Why people love cast iron pans (and why I'm on the fence)

this video is sponsored by squarespace cast iron pans you can't put them in the dishwasher you probably shouldn't cook very acidic foods in them you probably shouldn't use hard sharp tools on them you have to constantly season them using this messy smelly process that nobody seems to fully understand they rust if you don't give them regular maintenance and if they do rust or you mess up the seasoning really bad you might have to restore them with some kind of bond villain execution situation the electrolysis is really popping at this point that's all that build up being broken down why do people love these things well some people don't and in fact i'm kind of on the fence about it but i'm gonna try to give you the best argument for cast iron i think there are two overarching virtues for these pans i'm going to tell you about those and in the process we'll cover all the basic use and maintenance stuff the earliest known cast iron was produced in the 5th century bce in china modern jiangsu province europeans didn't get hip to it until the 14th century ce when it presented them with new and interesting ways to kill each other and what exactly is cast iron well it's generally defined as an iron carbon alloy that's at least two percent carbon the carbon is what makes it black the cast part refers to the process by which this is shaped the iron is melted and then poured into a mold made out of sand that's casting this is the medellin columbia factory of victoria cookware maker of what epicurious calls the best pre-seasoned 12-inch cast iron skillet i asked the general manager of victoria andres mejia why in the 21st century would you still be working with an ancient material like cast iron when you could be working with a modern material that doesn't rust and that you can put in the dishwasher like stainless steel first of all the cost it will be extremely expensive indeed this is a 12 inch stainless steel pan made by sardel in italy you should know that they sent it to me for free but they're not paying me any money it's a really good pan but it costs about a hundred dollars victoria's highly rated 12-inch pan costs about 30 why is this so much more expensive the geometries that you can get is typically stainless steel is stamped stamp it a pan like this is made by taking a thin sheet of steel and stamping out the shape if it's a cheap thin pan like this little one that basically could be the end of the process but for a quality pan like the sardel one then you make it thicker by layering multiple stamped sheets on top of each other this is a five ply pan so it's five layers that's a more expensive process and one of the reasons they do it is that steel is comparatively hard to cast into a mold you have to heat the steel to a higher temperature to melt it and then when you do it doesn't flow as well as iron cast steel also shrinks a lot as it cools which causes all kinds of problems iron doesn't do that you just make a mold in any shape you want pour in the iron and you're done and the geometries that you can make is whatever you can imagine the handles that you can produce the powering spouts the thickness ah yes the thickness cast iron is simply by far the least expensive way to make a thick heavy pan heavy bottomed pans have more thermal mass meaning they can absorb and store a lot more heat from your burner to transfer into your food you can take a cheap thin pan and get it screaming hot on the stove but the second you lay a steak in there what little heat is stored in the pan will transfer into the meat and suddenly the pan itself won't be that hot anymore it'll take time to rebound and you won't get as good a crust a thick heavy pan serves as a kind of regulator between your stove and your food it heats up slowly and cools down slowly so it cooks your food more evenly this is especially advantageous on natural fires which can be kind of unpredictable and hard to control cast iron remains the favorite cookware of campers everywhere it's also especially good on electric burners which constantly cycle on and off if using a crappy thin pan things might be going great but then the burner cycles back on and all of a sudden the heat shoots up and your food starts burning a heavy pan just smooths everything out and cast iron is by far the least expensive material with which to make a big thick heavy pan with the possible exception of aluminum but aluminum is way less dense than iron therefore you would literally have to make an aluminum pan three times as thick as this in order to get one that has the same weight and that would be dumb that's why no one does that plus aluminum isn't magnetic therefore you can't use it on an induction burner iron works great on induction but back to steel for a sec another reason steel is expensive is that you got to make the handle separately and then bolt them on you can't stamp this out with the rest of the pan shape i mean you can but it'll be kind of a funny shape like this clever design by the knife maker takayuki shibata cool piece but for obvious reasons steel cookware handles are usually bolted on and that connection is a weak point it can loosen over time iron you cast in three dimensional molds so it's all integrated it's one piece it's cheaper to make and far more durable so durable that people today are cooking on iron pans that are a hundred years old or even older this is my buddy david ragsdale's garage in athens georgia where he is a beloved high school english teacher and advisor to the student news magazine his side hustle is finding and restoring collectible cast iron antiques and selling them online link to his store is in the description he's a public school teacher and a good guy throw him some business i wondered to myself can i restore it so i started uh experimenting it's a lot of different setups from the easy off method that i showed you to the live bath to electrolysis bath and um a lot of trial and error and i realized i could sell these pieces and these are so cool man you can do brownies in these you can do cornbread in these it's probably some of the most versatile cookware you can use you can braise in it you can go from top to the oven you can sear you can bake so there you go that's what i would consider to be the first of the two primary virtues of cast iron cookware it is simply the least expensive way to make an incredibly high quality pan in any shape you could possibly want you can buy it when you're young and you have no money and then you can watch your grandkids cook with it it's good stuff the second great virtue of cast iron cookware you can make it pretty non-stick that's what seasoning is you rub on a little oil and then you literally burn it this causes the oil to break down and polymerize very similar to how plastics are made you can create a glassy surface called a patina that is almost as nonstick as teflon i use teflon pans the health and safety concerns about them are really overblown i have a whole video about that that's in the description what's not overblown is the environmental hazards of teflon production if you don't want to be a part of that then cast iron is the next best thing most cast iron manufacturers these days are pre-seasoning their pans at the factory this is the seasoning line at victoria but in order to have a very good non-stick surface you have to do it little by little right even andres there will tell you that his factory seasoning is not enough you at home have to build up lots of thin layers of seasoning on top of each other like lacquer why can't they just slap on a super thick layer of the plant the thick layer you're not gonna get a seasoning because you're gonna get like a burn oil and it's gonna be a crust that is not gonna hold on the surface it'll just chip off or worse if you use too much oil the surface won't come out hard and glassy it'll come out kind of gunky and sticky some people say that's due to insufficient carbon deposition whatever that means but here's the thing as far as i can tell no one has done scholarly research on seasoning cast iron pans you know what kind of oil works best what kind of heat works best and what kind of procedure works best if you are a graduate student in material science or something i think a great dissertation or thesis project is hiding in plain sight here the manufacturers have no doubt done plenty of proprietary research and the folks at victoria have landed on an oil they like best for seasoning here's andres mejia's son manuel who's the main product designer at the company what we use is flaxseed oil any type of natural or vegetable oil has polymer properties particularly the flaxseed oil has a better transformation through a heating process into becoming a hard polymer than others it creates a harder patina the idea to use flax oil apparently originated with a 2011 blog post by a woman named cheryl cantor and it has spread far and wide flax is extremely high in alpha linoleic acid which for science reasons is apparently great at polymerizing you often find it in the dietary supplements instead of the cooking oil section but people successfully season cast iron pans with any edible oil that you could think of saturated fats don't work as well but even something like hog fat and animal fat has some unsaturated fat in it too my buddy david thinks the flax patina is a little too hard it tends to crack he likes this buzzy wax stuff it's a blend of oils made especially for seasoning or a lot of my friends in in the business a lot of folks use a spray-on you get a super even coat it's a lot more efficient all right let's season this antique pan that david gave me a while back i'll heat it on medium-low heat for a good 10 minutes people argue about what exactly this is doing maybe it's opening up the pores of the iron but certainly it's evaporating any water that's still left in there then i'll just put in a little tiny bit of oil and smoosh it around everywhere with a paper towel you want the thinnest layer possible so rub it down until the oil seems to just disappear then put it upside down in the oven this will allow excess oil to drip out and away from the cooking surface and some people say you gotta heat the oven to the smoke point of the oil that you're using graduate student please figure out if that's true but lots of other people say just go to your oven's highest temperature which is what i do 500 degrees once that heats up let the pan cook in there for an hour it might get a little smelly because you're burning the oil turn off the oven and just let it gradually cool down in there a few hours later you'll have a nice new coat of seasoning you want to be crazy about it do that again five or six more times you'll have a hell of a patina or you could just do it the old school way and cook with the damn thing make your food then clean the pan super sharp or abrasive things could chip your seasoning but gentle scrubbies are fine warm water just dig in there you might have heard that you can never use soap on a cast iron pan is that actually true you ask a million different people they'll give you a million different answers in the old days the old days and grandma's day so much of soap was based on lie lie would eat through your seasoning contemporary soap doesn't really have lie as a basis so dawn works though that certainly won't stop a million people on the internet from saying that it doesn't again graduate student please figure this out then you dry your pan off and the best way to do that is to put it back on the heat just like before to evaporate everything then run on a thin coat of oil just like before and then put the pan away the oil forms a water safe barrier against humidity in the air preventing corrosion and then when you heat up the pan to cook with it the next time that layer of oil will polymerize a little bit and you repeat and you repeat and you repeat if you start to see cracks or uneven spots in an old patina you can do another proper round of seasoning in the oven now whether chips of the seasoning or some of the iron could get into your food and then into your body and have some minor health implications that's a conversation for another day gonna do a whole video about the health implications of specific pans but certainly acidic foods can cause some iron to leech from the pan which can just taste gross so maybe don't cook tomato sauce in here but you know some people do now you might be wondering why can't i get the best of both worlds and simply season a stainless steel pan well you can and some people do but it doesn't stick as well the best way is to have a mechanical adherence and a cast iron has a rough surface on the shiny surface that is stainless steel the mechanical endurance is never as good as easing cast iron so that's why it doesn't last that porous surface is from the sand in the mold and speaking of silica another way to get the best of both worlds is to get enameled or glazed cast iron it's basically a layer of glass that they bake on at extreme heat with this you've got all the thermal mass and shaping possibilities of cast iron and it won't rust you can put it in the dishwasher and it won't react with acidic ingredients but you can't really season it so it's not non-stick and these pans are hella expensive now with all that said have i sold myself on good old-fashioned unglazed cast iron pans i don't know here's my opinion f-w-i-w i think cast iron is a great kind of pan to use if you're actually going to use it like all the time if you're going to stick it into the drawer for like months at a time bad things can start to happen that oil that you put on the inside of it after you cooked with it the last time that could go rancid and the pan could start to rust to the point where you would have to take your pan to my buddy david and he would have to dip it into some of his chemicals that are hooked up to a car battery you'll talk now mr bond if you're gonna use it i say use it if not yeah go with the stainless it's easier even easier than that is squarespace the sponsor of this video it's actually the easy option and the low-cost option if you need to have some kind of online presence once you've picked a template that aligns with what you're trying to do in the world you just fly in some pictures or some text of your own and add on whatever you need maybe you need to sell a product squarespace can do all the credit card stuff for you maybe you need to let people schedule appointments with you there's a whole calendar situation for that maybe you need to let someone else worry about all of this you can hire a squarespace expert to put together your site for you if you have other things that need your attention more urgently once it's ready squarespace hosts the site for you and you can save ten percent when you publish or when you register a domain by going to squarespace.com ragusia and entering my code regucia you'll be doing us both a favor that's all in the description thank you squarespace now choose your weapon and get cooking

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,509,991

Rating: 4.8874693 out of 5

Keywords: cast iron, cast iron skillet, cast iron cooking, cast iron pan, seasoning cast iron, how to clean cast iron, how to season cast iron, how to use cast iron, cast iron seasoning, how to clean a cast iron skillet, cast-iron skillet, how to season a cast iron skillet, cast iron cookware, cast iron skillet steak, cast iron restoration, cast iron ribeye steak

Id: zGR-pyLHz1s

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ResidentNarwhal]

I have better results at 350 in the oven for 30 minutes. I find 500 for an hour plus waiting for the oven to cool down burns off half the oil and produces a more brittle seasoning. And with the 30 minutes method, this takes an afternoon to do 5 or 6 layers instead of an afternoon for 1 layer. Cooking with it is the best seasoning right? Think of when you do cook. Even HOT searing, the pan surface should only be around 400-450 and the wetness of the food on the pan will limit it from getting hotter. Most times you’ll cook around 350deg pan surface. Thats about the sweet spot for the maillard reaction and browning.

Iron seasoning isn’t some mythical lost art: restraunts use carbon steel pans and the seasoning is the same. The best way to build up more layers is the old fry potato skins method (or an onion or really anything absorbent) with some salt over medium high heat: enough to smoke the pan a little but not smoke out the kitchen. The skins absorb the excess oil so you always have a thin layer being polymerized. But they also release that soaked oil as they cook, allowing multiple layers to slowly build. AND as they cook (with the salt) they release water which keeps the pan surface and seasoning from being TOO hot. Cook until the skins are basically crisp and about to burn. I am convinced super hot seasoning cycles create the shit brittle seasoning everyone complains about.

Flax seed oil sucks to season with. Companies use it for the matte even finish, not because its best. Its brittle; its hardness is what makes it flake easier. My last pan and griddle I bought I sanded that shit off (which I also did to smooth the pan surface, but that’s not mandatory).

Do the oven cycles and fry the potatoes once or twice. You’ll have an even durable great layer of seasoning. It’ll look a little brown and blotchy in places, that’s fine.

EDIT: other easy care things: I basically almost always scrub with soap, hasn’t made a difference. I don’t always season or oil after cooking, I’m going to put oil in it next time I cook. I will reseason after washing it maybe....once a week for a pan I use daily. After washing and drying, coat in oil. Crank the burners on medium high for 2-3 minutes. Then crack them all out until the pan starts to get wisps of smoke. That’s enough and just kill the heat and let it cool. I’ll also do this if I cook fish on it. Oil in the pan will hold onto that fish flavor but crank it up and polymerize it, the oil won’t hold onto those flavor compounds because...it isn’t oil anymore.

I actually will scrub baked on stuff with one of those copper or steel scrubby things. Might take off a bit of seasoning but that’s like 1 layer of a dozen. And then those days I’ll usually do the above quick season.

[u/Steve_Streza]

I love my cast iron skillet and cook with it every chance I can. My fiancee hates it and refuses to clean it because of how heavy and cumbersome it is. C'est la vie.

I appreciate the "use it if you're going to use it a lot" recommendation; it's not for everyone and there's no shame in cooking with something else.

[u/chazman69]

Boy can that man make informative content.

[u/11433]

I think lots of people make a fuss about maintaining and using a cast iron pan because they treat it as their hobby, something to dedicate to and be proud of, and that’s awesome, but it also scare off normal people who don’t find that kind of maintaining work enjoyable. In reality it’s just a pan, some seasoning and light coat of oil after cleaning is plenty enough.

[u/llamalover179]

I've made a couple other comments in this thread but I think Adam completely missed some super important concepts with cast iron (I really like cast iron and its all I've used for years). Adam mentioned thermal conductivity a little with cast iron retaining heat, cast iron absolutely needs to be preheated before cooking anything on it. Cast iron doesn't heat evenly but it does retain heat well, pre heating negates this and makes it all evenly hot (I bake my pan for 15 minutes in the oven to cook eggs on the stove). Just as important but metal spatulas are almost necessary with cast iron, if you "chip" your seasoning 99% of the time that seasoning wasn't even and you are getting rid of bumps. The maillard reaction is why cast iron functions so well, food browns and no longer sticks to the pan and a thin metal spatula is the best way to turn it. Also cleaning just keep it simple, wash with soap and water but never in a dishwasher, drying with clothe or paper towel is essential as air drying will lead to rust. Oiling after every use to prevent rust is only useful if you don't use your pan frequently. Oiling after use and heating it to polymerize another layer of oil is unnecessary if you already have a good seasoning. For seasoning basically don't use flax seed oil, olive oil isn't great either other than that use whatever oil you have. Remember that cast iron is the cheaper option that people with little money and time turn to. You don't have to try all that hard to get a great cast iron pan, you just have to not neglect it and let rust form.

[u/flowerbhai]

do you need to wash the skillet after each use? sometimes if I sear a steak or fry some veggies, nothing ends up stuck to the pan since I have a pretty solid seasoning at this point. would it be wrong to just wipe it clean with a paper towel and put it in my cabinet till next cook?