None of this is true - I never used cast iron in my life...

why use a forever pan when you can have forever chemicals?

My cast iron cookware exists out of survivors bias. Everything else has fallen apart in one capacity or another.

I had a housemate who fried sausage patties and eggs in my cast iron skillet every morning for a couple of years. Gave it a good wipe and that's it. I'd cook other things in it sometimes and wash it up if needed. The seasoning on that thing developed into a deep black that was so smooth you see your reflection in it and you could fry an egg without oil and it came off clean with just a nudge from the spatula. It was beautiful.

We went our separate ways and it quickly degraded back to a more normal "good enough" level of seasoning. It was great, but I'm not frying up a fancy breakfast every morning for it.

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”

Most of this is true, I've never used cast iron in my life

I bought a $20 cast iron pan at target, I season it like once a year. I just wash it and make sure to dry it, I’m sure this is against the rules. Seems to work fine for me though. I wouldn’t say it’s nonstick but it’s mostly fine.

A $20 Teflon pan would be flaking and unusable, so for $20 it’s a good deal.

I'm a stainless steel enjoyer. Get that cast iron and teflon shit out of here.

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

i tried cast iron pans many summers ago. but i found myself never using it because cooking is already inconvenient enough and cast iron pans just add a whole other dimension of inconvenience. it also makes me nervous that they’re never/rarely ever cleaned with soap and water. it was also very difficult to find consistent instructions on how to care for them and use them safely. so now i just use stainless steel instead.

it's so much better than stainless

debatable but i think so

it takes a little maintenance

everything needs maintenance in the sense that you have to clean it. jokes aside, the only maintenance it needs is to burn oil in it if the seasoning got a little damaged for any reason

can't cook anything tomato based

you can, it's not great but won't ruin it

eight coats of oil you have to burn onto it before you can use it

that's not true, all cast iron pans come pre-seasoned from the factory

you can cook fried eggs and steak

that is true

even after seasoning it everything will still stick to the pan

not really, it's pretty non-stick

to clean it you gotta heat it up then dry salt scrub then re-season

not really, you only need to do that if the seasoning got damaged

if water ever touches it the entire thing will disintegrate

that's not true, you'd have to leave it in water for days to get it to rust

things that aren't mentioned: you gotta use it regularly otherwise it gets sticky; you can use metal tools like knives and spatulas directly in the pan that would demolish any teflon; the seasoning is more resilient than people think, you can even wash it with dish soap; the seasoning actually gets stronger when you fry fatty things in it (grilled cheese, steaks, eggs, sausages); it's very simple, durable, rustic, old technology, and incredibly cheaper than skillets of a similar quality (excluding cheap teflon pans); you can unrust it in your garage and even weld it back together if it breaks, which is sick as hell.

My biggest gripe with Teflon, after the whole PFAS problem, is that you have to baby it. I never was able to find a plastic spatula that worked well for any application. At worst, some are so darn floppy it's like trying to flip an fried egg with another fried egg. Not to mention, the leading edge would eventually melt and deform sending plastic shreds everywhere over time.

The things you can do cooking-wise with metal tooling just get you more control and better results. Any pan/pot that lets you do that is going to help your overall cooking experience. Plus, even if you don't go carbon steel or iron - say, stainless or even glass - de-glazing the pan with some water and heat from the range can make short work of cleaning.

One last point to this rant: your favorite cooking shows are lying to you softly. Your cookware are tools - they're gonna get fucked up. Used things eventually get scratched, stained, singed, dented, and that's okay; I promise you they're not unsanitary because they're in this state. Those stainless pans with mirror-perfect surfaces, or carbon steel skillets with that pristine golden hue, they're new; you usually see new product on camera thanks to sponsors and the general optics of the thing. Teflon pans hold out this false promise of pristine cook surfaces that just aren't realistic. And in practice, even those awful things do not go the distance. So yeah, reject modernity and all that. You'll be okay.

Reject tradition. Embrace forever chemicals.

I have a cast iron pan. Pros - it'll last forever if you look after it, it doesn't contain PFAS and generally it is non-stick enough to not be a nuisance. Cons - heavy AF, needs to be cleaned and dried after use & not in a dishwasher. I haven't tried to cook anything acidic in it yet but it does okay for steaks, eggs, mushrooms, sauces that I have used it for.

I still use soap and a plastic scrubber on mine and just dry it on the hob for a bit. I haven't had to reseason it yet but I imagine it will be a pain in the ass when I do. I have seen part of the seasoning flake off but it normally self heals with more cooking.

So it's okay overall but I think lack of PFAS and the fact that this thing will last a lifetime are the clinchers. Even if you have non-stick buy one of these and use it by default. I expect a stainless steel pan would be good too for same reasons.

I'm honestly surprised it took this long before Teflon and PFAS in general became a more public issue.

Especially after project farm showed how easy it is to scratch the coating material. I think only like 2 pans actually held up somewhat in hardness.

Not objective by any measure, but I don't think ingesting dissolved iron is as bad as dissolved Teflon.

Skillet issue

Stainless steel I swear by though. Easy to clean and nothing sticks if you heat the oil properly.

I’ve had one for roughly 15 years and use it almost every day. I most often use it as a baking pan or for grilling things. Not much sticks to it and what does is easily scrubbed off. I don’t season it in any meticulous way, just put a coat of cooking oil on and toss it in the oven every few months. I don’t cook acidic things in it - that is the rare time I use the stainless. I definitely understand why some don’t like the weight but I’m used to it.

In all seriousness my cast iron never looses its seasoning and is the best non stick I have in my house. I refuse to go back to PFSA

Don’t care, use carbon steel

Cast iron is cheap, indestructible, gets better with time, does want some care but nothing outrageous. I do have a good stainless skillet as well, call it the "stick pan", if you want something to stick and then deglaze, it's good.

But the cast iron is my joy, my kids joke that I love it more than I love them (it is older than they are) and already argue about who will get it when I die. Have never bought a nonstick pan, they seem unhealthy, and old cast iron is satiny and nonstick. It suits the way I cook, or perhaps the way I cook has been shaped by the pans. I don't worry about tomatoes or wine sauce but wouldn't slow cook spaghetti sauce in one, would use stainless or the Le Cruset one for that.

Mostly I think it's like flannel, not great at the start but improves with use, ends up better than everything else and then stays better for a long time. In the case of cast iron that could be several generations.

I like to avoid the hassle of taking special care of a cast iron and just use a stainless steel pan from IKEA. Spray on cooking oil works really well to keep food from sticking if your don't crank up the heat and anything that does get stuck can be easily scrubbed off with a copper scouring pad. Best part is that there's no need to worry about rust. Ultimately just use what you like most.

I just like how I can use my metal scrapers and spactulas without having to worry about damaging it.

This has been my experience with cast iron. There's so, so, so much conflicting information on them. Even in this thread.

I wish the Mythbusters would come back just to test via experimentation all these conflicting claims.

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.

call me lemmyml but I fucking love using a carbon steel wok to cook anything