Stainless steel I swear by though. Easy to clean and nothing sticks if you heat the oil properly.
My sauce pans are stainless and are The Shit. Had them four years now and they’re still in good order.
My frying pan is cast iron and is The Shit. Had it a year and it’s still as good as when I bought, and I use it every day.
I will never go back to flaky non-stick bullshit.
While oil is necessary, It’s more about how you preheat it and your technique, rather than how you oil it; no amount of oil is going to save you from over crowding a cold pan.
Yep, the old hot pan cold oil technique you use with a traditional woks works well with cast iron, carbon steel, and stainless steel.
You basically get the pan as hot as you can, coat with enough to cover the pan with a thin layer of oil, and heat until smoking. Dump out your hot oil and add your cold oil and then your ingredients. If you get good at hot pan cold oil you can make just about anything nonstick.
I’ve always just used the bead test where you drop a drop of water in a dry pan and if it beads up and rolls around, instead of just sizzles, then the pan is hot enough to add oil (although this also works if it’s too hot, but I have a good sense of how long it takes to get to this temp, so I’m usually testing just before and just after it hits this temp). Then when the oil is shimmering, this is the time to add food.
Reject tradition. Embrace forever chemicals.
BerlingerHaus uses some kind of artifical stone instead of teflon. I’ve only got a grill pan so far but it’s easier to use and to clean than teflon. Surely wherever you are has something similiar?
Enameled cast iron is definitely a thing, our le cruset Dutch oven is a work horse
Le creuset Dutch oven is a different budget :x
We found a used older one, used it just about daily for a couple years before my dumb ass left it in an oven that was too hot (some old ones only got to like 400F apparently) and caused a bunch of cracks. We messaged le cruset and after sending them some pictures and a sob story they sent us a brand new one.
Doesn’t need to be a new one or le cruset, enameled cast iron is just nice generally in my experience
I got a $30 enameled cast iron 6-quart Dutch oven at a post-Christmas sale. It wasn’t Le creuset, but it was a kitchenaid, which was over $100 at its original price. I also got a crockpot brand one, which was under $40 at its standard price, and they both lasted over a decade, until I moved across an ocean (afaik, my former neighbor is still very happily using them and my old kitchen aid stand mixer).
Heat cooking oil in the pan until it starts smoking. Hey presto it’s seasoned. Tomato will not strip it, nor will soap. Intense scrubbing will.
Cast iron is so easy to care for. Just don’t stick it in the dishwasher or let it stay wet after washing.
Don’t these pans last like generations, being passed down? I doubt your grandma and her grandma were bothering to apply 8 coats of flaxseed oil and heating it up to 1000 degrees and the pans would still perform as expected for ages
Has anyone outside of a commercial kitchen ever actually destroyed a stainless steel pan though
Yes.
Apparently you can’t hear up tortillas in them without it forever getting scorch marks. I suppose only thing I haven’t tried is using a machine sander on it to try to remove it.
Barkeepers friend (powdered metal and glass polish/cleaner, typically comes in a cannister) will get that off with a little bit of elbow grease.
Half the pans I’ve bought i got at a thrift store for like a buck because people thought they ruined them with a little bit of scorching., and I’ve gotten some nice stuff.
Unfortunately haven’t found that cheaply available in Finland. I know about it too. It’s the only thing I haven’t tried other than straight up sanding it
So the legend of bar keepers friend is that it was invented after someone boiled a bunch of rhubarb greens and noticed it cleaned the pan. I reckon any green high in oxalic acid (the main ingredient in BKF) should do similarly enough to the actual product to let you know if it might work.
There’s probably a local equivalent; looks like the primary “ingredient” is Oxalic Acid so a cleaner containing that would probably work just as well
A straight angle grinder is better suited for that job
Are those scorch marks an issue beyond aesthetics though? (Genuinely curious, not judging)
They leave a burnt taste in the food
In that case, try boiling a mixture of baking soda and water in it, then scouring it using tongs with copper wool (I’d probably use steel wool, but that might also leave scratches, I don’t know). If it’s giving your food a taste, it is coming off, just really gradually and under high heat.
Done that already before, twice.
Womp womp
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If I know grandmas, I was probably purchased at Kmart in like 1996.
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Sorry. Just trying to make a joke a grandmothers’ expense. My grandma had several artifacts that she claimed were ancient and/or hand crafted that were definitely not.
We were 3/4 of the way through mounting her hand painted collectible plates when we found two that were 100% identical.
There is nothing wrong with putting cast iron in the dishwasher. I do it all the time.
If the dishwasher strips the seasoning, you seasoned it wrong
Let the weakness be washed away
Most of this is true, I’ve never used cast iron in my life
I’m a stainless steel enjoyer. Get that cast iron and teflon shit out of here.
wood and stainless steel is definitely the way to go. i don’t understand how nonstick seems to be the norm. are people not aware that the “nonstick” part of their pans is basically just plastic? and that it’s generally a bad idea to cook/eat/scratch plastic things?
I never understood fans of cast iron. Its like still using candles for light, sure it gives a warming light, but electricity is cheaper, safer, and quicker to use for light. Same for pans, stainless steel have exactly the same use as cast iron without any of the inconvenience. Sure heating behavior is different, but who cares, you can get to the same results with stainless steel with a bit of experience… If you really want that “hipster cooking” feeling, just use copper, sure its way more expensive and you need to be extra careful, but its still better than to try using cast iron which is a real pain in the ass to use, making cooking twice as long as it should be… And for Teflon… it’s shit, weak as hell and will give you cancer. Aluminum is shit too, still better than teflon and at least its the cheapest.
Nothing cooks fried eggs as well as my cast iron pan. Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, french scramble, omelettes, any kind of eggs. Sometimes I use it for sausage too.
I use stainless for everything else.
If you’re buying modern garbage $10 pans from Dollar General don’t be surprised when they’re not performing as well as your Cuisinart SS. I have all SS and cast iron, and they both get about equal usage. CI is just better for meats. The higher heat conductivity and even temperature across the surface (with proper time to warm up) is incredibly useful. Searing is unsurpassable with CI. You can be rough with CI and it takes the beating in stride.
SS is better for quick heat and rapid changes in temperature. Boiling water, sauces, roux, etc.
I’ve had cast iron pans with old dinner remains sat in the bottom for 3 days, it comes off with hot water. And yes I use soap and water. If you use a good oil for seasoning and you set your pan up nicely you don’t have to worry about babying the seasoning.
twice as long
If you’re using CI for the right use cases it is WAY faster than aluminum. As I said, the heat transfer of iron is extremely good compared to thin walled aluminum or stainless. CI will cook chicken very fast. It’s all down to knowing your tools and using them correctly.
I can tap a nail into a wall with pliers, doesn’t mean they won’t do the job as well as a hammer.
My gf got me a cast iron pan. I despise it. It’s so much work compared to my other pans and I don’t see any benefits. I only bring it out if she’s watching me cook over my shoulder, so now I cook I tell her to relax on the sofa with some streaming or a book.
Skillet issue
The best pan is the $20 no name stainless steel pan from a restaurant supply store. Cast iron is for Dutch ovens that need to retain heat for stews and curries and shit. Anyone that genuinely prefers cast iron over stainless just doesn’t know how to preheat a pan and use cold oil. “Oh I want a pan that requires ongoing maintenance, can never be properly cleaned, isn’t actually non stick at all, and weighs 900 pounds so doing any kind of toss is a total pain in the ass”
I fucking hate cast iron pans. It’s way too easy to absolutely ruin one. But more importantly, it’s absolutely impossible to cool one down. If you determine that the pan is too hot and your shit is burning, sing your prayers, cus that shit is burning! What’s that? You can put it in the oven straight from the stove? So neat, but like, I have a pot for that. Also never ever made a dish that asked for such a maneuver.
I have no idea what kind of pots and pans I have. I know they’re not cast iron though lol. I just use them and they work.
The only thing I would use cast iron for is to fight the ninjas hiding behind my fridge
Unless you have arms like tree trunks then this is a bad weapon choice. Ninjas are notoriously fast and cast iron is notoriously heavy.
I assume they would be slowed down by having to clamber out from behind the fridge, I can get them while they’re off balance
lol look there’s one main benefit of cast iron: it holds heat really well. it is not easier to use or maintain than steel, but if you want something that holds a lot of heat, look no further
No, the main benefit is that it is made out of something edible that won’t give you cancer
Stainless steel is unreactive and is leeching less into your food than cast iron, if that’s your main concern. We already know that burned things are a carcinogen so why wouldn’t that include burned polymerized vegetable oil?
