I eat out of the pan almost exclusively, so this is actually kind of important.
is this one of those homosexual signaling things, like handkerchief code?
yes
No. Stick to your cancer coated cooking ware.
no. My dumbass roommates have ruined no fewer than 3 of my nonstick pans because they keep using metal utensils on them and I need something that's less delicate.
If you already know that non-stick sucks ass, then you should already have a cast iron.
It retains and distributes heat much better and just as slick as non stick if you're not retarded. A fresh Lodge comes preseasoned, but you'll need to season it further. Ignore any mouth breather that tells you to use special oils or baking hot with oil. Just cook a bunch of shit with lard, tallow, butter, olive oil, or whatever and the seasoning will build up over time. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can fry eggs no problem. I use my cast iron for baking biscuits, frying eggs or bacon, searing steaks, etc. It's my all purpose pan that can get really hot no problem. The only thing I don't do with it are acidic dishes like tomato stuff.
If you want the retention properties but without the hassle (and have the money) get Staub or Le Creuset. And no, unless you're consistently cooking at 500F+ you don't need to worry about temp shock. But also don't obsess over bare cast iron if you choose to get it. Some people go full autist about seasoning with virgin cold pressed flaxseed oil and X, Y and Z and no soap or tomatoes, etc. I used mine weekly to make Shakshuka, I always used soap; the no soap rule is from when dish soap had lye in it. Just use it for bacon for the first month and then just use extra fat when you cook in it, MAYBE get a chainmail scrubber but its nearly impossible to ruin. >I eat out of the pan almost exclusively
Maybe I just care more about aesthetics than you, but thats why I got Le Creuset; I eat out of and serve others out of it and an enameled CI looks way better on the table than bare Lodges do, although I know that at the price point its not an option for everyone.
you can get the Amazon basics equivalent for pretty cheap. I don't actually even entertain the arguments about those big expensive brands being better anymore because if there is a difference between them and the cheap ones, you'd have to be a subject matter expert to talk about them and honestly the food doesn't cook any different.
Is it better than carbon steel? Honestly the main thing I'm concerned about is cooking eggs with these pans because again, my roommates have ruined my nonstick.
CI and CS are going to stick with eggs (and fish too) unless you go full autism with seasoning, just get a non-stick and keep it in your bedroom so your roommates cant get it
Carbon steel is harder to maintain, but it's good for cooking eggs. However, that's after a long time of cooking other shit in it to build seasoning. Ignore retards that say you need to be autistic about seasoning. Best way to build it is to use it. It'll take a bit, but you'll know when it's seasoned. Start with cast iron first to get a good feeling about it. Bacon is your friend.
Every time I see someone cooking eggs in SS they're basically deep frying the eggs. With nonstick all I have to put in is like a tablespoon of butter but with SS I've got to fill the entire pan with a thick layer of it
Every time I see someone cooking eggs in SS they're basically deep frying the eggs. With nonstick all I have to put in is like a tablespoon of butter but with SS I've got to fill the entire pan with a thick layer of it
I can't make scrambled eggs in stainless steel. The preheat temeprature to get the water beads bouncing is too high for fluffy, slow cooked scrambled. Wat do, Culinaly?
Put in a layer of oil (you don't have to do the thin layer shit you do with carbon steel and meme iron). Heat to smoking. Not my problem the oil and wipe it out ... now you have a temporarily seasoned stainless steel pan.
I was a cast iron die hard until I just finally learned to cook with stainless steel.
There's literally no point to it unless you're a hipster or a cooklet.
It's a terrible rule of thumb that leads to excrescences like the Finex (which has 4/5ths of its mass in the side walls and handle where it does fuckall)
Pointless junk meme pan. Wanna know the easy way to know cast iron is a shitty meme? No professional chefs use them as a primary tool. Many never use them at all. They aren't used in almost any restaurant kitchen of any kind. They are superfluous space wasting junk. Precisely two people use them: hipster Reddit chefs, and smelly tryhard /misc/tard incels that think it's some kind of traditional honoring thing. Anything that cast iron is good at, there exists a better alternative with less cumbersome, high maintenance, shitty cookware.
Are you trying to do an American style omelet, or a French omelet? You really need a nonstick for French style unless you want to fuck up 9/10 times until you gain a psychic awareness of temperature control. If your cast iron is properly seasoned you should have no problem making an American style omelet.
NTA but in my experience they are just unrefined. They’re cheap, which is nice, but they also do very little finishing work, they basically roughly grind off the flashing after the cast, dunk the whole thing in oil and do a quick seasoning pass and ship it out. The seasoning that comes from the factory isn’t great, either. Every one of my lodge pans (with the exception of a blacklock pan I just got) needed to be sanded and seasoned again because I wasn’t happy with the finish. Most of the more expensive brands are polished and have nicer seasonings out of the box. On the bright side, if you’re willing to put in the work, you can have a nice pan that’ll last generations for like $30. If you go to their foundry in tennessee you can buy factory seconds pans for even less.
it's bad because it's readily available and inexpensive. this has two consequences: one, it's inevitably the CI pan that everybody learns on and makes their initial mistakes on, and two you can't use it to flex on the poors. other than that, they're outstanding pans for people who actually cook with them. video related, it's a lodge with the factory finish.
I have the same lodge pan, as well as the 10 inch. The factory finish on mine was very rough and took a while to break in and get good, but it performs like that now after many uses and building up an even better patina.
Still I find now there's no reason not to just use stainless, it does everything.
what you have to keep in mind is that the perfect pan for everything doesn't exist, every material has its pros and cons.
Raw cast iron still has a lot of disadvantages (weight, maintenance, hot spots, problems with acidic foods, not reactive...), but it can still be worth it, as long as you don't mind having to take care of it.
it's cheap, reasonably non-stick once it's properly seasoned, and it's really good for some preparations, both on the stove or in the oven.
carbon steel has many similarities, and a couple of advantages. You might want to consider it.
I've made steaks on both and I don't notice any difference. If you sear hot enough, cast iron isn't going to add anything. I've heard it theoretically should sear better since it maintains heat better, but I think the reality is it makes no difference. I've served steaks from both and I don't think anyone would be able to tell which pan it came from if we did a blind test.
If it made a difference, Michelin star restaurants would use them. They don't. They either have mini grills inside the restaurant or they use normal pans. These are the type of places that eke out every advantage that they can in cooking and none of them bother with cast iron. It's a meme.
No. If you are putting one away and won't be using it for awhile then it's good to oil it, but if you use a pan regularly then you're good.
I've made steaks on both and I don't notice any difference. If you sear hot enough, cast iron isn't going to add anything. I've heard it theoretically should sear better since it maintains heat better, but I think the reality is it makes no difference. I've served steaks from both and I don't think anyone would be able to tell which pan it came from if we did a blind test.
>It theoretically should sear better since it maintains heat better
This is the common wisdom, but it's mistaken - you want the pan to rapidly and efficiently transfer heat into the food, which is the opposite of "maintain heat" (the word for "maintain heat" is "insulate").
In terms of thermal conductivity, Carbon Steel > Cast Iron >> Stainless, and it is probably the relative rarity of carbon steel cookware (until recently) in the home kitchen compared to carbon steel that is the source of the conventional wisdom. Over the course of the several minutes it takes to cook a steak, the total thermal output of the pan is bounded by the thermal output of the burner and the material makes very little difference, if you want to more efficiently sear a steak then the only real solution is to use burner with a higher BTU output.
If it made a difference, Michelin star restaurants would use them. They don't. They either have mini grills inside the restaurant or they use normal pans. These are the type of places that eke out every advantage that they can in cooking and none of them bother with cast iron. It's a meme.
posted while I was composing but notice we're saying the same thing, better searing = bigger heat source, carbon steel vs cast iron pan doesn't matter much. Even carbon steel vs stainless steel doesn't matter much with a big enough heat source.
This is also why I believe the "heavy CI is good CI" meme is mistaken, the pans need to be thick enough for longevity (cast iron is brittle and susceptible to warping), but they don't need to be any thicker than that. Any extra weight just makes them harder to move around and slower to heat up for no gain in functionality.
They keep your food warm while eating it.
I eat out of the pan almost exclusively, so this is actually kind of important.
yes
no. My dumbass roommates have ruined no fewer than 3 of my nonstick pans because they keep using metal utensils on them and I need something that's less delicate.
If you already know that non-stick sucks ass, then you should already have a cast iron.
It retains and distributes heat much better and just as slick as non stick if you're not retarded. A fresh Lodge comes preseasoned, but you'll need to season it further. Ignore any mouth breather that tells you to use special oils or baking hot with oil. Just cook a bunch of shit with lard, tallow, butter, olive oil, or whatever and the seasoning will build up over time. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can fry eggs no problem. I use my cast iron for baking biscuits, frying eggs or bacon, searing steaks, etc. It's my all purpose pan that can get really hot no problem. The only thing I don't do with it are acidic dishes like tomato stuff.
is this one of those homosexual signaling things, like handkerchief code?
Great for baking meatballs and making home fries.
Yes.
No. Stick to your cancer coated cooking ware.
Who cares. Just buy whatever you're comfortable with. Stainless, cast iron, non stick, glass. Who gives a fuck.
If you want the retention properties but without the hassle (and have the money) get Staub or Le Creuset. And no, unless you're consistently cooking at 500F+ you don't need to worry about temp shock. But also don't obsess over bare cast iron if you choose to get it. Some people go full autist about seasoning with virgin cold pressed flaxseed oil and X, Y and Z and no soap or tomatoes, etc. I used mine weekly to make Shakshuka, I always used soap; the no soap rule is from when dish soap had lye in it. Just use it for bacon for the first month and then just use extra fat when you cook in it, MAYBE get a chainmail scrubber but its nearly impossible to ruin.
>I eat out of the pan almost exclusively
Maybe I just care more about aesthetics than you, but thats why I got Le Creuset; I eat out of and serve others out of it and an enameled CI looks way better on the table than bare Lodges do, although I know that at the price point its not an option for everyone.
you can get the Amazon basics equivalent for pretty cheap. I don't actually even entertain the arguments about those big expensive brands being better anymore because if there is a difference between them and the cheap ones, you'd have to be a subject matter expert to talk about them and honestly the food doesn't cook any different.
Is it better than carbon steel? Honestly the main thing I'm concerned about is cooking eggs with these pans because again, my roommates have ruined my nonstick.
>cooking eggs
CI and CS are going to stick with eggs (and fish too) unless you go full autism with seasoning, just get a non-stick and keep it in your bedroom so your roommates cant get it
Don't make me post the videos. Because I will, you know.
Carbon steel is harder to maintain, but it's good for cooking eggs. However, that's after a long time of cooking other shit in it to build seasoning. Ignore retards that say you need to be autistic about seasoning. Best way to build it is to use it. It'll take a bit, but you'll know when it's seasoned. Start with cast iron first to get a good feeling about it. Bacon is your friend.
Stainless is completely fine for cooking eggs if you do it right. And you get the satisfaction of being a stainless chad.
I cook eggs all the time in stainless.
Just use more oil
Every time I see someone cooking eggs in SS they're basically deep frying the eggs. With nonstick all I have to put in is like a tablespoon of butter but with SS I've got to fill the entire pan with a thick layer of it
You are a failure.
I can cook eggs all day long on stainless steel.
Enjoy your plastic flavored eggs.
I can't make scrambled eggs in stainless steel. The preheat temeprature to get the water beads bouncing is too high for fluffy, slow cooked scrambled. Wat do, Culinaly?
Put in a layer of oil (you don't have to do the thin layer shit you do with carbon steel and meme iron). Heat to smoking. Not my problem the oil and wipe it out ... now you have a temporarily seasoned stainless steel pan.
First good wash and it's gone.
>Bacon is your friend.
Also hamburgers.
I was a cast iron die hard until I just finally learned to cook with stainless steel.
There's literally no point to it unless you're a hipster or a cooklet.
the rule of thumb is the heavier the pans are better. i dont make the rules.
It's a terrible rule of thumb that leads to excrescences like the Finex (which has 4/5ths of its mass in the side walls and handle where it does fuckall)
well that sounds like a design problem
Pointless junk meme pan. Wanna know the easy way to know cast iron is a shitty meme? No professional chefs use them as a primary tool. Many never use them at all. They aren't used in almost any restaurant kitchen of any kind. They are superfluous space wasting junk. Precisely two people use them: hipster Reddit chefs, and smelly tryhard /misc/tard incels that think it's some kind of traditional honoring thing. Anything that cast iron is good at, there exists a better alternative with less cumbersome, high maintenance, shitty cookware.
>hipster Reddit chefs, and smelly tryhard /misc/tard incels
Ummmm sweaty that's basically Culinaly
Don't
>meticulously season cast iron several times
>go to cook omelet
>it sticks
Im a little over my cast iron ngl
Are you trying to do an American style omelet, or a French omelet? You really need a nonstick for French style unless you want to fuck up 9/10 times until you gain a psychic awareness of temperature control. If your cast iron is properly seasoned you should have no problem making an American style omelet.
I didnt agitate the eggs at all
If you at least get one get a good one and not lodge.
why is Lodge bad besides le popular?
NTA but in my experience they are just unrefined. They’re cheap, which is nice, but they also do very little finishing work, they basically roughly grind off the flashing after the cast, dunk the whole thing in oil and do a quick seasoning pass and ship it out. The seasoning that comes from the factory isn’t great, either. Every one of my lodge pans (with the exception of a blacklock pan I just got) needed to be sanded and seasoned again because I wasn’t happy with the finish. Most of the more expensive brands are polished and have nicer seasonings out of the box. On the bright side, if you’re willing to put in the work, you can have a nice pan that’ll last generations for like $30. If you go to their foundry in tennessee you can buy factory seconds pans for even less.
it's bad because it's readily available and inexpensive. this has two consequences: one, it's inevitably the CI pan that everybody learns on and makes their initial mistakes on, and two you can't use it to flex on the poors. other than that, they're outstanding pans for people who actually cook with them. video related, it's a lodge with the factory finish.
I have the same lodge pan, as well as the 10 inch. The factory finish on mine was very rough and took a while to break in and get good, but it performs like that now after many uses and building up an even better patina.
Still I find now there's no reason not to just use stainless, it does everything.
BUY BUY BUY GOYIM
You can use it as a buckler in hand to hand combat. You can also donate it during Wars to make tanks.
No.
what you have to keep in mind is that the perfect pan for everything doesn't exist, every material has its pros and cons.
Raw cast iron still has a lot of disadvantages (weight, maintenance, hot spots, problems with acidic foods, not reactive...), but it can still be worth it, as long as you don't mind having to take care of it.
it's cheap, reasonably non-stick once it's properly seasoned, and it's really good for some preparations, both on the stove or in the oven.
carbon steel has many similarities, and a couple of advantages. You might want to consider it.
Best way to make steak if you don't have a grill.
You can't get the crust of a cast iron pan with a non-stick one
yes you can just use some butter like you're supposed to either way
I've made steaks on both and I don't notice any difference. If you sear hot enough, cast iron isn't going to add anything. I've heard it theoretically should sear better since it maintains heat better, but I think the reality is it makes no difference. I've served steaks from both and I don't think anyone would be able to tell which pan it came from if we did a blind test.
If it made a difference, Michelin star restaurants would use them. They don't. They either have mini grills inside the restaurant or they use normal pans. These are the type of places that eke out every advantage that they can in cooking and none of them bother with cast iron. It's a meme.
Do you really have to oil your pans after cleaning? Sounds like big oil bullshit to me.
not if you use them a lot
nah
no
and guess what?
you dont even need to season them
No. If you are putting one away and won't be using it for awhile then it's good to oil it, but if you use a pan regularly then you're good.
>It theoretically should sear better since it maintains heat better
This is the common wisdom, but it's mistaken - you want the pan to rapidly and efficiently transfer heat into the food, which is the opposite of "maintain heat" (the word for "maintain heat" is "insulate").
In terms of thermal conductivity, Carbon Steel > Cast Iron >> Stainless, and it is probably the relative rarity of carbon steel cookware (until recently) in the home kitchen compared to carbon steel that is the source of the conventional wisdom. Over the course of the several minutes it takes to cook a steak, the total thermal output of the pan is bounded by the thermal output of the burner and the material makes very little difference, if you want to more efficiently sear a steak then the only real solution is to use burner with a higher BTU output.
This anon
posted while I was composing but notice we're saying the same thing, better searing = bigger heat source, carbon steel vs cast iron pan doesn't matter much. Even carbon steel vs stainless steel doesn't matter much with a big enough heat source.
This is also why I believe the "heavy CI is good CI" meme is mistaken, the pans need to be thick enough for longevity (cast iron is brittle and susceptible to warping), but they don't need to be any thicker than that. Any extra weight just makes them harder to move around and slower to heat up for no gain in functionality.
I use my cast iron on the grill like a griddle.