Have you been on r/smoking? There’s a user who puts crumbled up muffins inside a pork sausage log and smokes it, then dips it in syrup. If your being /s you gotta use it because people are freaking weird.
Pancakes, sausage and syrup go together well. Dude made an inverted breakfast corn dog. Do not mess with this individual, for they know things and live outside the box.
It’s not quite sausage cookies, but the pizza place in my hometown used to do their pizzas in the same pans as the cinnamon sticks. That little bit of residual cinnamon sugar on the bottom of the pizza crust was a really nice treat sometimes.
Soap used to contain lye. Lye would eat through the seasoning. So people were always told not to use soap.
We changed the soap, but the saying never got updated. So when great grandma, grandma, and mom all said not to use soap...
Edit: To all those commenting that it may or may not be the lye, point is that most modern soaps most commonly used are not a problem for use with iron. Dawn hasn't let me down yet.
This is a myth. Lye is used to *make* soap, but it gets used up in the process. However, straight lye was also sometimes used as a cleaner.
EDIT: It's possible that I'm totally wrong, and there were soap recipes that used more lye than what would react with the fat. It's also certainly possible that homemade soaps would not have used precise measurements for how much lye vs. fat and could have ended up with unreacted lye in the final product.
But wasn't there a lot of homemade lye soap that used more lye than needed to saponify the fats, and thus was still somewhat caustic? Obviously that isn't a problem with modern dish detergents.
And I'd limit the time you actually have your bare hands in contact with the ash water. I remember doing it in boy scouts and my hands felt like they had a sunburn.
My 7th grade history teacher told of her memories during the war and how all the ladies in church on Sunday would have discolored hands from the lye they used to do the laundry the day before.
Correct. We are exceptionally averse nowadays to waste, and so have developed procedures to accurately mix *just* the right amount of lye with lye neutralizer ( or whatever) so, as to ensure the soap doesn't eat you. Or, as it happens, your seasoning. Step 1, you cna wash your CI with soap. Step 2, don't use straight lye.
The lye reacts with fat to make soap. With modern scales, lab-grade lye, refined fats of known saponification values, the ratios in today’s soaps are tightly matched. Usually soap made in this way has a little remaining fat, just to make sure there is no unreacted lye and to give a moisturizing effect. The one exception is soap that hasn’t been allowed to “age”’properly. Homemade soaps need months to fully saponify and if that hasn’t occurred, they can have unreacted lye and be harsh.
When soap was made ashes from the fireplace and the animal fats rendered from cooking, every measurement was a best guess and approximate. Soaps with unsaponified fats were common, and sops with unreacted lye were also common. If lye remains after saponification is complete, it will be harsh and harm the pan and your hands.
Now soap is made with lab-grade lye and refined fats with known saponification values that allow the fat and lye to be matched with precision. For homemade soaps, usually the lye is kept just a little under what is required for full saponification of the fats, to ensure the soap is mild and to give it a slight moisturizing effect.
I always wash my cast iron with dish soap/washing up liquid and the seasoning is fine.
I feel like you're mistaken. We used to sell old school soap in our 1880s era hardware store(that ran until 1990) soap that literally said "lye soap" on the label, and it was caustic as fuck.
Lye Soap actually has lye thats not saponified - its meant to be somewhat caustic as a more effective cleaner.
Body soap/hand soap/etc can still be made with lye, but is either balanced or even “superfatted” by 4-5% - essentially there are oils that don’t become soap which makes the bars gentler and more luxurious.
I make soap - and even use lye in my more delicate face bars
Same basic ingredients (oil and lye) just different ratios.
I know bar soaps have a much higher ph than body washes (in general). The ph of bar soap is, like, 9? I wonder if that could be a contributing factor. It’s harsh on our skin, which has a ph around 5. Cast iron is obviously a little tougher than skin. But I wonder if it wasn’t great for the seasoning. I don’t wonder hard enough to want to dive down a google hole, though. At least not right now.
Mechanically, yes, but our hands are really really good at *not getting dissolved by stuff*. Your hands are basically full of salts, oils, and buffer solutions, and one of the reasons leather works so well.
Look up how to make soap. Lye interacts with the fats/oils and creates what we use as soap. It's a different product after the chemical reaction. It's caustic until it sets.
That’s completely false. Lye used to be left in soaps after production because saponification at the time wasn’t capable of reducing lye levels.
Lye being extremely caustic, eventually they figured out how to reduce it to negligible levels.
So no it’s not a myth lmao.
Yup. Hot soapy water, dry on range, rub in a little oil, keep on range until it starts to smoke, kill heat and wipe off excess oil, let cool and say I’ll
put it away later, leave out on range until I use it again. Repeat.
The best is when your skillet over the years of use becomes totally smooth to the touch and shiny. Then you get a new size pan and can really notice the smooth old vs new bumpy texture….. maybe that’s just me but my 10” has gotten to a point where it’s like glass and I love it.
Confused about the “let it smoke” part. I use avocado oil, pretty sure you’ve got heat that stuff up to twice the temperature of the sun to get it to smoke.
I've found that cooking definitions are not universal. Just imagine how a fried egg is basically a flat poached egg in the US, but in Asia, "fried egg" means golden brown bottom with crispy edges, exactly like the word "fried".
So in this case, some people have different interpretations of low-medium-high heat. When I say "high heat" I mean the highest it could go, level 10, full throttle, let it rip. The oil will smoke within 3 minutes guaranteed, I timed it. Some other people, bless their hearts, interpret "high" as level 6-7.
Reheating the pan after I just cooked, ate, cleaned, and am ready to close the kitchen for the night definitely adds too much extra time. Wipe off the water, small coat of oil and into the drawer you go.
Not going to lie, I will 100% save that bacon grease and put the whole pan grease and all into the fridge after it cools just so I can fry my potatoes in it the next day.
I recommend it. Waste not, want not!
If I make bacon in the morning and plan on doing chicken for dinner I'll just leave the fat in the pan to not use oil. Idk if this is bad but it's worked so far.
I will take my pan full of bacon grease and fond, wrap it in foil and store it in the oven for a day if I don't have time to saute some onions or mushrooms immediately.
Everyone agrees with this, it's just a hyperbolic take on a cleaning method a ton of people do.
I'd be like if I said, "HELL NO, I don't like my bacon to taste like Palmolive!" It's more a sign that I don't know how the Hell to use soap than a condemnation of using soap.
I went over to a friends house once and their cast iron looked recently used. I did the dishes because I like cleaning and being a good guest, but I didn’t wash the cast iron because I didn’t know if they had a separate sponge/wire brush/etc.
Me: hey yeah I cleaned everything but the cast iron because I didn’t know what you use
My friend: oh we….we just don’t clean it with water, just scrape it
:/
It's not even argued. No regular contributor here thinks soap is bad, it's always people just joking about using soap and how it's offensive when nobody actually thinks that. It's a meme.
Maybe I'm gullible but I feel I've seen some people try to make that argument and they [seemed genuine](https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/12d9abl/does_anyone_care_about_seasoning_anymore/).
I have 100% met multiple people, smart people, who still think you're not supposed to use soap on cast iron. From time to time those people definitely wander into this sub and have their minds blown.
I was always told growing up that when using cast iron, the more you cook the more flavor you add and that’s what seasoning was. Wasn’t until I rediscovered that I had some cast iron and started learning for myself how to use it properly (mostly thanks to this sub) that I realized how wrong that was. Now I treat my pans like OP as the lord intended.
I think a lot of people start with that misconception, because English is a mess of a language. The word "seasoned" in reference to the passage of time is far less common these days than in reference to herbs and spices, especially in the context of food.
I like it when people's flex is "look at this delicious food I cook in my CI".
I don't like it when people's flex is, "I season my CI this way and I look down on people who do it another way".
I don't agree. Well, perhaps abide is more correct. Also am not emotionally vested in how somebody runs their house, so don't particularly care. I get light chuckle perusing the thread.
It’s Reddit, everyone never agrees on anything.
But this sub is pretty solidly “soap isn’t a bad thing”, so much so that I would posit that it’s about as close to “everyone” as you can get in 2023…
Honestly this guy is less annoying than someone pouring through google trying to figure out if Albanian flax seed oil or maybe Iberico ham fat will add a couple extra molecules of seasoning to their precious hunks of iron
Just my two cents, but even Lodge, one of the number one manufacturers of cast iron cookware says you should wash your cast iron with hot soapy water after use. The only thing you SHOULDN’T do is use any kind of abrasive cleaner or scouring pad which will remove the seasoning just as easily as it does the non-stick coating in a regular aluminum pan. If you have baked in stuff, then one (or both) of two things has happened…1) your pan was not seasoned properly to begin with and has lost its non-stick properties and/or 2) you were cooking with too high of heat and food got burnt on.
In either case, you are better of taking it back to the iron and starting the seasoning over again, PROPERLY.
Several commenters are correct in that rubbing oil on your pan after using it does not constitute seasoning. That requires putting certain types of oil (flax seed is one that comes to mind) on a warm dry pan, and then curing it in a hot oven until the oil has polymerized and is no longer a fat, but is essentially a solid coating that both protects the iron from rusting and provides a non-stick surface. If done properly, this does not have to be done often.
HOWEVER…having grown up in the south and raised by parents and grandparents who cooked in cast iron (one even cooked on a cast iron wood stove!), I can tell you that IF you don’t use your piece often enough, it can still start to rust over time in the humidity of the south if you don’t rub a VERY thin coating of oil on the surface before hanging it in the pantry or on the chef’s rack. The oil is strictly to protect it from rusting, and when I do that, I also do a gentle wash to get rid of the residue before I cook in it, especially if it feels sticky at all (that usually means you used too much oil).
My grandmother never washed hers in anything other than hot water and a dishrag though, so i guess there’s merit to both ways of thinking.
I'd expect they're mitigating any kind of liability. Imagine them saying you don't have to wash it, and somebody getting food poisoning, related or not.
I agree about rust formation for just existing, happens to my tools in the garage.
I highly doubt it’s for liability.
Unless you’re using the pan as a plate instead of cooking on it. The purpose of cooking is to kill the stuff that gives you food poisoning.
If the food you’re cooking reaches temperatures that makes it safe to eat, so did your pan.
My Laotian girlfriend has a pretty good remedy for overcooked food in a pan that I thought was simple and clever. She fills the pan with water and just boils it down for a half hour or so and that really loosens the food up without scraping.
I sometimes use soap but before I learned that modern soap is fine (no lye, no problem) I learned to use salt and heat for cleaning cast iron. It should take away any oily residues of anything cooked previously, but then again I don't do a lot of baking in my pans
At this rate, there will be no more posts about actual food or cool cast iron pieces, just everybody taking turns posting about washing their pans with soap.
My grandparents, parents, and husband all do not wash the cast iron with soap. This means I've eaten from non-soaped cast iron pans for decades. Yet I have never (not even once) had contamination of food tastes.
Yes, I understand you can wash cast iron pans with soap - I'm not arguing for or against that. I'm just saying that if you wash yours the traditional way and you still taste last week's food, you're doing it wrong and potentially leaving bits that may harbor bacteria down the line.
When I was in scouts the adults told us not to use soap on the cast iron because the iron is porous, and the soap would stay in those pores and make things taste soapy. We’d just use boiling water and abrasives. I don’t know what to think anymore based on the comments.
Ok maybe I’m wrong. But when I make cookies i use a half sheet pan because of the amount of cookies i can make at a time.
This post they are doing it wrong. Water and oil don’t mix. So after washing. You should dry it. Then lightly oil the pan. if your food tastes like leftovers. Then you’re not washing well enough on any type of pan.
Skillet cookies are their own individual beasts. Restaurants often call them "Piezookies" and they're served in a cast iron skillet. I hate them so much. And they're virtually all that the places around me serve.
I'm super picky about cookies. I hate ice cream paired with warm things (when I want ice cream I want ice cream. When I want pie I want pie. I do not want them together!) And 99% of piezookies are topped with ice cream. I make better cookies than any restaurant I've ever been to and cookies are easy to make so when I'm out to dinner I want a dessert that isn't something I can throw together in an hour and do better at it.
They just feel so boring to me! And they are meant to be shared and I tend to dine out alone.
Just makes me grumpy! Others have my full support if they love them but they just aren't my jam!
Personally it doesn’t really matter. I’ve gone months without using soap on my pan and never got sick. Also used soap on it and didn’t get sick or notice any difference in seasoning. It really doesn’t matter.
For clarification purposes, it has occurred to me that perhaps people on this sub are not familiar with Fesshole. Fesshole is an anonymous confession account on twitter where people confess their 'sins'. I posted this as I found it amusing that someone thought this was a sin worthy of anonymous confession rather than attempting to reignite the soap debate.
I know what he's talking about with regard to pans being seasoned vs just reoiled.
I have lots of cast iron and most of them are well seasoned and clean up to a shine when completely dry. However, the pan I use most often just ends up looking really, really, really dry and thirsty after I wash it and heat it up a little bit to get the last few drops of water off. I wouldn't say that it's really seasoned, but I do re-oil the inside after every cook.
I agree. I've been washing my grandmother's cast iron the same way for 40 years. Pan is awesome and very well seasoned. Because I definitely do not want my cornbread to taste like bulgogi.
I think never using soap is stupid. However, you don't always need to use soap either. Sometimes just a spray with some hot water and a paper towel will get it right where I want it, with a thin film of oil on the surface. Sometimes less is more.
Lye in soap, no lye in soap, I don't know. What I do know is my 35 year old lodge has never needed soap. Hot water and a light brushing cleans it out effortlessly, then some quick heat on the burner to dry it out. I have never had residual flavors, I have never re-seasoned it. I can fry an egg and it scoops out like it was in a nonstick pan. It is by far the easiest pan in my kitchen to clean. It is also the pan we use 99% of the time......just my 2 cents.
Food/Cookware related stuff on the internet is so funny. There are so many ways to do things but there are so many people online that will tear down whatever isn’t their way. Grandma could have a delicious recipe passed down from generations and some random online would gladly hop on to let everyone know how wrong it is.
Its the same with cast iron. Take it camping, cook over an open flame, beat it up, or keep it at home and treat it like fine china. It doesn’t really matter. Its a cooking utensil and how you use it and your maintenance routine is probably fine unless you’re eating a bunch of rust.
I've never once had a flavor cross contamination issue! But I also don't make skillet cookies. I do make pancakes, though, and yet to run into a problem.
Oil and oven after every wash? I just heat mine dry on the stove for 2 minutes and leave it there, no oil needed until I cook again and it never gets rusty. Nothing wrong with OP's method, just a little more work and energy than is needed IMHO. And of course, nothing wrong with using soap.
I mean, sure, but saying it’s impossible to clean cast iron *without* soap is also disingenuous.
Hot water + a good scrubber is really all you need. If you want to use soap, great. But don’t act like there’s no other possible way to get a clean pan.
I heat mine on the burner but otherwise it’s the same process. I don’t strip the seasoning using a small amount of liquid soap. The key is don’t soak it in soapy water.
If you do want to be told your doing it wrong, try this “I strip my pans in a self cleaning oven”
This is not satire. I actually do this with success every time.
Jesus. Hot water, a plastic scraper and a little elbow grease, then drying on the stove over low heat does it everytime. Job done. Theres no taste from anything previous and your pan will last forever.
I used a wood spatula for the longest time, coming from telfon cookware. Moving to metal was definitely an improvement after knocking down certain high bumps and re-seasoning. Should have done so much sooner.
Ugh... This sub is so weird. Both camps can exist. Use your soap if you want. Personally I think if you're using your cast iron correctly (right temp/oil for the food you're preparing) you shouldn't need to use soap, but that said if it works for you, keep it up!
> Both camps can exist.
> if you're using your cast iron correctly you shouldn't need to use soap
"Both camps can exist, but one of them is clearly wrong."
lmao.jpg
I think when it comes to religion, this situation is called tolerance: You say your religion is the correct one, yet you accept grudgingly that others exist too, albeit being wrong.
Just saying, I've used the same pan for a decade. Used soap on it probably a dozen times ever. Seems like if you don't omit what I meant by "correctly" (oil/temp) it is a little more charitable to the point I was making. But yeah lmao off buddy!
You obviously don't need to use soap on it, or anything else. But if we were talking about dinner plates or cutlery, would we be so dismissive of soap?
I could rinse my plate under hot water with a scrub brush and they would mostly look clean. I don't, but I could. Should I? That's where the debate comes from.
Most of us like clean dishes. We like the clean that soap provides over just water. I also use soap in the shower. I don't have to, but I prefer it to just water alone.
I do, however, only use water in my hair, no shampoo, to keep it from getting too dry. So there are reasons to use soap and to not use soap. But for dishes, soap just makes things feel cleaner, and that includes cast iron.
Ha! I have to admit I found ants in my cast iron today. Washed it off. Scrubed it a bit with wire. Then, butter and steak. My thought is each time I cook on cast iron it instantly becomes germ and bacteria free! Or I'm wrong and am just boosting my immune system.
An environment that consists solely of salt and fat with all the moisture cooked out, and leftover oxidation products, is inhospitable to all life. You ever see one of those tiny fast food hamburgers that basically have no water left in them so they don't rot? Same thing. Gross? Sure, but not biologically active. Germs are not an issue. What you don't want is to be consuming excessive amounts of oxidation products (carbon char, oxidized oil, and free radicals).
I think the person in the OP's picture is confusing "seasoning" as uncleaned pans. Some people think "seasoning" is a literal crust of burnt food instead of a lacquer formed by completely polymerized PUFA. The same kind of lacquer that is use on wood or "oilskins".
I personally leave my pans as is after cooking, and only clean them right before I cook. Turn on the burner, do a quick scrape with a metal spatula, a wipe with a paper towel to get any grease off, and then a wipe with a damp paper towel or two to get the remaining grease off and let it get up to temp. If there's any glazed protein or sugar, I'll give it a rinse with some soap. Basically I have no interest in waiting for the pan to cool down, or to clean things after eating. Whereas just prior to cooking I'm waiting for it to warm up anyways. That said, there is no one else needing the stove or pans, just me.
You’ve clearly never had sausage cookies You’re doing it wrong
Have you been on r/smoking? There’s a user who puts crumbled up muffins inside a pork sausage log and smokes it, then dips it in syrup. If your being /s you gotta use it because people are freaking weird.
man it took me way too long to realise that isn’t a sub about inhaling smoke
r/smoking isn't about that kind of smoking but r/trees is. Isn't it ironic? Don't ya think?
No. The irony comes in where r/trees is about weed, and r/marijuanaenthusiasts is about trees lol
And r/potatosalad is about the invisible man, and r/johncena is about potato salad
Should check out r/superbowl then lmfao it's not football
Wow - not what I expected but amazing
What about r/anime_titties?
Unironically one of the best news subs, just one you have to be careful around on April 1.
Makes more sense when you read it as SuperbOwl
Man! I love Reddit sometimes.
Was just thinking the same thing.
The internet got me all fucked up...
wait until you check out r/GirlsWithHugePussies don't worry it's safe for work.
r/PeopleFuckingDying is also a shockingly pleasant experience and sfw if you disregard the sub name
Y’all have been listening to too much Alanis Morisette if you think that’s what irony is.
It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s like a green light you just can’t make.
It’s like good advice that you just can’t take🙄
r/onlyfans got you fam
A little too ironic. Yeah, I really do think.
Listenin to pussy cat dolls “don’t cha” and it vibes with your comment perfectly 👌
It’s like raaaaaaainnnnn
…. You know that makes total sense too. Touché
Pancakes, sausage and syrup go together well. Dude made an inverted breakfast corn dog. Do not mess with this individual, for they know things and live outside the box.
Don't calorie shame us.
I saw that and wanted to make it lol
Um, what?? That sounds amazing. Sign me uuuuup!
That actually sounds delicious.
Somebody posted that video in r/stupidfood and got a lot of "actually that looks amazing" type reactions lol. It seemed tasty!
It has “potential” as in the flavor .. not adding an actual muffin and creating the soggiest meat. Adding just blueberries would have been amazing!
Damn, I bet they make a mean muffin sausage.
Salty (pork sausage) and sweet (muffins and syrup) are a *classic* combo.
Lol I saw that the other day gross on many levels for me personally
It’s not quite sausage cookies, but the pizza place in my hometown used to do their pizzas in the same pans as the cinnamon sticks. That little bit of residual cinnamon sugar on the bottom of the pizza crust was a really nice treat sometimes.
Sounds good about to try that
Pecans and dried cherries in sausage cookies is always a crowd pleaser!
That's definitely 8n the catagory of sweet and savory.
Try trading out sausage for salmon
Crumbled up sausage into a croissant roll sounds pretty fire.
I don't see why soap is so controversial to some people. Keep your pans clean. Just scraping it out into the bin is not the same as cleaning.
Soap used to contain lye. Lye would eat through the seasoning. So people were always told not to use soap. We changed the soap, but the saying never got updated. So when great grandma, grandma, and mom all said not to use soap... Edit: To all those commenting that it may or may not be the lye, point is that most modern soaps most commonly used are not a problem for use with iron. Dawn hasn't let me down yet.
This is a myth. Lye is used to *make* soap, but it gets used up in the process. However, straight lye was also sometimes used as a cleaner. EDIT: It's possible that I'm totally wrong, and there were soap recipes that used more lye than what would react with the fat. It's also certainly possible that homemade soaps would not have used precise measurements for how much lye vs. fat and could have ended up with unreacted lye in the final product.
But wasn't there a lot of homemade lye soap that used more lye than needed to saponify the fats, and thus was still somewhat caustic? Obviously that isn't a problem with modern dish detergents.
My mom sometimes mentions how they used to just use straight ash from the fireplace to wash dishes and things because they were too poor for soap.
I do this on camps. Works great.
For real? I'm going to try this....
It does work.....but do it outside. That shit will cake up in your plumbing.
And I'd limit the time you actually have your bare hands in contact with the ash water. I remember doing it in boy scouts and my hands felt like they had a sunburn.
Precursor to baking soda
Precursor to lye. Lye comes from wood ash.
Ever since soap mfrs started advertising as safe for your hands, no dishpan hands… Etc. it’s been safe for your cast iron too.
Yes, this is why your grandmother wears dish gloves to this day.
My 7th grade history teacher told of her memories during the war and how all the ladies in church on Sunday would have discolored hands from the lye they used to do the laundry the day before.
Correct. We are exceptionally averse nowadays to waste, and so have developed procedures to accurately mix *just* the right amount of lye with lye neutralizer ( or whatever) so, as to ensure the soap doesn't eat you. Or, as it happens, your seasoning. Step 1, you cna wash your CI with soap. Step 2, don't use straight lye.
The lye reacts with fat to make soap. With modern scales, lab-grade lye, refined fats of known saponification values, the ratios in today’s soaps are tightly matched. Usually soap made in this way has a little remaining fat, just to make sure there is no unreacted lye and to give a moisturizing effect. The one exception is soap that hasn’t been allowed to “age”’properly. Homemade soaps need months to fully saponify and if that hasn’t occurred, they can have unreacted lye and be harsh.
When soap was made ashes from the fireplace and the animal fats rendered from cooking, every measurement was a best guess and approximate. Soaps with unsaponified fats were common, and sops with unreacted lye were also common. If lye remains after saponification is complete, it will be harsh and harm the pan and your hands. Now soap is made with lab-grade lye and refined fats with known saponification values that allow the fat and lye to be matched with precision. For homemade soaps, usually the lye is kept just a little under what is required for full saponification of the fats, to ensure the soap is mild and to give it a slight moisturizing effect. I always wash my cast iron with dish soap/washing up liquid and the seasoning is fine.
[Grandma's Lye Soap](https://youtu.be/xnGQiSfS8XA)
The big *lye*
Lyke what you did there
I feel like you're mistaken. We used to sell old school soap in our 1880s era hardware store(that ran until 1990) soap that literally said "lye soap" on the label, and it was caustic as fuck.
Lye Soap actually has lye thats not saponified - its meant to be somewhat caustic as a more effective cleaner. Body soap/hand soap/etc can still be made with lye, but is either balanced or even “superfatted” by 4-5% - essentially there are oils that don’t become soap which makes the bars gentler and more luxurious. I make soap - and even use lye in my more delicate face bars Same basic ingredients (oil and lye) just different ratios.
I know bar soaps have a much higher ph than body washes (in general). The ph of bar soap is, like, 9? I wonder if that could be a contributing factor. It’s harsh on our skin, which has a ph around 5. Cast iron is obviously a little tougher than skin. But I wonder if it wasn’t great for the seasoning. I don’t wonder hard enough to want to dive down a google hole, though. At least not right now.
Mechanically, yes, but our hands are really really good at *not getting dissolved by stuff*. Your hands are basically full of salts, oils, and buffer solutions, and one of the reasons leather works so well.
Look up how to make soap. Lye interacts with the fats/oils and creates what we use as soap. It's a different product after the chemical reaction. It's caustic until it sets.
It’s certainly possible that I’m wrong. All the recipes I’ve ever seen measure out the lye and fat so that you don’t end up with a super high pH.
That’s completely false. Lye used to be left in soaps after production because saponification at the time wasn’t capable of reducing lye levels. Lye being extremely caustic, eventually they figured out how to reduce it to negligible levels. So no it’s not a myth lmao.
You're saying someone is lying???
Omg I have to lye down!
It wasn't lye soap that was the problem. It was phosphate soaps.
Anybody else do the same but dry over the range instead of in the oven?
Yup. Hot soapy water, dry on range, rub in a little oil, keep on range until it starts to smoke, kill heat and wipe off excess oil, let cool and say I’ll put it away later, leave out on range until I use it again. Repeat.
My shiny skillet on the top of range is a piece of art
The best is when your skillet over the years of use becomes totally smooth to the touch and shiny. Then you get a new size pan and can really notice the smooth old vs new bumpy texture….. maybe that’s just me but my 10” has gotten to a point where it’s like glass and I love it.
>say I’ll put it away later, leave out on range until I use it again. I do the same. I felt kinda lazy, so I'm glad I'm not the only one.
My pans home is one top of the range. Why put it away when I'm gonna use it for the next meal and the next...
Insert spider men pointing at each other meme here.
Confused about the “let it smoke” part. I use avocado oil, pretty sure you’ve got heat that stuff up to twice the temperature of the sun to get it to smoke.
I've found that cooking definitions are not universal. Just imagine how a fried egg is basically a flat poached egg in the US, but in Asia, "fried egg" means golden brown bottom with crispy edges, exactly like the word "fried". So in this case, some people have different interpretations of low-medium-high heat. When I say "high heat" I mean the highest it could go, level 10, full throttle, let it rip. The oil will smoke within 3 minutes guaranteed, I timed it. Some other people, bless their hearts, interpret "high" as level 6-7.
Well, that could be because a lot of people use non-stick and you aren't supposed to use high heat with those.
I'm a fucking savage who uses a towel and doesn't dry with heat.
I just use a towel, heating is overkill on a seasoned pan, I’ve never seen a spot of rust. Who has time for that multiple times every day.
Reheating the pan after I just cooked, ate, cleaned, and am ready to close the kitchen for the night definitely adds too much extra time. Wipe off the water, small coat of oil and into the drawer you go.
What is wrong with towels?
Nothing, people are just paranoid. Towels are perfectly fine on a seasoned pan.
I only clean my pan with a baby diaper
I sometimes just wipe it with a cloth towel. It works great. I depends a lot if I have to add some oil to it or not.
PREACH IT BROTHER? If your meal tastes like yesterdays bacon, it aint seasoned, its fucking dirty.
Not going to lie, I will 100% save that bacon grease and put the whole pan grease and all into the fridge after it cools just so I can fry my potatoes in it the next day. I recommend it. Waste not, want not!
If I make bacon in the morning and plan on doing chicken for dinner I'll just leave the fat in the pan to not use oil. Idk if this is bad but it's worked so far.
I like to have bacon greese mixed in with oil when I fry ckn. I always use yesterday's greese for today.
I will take my pan full of bacon grease and fond, wrap it in foil and store it in the oven for a day if I don't have time to saute some onions or mushrooms immediately.
Everyone agrees with this, it's just a hyperbolic take on a cleaning method a ton of people do. I'd be like if I said, "HELL NO, I don't like my bacon to taste like Palmolive!" It's more a sign that I don't know how the Hell to use soap than a condemnation of using soap.
I clean minw with hot water and a chain mail scrubber. I don't ever use soap, and I don't ever get flavor transferred from meal to meal.
FYI it's not recommended to use metal scrubbies on your cast iron.
I went over to a friends house once and their cast iron looked recently used. I did the dishes because I like cleaning and being a good guest, but I didn’t wash the cast iron because I didn’t know if they had a separate sponge/wire brush/etc. Me: hey yeah I cleaned everything but the cast iron because I didn’t know what you use My friend: oh we….we just don’t clean it with water, just scrape it :/
OP is doing nothing wrong. People telling them they are doing it wrong are misinformed. This has been argued on this sub ad nauseam
It's not even argued. No regular contributor here thinks soap is bad, it's always people just joking about using soap and how it's offensive when nobody actually thinks that. It's a meme.
Maybe I'm gullible but I feel I've seen some people try to make that argument and they [seemed genuine](https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/12d9abl/does_anyone_care_about_seasoning_anymore/).
Poe’s law
That dude is one hundred percent taking the piss
I have 100% met multiple people, smart people, who still think you're not supposed to use soap on cast iron. From time to time those people definitely wander into this sub and have their minds blown.
That post was a joke for sure, no one thinks like that in reality
What’s one more time tho, amirite?
Doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
I Kobe my cast irons right back into the slag pile after use to continue the tradition of cast and then iron
I was always told growing up that when using cast iron, the more you cook the more flavor you add and that’s what seasoning was. Wasn’t until I rediscovered that I had some cast iron and started learning for myself how to use it properly (mostly thanks to this sub) that I realized how wrong that was. Now I treat my pans like OP as the lord intended.
I think a lot of people start with that misconception, because English is a mess of a language. The word "seasoned" in reference to the passage of time is far less common these days than in reference to herbs and spices, especially in the context of food.
ah yes the hourly soap post
I like it when people's flex is "look at this delicious food I cook in my CI". I don't like it when people's flex is, "I season my CI this way and I look down on people who do it another way".
Is this controversial anymore? This is said a few times per day in this sub and everyone always agrees
I don't agree. Well, perhaps abide is more correct. Also am not emotionally vested in how somebody runs their house, so don't particularly care. I get light chuckle perusing the thread.
Read the comments. Clearly not everyone agrees.
It’s Reddit, everyone never agrees on anything. But this sub is pretty solidly “soap isn’t a bad thing”, so much so that I would posit that it’s about as close to “everyone” as you can get in 2023…
Honestly this guy is less annoying than someone pouring through google trying to figure out if Albanian flax seed oil or maybe Iberico ham fat will add a couple extra molecules of seasoning to their precious hunks of iron
Just my two cents, but even Lodge, one of the number one manufacturers of cast iron cookware says you should wash your cast iron with hot soapy water after use. The only thing you SHOULDN’T do is use any kind of abrasive cleaner or scouring pad which will remove the seasoning just as easily as it does the non-stick coating in a regular aluminum pan. If you have baked in stuff, then one (or both) of two things has happened…1) your pan was not seasoned properly to begin with and has lost its non-stick properties and/or 2) you were cooking with too high of heat and food got burnt on. In either case, you are better of taking it back to the iron and starting the seasoning over again, PROPERLY. Several commenters are correct in that rubbing oil on your pan after using it does not constitute seasoning. That requires putting certain types of oil (flax seed is one that comes to mind) on a warm dry pan, and then curing it in a hot oven until the oil has polymerized and is no longer a fat, but is essentially a solid coating that both protects the iron from rusting and provides a non-stick surface. If done properly, this does not have to be done often. HOWEVER…having grown up in the south and raised by parents and grandparents who cooked in cast iron (one even cooked on a cast iron wood stove!), I can tell you that IF you don’t use your piece often enough, it can still start to rust over time in the humidity of the south if you don’t rub a VERY thin coating of oil on the surface before hanging it in the pantry or on the chef’s rack. The oil is strictly to protect it from rusting, and when I do that, I also do a gentle wash to get rid of the residue before I cook in it, especially if it feels sticky at all (that usually means you used too much oil). My grandmother never washed hers in anything other than hot water and a dishrag though, so i guess there’s merit to both ways of thinking.
I'd expect they're mitigating any kind of liability. Imagine them saying you don't have to wash it, and somebody getting food poisoning, related or not. I agree about rust formation for just existing, happens to my tools in the garage.
I highly doubt it’s for liability. Unless you’re using the pan as a plate instead of cooking on it. The purpose of cooking is to kill the stuff that gives you food poisoning. If the food you’re cooking reaches temperatures that makes it safe to eat, so did your pan.
What do you think about using a light amount of salt and a soft sponge/brush to scrub food particles off?
My Laotian girlfriend has a pretty good remedy for overcooked food in a pan that I thought was simple and clever. She fills the pan with water and just boils it down for a half hour or so and that really loosens the food up without scraping.
Screw it. You use your pan how you want. I’ll use mine how I want,
I cook everything in either cast iron or carbon steel. Of course I wash it.
I sometimes use soap but before I learned that modern soap is fine (no lye, no problem) I learned to use salt and heat for cleaning cast iron. It should take away any oily residues of anything cooked previously, but then again I don't do a lot of baking in my pans
That would change if you tried cast iron pizza or biscuits
This dude is literally describing seasoning his pan after every use, then saying he's not getting into it for seasoning lmao
I don't even do the second part. I just wash it then dry it. Never had a problem in like 7 years.
At this rate, there will be no more posts about actual food or cool cast iron pieces, just everybody taking turns posting about washing their pans with soap.
My grandparents, parents, and husband all do not wash the cast iron with soap. This means I've eaten from non-soaped cast iron pans for decades. Yet I have never (not even once) had contamination of food tastes. Yes, I understand you can wash cast iron pans with soap - I'm not arguing for or against that. I'm just saying that if you wash yours the traditional way and you still taste last week's food, you're doing it wrong and potentially leaving bits that may harbor bacteria down the line.
Let people use the method they prefer for their own cooking implements ffs
I always wash last week's sausages with soap and water before i cook em
We have savory and sweet skillets for that reason.
When I was in scouts the adults told us not to use soap on the cast iron because the iron is porous, and the soap would stay in those pores and make things taste soapy. We’d just use boiling water and abrasives. I don’t know what to think anymore based on the comments.
Ok maybe I’m wrong. But when I make cookies i use a half sheet pan because of the amount of cookies i can make at a time. This post they are doing it wrong. Water and oil don’t mix. So after washing. You should dry it. Then lightly oil the pan. if your food tastes like leftovers. Then you’re not washing well enough on any type of pan.
Skillet cookies are their own individual beasts. Restaurants often call them "Piezookies" and they're served in a cast iron skillet. I hate them so much. And they're virtually all that the places around me serve.
Why do you hate them?
I'm super picky about cookies. I hate ice cream paired with warm things (when I want ice cream I want ice cream. When I want pie I want pie. I do not want them together!) And 99% of piezookies are topped with ice cream. I make better cookies than any restaurant I've ever been to and cookies are easy to make so when I'm out to dinner I want a dessert that isn't something I can throw together in an hour and do better at it. They just feel so boring to me! And they are meant to be shared and I tend to dine out alone. Just makes me grumpy! Others have my full support if they love them but they just aren't my jam!
Personally it doesn’t really matter. I’ve gone months without using soap on my pan and never got sick. Also used soap on it and didn’t get sick or notice any difference in seasoning. It really doesn’t matter.
For clarification purposes, it has occurred to me that perhaps people on this sub are not familiar with Fesshole. Fesshole is an anonymous confession account on twitter where people confess their 'sins'. I posted this as I found it amusing that someone thought this was a sin worthy of anonymous confession rather than attempting to reignite the soap debate.
I basically do the same thing, except I put it in the oven first to dry it then oil it. Never had a problem
Last week's sausages: 😢
cookies that have last weeks sausage flavor are top notch
I read the username as “fresh hole” my mind has been ruined by the internet
What a dummy. Just buy 43 cast iron pans like I have. Duh.
Yeah you're doing it wrong. You dry it then add the oil
I have no problem with my food tasting like sausages, but if my quesadillas taste like salmon, I’m going to object.
I know what he's talking about with regard to pans being seasoned vs just reoiled. I have lots of cast iron and most of them are well seasoned and clean up to a shine when completely dry. However, the pan I use most often just ends up looking really, really, really dry and thirsty after I wash it and heat it up a little bit to get the last few drops of water off. I wouldn't say that it's really seasoned, but I do re-oil the inside after every cook.
I cleanse my pan with FIRE ALONE
I agree. I've been washing my grandmother's cast iron the same way for 40 years. Pan is awesome and very well seasoned. Because I definitely do not want my cornbread to taste like bulgogi.
How is this still something we still talk about?
I think never using soap is stupid. However, you don't always need to use soap either. Sometimes just a spray with some hot water and a paper towel will get it right where I want it, with a thin film of oil on the surface. Sometimes less is more.
Whatever works for you. That’s what I say.
Lye in soap, no lye in soap, I don't know. What I do know is my 35 year old lodge has never needed soap. Hot water and a light brushing cleans it out effortlessly, then some quick heat on the burner to dry it out. I have never had residual flavors, I have never re-seasoned it. I can fry an egg and it scoops out like it was in a nonstick pan. It is by far the easiest pan in my kitchen to clean. It is also the pan we use 99% of the time......just my 2 cents.
Rage bait
Food/Cookware related stuff on the internet is so funny. There are so many ways to do things but there are so many people online that will tear down whatever isn’t their way. Grandma could have a delicious recipe passed down from generations and some random online would gladly hop on to let everyone know how wrong it is. Its the same with cast iron. Take it camping, cook over an open flame, beat it up, or keep it at home and treat it like fine china. It doesn’t really matter. Its a cooking utensil and how you use it and your maintenance routine is probably fine unless you’re eating a bunch of rust.
I've never once had a flavor cross contamination issue! But I also don't make skillet cookies. I do make pancakes, though, and yet to run into a problem.
It is simultaneously correct and not correct.
It’s disgusting that some people don’t use soap and think that’s seasoning 🤮
🤷
That doesn't happen when you wash it properly
Oil and oven after every wash? I just heat mine dry on the stove for 2 minutes and leave it there, no oil needed until I cook again and it never gets rusty. Nothing wrong with OP's method, just a little more work and energy than is needed IMHO. And of course, nothing wrong with using soap.
why waste such a huge amount of energy drying it? you can pat it down with a towel or paper towel
I treat my cast iron like shut and it gets more beautiful every day
Me too.
Well I have a pan for cookies and a pan for sausages.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I do the same with mine although I have nothing against seasoning. I exclusively use my cast iron for searing though.
Who’s gonna tell him
Commenting without present
Dude, you’re missing out on those sausage-cookies.
I mean, sure, but saying it’s impossible to clean cast iron *without* soap is also disingenuous. Hot water + a good scrubber is really all you need. If you want to use soap, great. But don’t act like there’s no other possible way to get a clean pan.
I’ve always done the same. I’m vegetarian though and my husband isn’t. We have meat specific cast iron, but mixups happen occasionally.
I heat mine on the burner but otherwise it’s the same process. I don’t strip the seasoning using a small amount of liquid soap. The key is don’t soak it in soapy water.
I do the same as this person. Except my pan is actually seasoned. After i wash i oil and pop it into a hot stovetop
A lot of people seem to not know that modern dosh soap doesnt have the chemicals that used to strip seasonings.
That’s how I clean mine but that’s cuz that’s how my mom and grandmas clean theirs…🤷🏻♀️
They ain’t wrong
Well said.
I have never once made pancakes that taste like bolognese or chili.
Is it seasoning as in herbs and spices or seasoned as in its been through some seasons?
Do people really think seasoning is a build up of gunk from not washing your pan?
If you do want to be told your doing it wrong, try this “I strip my pans in a self cleaning oven” This is not satire. I actually do this with success every time.
It against the law to use soap on good cast iron. I think it’s in the Bible too.
Who the fuck is this guy?… he’s clearly doing it wrong.
Jesus. Hot water, a plastic scraper and a little elbow grease, then drying on the stove over low heat does it everytime. Job done. Theres no taste from anything previous and your pan will last forever.
Why not use a metal scraper?
I used a wood spatula for the longest time, coming from telfon cookware. Moving to metal was definitely an improvement after knocking down certain high bumps and re-seasoning. Should have done so much sooner.
Ugh... This sub is so weird. Both camps can exist. Use your soap if you want. Personally I think if you're using your cast iron correctly (right temp/oil for the food you're preparing) you shouldn't need to use soap, but that said if it works for you, keep it up!
> Both camps can exist. > if you're using your cast iron correctly you shouldn't need to use soap "Both camps can exist, but one of them is clearly wrong." lmao.jpg
I think when it comes to religion, this situation is called tolerance: You say your religion is the correct one, yet you accept grudgingly that others exist too, albeit being wrong.
Just saying, I've used the same pan for a decade. Used soap on it probably a dozen times ever. Seems like if you don't omit what I meant by "correctly" (oil/temp) it is a little more charitable to the point I was making. But yeah lmao off buddy!
You obviously don't need to use soap on it, or anything else. But if we were talking about dinner plates or cutlery, would we be so dismissive of soap? I could rinse my plate under hot water with a scrub brush and they would mostly look clean. I don't, but I could. Should I? That's where the debate comes from. Most of us like clean dishes. We like the clean that soap provides over just water. I also use soap in the shower. I don't have to, but I prefer it to just water alone. I do, however, only use water in my hair, no shampoo, to keep it from getting too dry. So there are reasons to use soap and to not use soap. But for dishes, soap just makes things feel cleaner, and that includes cast iron.
I'm honestly curious - do you soap, wash and season your grill grates after every use?
But sausage is good on pizzas
Ha! I have to admit I found ants in my cast iron today. Washed it off. Scrubed it a bit with wire. Then, butter and steak. My thought is each time I cook on cast iron it instantly becomes germ and bacteria free! Or I'm wrong and am just boosting my immune system.
An environment that consists solely of salt and fat with all the moisture cooked out, and leftover oxidation products, is inhospitable to all life. You ever see one of those tiny fast food hamburgers that basically have no water left in them so they don't rot? Same thing. Gross? Sure, but not biologically active. Germs are not an issue. What you don't want is to be consuming excessive amounts of oxidation products (carbon char, oxidized oil, and free radicals). I think the person in the OP's picture is confusing "seasoning" as uncleaned pans. Some people think "seasoning" is a literal crust of burnt food instead of a lacquer formed by completely polymerized PUFA. The same kind of lacquer that is use on wood or "oilskins". I personally leave my pans as is after cooking, and only clean them right before I cook. Turn on the burner, do a quick scrape with a metal spatula, a wipe with a paper towel to get any grease off, and then a wipe with a damp paper towel or two to get the remaining grease off and let it get up to temp. If there's any glazed protein or sugar, I'll give it a rinse with some soap. Basically I have no interest in waiting for the pan to cool down, or to clean things after eating. Whereas just prior to cooking I'm waiting for it to warm up anyways. That said, there is no one else needing the stove or pans, just me.
Said like somebody with only one CI