The Cast Iron Gallery
castirongallery.com
castirongallery.com
And as another commenter said, it lasts forever. My favorite pan has been in my family so long (at least 5 generations) that no one really knows who owned it first.
Most people I know who have had issues with cast iron either buy bad cast iron, or don't know how to season a new pan - an old pan can be re-seasoned in about 30 minutes, but a new pan will take several days, and possibly some sandpaper, to get its first good seasoning.
One of the exceptions is using steel cookware: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_iron_overload
Iron absorption is tightly regulated, but can't be totally stopped, and the body has no way to excrete excess iron outside of the rather slow cycle of blood formation and destruction
It stops when ferroportin uptake of iron is saturated
On the cooking side, well seasoned cast iron is nice for a lot of situations, and the maintenance and care is a breeze.[2].
The part I like the most is that it lasts forever. Every day i use cookware that my great-grandparents bought and used when raising my grandmother, and after they passed, my grandmother used them cooking for the family, and now I use them. There's some other family heirlooms, but the cast iron is my favorite because there's that practical daily connection to my roots - and I don't have to be particularly careful or reverent with it. Somehow that makes it feel more real.
[1] This is really important, particularly with old cast iron. People used to be far less cautious about lead, and used it in a lot of settings. A cast iron pan is a pretty good vessel for melting it down. The tests are readily available and you can know for sure if you'll be poisoning yourself or others.
[2] You'll find a lot of nonsense about cast iron. A lot of it is accumulated wisdom that no longer applies, and a lot of it is myth. For example: soap used to be bad for cast iron because it had lye - a caustic agent like that can eat into the seasoning and cause problems (modern dish-soap isn't like that). Generally I find cleaning and maintenance to be equal to or less effort than any other pan, just different - I'm happy to trade an extra 30s of cleaning time over a non-stick pan so that I can use a good metal spatula or tongs instead of some flimsy plastic crap.
All you need to know for long term maintenance is don't let the pan rust. Cooking in the pan will season the pan. (People will act like that's impossible without ultra-refined avocado oil or meticulous reseasoning protocols - they're wrong.) If you wash the pan, dry it on the stovetop; running a little water over the pan won't "ruin" the seasoning. That's it. Otherwise you can beat the ever living shit out of the pan and it will still be perfectly fine.
I've seen some methods that use beeswax as well, both alone and in combination with an oil.
All this to say it's not 'poor information', it might not be the absolute best oil to use, but it does certainly work. If for some reason the only oil you have in the house is flaxseed, it will season your pan.
On the beeswax tip, a little searching found me this: https://crisbee.org/ which is apparently basically crisco mixed with some bees wax.
The same way you cook on stainless. If you heat the pan and oil properly, you can let the Leidenfrost effect take it from there.
I'm not sure, but if you are scrubbing your cast iron with large amount or strong soaps it's going to have a bad effect on ANY seasoning.
No. If it flakes off, it is not seasoning. At that point, it is just burnt oil. But that's OK, because you can build up seasoning the next time you cook.
Crisco alone is a lot cheaper than some highly marketed brand of crisco + beeswax and will do just as good a job at seasoning your pan. Plus, you'll have crisco left over for other stuff. There's no need to buy these "boutique" products just for your pan.
> You'll find a lot of nonsense about cast iron.
Isn't that the truth! The best advice I got from an old hand at the care and feeding of cast iron was very simple:
1) Use it. The more you use it, the better it gets.
2) Don't be afraid of hurting it. Don't be afraid to experiment with various cleaning methods and see what works for you. The worst you can do is mess up the seasoning, and that's easy to fix so the stakes are low.
The seasoning over time is also vastly superior because of these tiny grooves. I buy the skillet one as a gift for people and its pretty much unanimous that it's their favorite.
Not trying to hype, its just legitimately one of my favorite pans
If anyone gets that.... cook some smash burgers in it and it gets the best seasoning ive ever seen, very quickly.
Can you expand on this? What was different on the first use that made its superiority so obvious so quickly? I have only a rudimentary understanding of cookware, so the difference between a $10 cast iron pan and a $200 cast iron pan isn't immediately apparent.
Your instinct is a good one - I tried this with a 12" Lodge skillet, working my way up to 220 grit with an orbital sander, and it instantly became my favorite pan.