Genuinely curious what supposedly happens if you dont follow all these "rules" for cooking with cast iron. Do the pans disintegrate from rust? Does the food taste like poo and/or give you ebola?
Because my parents have had a couple of cast iron pans for like 50 years now and they have never had to perform any arcane rituals to make them work. Just wash with dish soap, dry, and put them back in the cupboard.
Yeah, that sounds more sensible than the seasoning/oil rubbing/sacrifice to the ancient ones sorta stuff that inevitably pops up whenever someone mentions cast iron.
Seasoning/oil rubbing makes sense because it creates a layer of polymer that won't let rust in. You remove it with soap which is why it can rust if you don't dry it fast.
The seasoning can be ruined, but you really have to try hard. I had a roommate who would cook steaks on my cast iron skillet after marinating them in steak sauce. The sauce would burn on the bottom of the skillet and leave a layer of charcoal, and then he left it soaking in the sink full of soap, which made it rust. I ended up taking the pan to my friend's metal shop and sand-blasting it back to bare metal and starting over on the seasoning. But even then the iron was intact, you'd have to hit it with a sledgehammer to permanently destroy a cast iron skillet.
Genuinely curious what supposedly happens if you dont follow all these "rules" for cooking with cast iron. Do the pans disintegrate from rust? Does the food taste like poo and/or give you ebola?
Because my parents have had a couple of cast iron pans for like 50 years now and they have never had to perform any arcane rituals to make them work. Just wash with dish soap, dry, and put them back in the cupboard.
the important thing is to dry them promptly. If you neglect that step, you risk letting rust set in.
Yeah, that sounds more sensible than the seasoning/oil rubbing/sacrifice to the ancient ones sorta stuff that inevitably pops up whenever someone mentions cast iron.
Seasoning/oil rubbing makes sense because it creates a layer of polymer that won't let rust in. You remove it with soap which is why it can rust if you don't dry it fast.
Yeah, I don't get the babying a chunk of iron thing. They're nice because they're so tough.
The seasoning can be ruined, but you really have to try hard. I had a roommate who would cook steaks on my cast iron skillet after marinating them in steak sauce. The sauce would burn on the bottom of the skillet and leave a layer of charcoal, and then he left it soaking in the sink full of soap, which made it rust. I ended up taking the pan to my friend's metal shop and sand-blasting it back to bare metal and starting over on the seasoning. But even then the iron was intact, you'd have to hit it with a sledgehammer to permanently destroy a cast iron skillet.