Is this ok?
1mon 16d ago by lemmy.world/u/Pirtatogna in castiron
It looks a bit "spotted". Is that normal or need I do something about it?
That spotting is just where some of the oil pooled ever so slightly when seasoning. It'll even out with use and more seasoning.
There's nothing you can do to break it.
There's no "finish" the material halfway thru is the same as on the surface.
If nothing sticks, you're fine.
If something sticks, "season" the pan again.
If something sticks, "season" the pan again.
Scrape it out with a steel spatula, don't treat it like a nonstick...and cook in it again.
I never seasoned any of my pans, didn't baby them either. Just bacon or butter or oil and used a steel spatula (one of those thick ones, winco is the brand I use) and just cook in it. All my pans are basically glass now.
Yeah...
Obviously an implied step was "remove what's stuck"...
Lots of people don't cook with animal products or use weird oil.
If you make bacon every morning, it's self healing. Make acidic vegetables and it's always going to be getting fucked up
Don't assume everyone uses a product the same as you
I make spaghetti sauce in mine....and what does it matter what you're cooking in it. I use peanut and corn oil for most of my cooking, it shouldn't get fucked up with regular use and oil.
I make spaghetti sauce in mine…and what does it matter what you’re cooking in it
Depends...
If your anemic, great idea.
If you have hemochromatosis or just worried about Alzheimer's risk...
Bad idea.
Could I trouble you for info on that last one? I mostly do tomato sauces in my enameled pan, but all the same
It doesn't just trip the "seasoning"...
Anything you cook in a cast iron pan, will end up with you eating a very very very small amount of the pan.
Because the iron leeches into what we cook, which is cool, we need iron. The acidic food that strips the seasoning, keeps stripping the fucking iron too, far and above non acidic foods.
If you anemia (low iron) it's a good thing.
However, people with hemochromatosis have too much iron already, if it's too high in blood it gets stored in organs which does cause problems. The treatment is just fucking bleeding tho, so most people who have the mutations for that, just donate blood regularly. They gets rid of iron, and they test your iron before to make sure you have enough.
Super easy to manage, not really a big deal.
There's a pretty good chance tho, that excessive iron can cause Alzheimer's. Research is still happening it'll be a couple years to definitively say that high iron over a long time is a contributing factor
For some people whos family gets Alzheimer's a lot, they may take extra precautions because their worried
But in context of the thread, I was just pointing out how different people use things diff and have different concerns
If someone eats a "traditional" American diet from when cast iron was popular, it's the easiest thing in the world
When I started eating healthier and losing a bunch of weight the last couple years, I eventually hung my lodge up. What I was cooking most often just wasn't working with cast iron.
I still break it out occasionally, but a cheap modern pan handles veggies and other stuff better.
My opinion: cast iron needs meat cooked regularly in it to be "easy", otherwise you're gonna be reasoning a lot
My opinion: cast iron needs meat cooked regularly in it to be "easy", otherwise you're gonna be reasoning a lot
Oil, but yea meat does make it way easier to utilize. I have one pan I only cook fish in, and it's basically just oil and fish all the time. Nothing else.
You're not wrong though, cast iron was definitely created with meat eaters in mind. But the majority of people are meat eaters, vegans are not a huge portion of the population...nor are people who have to much iron in their blood lol
Thanks for explaining yeah. I cook more breads/pizzas in my skillet than big steaks or stuff like that. Interesting about hemochromatosis, I didn't know that stuff.
Not sure about the concerns op mentioned, but cooking fatty things in it is basically adding oil/seasoning. Cooking acidic food eats away at the coating, if only slightly, so you will need to season it intentionally more often.
Technically, if you only cooked tomatoes and other acidic food in it it will remove the seasoning over time if you don't do anything. Guessing they are saying that eventually you will end up with more iron in your food than you should have.
I never seasoned any of my pans, didn't baby them either. Just bacon or butter or oil>
That's seasoning the pan silly.
Yea...true...but when people say season these days, they mean strip the old seasoning and then do the 900 steps of baking it in the oven with 47 different coats of some magical oil and let it hang out in the sun while sacrificing a goat to Amon Ra...so it doesn't rain while the sun is baking on that final layer...
When someone says "season it" or "re-season it" I usually interpret that as add another coat. Not a full strip and redo.
A lot of the cast iron groups are super into "gotta strip it and to properly get it seasoned"
Yeah there's some real intense people out there.
In everything I suppose. Internet is full of elaborate 48 step routines for practically anything you can imagine. One can make a terrible fuss out of everything if one wants to.
That said, it seems that you may actually need to do things slightly differently depending on for example your diet. That doesn't mean slipping into 900 step "seasoning routine", but you may need to take care of your cast iron tools a bit differently if they don't get fat from meat or if they're frequently exposed to high acidity foods.
Not a cast iron specialist at all, but just recently steel wool'd and reseasoned my own inherited cast iron that had a bunch of carbon build up.
This looks fine.
If it's anything like mine, those are just the carbon build up parts that's didn't let go before the last seasoning.
Just keep cooking with fats and it should be fine.
Did you recently re-season your pan? If so, it might have had just slightly too much fat added, leading small portions of the seasoning to turn rubbery due to the thickness. Cook on it to see whether it’s a bother. I usually don’t mind it, but it does get eaten away and deposited on your food if you’re charring acidic veggies in there. A lot of black flecks on my tomatillos that I find unappetizing
I did, yeah. I tried to use really really thin layer of oil. I'll see if it evens out with use.
My pans usually end up similar. First cook will probably have some extra char, but it works great after!
Looks better than mine and mine gets the job done
Cool, thanks for the replies guys!
Pan update after first cooking.
Minimal sticking, not sure I'd even call it sticking to be honest, no more than my previous (ceramic coated) pan. Didn't require much scraping and I was fine with just a wooden spatula. No detectable charring on the food either.
Didn't even use brush to wash it afterwards, just hot water and the same wooden spatula used to cook took care of it. It seemed unnecessary to use the brush. Thin coat of oil to finnish and it looks fine to me.
Looks good but best advice I can give is worry more about how your food tastes and the pan will take care of itself as long as you don’t let it rust, you are good.
I have a bit of a habit in nerding out with most things I do. This, I think, is just part of that.
The food I cooked was something I call my "basic slop-pan". It's tasty and nice, but nothing super interesting.
--Edit--
Plus I figured it might be interesting to someone else who also enjoys nerding out on things to see how things progress. :D
To be fair I didn’t see the sub this was in. I’ve had my pans for a few years now and even the “bad” dishes, like tomato based sauces, I use my pans to prepare them. They obviously don’t look as pristine as yours, but the seasoning is good and they hold up to an egg the next use. Whenever I’m in doubt I douse it in some oil and get it hot enough to smoke then wipe it down and keep on cookin’.
Thank you for your input, much appreciated!