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Cast iron FTW. Haven’t checked if an enamel dutch oven is naughty or nice. Slow cooker’s pottery glaze is unknown.
by quantified 5y ago
Cast iron FTW. Haven’t checked if an enamel dutch oven is naughty or nice. Slow cooker’s pottery glaze is unknown.
- anonporridge 5y agoThis. We literally take iron as a supplement because it's an essential mineral for the body. K.I.S.S.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- s5300 5y agoObligatory cereal-iron extraction https://youtu.be/NHqN-Be5nlU https://youtu.be/NHqN-Be5nlU
- Johnny555 5y agoI think only pre-menopausal women should routinely take iron supplements. Men run the risk of getting to much iron.
- astrange 5y agoOnly for anemic women. Iron is mainly poisonous otherwise, especially for men or people with a history of hemochromatosis (ie British people). That's why multivitamins have separate ones "for women", everyone else just increases their risk of colon cancer.
- carabiner 5y agoWhy not carbon steel? It's lighter and just as durable, that's why it's used in restaurant kitchens.
- kragen 5y agoIt rusts if you leave it damp, and the rust is porous and consequently impossible to keep clean; you have to scrub it off or remove it with acid. Restaurant kitchens wash and scrub their pots constantly but they also use a lot of stainless steel.
- odonnellryan 5y agocast iron has the same problem
- kragen 5y agoThat's true, you have to keep it well seasoned to prevent it from rusting. Can you do that with carbon steel? I'd think the surface chemistry would be about the same, so maybe? Does the greater flexibility of the thinner cookware make the seasoning flake off?
- qbasic_forever 5y agoYes carbon steel cookware is seasoned almost exactly the same as cast iron. Although it's sometimes thinner, it's still quite dense and heavy cookware that's comparable to cast iron stuff in use and seasoning lifetime in my experience. It cooks just as fantastically well too--I love carbon steel pans.
- kragen 5y agoThanks!
- ummonk 5y agoCarbon steel is the same as cast iron, just less brittle due to lower carbon content. They sometimes make it thinner (doesn't have to be as thick since it's not cast), but there is plenty of thick carbon steel cookware out there too.
- pengaru 5y agoThermal mass is a desirable feature for cooking some things, the cooking surface loses less temperature as you introduce ingredients.
- dcchambers 5y agoCarbon steel also contains chromium and nickel, and presumably also leeches those into food as you cook like stainless steel. Cast iron is 100% iron. FWIW, I use all three types of pans happily in my kitchen and won't judge anyone for using any of the three, but this question is kind of hilarious given the linked study about steel cookware.
- sigstoat 5y ago> Cast iron is 100% iron. plenty of cast irons have all sorts of things mixed in them. i don't think anyone particularly cares to use pure iron, because additives make the process easier. if your pan manufacturer will even tell you which kind they used, you can check matweb for the composition. some of them include chromium, nickel, molybdenum, etc.
- smokefoot 5y agoDoesn’t chrome and moly make it stainless?
- kragen 5y agoI think it depends on the amount, though I'm no expert.
- metal_am 5y agoIt’s the chromium. Cookware usually has nickel too. When a pan is advertised as 18-8, they mean roughly 18%Cr-8%Ni. Basically the same as 304 stainless steel. You have molybdenum additions in something like 316 stainless steel.
- dcchambers 5y agoYes that's true, but compared to stainless and carbon steel it may only contain trace amounts of the metals that are the focus of this study.
- lazide 5y ago
- CoastalCoder 5y agoThe carbon-steel itself is very tough, but most people try to keep a layer of seasoning on it to prevent rust. Sometimes it takes a lot of care to maintain that seasoning, and it still might flake off because of e.g. metal spatulas. Good stainless steel, OTOH, is generally hard enough to survive reasonable run-ins with metal utensils, and doesn't require re-seasoning.
- globular-toast 5y agoI prefer spun iron which is as thin (and light) as a carbon steel pan but still pure iron. I do like cast iron, though, as it's just a thick chunk of metal you can throw in the oven or on a barbecue etc. without too much care.
- ummonk 5y agoWith cast iron or carbon steel you're getting bits of polymerized oil (i.e. seasoning) in your food.