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

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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

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¯\(ツ)/¯ wouldn't kill it. Just scrub any flakes off and re-season. The abuse they can take is almost unreasonable.

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I have a side business restoring antique cast iron pans and I use them for most of my cooking. I cook whatever the fuck I want in them, I leave the pan dirty on the stove a couple days sometimes when I'm busy, I use a scotch brite and scrub them clean with dish detergent, it really doesn't matter.

Go get a shitty Walmart pan and complain that CI is too hard to work with, it's ridiculous. My CHF #8 is an amazing piece of hardware

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Cast iron is to sear the bajesus out of steak. Nothing else can blacken the steak crust to my satisfaction without inadvertently overcooking the middle.

I hate it for everthing else.

A tiny cheap teflon pan just for 1-2 fried eggs and nothing else.

Then SS all-clad as the go-to for everything else.

Been having good experience with the hexclad teflon pan although handwash only. I believe it is generally disliked because it is marketed as "dishwasher safe" which is absolutely false. When handwashed it holds up very well.

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Scrub it clean with soap, then put the pan on a burner to heat dry it. At the end, rub a very thin layer of fat on it. I use clarified butter. It's a cumulative process, you won't see all the benefits of nonstick all at once.

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You could leave it outside in the dirt for 5 years and still just give it a lye bath then reseason it to work like new

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I think maybe sometimes I burn the seasoning from cooking with too high heat?

That will happen around 450-500F. One method of stripping seasoning is to run it through an oven self-cleaning cycle.

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Does cast iron really take babying? I have a 12" cast iron skillet that's pretty much the only pan I use, and I just scrub it with steel wool, get it hot again, then throw in some avocado oil. It takes like 60 seconds of work

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What weirdo takes a picture of their dirty dishes and posts it to the Internet? I'm unreasonably angry, mission accomplished.

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I am in flavor of this.

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Ahhh I probably get it over 500 for a big sear. Kinda crazy that my stove’s burner can get there even on medium.

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even putting it on the top rack, instead of the bottom where the pots go.
Masterfull attention to detail in trolling.

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Nothing else can blacken the steak crust to my satisfaction without inadvertently overcooking the middle.

Cooking at such temperatures is really bad for you. It will give you literal ass cancer eventually.

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If you want it that high, I would suggest using wok seasoning methods instead of cast iron. Basically, you "blue" the pan (develop a black iron oxide layer) by holding it at 550F for an hour or so. You'll burn off the oil every time you use it, but the black oxide layer is relatively non-stick. This will work better with carbon steel than cast iron.

Alternatively, you might consider an even heavier pan, to hold a 400-45F temperature even longer.

The burner will get well over a thousand. Without something cooling it off, a pan can overheat even on low.

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I used flax oil to season my dutch oven, and finds it stands up to frequent tomato based pasta sauces for a bout a year, but it does eventually fail, an you know immediately when that happens, iron flavoured bolognese. Did that for a few years and finally got an enamelled set for that. As for the frying pans, mine are really old (1920s) and quite lightweight, nowhere near as heavy as newer Wagner 1898s and Lodges. I find the heat retention just perfect when making a carbonara, i turn the burner off when the pasta is three minutes from done and the heat is just perfect to make the carbonara sauce cook without turning into scrambled eggs. The other use, pan frying steaks, nothing does that better. They're not for everything, I have one 7 inch teflon pan that i use for one purpose only, and that's french omelets. I have zero interest in trying that in a cast pan.

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Dawn has lye, that's why it works so well

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dawn literally has lye in it

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No, it doesn't. But people think it does and will get really vocal about it if you, god forbid, get it super gross and need to rinse it out with some soap and water.

That's why I specified that it was peer pressure, not necessity.