I hate cast iron so I am in favour of this.

That just gets me excited to start a fresh new seasoning. Starting from bare metal is a good feeling

Just FYI, you do wash cast iron, you just don't use detergents on it. One common method is to dump a handful of salt and a tiny splash of water into the pan and start scrubbing. You can use a gentle dish soap, but I'd avoid using the dishwasher, because those detergents will be a lot stronger and will actually ruin the seasoning (as well as linger on the surface and end up in your food, which is also bad).

We do wash them, I clean mine by boiling water in them, scraping any stubborn bits with a wooden spatula, rinsing it out under running water and wiping them down with a clean towel and heating the pan again to evaporate any remaining water. No microbials will survive being boiled and then heated again, anything stuck to the pan dissolves away in boiling water and a clean towel will wipe away anything else. After that I add a few drops of oil and wipe down the still hot surface with the thinnest possible coating of oil.

Seasoning for cast iron doesn't mean holding onto previous flavors. It definitely shouldn't taste like last night's dinner. Seasoning in the context of cast iron is the build up of thin layers of polymerized oils from heating them up in a clean pan that forms a durable protective finish that is incredibly non-stick.

So more accurately parallel your underwear example how cast iron is cleaned, if you took your underwear, boiled the hell out of them, used something to give them a scrub, rinsed them out well and then heat dried them.

I hate cast iron, but 'seasoning' is just a misnomer that was adopted to refer to the oils polymerizing on the pan. The oil (usually something like canola) is literally bonded to the metal.

Not cleaning a cast iron pan is gross, fats left in the pan will go rancid.

The only soap you can't use is lye based as that will strip the seasoning off.

I just wash it as normal, you just need to re-fry/season it once in in 3-5 months or so. People that don't wash it usually let it become rusted and dirty as well.

Whatsa matter? You don’t like your pancakes to taste like last nights steak?

It still gets them to reply, every time.

lol I got seasoned by 101 men at an airbnb and cried

The mystery is that iron will rust if wet. The care instructions are "don't leave it wet for a long time".

I have no fear of cooking with it, I just want my cookware to be minimally fussy and not require special treatment. If the $10 Walmart skillet can be thrown in the dishwasher and the $100 cast iron one requires me to baby it or it'll rust, I'll go with the cheap skillet every day.

So much gatekeeping in anything creative. Music, cooking, art…. If you change one little thing it’s no longer the Thing, it’s something else, and it’s not what chef/band/artist/or grandma made, even though it’s a popular variant of the same Thing called the same thing somewhere else. Cast iron falls into the same trap. Such harsh judgement on use and care. It’s a f’n pan, not the last remaining example of a vintage Ferrari. Get over it.

You could leave it outside in the dirt for 5 years and still just give it a lye bath then reseason it to work like new

Same here, though i don't use steel wool and i do season it every now and then
The pan handles it like a champ

I know you're a troll but the idea of cooking on a dish soap infused cast iron is filthy lol

I am in flavor of this.

Maybe a cast iron skillet killed his family.

Cast iron has a weird cult following. It's like the jahovas witnesses of cookware

Ugh they're so gross.

And turning it away from the water jets

Does cast iron really take babying? I have a 12" cast iron skillet that's pretty much the only pan I use, and I just scrub it with steel wool, get it hot again, then throw in some avocado oil. It takes like 60 seconds of work

Also don't temp shock them, they can warp

I end up reseasoning mine every couple of years, inevitably somebody leaves it in the sink for a bit trying to soak off some burnt on stuff. It's really no big deal.

Carbon steel has the heat storage of cast iron but transfers it fast like aluminum. I thought a cast iron seared steak was great until I used carbon steel and omg is it so much better.

Babying it is pretty new and somewhat cultish behaviour, my grandfather just used it and washed as normal, the only babying it needs is a huge temperature differences can break it. Stainless steel and high carbon steel pans are better.

Actually not my photo but I finally have a dishwasher after like 25 years of living with my SO.

Just wash it with dish soap like everything else, use a soft scrubber like everything else.

If you have an actual polymer layer, it won't be harmed.

Dry it off, throw it on the burner. Get it hot, give it a touch of oil, and store it.

A well-seasoned Dutch oven sounds like a fate worse than death.

It's pretty hard to ruin good cast iron. A good cast iron pan could spend a year at the bottom of a lake and all it would need is a good scrub and reseason to be good to go again.

About the only thing I've seen that makes them completely irrecoverable is when people use them to melt lead. Also you can crack the cheap ones in half with thermal shock.

In all seriousness I actually have this pumpkin Le Creuset cast iron Dutch oven and it's in fine shape. The pans that I hate are the gross frying pans my SO brought to this relationship which are disgusting. This Dutch oven can go in the dishwasher no problem actually.

I wash with soap and add a little oil every cook. Works great.

I leave mine sitting in water all the time. It still works.

Ugh. You wanna know the secret to cooking on cast iron/carbon steel? Just cook with it. Put fat in, get it hot, put your food in. It's really that easy. Wipe it out when you're done, rub some oil on it. That's it. You can even cook tomato sauce in it, it'll be ok. People have been using cast iron to cook all kinds of things, acidic and not, for literal centuries. This myth that cast iron/carbon steel pans are these delicate special snowflakes that need constant attention and maintenance needs to die.

No wok? Also safety razors are great and I'm guessing the only reason cartridges won out is because of marketing, then the following generation forgot there was another option.

I use cast iron for most of my stovetop cooking, but I'm sure it's because my cooking style evolved around them, they were so cheap and absolutely the best pans I could afford. They become nearly nonstick, can go from stove to oven to grill, even fire. So for something like $5-20 each I accumulated a set over time, and I love them. We do wash with soap, dry right away, it doesn't kill the surface. Now I have some money for pans, we do have one gorgeous stainless All-Clad skillet I call the "stick skillet", my kids like it. But in terms of PRICE to quality, cast iron is where it's at. That one All-Clad pan cost almost as much as all my cast iron put together.

I used flax oil to season my dutch oven, and finds it stands up to frequent tomato based pasta sauces for a bout a year, but it does eventually fail, an you know immediately when that happens, iron flavoured bolognese. Did that for a few years and finally got an enamelled set for that. As for the frying pans, mine are really old (1920s) and quite lightweight, nowhere near as heavy as newer Wagner 1898s and Lodges. I find the heat retention just perfect when making a carbonara, i turn the burner off when the pasta is three minutes from done and the heat is just perfect to make the carbonara sauce cook without turning into scrambled eggs. The other use, pan frying steaks, nothing does that better. They're not for everything, I have one 7 inch teflon pan that i use for one purpose only, and that's french omelets. I have zero interest in trying that in a cast pan.

Cast iron is to sear the bajesus out of steak. Nothing else can blacken the steak crust to my satisfaction without inadvertently overcooking the middle.

I hate it for everthing else.

A tiny cheap teflon pan just for 1-2 fried eggs and nothing else.

Then SS all-clad as the go-to for everything else.

Been having good experience with the hexclad teflon pan although handwash only. I believe it is generally disliked because it is marketed as "dishwasher safe" which is absolutely false. When handwashed it holds up very well.

This aligns with how I care for mine. Scrub it with a chainmail scrubber, Wash it with soap / watwr, then rinse dry over flame and then drizzle a but of oil and rub with a paper towel.

I have no reverence for my cast iron besides avoiding letting it sit wet for a long time.

(it's from the Internet I didn't take it).

I'm not a fan boy, I actually resisted getting one for nearly a year before one was gifted to me. There are a couple perks and draw backs I've learned. Pros: heating is pretty even, cleaning is actually way easier (IMO), and I can use metal on it. Cons: needs to be seasoned, takes longer to heat, some people get the ick from seeing rust.

TBH it's pretty much the only pan I use now (cause I find cleaning easier and I'm lazy AF), but people should use whatever suits them.

The cast iron "purists" are silly. We just wash ours with soap and water and use it like any other pan. I only know of stuff you can do with cast iron, use metal spatulas, scrub it out with salt, and/or put it in the oven. Not sure what you can't do.

Granted, I don't put any pots and pans in the dishwasher. Maybe y'all have bigger dishwashers than I do, but if one item takes up half the space, what's even the point?

People make this shole "cast iron cult" thing out to be a much bigger thing than it actually is. Cast iron is a durable material and has been used as a tool for cooking in the harshest of conditions for centuries, but to be able to use it in those harsh conditions it needs to be properly taken care of just like any tool.

The reason people seem so neurotic over taking care of cast iron is that cast iron cookware is an investment. Year after year a cast iron pan (and this applies to carbon steel pans too) becomes better and better the more the thin layers of oil polymerization into the seasoning. A fresh off the line Lodge dutch oven doesn't have the years of layer after layer after layer of polymerized oil on it as the same mode Lodge dutch oven my grandmother used when back she was half my age.

Cast iron is easy to take care of, there's nothing special about how to take care of it, but the ways to take care of it are specific because of the nature of the metal used. Hell I spend less time cleaning my cast iron pans and carbon steel wok than I do cleaning any other pan type.

If you don't care why post on a thread to tell people how little you care?

I bought my first carbon steel pan (a wok specifically) last week and I did a bad job at seasoning it for the first time. I had to scrub the shit out of it with steel wool and vinegar to reset. My second season was a little better but it’s still not fully non stick. I hope it will just naturally get better as I keep using it.

Oh it's the absolute best. Frank Prizinsano the chef taught me that.

It feels super greasy and filthy, and everything you cook sticks to it. Give me stainless steel any day.

When my SO and I first got together I did his dishes one day, and as I had never seen a cast iron pan I just washed it, fussing the whole time about how filthy it was. My Australian bush lunatic, one pair of underpants owning mother in law had an apoplectic fit. But seriously, these people cook salmon in them one night and pancakes the next with barely a wipe and it's disgusting. Give me stainless steel.

I put mine in the clothes dryer with a load of socks. Is that wrong?

Ceramic is great for some things.

No wash cast iron in dishwasher, bad!

Dishwasher detergent is super aggressive, because it has to clean with minimal mechanical force, therefore many materials should not be washed in the dishwasher or they will be damaged.

Ruins the patina, or something

Use "soap" if you want. Modern dishwashing liquid doesn't have lye in it. It's the lye from old school rendered soap that damages the seasoning.

Don't use anything with an abrasive more than the rough side of a sponge, and even with that, don't rub super hard or in the same place for too long.

Try washing it.

So long as you're not using the lye-based soaps your grandparents used to wash their dishes, you're fine. Dishwashing detergent does not damage seasoning.

Scrub it clean with soap, then put the pan on a burner to heat dry it. At the end, rub a very thin layer of fat on it. I use clarified butter. It's a cumulative process, you won't see all the benefits of nonstick all at once.

Store bought modern bacon is loaded with sugars and that is what is causing the issues. I've found that the older the seasoning the lesser the impact. Still, just scrub off the stuck on bits with a chain mail and some hot water with a mild dish detergent then do a quick post-season on the stove and it's like it never happened.