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Modern Cast Iron skillets which do/would you use?

I guess seasoning temp would need to be below the smoke point of whatever oil is used. At smoke point it generates free radicals, purported bad for your health, from that thermal oxidation.
You need to go above the smoke point to season properly. You aren't eating the seasoning and need carbonization.
 
Several years ago, largely out of nostalgia for when I was a short order cook in my youth, I bought some old expensive smooth-bottom ones (Erie, Griswold) and some French carbon steel pans as well. The conclusion I reached (YMMV) was that I preferred the new Lodge cast iron pans with the rough bottoms because the rough bottoms help the cure stay intact when you're scraping the pan. Moreover, the new Lodges are heavier than the old pans and so they hold heat better and spread it better -- so if you make a cornbread or mini-Detroit or Chicago style pizza in one, the crust is absolutely perfectly golden on the bottom and sides with no hotspots. I rarely use non-stick these days - only for omlettes, and I only use the carbon pans for sweating vegetables now because they seem to work best for that and I have no idea why.

There are a few things that I prefer to make on the old pans (in particular the old Erie 9) like crepes and hot-fried eggs where you fry the egg in almost smoking hot oil that is deep enough to where you can swish a little over the eggwhite with the spatula so you get a done white, clear golden yolk and dark thin crispy edges on the whites. Other than that, I prefer the high mass of the new Lodge pans.

Curing and scraping are the important things, IMHO. Don't worry about the "super" oils for curing (Flax etal.) as they don't seem to produce cures that are slick like animal fats or some other seed/nut fats. I like and use peanut oil, olive oil, butter, walnut oil, sesame oil, grape-seed oil... just use what works for the recipe and scrape with a steel spatula. Get a few stainless steel spatulas from a decent commercial industrial brand so you have the right shape and flexibility to work the food. I like Dexter Russell. They provide a great bang-for-buck and their stuff is intended for commercial use so it may not be sexy, but it works. Get a General purpose turner, a hamburger turner, a fish spatula... that's a good start... a little warm water on a hot pan will loosen burn-on. When you're done cooking, if you have time, let the pan come down in temp for a few minutes, put it in the sink and put a little warm water in it and scrape it with your turner. NOT COLD water and not a lot of water. A quarter cup of warmish water on a pan that has come down from stove temp for a couple of minutes. The water will froth and steam and you scrape and that'll take off the hard stuff. Never use soap or bartender's friend/Comet etc.. in a pan. Always oil it before storing it - easy to do -put half a teaspoon of your oil of choice in a warm or cold (not hot) pan and rub it around with a paper towel and you're done. If you screw up the cure, make a cornbread in it and/or put some oil on it and put it in the oven at 400 for 10 minutes or so and then turn off the oven and let it sit till cool.

Oh, and get yourself a nice heavy aluminum cookie sheet - Vollrath 68085 2mm thick aluminum works great. Modern cookie sheets are crap. The aluminum on the bottom is thin and the edges are weighted with steel to make the pan seem substantial ... then they sell you a silicon mat to keep things from burning (SMH). If your cookies come out burnt, get a commercial cookie sheet (and commercial bread pans too -thick aluminum - also Vollrath)
 
I have a couple Lodge pans, and they're good not great. I have not tried sanding them down.

We have some Le Creuset cast iron pans and a dutch oven on the wedding registry though. Whatever isn't gifted I'll bite the bullet and buy.
 

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
I don't think I addressed the original question.

Mostly Lodge as it is easily available. Although when I was getting Mom's house in N.E. Oklahoma ready to sell about a year or two ago I picked up a couple of cheap Wallyworld Ozark Trail ones so I could have some iron there. They are made in China so no telling what the metallurgy is in them but they have worked very well. Lighter than a Lodge, and should be good for knock around skillets to take camping and such. I haven't had a problem with them; have a 10 inch and later picked up an 8 inch to make omelettes with.

YMMV, but they've worked good for me.
 

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Ad Astra

The Instigator
Lodge "magic pan,"of course, but also a Westinghouse flat-square thing I use on the grill. Works well. Don't know why "Westinghouse."

I remember when Westinghouse made ballistic reentry vehicles ...


AA
 
Scrapeandsplash. I didn't know about the water I've used lots during clean up and I see seasoning getting beat up

I'll try using less next clean up
 
Scrapeandsplash. I didn't know about the water I've used lots during clean up and I see seasoning getting beat up

I'll try using less next clean up

And then again maybe the water amount isn't as critical as I thought. I went to Youtube to look for water-cleaning methods and found several videos of guys doing it differently - they all rely on the same mechanism which is hot water boiling at 212F removing the encrusted food without damaging the polymer underneath, but one guy heats the water in the pan, and the other dumps a lot of scalding hot water into a smoking hot pan... Well, so I guess my method is just the way I was taught is only one of many methods. Some of it might be the cure. I used to have problems with my cure busting up, and I don't really know why that stopped. I used to "cure" my pans with flax, but I'd never cook with flax and the performance just wasn't good and the cure was finicky and flaked off. When I stopped curing my pans and just started using them, the problems just seemed to go away. Maybe lower smoke temperature oils make softer but more durable cures? Generally in wood finish and epoxy, the harder the finish/resin, the more fragile it is. Soft finishes mar whereas hard finishes crack and flake. I'm not a chemist, but now that I just use the pans and the cure is formed during cooking by the oils used while cooking, my cures just seem to last. I hadn't really considered that till just now.


 

kelbro

Alfred Spatchcock
Flaxseed works great on my Lodge skillets, but it flakes off the Griswolds. Go figure.

Flaxseed flaked off my Grisowlds too. Looked fantastic at first. The surface on the Griswold might be too slick for the Flaxseed to get a good bond. I tossed half a bottle. Didn't think about trying it on my Lodges but they are all in good shape. Lodges hold any seasoning well.
 
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