[HN Gopher] The Cast Iron Gallery
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The Cast Iron Gallery
Author : EndXA
Score : 15 points
Date : 2024-06-11 10:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (castirongallery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (castirongallery.com)
| sophacles wrote:
| Cast iron cookware is a fun, low-grade/background hobby for me.
| Both using and restoring it. You can often find it affordably at
| garage sales, estate sales, etc - and even if it looks like it's
| in bad shape it often is quite recoverable. The restoration
| process is pretty simple - run it through the homemade
| electrolysis rig for a day or two, test for lead[1], season and
| it's ready to use. Once restored it can be sold or given away -
| and the collectors/aficionados will pay a pretty penny for some
| pieces.
|
| 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.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| On your second note, it's truly wild to have watched the
| (popular) use of cast-iron pans and cookware grow over the
| years thanks to the proliferation of their benefits and the
| early 'niche' character of them online. But it's also hilarious
| to watch the most online thing ever happen with them: people
| nerd out over minutiae and get into pointless optimization
| debates or "best practices" when it's just a big piece of cast
| iron. It's hard to fuck it up. And yet you see people babying
| them like crazy online with hyper elaborate seasoning and
| maintenance routines. 99% of them are overkill, but people are
| inundated with them and come away with a false idea of their
| requirement.
|
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| On the other hand, there is also a lot of poor information in
| very popular blogs telling people to do things like season
| your pan with flaxseed oil (which has a very low smoke
| point). It's hard to sort the good info from the misinfo, so
| I get why people overdo it after being burned.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| In my opinion, after using several different oils (lard,
| crisco, flaxseed) that flaxseed works fine, i've heard it
| might be a little more brittle in the long run, but it
| certainly works. You need to polymerize the oil, my
| understanding is that to do that you need to exceed the
| smoke point of the oil during the seasoning process. I know
| kenji has advised against it but I've got a small little
| pan I use for eggs most mornings that I initially seasoned
| with flaxseed several years ago and it's held up just fine
| and is slick as shit.
|
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| A pan doesn't need to be well-seasoned prior to cooking
| eggs in it. People cook eggs in stainless pans, for
| example. Likely, that flaxseed oil flaked down the drain
| when you washed your pan or onto your eggs the first time
| you cooked with it and you've been able to give your pan
| proper seasoning with the fat you normally cook with over
| the past several years.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| That flaxseed oil certainly did not go 'down the drain',
| I'm not an idiot. This was not my frist seasoned pan and
| it wasn't my last I just decided to try flaxseed oil as I
| had some in the house. Certainly oils and fats from
| subsequent uses help reinforce the initial seasoning.
| However, I challenge you to strip a cast iron pan and try
| to cook eggs in it and tell me how you got them not to
| stick. It may be that I treat my cast iron gently when
| washing that kept this initial season on, 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.
|
| On the beeswax tip, a little searching found me this:
| https://crisbee.org/ which is apparently basically crisco
| mixed with some bees wax.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _However, I challenge you to strip a cast iron pan and
| try to cook eggs in it and tell me how you got them not
| to stick._
|
| 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.
| debacle wrote:
| My wife was anemic (vegetarian) for a long, long time. We use
| close to 100% cast iron these days, and she hasn't had an iron
| issue in 2+ years.
|
| 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.
| Exuma wrote:
| Small plug of company I love (not paid or anything). Field
| skillet is literally the best cast iron I've ever used. Their
| skillet size is truly sublime for breakfast stuff and smash
| burgers
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| They look nice (and it's good to see important design tweaks
| like having a second handle opposite the main one even on
| smaller skillets like the 10in), but they are spendy. I got a
| Finex from their original Kickstarter (I liked the idea of them
| being made here in Portland), but they're also not cheap. My
| instinct is that some quality time sanding the cooking surface
| smooth would produce similar results in a cheaper pan...
| Exuma wrote:
| Hmm i very strongly disagree. It was immediately apparent to
| me even on the first cook how vastly superior the surface was
| to any standard Lodge or whatever. Nothing wrong with Lodge,
| I have those too, but I was very surprised. TBH i wasnt
| really expecting much, my expectations were very low when I
| got it on a whim as I kept hearing people rave about it.
|
| 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
| Exuma wrote:
| I forgot to mention if you get the griddle (Sorry, i kept
| calling it a skillet before, i meant this one:
| https://fieldcompany.com/collections/cast-iron-
| griddles/prod...)
|
| If anyone gets that.... cook some smash burgers in it and
| it gets the best seasoning ive ever seen, very quickly.
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