My CI are slick as glass. I have no trouble with sticking. I have had in the past til I learned the no acidic foods thing. And the salt thing really does work. I don’t know why it works, but it does. I asked my MIL why one time, she just gave me look. I didn’t press the issue.
I’ve used my late grandmother’s 100 year old CI pan for the last 20 years.
My understanding is that cast iron was not replaced by stainless steel / aluminum / teflon cookware because those products cook “better”, but because those products cook similar to CI (“almost as well”) but they were “lighter” “easier to maintain” making them more “modern”.
For cleaning I don’t use the salt method, my grandmother told me just put clean water (into the dirty pan) and put it back on the burner on high heat and then as the water starts to boil you use a plastic brush or plastic scouring pad on it, swirling the water around and rubbing with just enough pressure to get it clean. After cleaning you rinse with clean water, wipe with a dry paper towel then put it back on the heat for a couple minutes until any remaining water is gone, then lightly coat it with oil on a paper towel.
It’s definitely more of a pain than an SS or aluminum pan since you can’t just fire it in the dishwasher, but it gives very even heat and is quite non-stick once it’s well seasoned.
No, it really doesn’t, as I said in #18. Watch this short Cook’s illustrated video if you don’t believe me.
Another seldom mentioned advantage to using cast iron cookwear on a daily basis - you get a good arm workout. Biceps, forearms, grip strength, all benefit!
I guess you need to define what ‘better’ is. Home cooking evolved around the use cast iron, so yes when newcomers came out they had to compare to cast iron because that’s the pans people learned to cook with. But cooking has then evolved to use a variety of cooking surfaces, and cast iron to me falls into a niche now. This is evident as hardly no one compares their cooking surfaces to cast iron, but now to teflon (for no stick, easy clean) or copper (for even heat), or stainless (classic durability and balanced cooking properties and dishwasher safe).
One aspect that cast iron is superior with is heat retention with slower transfer, but that’s not the all and all in cooking. But all and all I don’t consider cast iron a particularly superior cooking implement on the whole, but a unique tool for a small range of tasks, which is does very well at.
Cast iron has high conductivity relative to stainless steel with the same specific heat.
Aluminum has higher conductivity and higher specific heat. But… cast iron is massive. A 12" skillet weighs over 8 lbs, while a comparably sized SS/Al clad skillet weighs less than 3.
So overall, a cast iron skillet of the same size can absorb a LOT more heat than an aluminum one, and the same amount as a stainless steel one of the same mass. It can also conduct that heat faster than the stainless steel one.
If you need to cook something that needs a lot of heat over a relatively sustained amount of time (i.e. where you’re trying to brown/sear something), cast iron excels.
It’s not necessarily very good at anything else that skillets do- it doesn’t heat too evenly, it doesn’t conduct heat that well, it doesn’t change temp too fast, etc…
But what it does do well, it does extremely well like nothing else out there.
I don’t have all that science at my beck and call like bump, so this is merely personal experience of a guy who cooks every day, several times a day.
I have two Lodge cast iron pans, nicely seasoned, an 8-inch for cornbread and a 14-inch for frying chicken. The cornbread ALWAYS sticks to the iron, so I inevitably reach for a steel All-Clad skillet now. Chicken fries nicely in the big pan, but All-Clad steel gives me a much more attractive color. Also easier to clean and I don’t kill myself lifting them.
Not sure why I even still OWN the Lodge.
That’s not quite the same thing, though. That shows that it doesn’t GAIN heat evenly (and was done on an induction stovetop, to boot, which you’re not even supposed to USE cast iron on). It’s a huge thermal mass, of course it’s going to take a while to distribute the heat to places that aren’t immediately touching the heat source. Once the pan’s at temperature (and usually a temperature way, way hotter than that necessary to darken dry flour), is it still uneven?
That Cooks Illustrated video doesn’t show what they say it shows. Yes, cast iron heats up more slowly than thin steel or aluminum, but that’s not the same thing as heating unevenly. And it’s also not a fair comparison to use an induction stove surface, because then you have to consider not only the material’s thermal properties, but its electrical conductivity, and aluminum is a significantly better electrical conductor than iron.
The main difference between cast iron and thinner pans is that, simply because of their mass, cast iron pans change temperature more slowly. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you’re trying to make.
Cast iron heats up unevenly. The portion of metal directly touching the heat source will heat up much faster than the metal not touching the heat source. If you preheat the cast iron in a hot oven or give it a good long sit on the burner to allow the heat to spread, then it will cook evenly.
But if you simply slap the pan on the burner and leave it for 2 minutes and then throw your cutlet in the pan, you will get very uneven cooking.
I don’t even take care of mine all that well. I have a cheap-shit pan from Target that I bought for $15 in the early 2000s that I maintained a good season on. I cook acidic things in it from time to time. I wash with soap & water. I don’t bother with that salt shit anymore. I literally just cooked up a fried egg that released cleanly from the pan (with the help of a spatula, but nothing stuck to the pan.) It’s actually not my favorite for frying eggs (I like a lightweight teflon pan for that), but I just did it to test whether I could cook an egg in it without making a right mess of the egg and pan, and it came out without a problem – just a little jiggle necessary from the spatula in a tiny spot for it to completely release.
I find that interesting as I prefer cooking breakfast on the cast iron griddle over any non-stick pan I’ve used. We bought a Lava 8 qt enamelled dutch oven for Christmas and making soups/stews and bread in that sucker is just awesome! Same with the griddle on our induction cooktop.
Honestly, the thing I like most about cast iron is I can beat it up and not care. It’s iron, it’ll be fine. I don’t have any patience for prissy princess pans that you can’t use a metal spatula on.
But conductivity is not what makes induction work. The pan material has to have good reluctance, which iron does but copper and aluminum do not so much. There are induction heaters designed to work with most metals, but they tend to be more expensive.
I like over easy eggs, and I do the pan flip to achieve them. The heavy cast iron with steep lip isn’t conducive to this, or at least I have trouble with it.
I don’t really understand the cult of cast iron. Yeah, great, it’s better than nonstick, hooray. Why not just use a good steel pan and get better heat transmission and temperature control, less heavy, no harder to maintain, etc?
Everything sticks to steel pans. And burns.
Yeah, I’m sure that if I cooked on them all the time I’d get used to their behaviors and accommodate.
Between the two of us, we have a rectangular bacon-and-egg cast iron, two deep 12" (one with a cast iron lid, even), another pair of standard depth 12" pans, a pair of 9" pans, and a 6".
I’m not understanding the science-y thing about conductivity. Just preheat the thing. It’s not hard. I turn the gas on, put my pan on the burner. Go to the fridge and get eggs. By the time I get the egg and my spatula the pan is heated. Smal amount of cooking oil and egg goes in. Right quick your egg is cooked. What could be easier?
ETA, I got one of those copper clad pans, it’s basically worthless. It does make a decent grilled cheese.
I’ve never had any trouble with food sticking to steel pans. Are you talking about browning meat? You have to do it properly, that is, don’t try to move it until it releases (which also gives you the optimum Maillard reaction).