I mean, let's say it was sour kraut Saturday and you just downed a whole litre of the stanky delicious juicy slop. Are you gonna totally destroy that bidet? How do you keep that thing hygienic?
They're good (I personally use them almost exclusively) but they're just pans at the end of the day. Cast Iron Guys act like they're some life changing miracle
Other funny facts about cast iron Redditors:
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They overpay for cast iron crap for God knows what reason. They drop $50 on a single raw cast iron item that can be had for $10.
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They don't refinish them. The best part of cast iron is a smooth nonstick surface from the seasoning. But you have to sand down the new ones before seasoning because (1) they're a little bumpy from the casting and (2) they're usually treated with a factory seasoning that makes them bumpier. They just dropped $50 and didn't even get the thing they're hyped about.
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They use and recommend expensive and brittle seasoning oils that will flake off. They go nuts for raw flax oil. A normal vegetable oil will make a more durable seasoning and not go rancid in a week.
That said, cast iron is basically a white person wok (the best cooking tool on the planet) and woks/proper (cheap) cast iron can eliminate the need for several other pans. They'll also outlive you and not give you Teflon cancer.
Where can you find a good pan? I wanted to buy one and was looking to buy a $50 pan but not sure what to do now after reading this.
Get real sick of Teflons SHIT, the pans last like 2 years before being trash
I have thrifted every cast iron i own.
Of course, that means often times it’ll be a crap shoot
Often times not the case, people seem to not know they can reseason cast irons or something
There are a lot of different pans that are good (and not aluminum + Teflon). I assume you're mostly asking about cast iron but I'll also list some others. Here's how I would search for a cast iron pan, in order of preference:
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Thrifting/Craigslist. You can get fantastic stuff this way for cheap and it produces slightly less demand so you can also put a microscopic but still real anticapitalist feather in your cap.
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Costco often has good deals if you're already a member or know someone who is. There's a two pack that comes with silicone grips for $30 at Costco right now. They look heavy but that can be a good thing.
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Lots of places inexpensive cookware is sold or on sale. A 10" lodge is currently $17 new on the Bezos site.
Personally, I don't think there's any reason to ever pay more than ~$15 and if you thrift it should be $5-$10. The latter is the same price as a cheap aluminum Teflon pan, may require a couple bucks of sandpaper (get low grit sandpaper for metal or a metal scrub brush thing) and some elbow grease, and will last you forever.
Other options that are pretty good alternatives to Teflon pans:
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Restaurant supply stores have pretty good pans for decent prices. They're usually aluminum but they often sell bare metal ones that you can somewhat treat like carbon steel. I like to weirdly plan for things so I'm avoiding aluminum in case a landlord has an induction range. A "First Street" bare aluminum pan costs $15-$17.
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Anodized aluminum are also pretty good. The anodization is kind of non-stick and you can use metal utensils on it. But they tend to be more than $30 per pan so probably best to thrift.
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Stainless is nice but you have to learn how to cook with it because it is the least non-stick thing on the planet. There are very nice brands with great thermal control properties that are on my list of things to thrift on the cheap when/if COVID dies down.
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Carbon steel can be seasoned like cast iron while being thin and light. Standard woks are carbon steel and you can also get frying pans. Carbon steel stuff tends to cost around $50 new. I don't think there's a very big second hand market for carbon steel woks but if you find one, jackpot! IMO a wok is worth it if you cook a ton of East Asian recipes but otherwise a big $10 cast iron pan will work perfectly well for the same tasks. Carbon steel pans are for cooking nerds with cash or people who need seasoned nonstick, no Teflon, and for whom cast iron is too heavy.
IMO patiently thrifting/craigslisting is the way to go for most things, you get great stuff for very cheap and cookware in particular tends to be a great deal. My local Craigslist has 12" lodges for $10-$15 right now, the brand that sicko Redditors go nuts over for some reason.
PS if you're hardcore you can even restore rusted cast iron that looks like it's complete garbage. Such items should be free. Sometimes it's a lost cause, but usually it comes back like magic by soaking it in something like vinegar and then sanding it.
Hope this helps!
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the pans last like 2 years before being trash
All it takes is my dad using one ONE TIME lol
Lodge makes cheap cast iron pans, sold everywhere. Mine are both Lodge. Walmart, if you have no where else to shop.
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Yeah it’s just the pan that gives me a slightly better crisp on meat. It’s not anything spectacular.
I'd say it gives a far superior crisp on meat, but yeah it's just a pan.
Are they though? I own several. Even use flax oil on them to keep them well seasoned. I find them to be extremely niche. 304 stainless with aluminum bonded bottom seems to be the most versatile of all my cookware and easily last multiple lifetimes. I have these, the actual antique ones, the modern ones aren't as good. They used to belong to my grandparents and then my parents.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154544316452?hash=item23fb8f2024:g:tEUAAOSw7Hpg7yIk
you can get cast iron wet, you just can't leave water on it for extended periods of time. hell, you can even use soap (modern soaps don't have lye) if you're careful
Cast iron pans and carbon steel pans are great because of how you season them (they become nonstick without Teflon) and because of the range of heat control you get.
They're also not particularly expensive and cast iron can be found and rehabilitated for $10-$15 easily. They will also last you your entire life whereas a typical nonstick will crap out within a decade, depositing pretty bad carcinogens into your food.
Stainless is great as well, just has different properties. Thrifted, simple and cheap IKEA stainless pots are my go-to with one of those little portable induction burners. Can heat up very fast (water boiling in 30 seconds), they're light, easy to clean if you do it right away.
A person could cook very well with either (1) one cast iron pan and a stainless pot or (2) a big ol' carbon steel wok, keeping that set for life.
I'm gonna asume you were born in North Klansville (Louisiana) and explain you that you shit on the toilet normally, then switch to the bidet to rinse your butthole, then use paper to dry/finish any dificult spec.
Then you flush the toilet and flush the bidet and clean with a toilet brush and bleach any remaining skid.
Voilá, your ass is now cleaner than the average murican and you didn't become gay because of it.
you didn’t become gay because of it.
You talked me right out of a bidet
A bidet will give you the realization that Americans are walking around with doodoo asses.
Also despite spraying your booty hole with water, they actually save water by cutting down (dramatically) on your use of toilet paper.
I have a sqatti potti to get the natural position, but you know, sometimes you just build up some serious gas and it just comes out like a hydrogen bomb with spray everywhere...Kind of being serious here, I'm interested in the idea of a bidet, but practicality seems a bit off to me. Are they easy to keep clean?
Like, do you have to clean the thing after every go?
It depens on what kind of bidet you get, I was talking about the separate ones (the ones with their own bowl), not the built in.
In any case, if nothing got attached to the bowl (or the movable stick in case of the built in) then you don't need to clean it immediately. But is always recomendable to clean your toilet as often as posible.
Ahh, interesting. I think I'll look into the separate kind, seems like a non-committal way to try one out!
Eeh no, actually those need the same plumbing and space as another toliet so I reccomend the built in
I think we may be talking about separate things. There are squeeze bottle types you just fill from the sink, which is what I'm going to try, and there are some that use the same water source as the toilet via a fitting with a splitter and it is just a hand held nozzle that sits in a holster attached to the upper bowl.
Ah, yeah I never tried any of those, I was thinking about the ones that are just a retractable ¿stick?/¿wand?/whatever that you attach to your toilet.
I have a sqatti potti
should've used this as your fad example instead of cast iron tbh
Most of them retract when not in use and they have a little lip that covers the nozzle from debris while retracted. So you’d need to clean that more than the nozzle itself. A lot of them also have a “cleaning cycle” where they just flush themselves with water to remove anything that may have gotten on it while spraying.
bidets are clearly an artifact of late capitalism, and I can't believe I'd see people on this Hexbear website advocating individual commercial solutions for communal problems
I just have a comrade purse their lips and spit a big mouthful of water at my chocolate starfish
The way i was convinced to buy one was: do you wash your dishes? Or just dry them.
Do you wash a tub of yogurt once you've scooped a serving out of it?
Do you wash the soles of your shoes regularly?
So my point there is that 1) your butt is more than just your anus, nobody cleans their whole rectum (or colon, or large intestine) and if they don't, the microbes will be right back. You're never going to get your ass completely "clean", you're just going to get it wet.
And 2) the microbial community there serves a function, so even if you wanted to clean further than the sphincter, it wouldn't be a good idea.
If you get dog shit on your hands do you wash your hands or smear tissue paper around on them to hopefully wipe off the dogshit?
bidets are absolutely awesome. me and my partner switched to it 2 years ago and will never go back.
Yeah about 3 yrs ago my partner and I got a tushy with the warm water, and I can't ever go back. Next place I get I'm going to buy one of the ones with a heated seat and everything
Am Bangladeshi. Every toilet in bangladesh, public or private, has a handheld bidet. it’s like a detachable shower but smaller. you point it at your bussy and shoot.
I’ve only personally ever used those retractable bidets twice. they’re nice, but i prefer the handheld ones. i live in the US now and my house has one, and my roommates appreciate me for it.
So do you just drip dry? You pull your pants up and walk around with wet underwear for the next hour?
I thought the whole point of the bidet is that toilet paper is barbaric and needs to be removed from the bathroom. People only use bidets.
Absolutely god tier, Westerners are literal savages for using toilet paper
I will proselytize to anyone who will listen about them
Bidets are just a meme, but the three seashells method is commonplace.
I got one back when everyone was freaking out about toilet paper, and "life changing" is not really an exaggeration. I have one of the cheaper ones that just bolts onto the toilet and hooks into the same waterline, and it's unironically one of the best purchases I've ever made. It cuts down household TP usage by like 95%, and just works so much better. It needs cleaning like the rest of the toilet, but nothing special; unless you're regularly shitting all over the toilet seat, it shouldn't really get especially gross. Can't recommend it enough.
