Seasoning Your Cast Iron Pan Isn’t Enough
6th April 2018
You also have to live the yoga life, eat vegan, and use only organic GMO-free oil from the Honduran Burberry plant.
I’m a big fan of hard-anodized nonstick, myself. Hot water + paper towel = I can go back to bed.
April 7th, 2018 at 00:43
Cast iron is wonderful stuff. I’m surprised at how many people seem to need directions on keeping it from rusting. (Dry it. Put some oil in it.) No matter how badly something is fried, charred, or caramelized in cast iron, you can always take a steel wool pad and strip it clean in a few seconds. Honestly, Brillo makes cast iron easier to deal with than the so-called non-stick. The stuff lasts forever – the pans I have were my grandmother’s.
The newer non-stick pans may be ok, but the old Teflon stuff is bad news. At best, it scrapes off the surface easily. (Non-stick applies to both sides, to some degree.) Heat Teflon too hot and the fumes are extremely toxic. Fluorine compounds are all toxic. A chemist/historian went back through chemical history and looked at the development of chemicals. For the first 20 years or so after fluorine was discovered, every researcher who worked with it died within 2 years. (Granted, lab ventilation and safety were unheard of. “Tasting” was a routine test method.) What changed was that it was discovered that copper could be used to contain the gas safely. I remember a college prof talking about the dangers of Teflon and that electric stoves could easily reach decomposition temperatures. Years later, my sister left a pan on the stove as she ran out for an emergency. She returned to find all of her canaries dead.