I hate cast iron so I am in favour of this.

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Yeah, soap doesn't hurt a fucking thing, If I just cooked with a seed oil or bacon or something I'd be inclined just to let it burn off, But if I cooked noodles or pasta or garlic or anything fragrant on there, I'd soap and scrub the piss out of it. I just make sure to throw it back on the fire and get it past 212 if it's been wet.

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Well that’s just crazy. I wash mine with soap and water after cooking… but then I give it a quick flame dry and re-season on the stove top, which I can definitely admit is more maintenance than most people want to deal with.

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I just reseasoned my 12” Lodge today! A lot of nasty smells coming out as I took off layers and layers of old seasoning with barkeeper’s friend. But now it has a non sticky, glassy smooth new sunflower oil seasoning. Very slick!

Does anyone know how to avoid having bacon foul up the seasoning? Seems like it always reacts chemically and incorporates proteins into the seasoning which make it nasty and dry and flaky rather than smooth and glassy.

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That's just a dirty pan. Actual cast iron seasoning isn't sticky or dirty because it has no impurities from the food, it's actually polymerized with the cast iron and it should look make the pan look black and glassy. I wash mine with Dawn soap and hand dry it, and it makes Teflon look like a joke. I can heat it without any butter or oil, drop in a glob of egg yolk, and it'll slide like it's skating on Astroglide. You're having a skill issue and you need to get good.

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You have problems with cast iron sticking but you like stainless steel? Stainless steel is probably the most non stick material you can use. I can't stand the stuff.

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That's just an abuse of olive oil. Olive oil is a finishing oil when you want the flavor. Use a neutral oil like avocado.

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I wash mine with Dawn soap and hand dry it,

Yeah, I think the big hangup for a lot of people is that detergents used to contain lye which would react with the steel. No longer the case. Folks will seriously refuse to clean their pans which is gross AF.

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Unseasonably mad

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Also don't temp shock them, they can warp

hypnotoad

Lol I'm not religious about it or anything, but it's porous unlike other cooking materials, so yeah, I don't put soap on it

Canopyflyer

Cooking has been a hobby of mine for decades now. I have gone through a lot of phases in cooking, especially early on.

I have used cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and a dubious flirtation with all aluminum.

16 years on now and this is what I reach for 100% of the time:

Skillet/sautee: cladded stainless. Both standard side and high sided.

Dutch Oven: Enameled cast iron.

Pots Pans: Cladded stainless steel. For smaller 1qt to 2qt I like All Clads D5 for its heat retention. Larger than that I like the D3 for its lighter weight

Grill Pan: cast iron. Hate the excessive weight though

Non-stick: Ceramic coated aluminum. What ever Americas Test Kitchen recommends that year. I consider these disposable items. I stopped using TEFLON a long time ago.

I used cast iron skillets for several years. I found them to be finicky. Heat retention was stupidly high and that's not always a good thing. Excessively heavy and god forbid you attempt any sort of tomato based sauce or anything acidic for that matter. Circumstances forced me to use stainless steel and I just found it matches my needs in a kitchen much better than cast iron. It gets used, it gets cleaned and I put it away. No having to have the vaginal juices of a thousand virgins on hand to make sure it doesn't destroy the next egg I try to cook.

I consider cast iron skillets like safety razors. They had their day, but continue on because of a dedicated set of die hard users. Nothing wrong with that, just not my thing.

The above goes for carbon steel as well, although it usually isn't nearly as heavy.

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We do wash them, I clean mine by boiling water in them, scraping any stubborn bits with a wooden spatula, rinsing it out under running water and wiping them down with a clean towel and heating the pan again to evaporate any remaining water. No microbials will survive being boiled and then heated again, anything stuck to the pan dissolves away in boiling water and a clean towel will wipe away anything else. After that I add a few drops of oil and wipe down the still hot surface with the thinnest possible coating of oil.

Seasoning for cast iron doesn't mean holding onto previous flavors. It definitely shouldn't taste like last night's dinner. Seasoning in the context of cast iron is the build up of thin layers of polymerized oils from heating them up in a clean pan that forms a durable protective finish that is incredibly non-stick.

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In all fairness by the looks of the carbon buildup on the outside this skillet is due to be reseasoned. I doubt the dishwasher will do much to help; this thing needs a lye bath or electrolysis at this point.

I just stripped my 20+ year-old 10" lodge because the carbon buildup was flaking on the inside. The pan is better than new now as the rough finish has worn considerably (though it isn't glass smooth). I have a lot of fond memories of meals made in this skillet and plan on using it for the rest of my life even though I can afford and own arguably better quality cookware these days.

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It is a myth that you can't use dish detergent on cast iron. If it feels greasy and filthy, it is greasy and filfthy.

The truth behind the "no soap" myth is that we used to use lye-based soap for dishwashing. Lye does, indeed, break down seasoning. But we use surfactant-based detergents now, rather than actual soap. Detergents break down oils, but they don't

Your boomer parents/grandparents couldn't wash their cast iron with dish "soap". You can.

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React with the steel.. in the cast iron? I'm confused

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Try washing it.

So long as you're not using the lye-based soaps your grandparents used to wash their dishes, you're fine. Dishwashing detergent does not damage seasoning.

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Teflon itself isn't poison. The entire point of teflon is that it's so chemically unreactive that nothing can even bind to it on a molecular level.

The problem with Teflon is that manufacturing it uses a lot of actually toxic chemicals incidental to making the Teflon bind to the metal of a pan and because it's so non-reactive and very brittle, general use and any disposal of it will result in Teflon molecules just floating around in the environment unable to be broken down by anything.

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Ugh. You wanna know the secret to cooking on cast iron/carbon steel? Just cook with it. Put fat in, get it hot, put your food in. It's really that easy. Wipe it out when you're done, rub some oil on it. That's it. You can even cook tomato sauce in it, it'll be ok. People have been using cast iron to cook all kinds of things, acidic and not, for literal centuries. This myth that cast iron/carbon steel pans are these delicate special snowflakes that need constant attention and maintenance needs to die.

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That’s what led me to redoing the seasoning today. I washed up the grease with a few drops of Dawn and the pan came out with large areas of brown/white and dry/powdery rather than black and shiny.

I definitely have had the pan have a really strong seasoning that maintains a hard, glossy black finish even after washing with soap before. I’m hoping the current seasoning holds up a bit better.

I think maybe sometimes I burn the seasoning from cooking with too high heat? I really love to put a good sear on a burger or a steak and I love how cast iron is like a deep cycle battery that can store and release a large amount of heat into a piece of food.

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I'm imagining the sound