I was (and to a degree still am) a big cast iron guy, but I find that these days I use my carbon steel pans much, much more frequently. They share many of the benefits of cast iron in terms of durability, oven safety, high temp cooking, natural non-stick, etc. However they can be much, much lighter and their heating properties make them superior for many, and I would argue most (but not all!), applications.
These days if someone said they needed 1 quiver killer pan, I would unquestionably recommend a carbon steel skillet over a cast iron one.
If you're someone who likes using cast iron, I think you are doing yourself a major disservice by not trying carbon steel.
Especially carbon steel crepes pans (https://www.debuyer.com/en/poele-a-crepes-mineral-b-1472.htm...) are completely unbeatable. I have two of them and I can feed a small crowd of family and friends faster than they can eat. Nothing sticks if you take proper care.
The best thing, they are dirt cheap.
We do, however, still use our cast iron griddle for making bacon in the oven. Comes out perfect every time.
For anyone reading who is new to carbon steel, the trick to non-stick cooking is making sure the pan gets hot. And if something does stick? It pretty much wipes right off while the pan is still hot.
By complete accident my spatula is also from DeBuyer (https://www.debuyer.com/en/flexible-turner-slotted-fkofficiu...). It is very sharp and it easily scrapes anything that dares to stick (due to my mistake of not getting it hot enough), without smearing it.
Pros are they can take very high temperatures, you can be rough with them, are non-stick when seasoned and at a proper temperature (like cast iron), and much lighter than cast iron.
Cons are you don't want to cook liquidy acidic foods in them that often (removes the seasoning off the pan), they can rust easily if not seasoned, and require slightly more maintenance then stainless steel or Teflon pans. Basically you're not washing these with dish soap. Just a rinse, maybe some scrubbing with kosher salt, and heating it on the stove to dry and sterilize it.
Keeping it lightly oiled when cooking or storing it helps too. They're a great work-horse pans. We got ours after having to throw out our last scratched Teflon pans. Making scrambled eggs in carbon steel was hard at first, but over time as a better seasoning developed and figuring out the right temperatures to use, I now get the same results as I use to in Teflon.
In my experience the searing/frying performance of carbon steel is not an issue for the overwhelming majority of things I cook, ergo I don't really care that cast iron has a higher capacity. The tighter temperature control, on the other hand, is always nice.
I still use my cast irons sometimes for things where that heat capacity is really nice (searing a huge steak or something like that), but I use carbon steel much more frequently.
It's now like 7 years later and my skillet shows no signs of giving up, and I don't think buying yet another kitchen device would make my wife happy. Should have gone with a bigger skillet to begin with.
Also, induction cooktops are amazing.
Lodge casts their pans without surfacing, so you have a porous surface. I have a lodge and it's okay, but I prefer my antique Wagner when I can. It sticks less and it also has been in my family a really long time.
Just wait until your kids get their hands on it. Mine is literally inherited from somebody's grandmother and it's awesome. Though sadly, its sibling died doing what it loved -- making bacon.
One drawback is they are often bundled with ridiculous touch-controls rather than knobs, even though that shouldn't need to be the case. You can find those without.
Anytime you are cooking something acidic, tomatoes, vinegar, wine. I try not to deglaze meat brownings into sauce in cast iron.
A stainless steel dutch oven is a great universal pan as well. For a "first pan" I'd probably suggest tri ply stainless over cast iron. The main thing I like about cast iron more is the pan temperature not dropping when I put something on it, so its great for reverse searing baked steaks inside the house. Most other things I find functionally equivalent in stainless and cast iron, including browning meat before I cube it or break it apart. (brown cuts of meat and ground meat whole!)
And iron leached into whatever your eating. I know thats considered in the myth category, but I have at least one dish Ive prepared that ended up tasting pretty metallicy. Could be expectations manifesting reality.
I think people get turned off to steel when they put a new pan on the stove, dont let it heat up, bake something to it, and its an arm and a leg to clean the first time. Unlike nonstick, it has a bit of a learning curve. Cast iron doesnt show stains the same way, and you can use a chain mail scrubber. Scratching steel does slightly change its nonstick properties, so dont use steel wool.
When I'm searing something, I even prefer that it sticks slightly more to the stainless as it typically releases when it's done anyways -- and my anecdotal experience is that I get a better sear from the surface of the meat sticking to the skillet more firmly.
Cast iron gives additional radiant heat because it's black, so if I am cooking steak in the oven I pretend like it gives me more uniform temperature increase than depending on conductive and convective heat. If I am browning meat and not baking it after, Ill use steel.
I like cast iron for potatoes too. Hashes. Not sure why. Holds temp better?
I wouldn't simmer an acidic sauce in cast iron for hours, but this is poor advice. Deglazing will not damage the seasoning on cast iron pan once it is properly seasoned (and maintaining that is easy, contrary to lots of what you hear).
Unlike to your experience, I don't find them functionally equivalent for a number of things, which is why I have both (and enamel cast, much better than almost all clad steel dutch ovens that aren't really expensive, as most of them don't clad far up the sides)
I have both, and I use 5-ply fully clad more than I use cast iron. My 9 qt is bottom clad only, but the lack of clad up the sides hasnt been an issue. The bottom surface is hot which is what needs to be hot on the stove. The sides arent getting hot spots in the oven, during brazing and stews.
https://www.calphalon.com/cookware/cookware-by-product-type/...
I did once ruin a seasoning making a tomato sauce, which was a way to learn about acidic interactions - but that was over hours.
FWIW I had a 5 qt like that calphon but found I was always using my enamel cast one instead, so gave it away.
One thing I really like about the cast iron skillit is you can treat it roughly and use it anywhere. Mines been in fire pits, on bbq, stovetop, oven, even a bread oven. Handles temperature changes without issues (unlike enamel and some clad) is unbeatable to sear things. Doesn't care what tools you use in it. Nonstick property is pretty good (better than steel pan, worse than teflon) and will still be pretty good in 20 years.
Deglazing itself is a very fast process, usually seconds. If you are doing something over an hour, it's likely simmering. If you did that in a sauce that was still acidic (rather than had some acid thrown in to deglaze or whatever) then I could see that being a problem.
I'm not super careful about not using acidic things in cast iron, and I do deglaze in it on occasion, it's just a little harder imho. I can see how my original comment reads.
Metallic taste/smell in beer is a pretty significant fault traced to untreated wwater, old equipment, or lipids in the malt.
There’s lots of stuff in Hoegaarden (and witbiers in general) that can be unexpected or off balance (e.g. coriander, lactic acid, orange zest).
Metallic, at Hoegaardens scale, would be quite unexpected
Carbon steel is great, requires a little upkeep, but part of what makes it great is how it works with a really high heat source; the stoves in a restaurant behave very differently than your home one.
An extreme case of this is woks. There is very little you can do at home to reproduce the effect of an 80k BTU burner and a carbon steel wok.
Oh, and if a tomato or anything else somewhat-acidic touches it then the entire dish will taste like blood. So that's fun.
It's alright for cooking steak (preheating for a few minutes on high is a must, though, it's gotta be terrifyingly hot or everything will stick, including steak), and if I drown things in scorching-hot oil or fat (say, from bacon) they they don't stick much, but that sure isn't healthy. The pan has zero inherent non-stickness, only what it acquires from whatever lake of oil I put in it.
Screw babying it. Get a chain mail cleaner for it (and you definitely can use soap), use the pan often and especially when you’re doing something oily, and soon enough you’ll use it a lot.
Food stuck to the (Lodge) pan no end as well, even when I spent money on all the seasoning oils and seasoned it.
I'd rather just buy a new cheap modern pan every year. Chuck them in the dishwasher, job done.
But handling them now is just part of the ritual.
The biggest change I’ve had since starting using them a couple years ago is moving from the ball scrubby disposable two a Chainmaile ringlet style scrubby.
Using the chain mail has a different feel it slides easier and it washes clean much easier.
I recommend checking out the chain mail style scrubbers for cast-iron.
You can mostly do the same soap and water scrub as everything else. Assuming you use a reasonably modern dish soap an not something harsh, if you don't leave it soaking in the soapy water it will be fine.
If your seasoning is perfect (it isn’t) you could in theory leave it to soak too since it would be completely encased in the polymerized fat.
Contrast with fraying teflon (which you should immediately discard, of course) that we ought not ingest.