Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by daveyjonezz | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

daveyjonezz

Cast iron pans are cheap, will outlive you, and work nearly as well with enough seasoning / butter :)

View on HN

Cast iron pans are such a pain in the ass to maintain and use that I'll rather take the cancer instead.

Cast iron pans are less effort to maintain than nonstick pans and last longer, if you know how to maintain them.

Have you tried maintaining nonstick pans?

I made a comparison between the two, so hopefully you can infer that.

Here, I'll help. Having had both, the cast iron was a massive pain in the ass, and the nonstick pan takes literally no effort to not fuck it up. I don't have a cast iron anymore. I still have nonstick pans.

Yeah - all you need is to accidentally use the wrong side of the scrubber and it's "hello scratch".

Yeah yeah, they'll outlast me yadda yadda yadda.

There's no maintenance to do with nonstick pans. Take off shelf, use, put in dishwasher, put back on shelf, repeat. When all you use are silicone spatulas (because they are frankly the best kind of spatula) then there's also no danger of scratching them.

I do nothing at all for mine. I cook eggs, pancake and sausage in it every morning. After, I run it under some water and scrape it with a spatula, then toss it on the burner for a few seconds to dry.

It's significantly easier than dealing with nonstick, which has to be carefully kept from touching anything metal on the inner surface.

It's easier to flip things like eggs on cast iron because I can use a thin metal spatula instead of a much thicker, nonstick-safe plastic one.

If I manage to get something crusty on it I can use the green scrubber pads or even steel wool, which can't ever be used on nonstick.

If you think cast iron is harder you're really doing it wrong.

> After, I run it under some water and scrape it with a spatula, then toss it on the burner for a few seconds to dry.

I still can't get over how you guys think this is in any way sanitary. Not to mention that if any soap touches it you have to re-do the oil burning thing to remake the nonstick layer thing which isn't exactly practical, not to mention the seasoning thing. They're also rather heavy in comparison, not sure what kind of shape you're in that you manage to flip pancakes in one hah.

It's definitely harder than chucking the thing into the dishwasher for it to be washed with zero effort and maintenance. Scratches are also an impossibility with silicone spatulas.

"I still can't get over how you guys think this is in any way sanitary."

Why would you think it's not sanitary?

"Not to mention that if any soap touches it you have to re-do the oil burning thing to remake the nonstick layer thing"

No you don't. This simply isn't true. I use soap from time to time. It's fine.

"not sure what kind of shape you're in that you manage to flip pancakes in one hah."

I'm in pretty great shape, but I use a spatula to flip my pancakes.

I do toss my carbon steel pans. They're quite light.

"It's definitely harder than chucking the thing into the dishwasher for it to be washed with zero effort"

It's not, but you should know that dishwashers break down the teflon bonds and will degrade your nonstick pans. Nonstick isn't dishwasher safe either.

I’m curious, what’s so hard about it? I find they’re much easier because you never have to worry about using stronger tools - soap & a Brillo pad will take care of almost anything in seconds and you can use a metal scraper for the worst whereas I had to throw out our last “non-stick” pot because some fruit adhered hard enough to take the coating off. The main thing I keep in mind is that Teflon is only really better for maybe the first year - it’s so fragile that you’ll spend most of your time with inferior results and bonus health worries.

There is a cult around seasoning cast iron but those people are lunatics. It’s like adding an audiophile for buying advice and then saying a home setup isn’t a good idea because the moonrock needle costs too much. Clean it, cook a pound of bacon every few months, that’s it.

Cast iron is also very heavy, and hard to clean if you get anything stuck to it. You can’t really soak or wash it with soap/water without re-seasoning it or it’ll rust.

It has its upsides if you put in the work. I’ve given up and opted for mid-range non-stick (coated steel and/or copper, not anodized aluminum) or high end stainless.

Carbon steel builds the same coating but isn’t all that heavy.

> hard to clean if you get anything stuck to it

Easy fix, just don’t get anything stuck to it. If you learn how to use these correctly, this becomes essentially a non issue.

I frequently soak and wash my cast iron. It retains seasoning and won’t rust so long as I dry it after. I also will typically coat them with a very thin layer of oil, but haven’t found it to be strictly necessary.

That said, I have mostly transitioned to stainless.

I barely have to clean mine anymore. When something does get a bit stuck, I just boil a bit of water in it and it comes right out with a light swipe of some chainmail.

> if you get anything stuck to it

We bought these Lodge scrappers and they remove anything stuck to it.

https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/pan-scrapers?sku=SCRAP...

Hot water and this kind of brush is all you need to clean cast iron:

https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/scrub-brush?sku=SCRBRS...

Those scrapers are made of plastic. I wonder if that has some forever chemicals. lol

I bought one of these a decade ago - the price has since gone up to $4:

https://www.restaurantsupply.com/tablecraft-254-stainless-st...

It’ll likely outlive me.

I've seen those used at hibachi and waffle House which probably see a lot more traffic than our homes. Probably a great choice

Yeap, simple mature technology can be refreshing to use.

I use water and soap every day cleaning mine. If you get something really stuck you can heat the pan up, then add hot water to it. It basically boils the stuck stuff off. You just need to be careful not to crack the pan.

Not being able to use soap is a myth, and re-seasoning a pan hardly ever needs to be done unless you're seeing bare metal.

After a hard scrubbing, put it on the stovetop, drizzle a small amount of oil in there, and high heat for a minute. Push the oil around with a paper towel. Your pan won't rust.

Use a metal scrubber and you probably don't need to use soap in the first place.

The idea of maintaining a seasoning on cast iron frying pans is too much of a pain in the ass. I wash it with soap and water and use olive oil or butter whenever I need to. The cognitive load is minimal and I don't have any usability issues.

The burnt oil coating of a seasoned pan is also cancerous. Is it more or less cancerous than PFAS? We'll probably know in 20 years.

Yup. Chefs rarely use nonstick cookware outside of baking or specifically making omelettes. For the majority of their uses, it's either stainless, cast iron, or enameled cast iron.

Non-stick got its foothold when the feds went on their "fat is bad for you" kick. They took all the fat out and added sugar to products to fix the texture.

Proteins stick to steel when the steel isn't sufficiently hot before food is placed on it. If you toss a bead of water into a pan and it doesn't dance along the surface in the Leidenfrost effect, your pan isn't hot enough.

> Chefs rarely use nonstick cookware outside of baking or specifically making omelette.

Citation needed? It sounds implausible to me that a majority of professional cooks seek to make their own job harder when they've got seven other dishes to make by tending a nonnonstick pan.

These pans are only not nonstick if used incorrectly. Carbon steel is often used in professional kitchens which develops a nonstick coating called “seasoning”. And if stainless is hot enough, it’s also not very prone to sticking.

The main reason I know of is that a nonstick coated pan will not survive long with the bulk way they wash their dishes. You'd also have to keep a separate set of non-metal spatulas and such.

As a college student with no idea what I was doing, I tried to stir-fry everything at maximum heat and would quickly burn food to a regular pan.

After I learned to be a halfway competent cook, I discovered most cooking methods don't stick at all! Caramelizing, braising, roux, simmering, on and on- mankind learned to cook with ordinary cookware, and all the classic recipes and techniques reflect it.

It's not a matter of being a great cook - you simply don't need nonstick to braise or simmer, for example. So I'd phrase the exercise of learning to cook with steel pans as simply "learning to cook".

I love cast iron for certain things but keep in mind you can’t cook acidic foods in them. They also don’t allow for much finesse.

Have you checked the your cast iron pan's seasoning for potential carcinogenic chemicals?

Organic chemicals when exposed to heat can turn into bad things (see nitrates, acrylamide).

The issue is that I want to cook with far less fats, not enough for cast iron to be viable. On top of that, it's easy to get cast iron to leach with acids and in some cases the seasoning can also be toxic.

If you spend the time sanding them down to glass-smoothness before seasoning them, you won't need that much fat -- although fat is tasty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com