Cast iron is a pain to clean if you burn food and the burnt pieces stick, but the investment into learning how to cook with it is worth the reward imo.
You "season" from time to time (oil high heat) but we haven't in at least 6 months and use that thing at least 6 times a week. Easy to clean too.
This article kinda give the details. (you have to dodge a modal and click "read more"...sorry)
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/1623-12-i...
I probably don't do anything at all 29 out of 30 uses or more. The other 1 gets a thin swipe of oil while drying under heat and that's it.
My understanding is that you want to buy cold expressed oils to avoid these nasties.
It's one of my fav kitchen purchases. The only annoyance was getting the beeswax off the pans on the first day.
So, use two pans, one foot the fillings and a fresh one for the eggs, adding the fillings once the eggs hit the oiled pan. Afterwards, neither needs more than a rinse out.
There's some concern that because cast-iron pans can sustain high heat, they may produce chemicals known as heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are linked to an increased risk of cancer. These chemicals form when meat, including beef, pork, fish and chicken, are cooked using high-temperature cooking techniques, like pan-frying and grilling over an open flame, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Not sure how much the increased risk is but just something to consider.
The dose makes the poison.
This in no way damages your seasoning.
I was taught by a Chinese room-mate at college who showed me how to prepare a wok.
- 1. Heat the thing up as HIGH as it will go, till parts of the base glow red if you can. Gas is better than electric heat.
- 2. splash a little vegetable oil in and swill it around to cover all the surface. It may ignite, ignore the short lived flames, but brush it around with a paper towel so that the carbonised film covers the surface with a black layer.
- 3. Add some fine salt. Use the paper towel to rub it around until a shiny and slightly bluish and rainbow colour carbon later coats the surface.
This will be as good as any teflon for a few cookings.
EDIT: For example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4029104/
If not, are there good electric stoves that work with hard cast iron pans?
I have seen the mess heavy cookware creates on those glass top cooktops - old style coils seems to be best for those.
What the poster may mean is that a carbon steel pan must be heated slowly (i.e. on half power) until it is all the way hot. Then you can use a higher power setting if you want. If you don't do it this way supposedly the pan warps, but I haven't been brave enough to test whether or not that's really true.
That said, heating on medium until it's hot takes a few minutes at worst. I don't really see what the big deal is.
I just love cooking everything with it, including eggs.
I don't move the cast iron pan around a lot when I cook, but they're too heavy to do that anyway really, and unlike some thin stainless pans they don't warp so won't "walk" around the surface.
I have successfully removed the cast-iron crud from a glass-ceramic cooktop using a paste of 91% rubbing alcohol and baking soda. You can speed up the process by scraping with the back of a knife a few times first. Overall, it's not slower than cleaning the grease traps on a coil stove.
Induction works great. You onnly need gas for wok. It also doesn't become dirty like a resistive stove but you do have to be careful not to drop the skillet onto the glass.
Different oils have different smoke points, and heating an oil beyond that smoke point can polymerize the oil and produce free radicals.
Charring foods can create heterocyclic amines, which are associated with cancers.
You should avoid putting some cookwear directly into cool water though - the temperature shock can cause cracking and other damage if it's coated. I don't have a great rule of thumb for this, you should just double check any advice you can find specific to your cookwear.
If I need to fry some fish or steak, I use my cast iron frying pan.