarrel.com/zwilling-j.a.-henckels-vistac...

Ceramic is actually a marketing gimmick referring not to the material used but rather the process of making it. It is still teflon-coated and just as toxic as "non-stick."

Wish I had a source but I'm on mobile.

No, ceramic sol-gel coatings contain no PTFE. Fluorinated chemicals are not involved in any way. There are many ceramic coatings used in cookware: Greblon CK, made by Weilburger, Thermolon/Zwilling Sol; Fusion, made by Whitford; Ceralon and Xeradur made by ILAG; Duraceram made by GMM. You can see specs for all of these at the manufacturers' websites.

Ceramic is no teflon... I accidentally proved this by leaving an empty ceramic pan on the fire. It took take an amazing high temperature with the aluminium underside discolored a bit but otherwise perfectly fine, still use it today.

Sort of. There's ceramic in the coating, but it's a minor component. More specifically, the coating is referred to as sol-gel ceramic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol%E2%80%93gel_process?wpro...

I think you're confusing ceramic coatings with reinforced PTFE coatings, which may sometimes contain ceramic particles. Actual ceramic coatings for cookware contain no PTFE at all.

For example, premium PTFE coatings such as GMM's Duramax and Whitford's Eclipse are internally reinforced with hard materials of some sort. However these are not marketed as PTFE-free, because obviously they aren't. On the other hand, a ceramic coating that's advertised as PTFE-free, such as Thermolon (which is used in GreenPan) is completely free of fluorinated chemicals.

Could you please give the source when you're not on mobile?

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