7 ms·

I'm never, ever, ever going to be able to convince my wife cast iron is any good. This is because we have cast iron pans, and she's tried to use them, and finds

I'm never, ever, ever going to be able to convince my wife cast iron is any good. This is because we have cast iron pans, and she's tried to use them, and finds them entirely terrible. Yes, we've done all the fiddly seasoning and such. I'll cook in them, but she hates the things. Tiny chance I'll be able to convert her to stainless for most things, but we're never not going to have one teflon pan for eggs and crepes and such.

siftrics 4y ago
If you cook eggs correctly, they stick less to a cast iron pan than to a teflon pan, and they hold together better.
- lumb63 4y ago
  How’s that? Got any additional info?
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Seriously, the single time I've made eggs work without having a layer of stuck egg at the end, in cast iron, was on this immaculately-maintained ancient cast iron pan in an AiBnB on a Mennonite farm, and even that only worked because I cooked them in a bunch of sausage grease, probably amounting to 10x the fat I use in teflon (butter, in that case). But, I usually make scrambled, and you need tight, lowish temp control for those, which is one thing teflon really excels at (cast iron and stainless need higher temps to prevent sticking)
    - lukevp 4y ago
      Try carbon steel, it’s much less sticky
- dahfizz 4y ago
  Anytime your solution to a problem is "Just exert more effort and skill and do it correctly", there is a 100% chance the general public will not adopt your solution.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    This should be codified as a law of the internet.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Dahfizz's Law
    - halfnormalform 4y ago
      I've heard something similar phrased as "Discipline doesn't scale."
  - klodolph 4y ago
    The worst is when I see this advice used for backup policies. Like, the backup is there to save your ass when you don’t do things correctly. If the backup needs you to exert more effort and do things correctly, then it’s most likely to be broken when you need it the most.
  - siftrics 4y ago
    I agree, but I think it's less effort to cook eggs in a cast iron. Just add a dash of oil and cook on medium low-heat with a lid. I never spend more than five seconds cleaning because the eggs never stick.
  - testTED 4y ago
    This explains the state of the general public very well.
- greenie_beans 4y ago
  what is the correct way to cook eggs?
  - siftrics 4y ago
    I see what you're saying. For me: dash of oil, medium-low heat, and a lid. You don't even have to clean the cast iron because the eggs don't stick.
    - webnrrd2k 4y ago
      If I'm cooking bacon, then I baste them in the hot bacon fat. But mostly I like to put enough olive oil in the pan so that I can easily baste the eggs with a soup spoon. Salt, lots of pepper, and baste 'em -- the tops solidify just enough not to run.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Add the tendency of cast iron to unpleasantly flavor acidic foods (which is lots of foods) and it's hopeless, as far as convincing goes. At least stainless doesn't do that. I might win her over for stainless, mostly, but cast iron's going to remain only for me. No denying that it's a lot easier to make eggs or pancakes or whatever on teflon, while distracted by also trying to get the kids dressed and such, without ruining the food or making a mess, than it is on other materials. Even if you know what to do with other pans, you still have to do it, and that takes more attention and care than teflon. If it comes out that teflon pans are, in fact, a major source of ingested or inhaled PFAS, I'll probably kick up my efforts to convert her. In the meantime I suspect a lot more of it comes from other household materials (clothes, carpet, furniture—plus stuff in cars) that've been treated for fire and stain resistance, so I'm not super worried about the pans.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    You need stainless for acidic foods. We have both types of frying pans. The problem with Teflon as I understand it is that it breaks down to PFAS at temperatures that are easy to reach in a frying pan. It might be that Teflon other things are better (like a stand-alone grill thing), but I just try to avoid it.
  - buu700 4y ago
    I'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Would she be willing to use a timer? She can just set it for 10 - 15 minutes after turning the burner on, and avoid putting anything in the pan until after the timer is done. I've certainly ruined my fair share of eggs by rushing, but having the patience to let it get up to temperature is pretty much the only "hard" part of using cast iron.
    - kingnothing 4y ago
      10 minutes? You don't need the pan to be 900 degrees! It's more like 1-2 minutes.
- insanitybit 4y ago
  I think I'm legitimately an egg cooking expert at this point. I've cooked eggs in 1000 different ways on different pans. There's no comparison - a non-stick pan is going to trivially handle eggs, regardless of how your pan is oiled, the heat, etc, whereas a cast iron is only going to do a decent job if you're cooking eggs in a few specific ways and you take care to control temperature and oil.
  - earthling8118 4y ago
    It's also pretty trivial to get right. I'd use carbon steel just because it can heat faster. I can have my pan ready to go in 2 minutes of heating. Use a bit of oil (sometimes I mix in a tiny bit of butter to help nonstick, but it isn't required) and it's good to go. The difficulty is extremely exaggerated. I've not had a need for nonstick
  - acdha 4y ago
    If the non-stick pan is brand new, yes. The problem is that you need to replace them every couple of years as the coating become degraded or they perform worse - even if you religiously use only soft utensils, simple use and cleaning will break it down. Unless you’re trying to avoid using oil for some reason, there is no time savings.
    - insanitybit 4y ago
      > simple use and cleaning will break it down. This isn't my experience. Low heat (which is how you should be using them) and soft utensils (I prefer to use those anyway) should be enough to keep it going - I have no scratches or wear on mine that I've noticed, though I did just replace them. They're quite cheap so replacing isn't really onerous either. > Unless you’re trying to avoid using oil for some reason I don't want my eggs to be particularly oily, or if I'm explicitly making a buttery french scrambled eggs I want to use butter and I want to add it in later, not use it for lubrication/ stick. You'll need much more for the cast iron.
mtalantikite 4y ago
I have a de Buyer carbon steel omelette pan and it is completely non-stick once seasoned. Way nicer for eggs than a cast iron, maybe she'd be open to trying that. I also have one of their crepe pans that we use for tortillas and dosas, check those out too.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  We're about due for some new pans (the worst non-health-related thing about teflon is that they're much more a consumable item than other pan types) so I'll see about snagging one or two of those, thanks for the tip.
  - earthling8118 4y ago
    This is the main reason I ditched them. Carbon steel is my primary pan type now. When you're breaking in a new pan use just a little bit of butter for stuff like eggs. I use more oil than butter but just having a little amount present helps.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  I'll echo this. One thing I learnt is that metal scourers, used judiciously, are perfect for cleaning a well seasoned carbon steel pan. Basically, the scourer pulls off the few bits that catch on the pan and if you don't really scrub (which you should never need to) the seasoning is robust enough. Just remember to not cook anything acidic (for which we use stainless) and try not to leave things in the pan for ages.
- voldacar 4y ago
  How do you season it? How do you clean the pan, and does it need to be seasoned again after cleaning?
  - mtalantikite 4y ago
    Serious Eats has a good post on it [1]. Basically, remove the beeswax layer, then rub a layer of oil on the pan and heat it until it fully smokes off. You can do it on a burner or in the oven at 450F. You'll do that a maybe 3-5 times on a new pan, up to you. They tell you not to do carbon steel in the oven because of the material of the handle, but I've done it before and it worked out fine. I generally just use the stove top because it's easier. You clean the pan with soap and water as you would any other pan, and then towel dry since you don't want rust forming on the metal. You'll need to re-season it every so often depending on how much use the pan gets, but that's usually only every couple years. [1] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-season-carbon-steel-pans https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-season-carbon-steel-pans
Workaccount2 4y ago
I use both, I have a cast iron, a carbon steel, and a non-stick. The truth is that the non-stick is the most non-stick of the bunch when compared across all things you could cook in a pan. Sometimes I just want to reheat my pasta quickly and uses a quick splash of water and a paper towel to totally clean the pan. I am a total nazi though about making sure metal never touches the non-stick. It always gets cleaned and put away in its special spot immediately after using it.
insanitybit 4y ago
Could I ask why she has an issue? I've heard some people have had problems with them but as someone who was born and raised on cast iron I've never really understood.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  More care & technique required while cooking to keep things from sticking or burning, the seasoning and iron itself flavors acidic foods so the pans aren't as nearly-universally-useful as teflon, can't put them in the dish washer, cleaning in general becomes a kind of balancing act between leaving soon-to-be-rancid fat on the pan (which will flavor your next dish) and stripping the seasoning (you can't just clean everything off, completely, like you can with teflon or stainless).
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    It’s really not nearly as bad as you’ve made it out. Put some salt in the pan, rub it down, apply a thin layer of oil and good to go. Is not some occult ritual.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      My pans and experience disagree, but OK. Sometimes that's true, sure, but getting a stuck-on mess off them is worse and more fiddly than other pans. Recall, I do use cast iron, my wife's the one who finds it to be too much.
    - bioemerl 4y ago
      You don't even need that. Soap and water work fine.
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        Yeah soap is fine, I like the salt for abrasion.
  - acdha 4y ago
aosmond 4y ago
How about ceramic pans?
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  You mean enameled cast iron? We've got a big pot like that, great for things that need to go in the oven, not just on the stovetop, but it's damned heavy so I don't tend to use it unless I have to. [EDIT] Oh, googling, yes, we do also have a ceramic-coated steel(?) fry pan still kicking around, though I almost never use it because the non-stick was never great and got worse fast. Teflon better if I need non-stick, stainless better if I don't and also don't want to have to baby the pan.
earthling8118 4y ago
Stainless steel just really isn't the same thing or used for the same purpose. It is an important type to have available but I wouldn't cook eggs in them for example. Better to use a carbon steel or cast iron so I can just cook in it and not worry about stickage.
bioemerl 4y ago
I got a pre seasoned one and beyond the care to make sure it doesn't rust it seems identical to Teflon to me. Lodge, got it from Walmart.

siftrics 4y ago

If you cook eggs correctly, they stick less to a cast iron pan than to a teflon pan, and they hold together better.

lumb63 4y ago
How’s that? Got any additional info?
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Seriously, the single time I've made eggs work without having a layer of stuck egg at the end, in cast iron, was on this immaculately-maintained ancient cast iron pan in an AiBnB on a Mennonite farm, and even that only worked because I cooked them in a bunch of sausage grease, probably amounting to 10x the fat I use in teflon (butter, in that case). But, I usually make scrambled, and you need tight, lowish temp control for those, which is one thing teflon really excels at (cast iron and stainless need higher temps to prevent sticking)
  - lukevp 4y ago
    Try carbon steel, it’s much less sticky
dahfizz 4y ago
Anytime your solution to a problem is "Just exert more effort and skill and do it correctly", there is a 100% chance the general public will not adopt your solution.
- xeromal 4y ago
  This should be codified as a law of the internet.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Dahfizz's Law
  - halfnormalform 4y ago
    I've heard something similar phrased as "Discipline doesn't scale."
- klodolph 4y ago
  The worst is when I see this advice used for backup policies. Like, the backup is there to save your ass when you don’t do things correctly. If the backup needs you to exert more effort and do things correctly, then it’s most likely to be broken when you need it the most.
- siftrics 4y ago
  I agree, but I think it's less effort to cook eggs in a cast iron. Just add a dash of oil and cook on medium low-heat with a lid. I never spend more than five seconds cleaning because the eggs never stick.
- testTED 4y ago
  This explains the state of the general public very well.
greenie_beans 4y ago
what is the correct way to cook eggs?
- siftrics 4y ago
  I see what you're saying. For me: dash of oil, medium-low heat, and a lid. You don't even have to clean the cast iron because the eggs don't stick.
  - webnrrd2k 4y ago
    If I'm cooking bacon, then I baste them in the hot bacon fat. But mostly I like to put enough olive oil in the pan so that I can easily baste the eggs with a soup spoon. Salt, lots of pepper, and baste 'em -- the tops solidify just enough not to run.
yamtaddle 4y ago
I'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Add the tendency of cast iron to unpleasantly flavor acidic foods (which is lots of foods) and it's hopeless, as far as convincing goes. At least stainless doesn't do that. I might win her over for stainless, mostly, but cast iron's going to remain only for me. No denying that it's a lot easier to make eggs or pancakes or whatever on teflon, while distracted by also trying to get the kids dressed and such, without ruining the food or making a mess, than it is on other materials. Even if you know what to do with other pans, you still have to do it, and that takes more attention and care than teflon. If it comes out that teflon pans are, in fact, a major source of ingested or inhaled PFAS, I'll probably kick up my efforts to convert her. In the meantime I suspect a lot more of it comes from other household materials (clothes, carpet, furniture—plus stuff in cars) that've been treated for fire and stain resistance, so I'm not super worried about the pans.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  You need stainless for acidic foods. We have both types of frying pans. The problem with Teflon as I understand it is that it breaks down to PFAS at temperatures that are easy to reach in a frying pan. It might be that Teflon other things are better (like a stand-alone grill thing), but I just try to avoid it.
- buu700 4y ago
  I'm still struggling with conveying, "you have to get the stainless pan hot and lay down some fat before you add the food, or it will stick". Would she be willing to use a timer? She can just set it for 10 - 15 minutes after turning the burner on, and avoid putting anything in the pan until after the timer is done. I've certainly ruined my fair share of eggs by rushing, but having the patience to let it get up to temperature is pretty much the only "hard" part of using cast iron.
  - kingnothing 4y ago
    10 minutes? You don't need the pan to be 900 degrees! It's more like 1-2 minutes.
insanitybit 4y ago
I think I'm legitimately an egg cooking expert at this point. I've cooked eggs in 1000 different ways on different pans. There's no comparison - a non-stick pan is going to trivially handle eggs, regardless of how your pan is oiled, the heat, etc, whereas a cast iron is only going to do a decent job if you're cooking eggs in a few specific ways and you take care to control temperature and oil.
- earthling8118 4y ago
  It's also pretty trivial to get right. I'd use carbon steel just because it can heat faster. I can have my pan ready to go in 2 minutes of heating. Use a bit of oil (sometimes I mix in a tiny bit of butter to help nonstick, but it isn't required) and it's good to go. The difficulty is extremely exaggerated. I've not had a need for nonstick
- acdha 4y ago
  If the non-stick pan is brand new, yes. The problem is that you need to replace them every couple of years as the coating become degraded or they perform worse - even if you religiously use only soft utensils, simple use and cleaning will break it down. Unless you’re trying to avoid using oil for some reason, there is no time savings.
  - insanitybit 4y ago
    > simple use and cleaning will break it down. This isn't my experience. Low heat (which is how you should be using them) and soft utensils (I prefer to use those anyway) should be enough to keep it going - I have no scratches or wear on mine that I've noticed, though I did just replace them. They're quite cheap so replacing isn't really onerous either. > Unless you’re trying to avoid using oil for some reason I don't want my eggs to be particularly oily, or if I'm explicitly making a buttery french scrambled eggs I want to use butter and I want to add it in later, not use it for lubrication/ stick. You'll need much more for the cast iron.

mtalantikite 4y ago

I have a de Buyer carbon steel omelette pan and it is completely non-stick once seasoned. Way nicer for eggs than a cast iron, maybe she'd be open to trying that. I also have one of their crepe pans that we use for tortillas and dosas, check those out too.

yamtaddle 4y ago
We're about due for some new pans (the worst non-health-related thing about teflon is that they're much more a consumable item than other pan types) so I'll see about snagging one or two of those, thanks for the tip.
- earthling8118 4y ago
  This is the main reason I ditched them. Carbon steel is my primary pan type now. When you're breaking in a new pan use just a little bit of butter for stuff like eggs. I use more oil than butter but just having a little amount present helps.
hgomersall 4y ago
I'll echo this. One thing I learnt is that metal scourers, used judiciously, are perfect for cleaning a well seasoned carbon steel pan. Basically, the scourer pulls off the few bits that catch on the pan and if you don't really scrub (which you should never need to) the seasoning is robust enough. Just remember to not cook anything acidic (for which we use stainless) and try not to leave things in the pan for ages.
voldacar 4y ago
How do you season it? How do you clean the pan, and does it need to be seasoned again after cleaning?
- mtalantikite 4y ago
  Serious Eats has a good post on it [1]. Basically, remove the beeswax layer, then rub a layer of oil on the pan and heat it until it fully smokes off. You can do it on a burner or in the oven at 450F. You'll do that a maybe 3-5 times on a new pan, up to you. They tell you not to do carbon steel in the oven because of the material of the handle, but I've done it before and it worked out fine. I generally just use the stove top because it's easier. You clean the pan with soap and water as you would any other pan, and then towel dry since you don't want rust forming on the metal. You'll need to re-season it every so often depending on how much use the pan gets, but that's usually only every couple years. [1] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-season-carbon-steel-pans https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-season-carbon-steel-pans

Workaccount2 4y ago

I use both, I have a cast iron, a carbon steel, and a non-stick. The truth is that the non-stick is the most non-stick of the bunch when compared across all things you could cook in a pan. Sometimes I just want to reheat my pasta quickly and uses a quick splash of water and a paper towel to totally clean the pan. I am a total nazi though about making sure metal never touches the non-stick. It always gets cleaned and put away in its special spot immediately after using it.

insanitybit 4y ago

Could I ask why she has an issue? I've heard some people have had problems with them but as someone who was born and raised on cast iron I've never really understood.

yamtaddle 4y ago
More care & technique required while cooking to keep things from sticking or burning, the seasoning and iron itself flavors acidic foods so the pans aren't as nearly-universally-useful as teflon, can't put them in the dish washer, cleaning in general becomes a kind of balancing act between leaving soon-to-be-rancid fat on the pan (which will flavor your next dish) and stripping the seasoning (you can't just clean everything off, completely, like you can with teflon or stainless).
- arcticbull 4y ago
  It’s really not nearly as bad as you’ve made it out. Put some salt in the pan, rub it down, apply a thin layer of oil and good to go. Is not some occult ritual.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    My pans and experience disagree, but OK. Sometimes that's true, sure, but getting a stuck-on mess off them is worse and more fiddly than other pans. Recall, I do use cast iron, my wife's the one who finds it to be too much.
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    You don't even need that. Soap and water work fine.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Yeah soap is fine, I like the salt for abrasion.
- acdha 4y ago

aosmond 4y ago

How about ceramic pans?

yamtaddle 4y ago
You mean enameled cast iron? We've got a big pot like that, great for things that need to go in the oven, not just on the stovetop, but it's damned heavy so I don't tend to use it unless I have to. [EDIT] Oh, googling, yes, we do also have a ceramic-coated steel(?) fry pan still kicking around, though I almost never use it because the non-stick was never great and got worse fast. Teflon better if I need non-stick, stainless better if I don't and also don't want to have to baby the pan.

earthling8118 4y ago

Stainless steel just really isn't the same thing or used for the same purpose. It is an important type to have available but I wouldn't cook eggs in them for example. Better to use a carbon steel or cast iron so I can just cook in it and not worry about stickage.

bioemerl 4y ago

I got a pre seasoned one and beyond the care to make sure it doesn't rust it seems identical to Teflon to me. Lodge, got it from Walmart.