Why people love cast iron pans (and why I'm on the fence)

This video is sponsored by Squarespace Cast Iron Skillets. You can't put them in the dishwasher. You probably shouldn't cook very acidic foods in them. You probably shouldn't use hard, sharp tools. You have to constantly season them using this unpleasant smell. process that no one seems to fully understand, they rust if you don't maintain them regularly and if they rust or mess up the seasoning too much you may have to restore them with some kind of link villain run situation, electrolysis is really blowing up. At this point, that's all it builds up and breaks down, why do

people

love

this stuff?

Well, some

people

don't like them, and I'm actually a little on the

fence

about it, but I'll try to give you the best argument for the

cast

.

iron

I think there are two general virtues to these

pans

. I'm going to tell you about them and in the process we will cover all the basics of use and maintenance. The oldest known

cast

iron

was produced in the 5th century BC. C. in modern China. Europeans in Jiangsu Province didn't become familiar with it until the 14th century, when it introduced them to new and interesting ways to kill each other and what exactly cast iron is.

It is generally defined as an alloy of iron and carbon containing at least two percent carbon. The carbon is what turns it black. The molten part refers to the process by which the iron is shaped. It is melted and then poured into a mold made of sand, which is the foundry. This is the Medellin Columbia factory of Victoria manufacturer. of cookware of what Epicurious calls the best 12-inch pre-seasoned cast iron skillet I asked Victoria Andres Mejía general manager why in the 21st century you would still work with an ancient material like cast iron when you could work with a modern material that does not rust and can be put in the dishwasher just like stainless steel, first of all, the cost will be extremely expensive.

In fact, this is a 12-inch stainless steel skillet made by Sardel in Italy. You should know that they sent it to me for free, but that's not the case. Paying me some money, it's a really good pan, but it costs about a hundred dollars. Victoria's highly rated 12 inch frying pan costs around 30, why is it so much more expensive? The geometries you can get are typically stainless steel and stamped. this is done by taking a thin sheet of steel and stamping the shape if it's a cheap thin pan like this little one which could basically be the end of the process but for a quality pan like sardel then it is made thicker by placing layers. multiple sheets stamped on top of each other, this is a five layer pan so it is five layers which is a more expensive process and one of the reasons they do it is that steel is comparatively difficult to cast in a mold, you have to heat the steel to a higher temperature to melt it and then when you do that, it doesn't flow as well as cast iron steel also shrinks a lot as it cools, which causes all kinds of issues.

Iron doesn't work, you just make a mold in the shape you want. pour the iron and that's it, and the geometries you can make are whatever you can imagine. the mangoes you can produce. the feeding pipes. The spesor. Ah yes, the thickness. heavy pan Heavy bottom

pans

have more thermal mass, meaning they can absorb and store much more heat from their burner to transfer to your food. You can take a cheap thin skillet and heat it up screaming on the stove, but the moment you put in a steak. there, the little heat that is stored in the pan will transfer to the meat and suddenly the pan won't be as hot anymore, it will take time to bounce back and you won't get as good a crust.

A thick, heavy frying pan serves as a sort of regulator between the stove and the food, it heats up slowly and cools down slowly, so it cooks the food more evenly. This is especially advantageous in natural fires that can be somewhat unpredictable and difficult to control. Cast iron remains the favorite cookware of campers everywhere. It is also especially good on electric burners that turn on and off constantly. If a thin, poor quality pan is used, things can go great, but then the burner comes back on and suddenly the heat spikes and the food starts to burn.

A heavy pan just goes soft. everything is done and cast iron is by far the least expensive material with which to make a big, thick, heavy skillet, with the possible exception of aluminum, but aluminum is much less dense than iron, so literally you would have to make an aluminum pan three times thicker than this to get one that is the same weight and that would be silly, that's why no one does that, plus aluminum is not magnetic therefore you can't use it in an induction burner. The griddle works great on induction, but we're going back to steel for a while.

Second, another reason why steel is expensive is that you have to make the handle separately and then screw it on. You can't stamp this with the rest of the pan shape, I mean, you can, but it will be a bit of a fun shape like this. clever design by takayuki shibata knife maker great piece, but for obvious reasons the handles of steel cookware are usually screwed on and that connection is a weak point that can loosen over time iron is cast in three dimensional molds so that it is everything integrated is one piece, it is cheaper to make and much more durable, so durable that today people cook in iron pans that are a hundred years old or even more.

This is my friend David Ragsdale's garage in Athens, Georgia, where he is a be

love

d high school English teacher and advisor to the student news magazine. His sideline is finding and restoring collectible cast iron antiques and selling them online. The link to his store is in the description. He is a public school teacher and a good guy. He made her a business. I wondered if I can restore it, so I started experimenting. so many different setups from the easy remove method that I showed you to the live bath and the electrolysis bath and, um, a lot of trial and error and I realized that I could sell these pieces and they are so cool that you can make brownies with are.

I can make cornbread in these, it's probably one of the most versatile cookware you can use, you can braise in it, you can go from the top in the oven, you can brown, you can bake, so voila, that's what I would consider The first of the two main virtues of cast iron cookware: it's simply the least expensive way to make an incredibly high-quality skillet in any shape you could want. You can buy it when you are young and have no money and then you can watch your grandchildren cook. with this is good, the second great virtue of cast iron cookware, you can make them quite non-stick, that is the seasoning, you rub it with a little oil and then literally burn it, this causes the oil to break down and polymerize Much like plastics are made, you can create a glassy surface called patina that is almost as nonstick as Teflon.

I use Teflon pans. The health and safety concerns about them are really overblown. I have a full video on that which is in the description. What is not exaggerated is the environment. Dangers of Teflon production, if you don't want to be a part of that, then cast iron is the best alternative. Most cast iron manufacturers these days are pre-seasoning their pans at the factory. This is the curing line in Victoria, but to have a very good non-stick surface you have to do it little by little, right, until Andres Ahi will tell you that his factory seasoning is not enough at home, you have to accumulate many thin layers of seasoning on top of the another as a lacquer Why can't they just apply a super thick layer of the plant?

The thick layer will not get a seasoning because it will be like burnt oil and will be a crust that will not stick to the surface. it will just come off or worse, if you use too much oil, the surface won't be hard and glassy, ​​it will be a little sticky and sticky. Some people say it's due to insufficient carbon deposition, whatever that means, but here's the thing. As far as I can tell, no one has done academic research on seasoning cast iron pans. You know what kind of oil works best, what kind of heat works best, and what kind of procedure works best if you're a graduate student in materials science or something.

I think a great dissertation or thesis project is hiding in plain sight here, the manufacturers have certainly done a lot of proprietary research and the people of Victoria have found an oil they like best for seasoning. Here is Manuel, Andrés Mejía's son, who is the main product designer in company what we use is linseed oil any type of natural or vegetable oil has polymeric properties particularly linseed oil has a better transformation through a heating process to become a hard polymer than others creates a harder patina The idea of ​​using linseed oil apparently originated with a 2011 blog post by a woman named Cheryl Cantor and has spread far and wide.

Flax is extremely high in alpha linoleic acid which, for scientific reasons, is apparently excellent for polymerizing; You often find it in dietary supplements rather than the cooking oil section, but people successfully season cast iron skillets with any edible oil you can think of, saturated fats don't work as well, but even something like Pork fat and animal fat also contain some unsaturated fat. My friend David thinks the linen patina is too harsh. tends to crack like this buzzy wax is a blend of oils made especially for seasoning or many of my friends in the business many people use a spray, you get a super uniform coating, it's much more efficient Okay, let's season this old frying pan that David me gave a while ago.

I'll heat it over medium-low heat for a good 10 minutes. People argue about what exactly this does, maybe it's opening the pores of the iron, but it's certainly evaporating everything. water that's still there, so I'll just put a little bit of oil and spread it all over with a paper towel. If you want the thinnest layer possible, rub it until the oil seems to disappear and then turn it upside down. in the oven, this will allow excess oil to drip away from the cooking surface and some people say you should heat the oven to the smoking point of the oil you are using.

Graduate student, find out if that's true, but there are many others. people say just go to the highest temperature of your oven which is what I do 500 degrees once it heats up let the pan cook there for an hour it may smell a little because you are burning the oil , turn off the oven and just leave it. gradually cool there a few hours later you will have a nice new layer of seasoning that you will want to go crazy over, do it again five or six more times and you will have an amazing patina or you could just do it the old fashioned way and cook with the damn thing , prepare your food and then clean the pan.

Very sharp or abrasive things could chip your seasoning, but gentle scrubs are fine, warm water, just dig in there, you may have heard that you can never use soap on a cast iron griddle. bread is really true you ask a million different people and they will give you a million different answers in the old days, in the old days and in grandma's days, a lot of soap was based on lies, the lie would be eaten your condiments, contemporary soap really doesn't. has lying as its basis so dawn works that certainly won't stop a million people on the internet from saying you're not a grad student again please figure this out then dry the pan and the best way to do it en Put it back on the heat as before to evaporate everything, then apply a thin layer of oil as before and then store the pan, the oil forms a safe barrier against moisture in the air preventing corrosion and then when you heat the pan to cook with it next time that layer of oil will polymerize a little and you repeat and repeat and repeat if you start to see cracks or uneven spots in an old patina you can do another proper round of seasoning in the oven.

Now, whether the seasoning chips or some of the iron could get into the food and then into the body and have some minor health implications, that's a conversation for another day. We'll do a whole video on the health implications of specific pans, but certainly acidic foods can cause some iron to leak out of the pan, which can taste gross, so maybe don't cook tomato sauce here , but you know some people do it now, you might wonder why I can't get the best of bothworlds and simply season a stainless steel. Good steel pan, you can and some people do it, but it doesn't stick as well, the best way is to have mechanical adhesion and a cast iron has a rough surface on the shiny surface that is stainless steel, the mechanical resistance is never as good as softening cast iron, that's why it doesn't last, that porous surface comes from the sand in the mold and speaking of silica, another way to get the best of both worlds is to get enameled or glazed cast iron, it's basically a layer of glass that bakes at extreme heat with this, it has all the thermal mass and molding possibilities of cast iron and it won't rust, you can put it in the dishwasher and it won't react with acidic ingredients, but you can't really season it.

So it's not non-stick and these pans are very expensive now, with all that said, have I sold out on good old unglazed cast iron pans? I don't know, this is my opinion, f-w-i-w, I think cast iron is a great type of pan. to use it if you are really going to use it all the time if you are going to keep it in the drawer for months at a time, bad things can start to happen, that oil that you put inside after cooking with it the last time could turn rancid and the pan might start to rust to the point where you would have to take the pan to my friend David and he would have to dip it in some of his chemicals that are connected to a car battery, will speak now, Mr.

Bond, if you are going to use, I say use it, if not, yes, go for the stainless steel one, it's easier, even easier than That's Squarespace, the sponsor of this video. It's actually the easy, low-cost option if you need to have some kind of online presence once you've chosen a template that aligns with what you're trying to do in the world. just include some images or some text of your own and add whatever you need maybe you need to sell a product. Squarespace can do all the credit card paperwork for you maybe you need to let people schedule appointments with you there is a whole calendar situation so maybe you need to let someone else worry about all of this you can hire an expert from Squarespace to build your site for you if you have other things that need your attention more urgently once it's ready, Squarespace hosts the site for you and you can save ten percent when you publish or when you register a domain by going to squarespace.com ragusia and by entering my code regucia you will be doing us both a favor that's all in the description thanks squarespace now choose your weapon and start cooking