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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

I just started cooking in an iron pan, and I love it. It's actually not significantly more difficult to clean once you learn to leave the seasoning on and get over the cultural conditioning of what clean is essentially.

The cooking process it also far better, with the whole pan being uniformly hot and staying that way.

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There are a lot of old misconceptions around about cast iron seasoning. It's a layer of bioplastic formed by the polymerization when heating a thin layer of oil on the pan to high temperature - It's not about leaving your pan dirty or 'flavored'. You can clean it with regular dish soap just fine, that isn't strong enough to take the layer off.

Exactly. Even the Lodge manufacturer, for example, indicates on their website that you can use a small amount of soap.

Yes, correct. I'll add, though, that this takes skill to develop. Even the soap just left on the sponge from washing other utensils is too much. So I'll often just foregoe the soap unless there is an egregious bit of food stuck on it - which is rare as the heat is so well distributed on cast iron that I don't burn food anymore using it.

The fear of using soap was real back 100 years ago when soap contained lye, which would destroy the seasoning on your pan. Today is this no longer true, so clean away!

I suppose that depends on the type of soap. Do you have a source that I could read? Thank you!

soap does lot contain lye anymore. This is where I learned this: https://youtu.be/zGR-pyLHz1s?si=En2OM2GxfNxhfZKY

Thank you

Dish soap is not going to contain lye because it's not made by cooking animal or vegetable fat in lye.

Soap artist and still do that process though. Handmade soap will probably have some sodium hydroxide in it.

(Does anyone use that for dishes?)

>and get over the cultural conditioning of what clean is essentially.

Eww, gross.

This is not necessary, you can (and should) actually clean your cast iron pans. I certainly clean mine.

Clean as in hot water and soap?

Or clean as in industrial degreaser or varnish stripper?

No, it's not gross. It's just not squeaky obsessively free of oil. But it's still clean.

This you?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/taz86n/comment/i04...

No, that's not me. In any case, in our language we don't use the same word for the pan coating that we use for food flavouring. There is no smell on these pans! But yes, if people are treating their cookware as referenced in that page, then I understand why you are appalled.

I mean, when you say "get over the cultural conditioning of what clean is" it makes it sound like you are cooking with dirty pans.

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