Is it possible to sand cast iron so much that you won't even need to put oil/butter to have a non-stick surface...

Is it possible to sand cast iron so much that you won't even need to put oil/butter to have a non-stick surface, just preheating?

pic related is after sanding a 10" lodge griddle with 100 grit, then 1000 grit sandpaper for half an hour, and finally seasoning 3 times in the oven with olive oil.

FOOD STILL FUCKING STICKS EVEN AFTER 10 MINUTES OF PRE-HEATING UNLESS I BATHE IT IN OIL.

>inb4 "lel just keep using it"
I would have to cook on this thing for YEARS to get a 100% smooth surface. Fuck that.

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thekitchn.com/i-seasoned-my-cast-iron-pan-with-flaxseed-oil-and-heres-what-happened-224612
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What

>sanding cast iron
>seasoning with olive oil

Fucking hell, you want to build up a patina, do a little research.

Cast iron cookware is rough as fuck so food sticks to it. Cookware coated with teflon is smooth so nothing sticks. But teflon is gay because it chips/scratches easy especially under high heat, cast iron doesn't.

Could cast iron be sanded down to a mirror polish and if so would that mean you could just preheat it without rubbing cooking oil/butter on it?

I hate to say this but it's true. Yeah, you have to constantly cook with it for years. We recived a Lodge round cast iron griddle as a wedding present 16 years ago, and it took probably 3 years of using it (this was back before I learned all about seasoning) before it was demonstrably nonstick. Now, it's like slick obsidian, nothing sticks to it. OR, you have to go the antique route. Old Wagner pans, or (fuck, I forget the name) were made differently than modern cast iron and already had a smooth surface. I have some of those that I came across in thrift stores, and they are awesome.
But, other than the griddle, I don't use my cast iron nearly as much as my Magnalite Pro. That's some bad ass cookware, and it seasons up as well.

Why are you sanding? You can't create a microscopically smooth surface by sanding, you're just making the surface have more microscopic tears and gouges. If you want to make it smooth, you add oil and cook it to smoking point, cool it, add more oil and repeat till like 10 times to make a proper nonstick surface. And even then, you still need a small amount of oil to keep the layers from just burning.

Jesus Christ, no wonder food sticks to it. You're supposed to have a smooth surface before you start seasoning. That's barely smoother than the casting medium.

Get some proper corundum sanding disks and a power sander if you want to use that pan as a non-stick frying pan.

Of course you sand cast iron, if the manufacturer can't be fucked to do it for you. All those heirloom skillets in the deep south? I guarantee you they were polished before they were seasoned, because when cast iron was actually cast by pouring into a sand mold with nothing to line it, you had to sand down the surface to remove and sand that had been incorporated into the metal surface.

That would take forever with my shitty modern lodge trash. The reason is they don't polish cast iron anymore so you need like 1000 seasoning cycles to fill the unpolished crevices on the surface with seasoning. Also it's light olive oil, I'm not pouring extra virgin to use as seasoning lol.

I'm considering just sanding down this fucker to the point where I can see me face in it and season it 3 times.

Not if you slowly work yourself up from coarse grits ro fine ones. At least I've heard.

>corundum sanding
don't have sander but could this be done by hand?

I fucking love my magnalite, but they are so damn expensive. I just got a medium sized roaster for Christmas, and I plan on slowly incorporating more and more pieces. I want to get pic related.
Im telling you, my grandmother has magnalite pots that are decades old and they're still the best to use

You need greater than 1000 grit to get the level of polish you're talking about.

It would take a long-ass time, looking at the roughness of the surface, but yes, it certainly could be. Go with 150 grit until it's uniformly roughened, then up to 600 or so until you've got a brushed steel look, then onto the 1000 to polish. You need to work with the 150 grit until you're down to the depth of the massive pits and are working on an even layer of metal.

This guy is right, if you want it to be actually polished, but 1000 grit should be good enough to start seasoning from. Nobody needs to break out the rouge for a frying pan.

I see, thank you. Would this nazi sandpaper be enough for the final solution?

...yes?

Again, removing the casting finish with low grit is an important first step. You need to remove literally a millimeter or so, by the looks of the picture, and that's a lot of iron to remove by hand.

Fuck. It sounds like there is a shortcut here somewhere, like a round file puck or something to scrape out that millimeter. Any ideas?

>Yeah, you have to constantly cook with it for years
No you dont. I have both cast iron pans and carbon steel pans and I can get all of them so nonstick that a fried egg slides around in them in ten minutes. Just pour in a tbsp or two of canola oil, wipe it all over the inside with a paper kitchen tissue, then heat the pan until the oil begins to smoke. Keep wiping out the pan with the kitchen tissue, especally the part where the oil seems to "dry out". Keep that up for a few minutes, done.

Holy shit all that oil for an egg? No wonder people hate modern cast iron and opt to poison themselves with burn/scraped reflon in their food.

there are sandpaper disks for angle grinders, with overlapping stamp-sized bits of very stiff sandpaper attached all around the circumference of the disc. Those would probably be ideal. Pic very related

two tablespoons of oil is just for the seasoning! After it has been seasoned you can fry two or three eggs with a teaspoon of butter.

>buy cast iron pan
>don't do any meme shit
>season it with a few layers of canola oil
>works just fine, can cook anything in it without it sticking
I don't get what people find hard about this

Like everyone else here said modern cast iron is fucking garbage, rougher than 40 grit sandpaper.

How much did you pay for your vintage?

I'll leave this here.

thekitchn.com/i-seasoned-my-cast-iron-pan-with-flaxseed-oil-and-heres-what-happened-224612

Broscience. Of course sanding isn't going to do shit.

>look I made it smoother so now it sticks less!
It's a placebo at best, but hey, whatever makes these retards happy.

Then why did old cast iron cookware get sanded down before seasoning?

To remove the previous seasoning along with the shit that could get in.

How should I know? There could be any number of reasons why people did pointless shit. Also have you considered that if it's old then it probably has gotten smoother from decades of use rather than from grandpa user taking his power tools to it?

Shit, sorry. I meant why did old cast iron cookware get factory sanded down before being seasoned and then finally being sold to consumers?

Unless you remove "old" from your sentence the answer will be the same.

It both means it has being either used and/or stored somewhere in unknown conditions.

So previous rust seasoning still has to be removed before applying another layer. Sanding is only the most economic, polyvalent and efficient process for them. Other methods can be used for that.

>all those enormous pores still visible
Learn how to sand.

tell that to lodge, I bet you can still find sand on their modern trash

don't use olive oil. it burns at too low a heat to work properly.

peanut, grapeseed, lard, etc

>being this autistic

holy shit senpai a pan is a pan rofl.

>2018 and people still don't know cooking with olive oil is actually retarded
grapeseed oil is the cheapest fucking one at costco for fucks sake

You need to sand it down a lot more than that, user. First of all, you can't just jump from 100 to 1000. Second of all, you'll need to wet sand with like 3000 grit to get anywhere close to the finish you're looking for. Regardless, I doubt it will have the effect you want.

There's a difference between using an oil for cooking and using an oil for seasoning.

So is almond oil /ouroil/?

They don't need to polish their pans because most of the people that buy cast iron actually know how to season a pan.

>spending years seasoning to be able to cook a fucking egg without a gallon of oik
cast ironfags sure are dedicated, I'll give them that

>spending years seasoning
Nobody does this.

Just stick with the teflon, dude. You're obviously too stupid to learn how to season and use cast iron.

Mark my words, I'll sand it down so fucking fine I'll use it as a mirror and eggs will slide around like air hockey pucks with just pre-heating.

Well they save on washing product too, since the main point of these is to build up layers of hardened fat (that stick to iron's grain). and washing product just kills those.

>buying Barlean's for seasoning a cast iron pan
What a dumbass

How the fuck does soap remove seasoning? Isn't it supposed to be harder than metal utensils people use?

Good luck, dude.

3 seasonings is nothing, chump. use the pan for bacon and deep frying for a couple years. then you will have a nicely non-stick pan. also if your eggs are sticking your gas is set too fucking high. learn to use your tools fucking correctly.

Soap is a degreaser it traps lipids as a main action . you are trying to build a fat layer.

But some hardened fat are harder to dissolve with soap still it's attacking them, in the long run it will kill it.

Same as the reason the ultra slick iron pan OP wants to do can maybe cook egg without sticking but the water will ultimately make this pan rust up to some point and make it sticky again.

higher grit = finer sandpaper

Also the damage done by metal ustensil will regenerate by the fat rended from cooking stuff into these crevices.
Still using a metal brush you will remove this layer.

>How the fuck does soap remove seasoning?
It doesn't. That's a common misconception.

smear it with margarine then freeze it. thank me later.

The seasoning layer isn't just hardened fat, it's a polymer and it should be pretty resistant to soap. If the soap is taking anything off then that's just grease and not actual seasoning. It's probably not a good idea to scrub the shit out of the pan with super concentrated soap or something, but mine will survive a quick wash just fine. You should dry it off immediately, though.

wtf...

thank you for what? wasting margarine and freezer space?

No. The fibres of the metal absorb the vitamin K from the sunflower seed extract, and stop food molecules from getting jammed in the iron clumps for decades. Heating marmalade and glue until it smokes also helps if all else fails.

it literally took me two weeks of cooking two strips of bacon in my pan every day for my pan to be nonstick, this board is full of literal rock smacking neanderthals trying to seem elite by misusing objects and then crying that the object is flawed

you cook thin layers of fat into a seasoning, the fat fills the pores because its liquid, then hardens slowly into tiny tiny tiny microlayers. do this enough days in a row, and apply even heat, and wipe the excess off, eventually it ends up flat and smooth.

sounds legit

things don't stick because it's smooth you retards
teflon doesn't stick because the nonstick coating is chemically non reactive

Wrong, at least on cast iron things stick because tiny portions of the food go into the pits of cast iron and burn on so when you go to flip the food it anchors the whole piece on and causes it to tear. Oil/seasoning prevents this because it creates an even surface upon which the food cooks on. Teflon will stick to food if you heat it up enough (ie searing) which is why it fucking blows.

Anyway in theory a mirror polished cast iron surface even without seasoning will have an uber smooth surface on which there will no pits for food to burn into and stick.

Just buy a carbon steel skillet. They're also seasoned, but they're stamped rather than cast so they're super smooth. Plus they have long handles

Yes, that's why nothing ever sticks to steel or copper pans, which are way smoother than cast iron pans to begin with. Dumbass.

Hate to be the downer but carbon steel is prone to dents and more easily scratches. Mirror polished cast iron would perform better but I doubt all the hours sanding and expensive polishing sandpaper is worth it. Teflon is still probably the best cookware for most.

Wtf are you doing with your pan that is causing it to dent?

it just gets dented as it goes through the washing machine. it's normal.

They probably meant something closer to pitting.
Washing machine? I'm done here, we're too retarded.

YOu must be baiting here, nobody would be dumb enough to put a non-stainless carbon steel pan through the washing machine. And the carbon-steel pan that I have would smash everything else in the machine to pieces before getting dented.

It's a machine that washes things. Of course I put it in there.

Let's just all agree here that seasoned mirror polished cast iron will be more durable than carbon steel stuff. There's a reason stargazer cast iron cookware exists but in this case it would be cheaper for OP to just sand down his cast iron.

> Let's just all agree here that seasoned mirror polished cast iron will be more durable than carbon steel stuff.

no... steel is used for buildings, not iron. Have you ever thought to wonder why? Steel is ductile, and iron is brittle-- while steel may deform if you're confusing it for a hammer (like some retards in this thread), at least it won't shatter.

This will be valuable information if user ever decides to use his cookware as building materials.

...

>seasoning 3 times in the oven with olive oil
You're not doing it right. You need to use a high smoke oil, like lard or flaxseed, and you need to BURN it on.
Cast iron seasoning = polymerized fat = burnt-on oil.
Have you ever seen a cookie sheet or something with old grease stains that never come off unless you break out the barkeeper's friend or something? THAT is the same shit as polymerized fat. That's what you're trying to do to your cast iron.

get a paint-stripping disc like this

>patina
>build up
>build up a patina

If you want your cast iron to be THAT fucking smooth, you need to be buying carbon steel instead.

Indeed, but if you want to be autistic about pans you should at least get the facts straight

>falling for the cast iron meme
literally worse than non-stick in all aspects of stovetop cooking

slower to heat up? check
5X heavier? check
stupid mitten covering on the handle? check
have to autistically oil and bake the pan for hours before use? check
food sticks to the pan like gum on the sidewalk? check
can't wash the pan? check

cast iron is literally worse than any other stovetop pan

>UNLESS I BATHE IT IN OIL.
Yep, that's how cast iron works. Seems like everyone understood this until recently, at which point people thought cast iron could somehow replace actual nonstick.

Except for it's property of heat retention due to it's mass. When heated, this thermal mass will not drastically drop in temperature when cold food is added to it. This makes it objectively the best material for searing meats, deep-frying on the stovetop, and combination cooking techniques like braising in which you sear and subsequently put the pot/pan in an oven to continue cooking. It also does crusty loaves of bread, quick breads such as cornbread, and deep dish pizza better than any other material.

its mass

No, under heat the iron becomes more porous, causing it to stick regardless of how smooth, altho it does help if its smooth. A healthy amount of fat js what you need, itll never be as nonstick as a nonstick pan regardless just due to materials.

No, under heat the iron becomes more porous, causing it to stick regardless of how smooth, altho it does help if its smooth. A healthy amount of fat js what you need, itll never be as nonstick as a nonstick pan regardless just due to materials.

I accidentally left my griswold pan sitting on a damp counter top and now it has rust on the bottom. what's the best way to get it off and reseason it without having to strip the cooking surface too?

>How much did you pay for your vintage?
Over the past 5 years I've acquired roughly a dozen vintage cast iron skillets ranging from 8-14". I never spent more than $10-20 per.

I did however invest several hours into sanding off rust and reasoning several of them.

holy shit you are retarded

>chart organised alphabetically instead of temp

Thanks I guess

>cast iron meme
>literally worse than non-stick in all aspects of stovetop cooking
>GIRLS DOUBLED OVER IN CRIPPLING FITS OF UNCONTROLLABLE LAUGHTER.PNG

The Maillard reaction called, it shot you repeatedly in the face for wasting every steak you've ever queefed out of your Fisher Price babby's first kitchen toy

If it's not rusty on the cooking surface, don't even worry about it.

>vitamin K
>fucking phytomenadione
10/10 for mixing up seasoning a pan with treating a warfarin overdose.

I don't want the rust to eat pits into it. can I just sand it off? or should I try steel wool first?

brah use an aluminum non stick pan.

>mirror polish
Not sure if iron works that way. Its not steel.

I have a magnalite baking sheet that is practically non stick. Its so fucking easy to clean.

All those old cast iron pans where machine finished, not sand blasted like Lodge or equivalent. You will not get something similar from hand sanding. Even with a power sander, you would be better off saving your time and money and investing in a machined cast iron pan if that is what you really want.

>having to use power tools to make a damn pan usable
did i just get lucky? i ordered one of these from vonshef for £15, and the only time anything has stuck to it was when i was drunk and left a burger in it for like half an hour. it's absolutely superlative for frying ribeye and i can fry an egg in olive oil without it breaking. didn't even season it

This. I vastly prefer carbon steel anyway, as it is the true gastronomic patricians choice

Do you have both? What are the differences? I hear carbon steel has a less permanent seasoning (eg. it will strip if you use acids), whereas a cast iron seasoning is more robust. Is this just because the cast iron is typically more rough and porous?

Read the thread. There's no need to sand them, it's just something autists do because they think it helps somehow.