This guy is misinformed.
That’s his ex-wife.
I also choose this guy’s ex-wife
ew a reddit meme 🤢
“the food was always sliding around the pan! Now it stays right where you put it!” Lol
“I now know what rust tastes like”
The cast iron subreddit drama is one of the few things I miss from reddit. Even got me to buy a few more and cook more often with them!
I was super precious about all my cast iron for a long time. Then I had a thought watching this “cowboy” YouTuber wash his cast iron with some specialty thing.
“This fucking guy is like pretending to be out on the pasture or whatever. In the actual 1800s, this shit was probably just wiped out, or they used lye soap or something ridiculous! Why the fuck am I being so fucking careful?!?”
Now I do not care, like I’ve had my shit get rusty, crusty, “overheated”, the reality is that it’s a big ass chunk of metal! Short of deformation or intentional or extreme neglect (leaving it in the rain uncovered for 40 years) you will not destroy it.
If it gets too “sticky”, you oil it up and heat it, and bingo, it’s fine again.
Ok. But should you never put citrus in your garbage disposal because it summons the pipe demon, or are you supposed to put citrus in your garbage disposal because it repels the pipe demon?
You guys need to lay off the pipe demon. He’s just doing his job like the rest of us.
But he does prefer oranges over lemons.
You should rip your garbage disposal out and replace it with a normal drain, then put your food waste in the compost or trash instead.
Yea and carry all of your laundry to the river and beat it against a rock!
Oooh, there is this great startup that sells a smart stream and rock for cleaning your clothing. The monthly subscription is very reasonable for the experience.
Yes, because scraping your plate off into a trash can is so much less civilized than scraping it off into a sink. 🙄
(we. thought. you. was. a. toad.)
The neighborhood gang of masked bandits prevents me from doing this. They like to pillage the trash cans and leave the evidence all over the driveway.
Yeah, food scraps belong in a landfill, where they can be sealed over and fester for years, perhaps preserved for future archeologists to study. Disposals just add your food waste where it can decompose and rejoin the cycle of life. We don’t need that
What part of
then put your food waste in the compost
did you not understand?
This part
or trash
Yes, disposal can take care of the same subset of foods as composting and in pretty much the same way.
- composting is a better choice if you garden but otherwise is extra steps
- disposal is much more convenient, but if you don’t know what’s appropriate you may clog your plumbing. Or if you have a septic system, it probably wasn’t designed for that and will clog.
I rest easy knowing the food I put in the disposal is ground up and mixed with biological waste so is quickly digested on the way to the sewage treatment plant. I further know we have advanced treatment such that any remaining food sits in a digester for 30 days before being filtered and the remaining indigestible fraction sent to a landfill. I also have a reasonable handle on what to use it for, so have never had a plumbing issue.
Coffee is the only problem area. The grounds would be good to compost but bad to put in the disposal
I have a compost but the disposal is a fantastic addition to my life. Some rice in the sink? No problem. Broth, compost, disposal. Sometimes trash. Obviously divert as much as you can, but the garbage disposal in the sink is wonderful.
I used to hike to a mountain lake in New Hampshire for trout fishing. On the wall of the Adirondack shelter next to the lake was a large cast iron skillet. Random people used it for decades to cook fish over a wood campfire. The only cleaning it got was being scraped with a flat rock, rinsed in the lake, and picked at by woodland critters. It always worked just fine, and the fish tasted great.
and the fish tasted great.
It’s them critters, I’m telling you!
You just can’t get a good woodland-critter-saliva sauce in the big city.
scribbles furiously get woodland critters for cleaning…
Got it!
Isn’t that the whole point of cast iron pans?
they can be treated like shit and still work?
They also hold more heat so they can get hotter which is great for searing steaks.
I don’t understand how people use them to cook eggs. Every time I try they stick. I gave up.
Sorry if you’ve heard this before, but getting the pan hot is important. If the egg is cooked before it gets into the texture, it won’t stick at all. It’s tempting to add the eggs early because cast iron takes so long to heat up, but a cool pan will stick a lot more. I usually let the butter brown heavily before I crack the eggs. If you think that leaves the top undercooked, add a spoon of water and cover the pan to steam the egg tops.
The other guy is right about letting the pan get hot first, but also remember that “hot” doesn’t mean on high, eggs like to be cooked low and slow. Just make sure that it’s actually up to that temp before you crack them in. Flick some water into the pan, if it sizzles for a second or two than that’s good enough for eggs imo (some will recommend waiting until the water drops hover, I feel like that’s too hot for eggs, but you know try both see what you like). I personally try to crack the eggs into the pan before the butter browns, but that’s just me. Another thing to be aware of that’s been mentioned in other threads under this post is that cast iron with a course surface can make things harder, so consider getting a smoother one or sanding yours down. Finally, for your best chance of getting under the egg cleanly, I recommend a thin metal spatula with some flex, like a fish spatula. In my experience plastic spatulas are culinary bulldozers. Be patient, if you think it’s close to done use the spatula to peak under the edge for a bit of a crust to separate from the pan, and if it’s ready, work around the edges to get it loose before you try to move or flip it.
Mine has the opposite problem. Eggs slide around, no stick. However when I crack them on, they spread like water. I recently used Teflon for the first time in years, and the eggs pooled up at a perfect size and shape for a sandwich. I’m jealous. It’s probably a heat thing but the eggs already brown a lot so I didn’t want to make the cast iron hotter
To paraphrase NetShaq, some people like to take something known for being bullet proof and then treat babying it like it’s their entire personality
Rust you can grind off, but if it was used to melt lead down, that will kill one of these cast iron pans.
I like to think of it as “a little extra sweetness”
The sentiment is good, but you can easily avoid the rust and stickiness by using enough oil while cooking and if the surface is damaged wash it with soap and then if there is any bare metal heat it with a tiny amount of oil to remove the moisture and wipe out excess before putting it away. If no metal is showing and water is beading up, just dry with a towel!
All the fancy shit is just too save from having to season it again, and seasoning is a bit of a pita. Getting the whole pan kinda hot, adding a bit of a short chain oil, baking it at like 450 for a couple hours, and letting it cool back off.
I’ll just be kinda careful with mine and avoid having to do all that.
Doesn’t make a very good anvil. Breaks too easily.
I’ve graduated from cast iron to ceramic coated cast iron.
All of the benefits of cast iron with the added appeal of never having to reseason it.
I have a LeCruset enameled cast iron pan and love it. So easy to clean, doesn’t need seasoning.
Funny enough, I made the opposite journey. Bought a LeCreuset a while back and had to toss it after 1.5 years, because the enamel started to flake off, despite great care handling/cleaning it. Replaced it with a cast iron skillet and am thoroughly enjoying its simplicity.
There’s a huge difference between the low end LeCreuset and the high end ones.
I don’t even understand why they make the cheap stuff, the ceramic just flakes off and it’s garbage. The high end $$$$$ stuff lasts forever tho.
Oh this was a high-end model (medium-sized pan, wooden handle, cost about 200€). This is why I was so disappointed that it didn’t last very long.
I’ve always wondered if that is taking the durability advantage of cast iron and coating it with enamel that can chip or scratch. Taking the nice non-stick surface of perfectly season cast iron and covering it with something that will never be as slick
Looks might impressive though
Sometimes the simplest of things appear as the scariest.
At least, the pan as such is not ruined. You’ll just have to season it back into the proper condition.
And this is how I discovered pan seasoning.
Given the recent horrible things about non-stick pans, I wonder if I should just buy seasoned cast iron pans.
I don’t think I’d trust a pan that says it’s “pre-seasoned.” Get a cast iron pan and learn how to season it yourself. It’s kind of an ongoing process anyway; every time you fry something in it with butter or oil you’re maintaining the coating.
Meh, one of my pots came pre-seasoned and I just started using it as if I’d seasoned it myself, after the first couple of weeks of simply using it, it now has the exact same surface as everything I seasoned myself, because every time you fry something in it, it just improves the seasoning.
shrug
I mean I’m happy I know how to season my stuff, but if it lowers the entry-barrier to cast iron I think it’s worth it.
And see I’m getting to an age where I’m not convinced there’s a procedure for anything. Get eight people together, ask them how they season their cookware, you’ll get nine different answers and none of them work for you. Half of what that guy said, some of what this guys says but I’ll use this detail from the third guy, that works well enough for me and my life improves drastically the instant I stop giving a shit.
Following the full recommendations on every piece of equipment you buy would result in every waking hour of your day being filled with maintenance and busywork.
If the pan works for you, who gives a rat’s ass?
There is but most people prefer to pretend they understand rather than seek a scientific understanding.
I have a fair amount of cast iron and the pre-seasoned ones aren’t the best. I’ve always ended up seasoning it further or stripping it down and doing it again from scratch.
I should really switch to cast iron as frying is like the only thing I do lol
I can only tell you about my experience, I’ve made the switch half a year ago.
Cast iron is heavy, REALLY HEAVY and comparably more expensive than cheap non-stick pans. It’s a hassle to work with because it’s so heavy, no easy flipping stuff by throwing the pan around (inertia is a bitch), you shouldn’t clean it with soap, just hot water and some elbow-grease and you should always keep is slightly oiled. Oh and there is no “the handle doesn’t get hot”, it always does and you should wrap a cloth around it.
But Oh My Goodness!
I’ve needed some tries to get the seasoning right, needed some time to adjust my cooking as to not leave acidic food in the pan or pot over night, but now that my pan and pot are very well seasoned and I know how to handle them… nothing sticks, at least not for long. I can make a fried egg or some bacon and after sticking for the first few seconds it just… lift’s off the surface and moves freely in the pan. No non-stick pan has ever given me a non-stick experience like this and making steak has become one of my most fun experiences, because the pan keeps its heat when I throw the cold slap of meat into it and evenly browns the beef without any sticking.
Absolute game changer. just don’t heat an empty pan too much, because you can burn the seasoning off again.
Soap is ok for washing (as long as it doesn’t contain lye).
And carbon steel pans are a lighter alternative.
I have a carbon steel wok and I absolutely love it. I have a couple cast iron pans but I haven’t used them in a while because of it.
I’ll look into carbon steel if I ever need a new one, thanks. But honestly, cast iron is just build to last.
And I don’t trust the soap around here, my first seasoning-tries went horribly flakey after I used soap on them. I’d rather just hot water and scrub, stuff usually just wipes off.
The weight, and Alton Brown, are why I started getting carbon steel pans. All the benefits, still the seasoning, a fraction the weight.
Stainless Steel also is great. We have one and not to much really sticks and you can clean it very easily.
Yeah it’s basically all the same stuff. A steel (iron) pan without a coating of Teflon that you can throw around anywhere are all great.
Heck even some of the IKEA pans are great if you just get the flat stainless steel. Basically any in that vain will be good enough for most people.
But aluminum for baking.
You can buy pre seasoned cast iron.
My advice, as someone who has owned a cast iron pan for a while, is to take care of the pan. When you use it, wait for it to cool after use, then immediately clean it. Once cleaned, use heat to dry it (just put it back on the stove and heat it up to boil off any water), let it cool again, then add oil to protect the pans surface.
Don’t use just any oil for it, there’s a specific set of oils used to condition/season cast iron. I use grapeseed oil, but there’s plenty of others. A quick Google search should yield some options for you.
The main focus is on keeping the pan protected from water, as it will rust the iron. Using water while cooking/cleaning is fine, but having water standing on the surface of the pan, even microscopic amounts, will cause rust to form. The moisture in the air can also cause the pan to rust, hence the oil coating after cleaning to protect the surface of the pan.
I got rust on my cast iron once after I left the pan for too long after cooking with mushrooms, which are very high in moisture. I had to scrub away the rust, which left a shiny spot on my pan (where the seasoning/conditioning was lost), and I had to re-season the pan.
IMO, cast iron cookware is a pain in the butt to take care of, but well worth it. Easily one of my favorite pieces of cookware. It holds heat really well and it cooks pretty much everything very well. Something that’s always bothered me about regular cookware is the thermal cycling, you throw room temperature ingredients into a hot pan and suddenly, the pan isn’t hot anymore… It takes a while to get back up to temperature. Not nearly as bad of a problem with cast iron.
Just so you know my favorite way to clean cast iron is to run it dry until the bits start to burn then throw in water to deglaze it hot, dump the water and wipe with a cloth then back on the heat to dry and a little bit of oil back in the pan.
I get water is an issue but it shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
It’s not really an issue if you’re paying attention. As long as it doesn’t sit to air dry for days, generally rust shouldn’t be a problem.
My issue with the mushrooms was that I made a kind of gravy with them after cooking the meal and the combination of the moisture and other stuff in the mushrooms plus the moisture from making it into essentially gravy, then leaving it in the pan for more than a day, did me in.
I just forgot about it after the meal, and didn’t look at it for the next few days. It’s entirely my fault that it happened. No question about that. Careless cooking habits can ruin cast iron pretty fast.
If you’re coming mainly fatty foods in the pan, then there’s not a lot of worry there, the natural fats will protect the surface, so you can be, more or less as lazy as you want; but with some foods, you really want to clean it as quick as you’re able to prevent any damage to the coating/seasoning/nonstick polymerized layers that protect the pan.
By the time my cast iron cools, I’ve left the kitchen, so tbh i generally clean it before the next time i cook with it, and have never had rust issues no matter what i cooked in it last. Every once in a while i notice the seasoning getting a little thin after scrubbing it, so I reseason it with a single layer on the stove.
With my carbon steel wok, i regularly clean it by tossing it on the wok burner at full blast until it’s entirely red hot and everything has carbonized off of it, and maybe splash some water in to help clear that off. Then i wait for it to cool enough and reseason it with a quick wipe of oil while it’s still hot enough for the remaining heat to polymerize the oil.
Basically, I’ve never spent significant effort taking care of my cast iron of carbon steel cookware, and it’s all still perfectly functional and non-stick and not rusted.
You and I have had very different experiences.
That’s fair. I don’t mean to invalidate your personal experience with cast iron rusting, but I do want to present a counter experience so people don’t think it’s definitely like that.
That’s fair. I appreciate the reply.
I just bought a stainless steel pan.
Easy to take care of, that thing is indestructible. And to avoid sticking just heat it really high. Inmediatly after using and it’s still really hot stick it under cold water. It cleans itself while making a cool noise.
For some meals like eggs or omelette you can have a non-stick only used for those. But steel is good as a daily pan.
How recent? I thought the more recent non stick are considered safe.
RIP Santa Clarita Diet
I’m still mad
Just needed one more season. Or cut the last episode 5 minutes sooner.
My ex is obsessive about cleanliness and genuinely enjoyed doing the dishes. She was also a terrible cook. So we had an arrangement where I’d cook and she’d do the dishes.
We quickly had to ammend the rules so that I also cleaned the cast iron because she’d obsessively scrub the pan for an hour and ruin it.
I trained (for lack of a better word) my husband to wash the cast iron without wrecking the finish. He used to leave it soaking, I didn’t freak out but told him that was bad for them and he could just toss them into the oven dirty if needed and I’d deal with them (like you, I am the cook not the clean) but then he’d want to make eggs or something and the pan would be dirty so he asked how to. I got a chainmail scrubber and he loves doing it now because he loves the chainmail scrubber. Like - I will sometimes use soap on mine because I can judge the finish but he will not put soap now, will only scrape and has begun to love the pans too, after so many years he realizes because they never wear out just get better.
I did have to reset a couple of mine once, burn off the seasoning and sand them and restore and yes they looked like this picture. It was terrifying but they got great again. Such durable goods they are!
I can usually boil water in them to soften stuff.
It helps that I’ve got an inductive stove that will boil water in like 30 seconds, so there really isn’t any reason to soak them.
Skillet issue.
That was not cast iron, was it?
That is what cast iron looks like if you strip it down to the bare metal. It’s not actually ruined, but it will be unusable until someone goes through the process of re-seasoning it
Not me thinking that “seasoning” meant to let stuff stick to it for the flavor. 💀
I had a roommate who thought this, and therefore never washed or rinsed their cast iron. They refused to believe otherwise.
You should avoid washing and rinsing it as much as possible, especially avoiding soap. When food sticks, I usually just soak it, scrub it using a loofah, and then dry it over a hot burner or in a high-temperature oven.
I saw one guy on YouTube who scrubbed his out using salt. I think I’m going to start using this technique, because it avoids water altogether.
no, the soap thing was from back when soaps contained Lye. dont use grandma’s soap on cast iron. please use a small amt of soap on your cookware
I got a chain mail cloth thing that does a pretty decent job of getting the pan clean without using soap. When it fails I use steel wool that doesn’t come pre-soaped.
Chain mail and dish detergent every time. Usually just needs a quick wipe, then dry with a paper towel.
Occasionally something sticks but you’re already set to scrub. In that case, you’ll need to touch up the seasoning after
Which is a bit time consuming and takes a little practice, but is a pretty great feature for getting a pan back into working condition in situations where a steel or aluminum pan might be ruined.
I had a few imperfections on a lodge that were catching the spatula, but too big to just knock off with said spatula. After a light 5 minute sanding with an orbital sander, a wash, and a couple hours for the new seasoning to bake on it was back in business.
Now it is my favorite cast iron pan!
(I cook most things on ceramic non-stick though)
You can season aluminum and I think steel (although I don’t see the benefit of steel)
Yes. Aluminum sheet pans for baking and roasting are awesome. They take a seasoning really well and when fully seasoned to a dark brown/black they become amazing tools for browning and roasting foods!
Really? I’ve never tried but now I’m interested
Yes, look up Helen Rennie on YouTube. She does a bunch of tests and explains how to do it.
deleted by creator
(although I don’t see the benefit of steel)
I could be wrong, but I think carbon steel skillets and woks are supposed to be treated the same way as cast iron.
Carbon steel, yes. Stainless steel, no (you can season that one too, but the coating will not stick to the pan well due to the steel’s smoother surface).
Steel can work really well with seasoning, but not stainless steel. I have a steel griddle top and a steel pizza pan that are well seasoned now to being mostly non-stick.
I don’t know what kind of steel you’d call them but probably not carbon steel nor stainless steel
Wouldn’t even call it unusable as is.
I am pretty sure you could cook bacon or similarly fatty stuff in there right away.
Then again there are people that see cooking bacon as a legitimate form of seasoning a pan.If my cooking senses are right, it would be like cooking bacon in a stainless steel pan, which is sticky and burny but not impossible
No, they’re right cooking bacon is a way people season cast iron! You have to cook a lot of it though, and it’s really not the best way to do it lol
But it’s the tastiest way to do it!
you really oughtta season your stainless steel too, then you likely won’t have such issues.
I mean, you can. But bacon will pretty angrily stick to a naked pan like that.
Can’t we just get a Tefal so we can clean them like normal people?
Cleaning cast iron is actually super easy, this person didn’t “clean” it though they sanded it down to the bare metal which makes things more difficult
Dude started with 80 grit and went from there.
yea, you can see Lodge on the handle, he grabbed his camera quickly before the rust kicked in
If you put enough time and effort into it, you can grind down and polish a cast iron pan until it has a mirror like finish. Some people prefer this so that after seasoning the pan is very smooth and glossy black, like a well-cared-for carbon steel pan.
I recently used my cast iron pan to roast peanuts. 20 minutes roasting on low flame, preceded by two hours of flame torture to burn off dust and re-glassify the 60-year-old layer of burned grease.
60 years of good meals. That pan could end up being some important artifact of our time period in the far future.
Are we reposting fucking pots now?
That’s a pan.
Also, it’s non-fucking.
Removed by mod
Thanks for this reminder of that thread.
I couldn’t seem to assemble the words that would properly convey my point. I eventually gave up because it was consuming too much time to try to clarify what people were definitely taking the wrong way.
I’m bad with words sometimes.
Removed by mod
You misunderstood me for one.
I’m stating that, in most municipalities, the law allows for young people (14 year olds) to be married and engage in sexual activity. That’s a very abridged version of the same.
I’m also stating that if you want it to be different, change the laws where you are.
These are all factual statements.
In discussing the facts, I made no assertions about whether I agreed or not with those laws, and when I did express my opinion briefly, I said that I see no reason why a grown adult (19+ years old) would want such a thing, and either implied or explicitly stated that I don’t agree with the law.
I’m not going to reread and analyse my wording on the matter, yet again. However, whatever you understood me to be saying, what I’ve said now is my intended message.
I don’t always agree with the laws. There are many I don’t agree with. In this case, I don’t think it should be legal for any loopholes to exist where any individual can legally have intercourse with someone who is 14 years old. The limits should be much higher; with the only caveat to that being the Romeo and Juliet laws (which allow for exceptions for people who are similarly young in age).
However, either from a mishap of my words, or some failure to adequately clarify my point, everyone seemed to think I was endorsing, and defending, what is essentially statutory rape. I’ll be clear: any adult who willingly and knowingly has intercourse with someone underaged, should be, at the very least, imprisoned.
I would be in favour of more severe penalties for such things, but that’s a different discussion.
The laws are fucked up if you read and understand them. I’m no lawyer, but everything I know about this aspect of the law, is morally questionable at best.
Anyone who said “sex with x years old” for anyone underage is gross. It is not “sex with children” it is not “sex with teen” it is “Rape” and “Sexual exploitation” using “power” that can be “money”, “force”, or “emotions”.
You have alot to say about the topic which makes you a pedophile apologists.
deleted by creator
My boy went and machined his lodge!
Ya Boi is accidentally pretty smart. One of the biggest issues I have with Lodge cast iron is the poor bottom finish - such rough tool marks. I have sanded the bottoms smooth on several of the pieces I’ve gotten over the years. A quality smooth finish, (like you find on good vintage cast iron pieces), makes for easier curing and a slicker surface.
So do what Lodge didn’t do and sand those insides shmoove.
Well, I didn’t get it because I don’t know very much about cast iron cookware or the Lodge company, so I was grateful for their explanation 🤷
It’s turns into all sorts of drama and flame wars from people who care way too much about ever smaller details.
- according to Lodge, their pans are intentionally rough to better hold seasoning. It’s easier and more forgiving: you don’t have to follow a strict process.
- according to other manufacturers and people here, a nice smooth surface gives a smoother seasoned result. You may have to follow a stricter process to keep it seasoned but the results can be better.
Personally I find the Lodge approach compelling. My cast iron is pretty much non-stick and the only real care most of the time is cleaning them right after dinner and not putting away wet. Oh yeah, and get a chain mail scrubber: so much easier to clean with in case something does stick
lol I can totally see how specialty cookware like this is ripe for that kind of devolution. Thank you for the context, and the tips!
phrasing
We’re not doing phrasing anymore.
Boom… Bumper!
It works if you don’t get it too smooth. One of my daily drivers is a 18 buck walmart ozark trail I sanded down a bit. I left it rough enough that the seasoning sticks. Did four layers of seasoning. It does a great job and cleans up quick.
I sanded down a bit.
That’s the key. I sufferred for 20 years with a cast iron pan that barely worked. I always assumed it needed one more coat.
Eventually I gave up, sanded it with 220 grit, cleaned it with acid to remove any rust, then immediately coated with oil and started seasoning process . It’s like the teflon that everyone said cast iron could be and I thought they were exaggerating.
I started doing something like this with a Teflon pot when I was seven years old. My mother stopped me before I finished my ‘cleaning’, but the pot was ruined. She wasn’t happy.
I always appreciate hard work
On the topic of cast iron pans, any recommendations on a quality pan? All the cheap ones seem to have a rough surface are very porous.
Believe it or not, lodge is the best bang for the buck. Pores don’t really matter once you’ve got a decent layer of “season” built up. If anything, it makes the polymerized oils hold on a tiny bit better.
But, if you don’t mind starting the seasoning process over, you can hand sand the cooking surface and get it as smooth as you prefer. Well, you can machine sand it instead, but that’s less forgiving if you aren’t used to doing that kind of thing.
Just get a lodge and use it a lot. It will get good fast. Alternatively go check Craigslist or ebay or shopgoodwill for something cheap that looks good to you.
The difference between cast irons is pretty small at the end of the day is pretty tiny and you shouldn’t spend too much money or brain power on getting one. You don’t need to be too selective because the biggest determing factors are how heavily seasoned it is and how practiced you are using it so you are better off just getting something and using it rather than looking for the perfect pan. I don’t even know who made my main pan, it just says “Taiwan” lol
Go to an antique mall and look for a Wagner or Griswold. Vintage cast irons were machined smooth like the pans pictured in the OP.
You’re overthinking it. As long as a cast-iron pan isn’t nearly rusted through or cracked in half, it’s fine. Get a cheap Lodge, get an expensive one, get an old one at a yard sale – doesn’t matter. If the surface is rusty or something, just put it through an oven self-cleaning cycle, sand it down to the state shown in the meme, and re-season.
I’ve got a couple of dutch ovens but I can’t get all the rust off, plus they rust over before I can get them oiled.
Any idea what I should do?(Note: my previous comment mentioned only the sanding method, but I researched this reply a bit and now I think the chemical soak method is probably the better first try if a “normal” cleaning with a kitchen scrubbie or whatever isn’t sufficient.)
Soak the entire pan in acid (vinegar, pool cleaner, acidic drain cleaner – whatever) and then scrub it with a stiff-bristled brush. Make sure every part is completely submerged, handle and all (edit: wait, you said “dutch oven” – if it’s got a wire bail handle, remove that first), 'cause otherwise it can eat away at the pan at the point where the liquid meets the air. The stronger the acid you use, the quicker it’ll work but the more you’ll have to watch it because it’ll start eating away at the metal once it finishes off the rust. Wear safety goggles and gloves, BTW. Alternatively, if the prospect of acid sounds sketchy, apparently Evapo-Rust is safe for cookware, so that’s neat.
Otherwise, if you want to keep trying to remove the rust mechanically, basically try harder and with stronger abrasives. That’s up to and including sandpaper, if necessary.
If the pan is pitted, either use the soaking method to get rid of the rust and just deal with cooking on the uneven surface until the seasoning builds up enough to get it out, or consider resorting to power tools (palm sander, die grinder with abrasive disc, angle grinder with flap disc, etc.) since you’ll have to remove a lot of material to get the surface smooth and flat again.
In any case, once all the rust is gone, wash it with soap and water, dry it off, and season it immediately, before any new rust has a chance to start forming.
Ooh. I’m saving this post for my next attempt, thank you.
Clean and strip seasoning with yellow cap oven cleaner(lye). If any rust remains, use a vinegar bath and scrubbing until it comes off. When you use the vinegar and get all the rust off do not let air dry, wipe dry then heat on stove until liquid evaporates. Reseason.
Stargazer. Among the companies that smooth out the surface of their pans (a think any company could trivially do but don’t) , they cost the least. My info is a few years out do date though.
Good ones that have been cut smooth will cost you double or more than a lodge.
You can sand and grind a lodge down to be a lot smoother and then season it up and you can get there. Or even just season a lodge a whole bunch of times amd you can make it smooth.
Otherwise, there’s a lot of cast irons that are smooth right out of the box, such as BackCountry Iron and Finex.
Just be careful of a lot of cheaper brands advertising “lighter weight” as a feature. It isn’t. Them being heavy as hell is a large part of what makes cast iron skillets cook so nicely. The iron doesn’t cool off when you put the food in. Lighter weight means it’s easier for them to make, uses less raw materials they have to buy, and costs less to ship.
If you’re up for shopping a little, go to thrift stores. Cast iron pans are durable and you can find them really cheap in perfectly fine condition in thrift stores. There’s essentially no need to buy new since they last so damn long. You also really don’t need a smoothed surface.
Go carbon steel instead.
You should to that once in a while. After you do reseason.
Once every 50 years or so
That’s way to long. The build up will break the smooth surface overtime which can lead to uneven cooking or sticking. Best to sand if off once in a blue moon. I would say every 3-5 years
Bro, if you gotta strip it down to metal every year then you are not cleaning it nearly well enough day to day. Stripping it down to bare metal every 50 years might even be too frequently imho.
I think I meant 3-5 years. (Maybe longer or shorter) I actually don’t keep a log so I don’t know. I just sand it down so it is flat once it gets bumpy. I don’t sand it down to complete shine but I remove any buildup and create a clean smooth surface. From there I season it on the grill a few times.
It shouldn’t ever be bumpy. If your cast iron is growing lumps and bumps in the pan, you’re not cleaning it properly. A chainmail washcloth is a great tool for cleaning the bulk off then pan. Then use a non-lye soap, like dawn, to wash it. (Yes you can use soft soap on cast iron! It’s only lye-based soaps that eat through the seasoning.)
I want to disagree since everything I’ve read says this shouldn’t be necessary but I’ve really only used cast iron since COViD so it hasn’t come up yet
If you buy one of the chain link scrubbers to wash your pan with, it essentially keeps the high spots knocked down all the time, so it never really gets bumpy. Also, if you want a smooth cast iron, you have to buy a more expensive one than a Lodge, or power sand/grind it down yourself. Casting is a rough process. The only smooth bottomed pans are cut down flatter after they’ve been cast.
