Should I buy cast iron cookware or more specifically a cast iron pan? Does the brand of pan matter? Any recommendations?

cast iron is a meme outside of a small amount of niche scenarios that you will almost never come across

Cast iron skillets are only good for making cornbread.

>If you're in a situation where you can't grill, they're great.

Yeah, I live in an apartment with no way to grill and I love my cast iron pan

non-stick is not good if it's teflon. it has been proven to be cancer causing.

So it isn't good in general cooking? I didn't mentioned but I already have couple of non sticky pans.

Lately I see the "ILAG" coatings been shilled everywhere. Usually with different sublabels like "Ultimate", "Professional", or "Basic". It's swiss though, and therefor it gives me that expectation of top quality.

Which one of these is the best for cooking meat or steak?

>Stainless steel
>Cast iron
>Carbon steel

I have heard that more expensive cast iron pans or pre 70s vintage pans are better because the interior surface is machined out.

I have a lodge from Walmart that I use a lot and I havent had any problems with sticking etc. I also am lazy and will only treat it once every few months and use soap to clean it out all the time.

I also agree that it's a good subsitute for a grill in an apartments. I had to sell mine when I moved and I wouldn't be using my cast iron as much otherwise.

Yes. Lodge 8" and 12".
Although I have an Emeril cast iron pan which I am impressed with.

I have a 6", 8" and 12" cast iron pan. And two Dutch ovens, 10" and 12". My gf's/wives have mocked my cast iron, but then come around to admitting that it is superior. And a cast iron griddle! Unsurpassed for pancakes and burritos.

i prefer carbon steel because you can actually toss stuff while cooking. being able to bend the handle is nice too and they still do a good job at frying steaks etc

carbon steel pan and cast iron dutch oven is s tier desu

>I also am lazy and will only treat it once every few months and use soap to clean it out all the time.

I have a Lodge cast iron pan that I haven't washed in probably 10 years but then I only use it for frying (bacon & eggs, corned beef hash, pirogi, etc.) and simply wipe it with a paper towel after frying.

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Nothing wrong with owning a cast iron pan but i'd buy one of these first.

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Stainless steel?

I think they are called carbon steel pans in English.

I dont enjoy grilling personally and prefer searing my meats in cast iron. If you'de caredul with what you out in it you will not need to wash it more than you would to cook with any other pan and less so if you uss it often and only cook a set of certain things in it. As others have said you should acquire a good steel pan first, if you want to get something suoer fancy/one-and-done get a threeply deep skillet with a copper core. If you have a friend who knows about cast iron or cookery, go to estate sales or elderly yardsales, you can find amazing things for far cheaper than you ever could anywhere else in either perfect or fucking terrible condition most of the time.

We call steel with a certain chromium content in it a stainless steel. Other additives like molybdenum bay be included.

Steel by nature includes carbon, but when people say "carbon steel" they usually mean higher carbon content, not just iron, and low additives.

Cast iron is a meme to make talentless people feel that they're special. Like expensive espresso machines. All that work for no real gain

Let's say I want to cook a single egg
>take pan
>put flax seed oil in pan
>bake it for an hour
>wipe away oil
>bake an hour again
>now it's ready to cook the egg
>cook egg
>soak for 2 hours
>wipe away egg residue
>scrub (but not too hard)
>bake
>flax seed
.bake
>flax seed
>bake

Wew, ok.
You have to do that every fucking time you cook with it

What pans do you use then

In my opinion that is just a myth.

Steel if I want a sear, non-stick for pretty much anything else.
Because I'm not retarded

It's what cast ironfags believe though. They're fanatics

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Cook a strip of bacon. Remove it. Cook eggs in bacon grease. Delicious and easy to clean up. Hot water and a brush. A seasoned cast iron pan is what Teflon was trying to imitate.

>A seasoned cast iron pan is what Teflon was trying to imitate.
That's a fucking lie. It was developed by accident trying to make a new refrigerant and was first used coating materials containing radioactive materials for the Manhattan Project.

Afterwards it was used for cookware.

Cast iron is the best in many areas. If you’re looking for cheap and durable and wonderful potential for crust creation, look no further. The most utilitarian is a good stainless pan, but really there isn’t a gigantic difference. A pan is a pan, and the differences will be subtle aside for price points and shoddy manufacture.

If you want to spend all day caring for it go ahead. I had to quit my second job ever since I got my cast iron. Just use teflon less hassle and food tastes better.

I don't do the whole seasoning meme with my cast iron pan, I usually just handwash and dry it immediately after using it, is there any drawback to not doing the seasoning method?

Vitun neekerit

Older ones will rust just from air contact doing that. They either have to be seasoned or kept oiled at all times.

It's a new pan, only a couple months old at this point.

Speaking of, would a cast iron dutch oven be better for searing because more metal holds more heat? Or would you just have colder spots at the bottom of the pan because heat can't travel through the metal fast enough?

One oil-up on a 45 year old iron cantine with devoloped rust, some scrubbing and "what, the fuck!" no more rust. Two years later, faggot.

Your pan was seasoned at the factory and it's still intact.

every kitchen should have 1 good cast iron and 1 good carbon steel

cast iron if it's a big piece of meat that sucks all the heat out of the pan and ruins the sear, carbon steel and stainless when that's not a factor

cast iron is a meme

except you need one when heat retention is an issue or you need to move it to the oven

A decent cast iron pan costs less than $20 and lasts essentially forever if you don't use harsh acids and don't leave it soaking in the sink overnight.

It's a good investment, but stainless steel has much more utility in the kitchen. Cast iron's heat retention is excellent for searing meats, I usually finish my cast iron steaks in the ove. If you ever start making bread, you can use the skillet as a steam pan and replicate hearth cooking.

I think he was referring the non-stick properties of the patina. This is like saying viagra is truely blood pressure medicine.

If I see one at a thrift store and it's not rusted should I pick it up? Or is it better to start from scratch

the mythos says older is better but that's only if the previous owner has taken good care of it. if its rusty toss it but otherwise an old one will be just as good.

>Only buy it once you've got everything else.
I'm not sure I'd go that far, definitely go for the skillet before the tinned copper, but yeah, cast iron is overshilled on the internet largely due to poorfags
A lot of people only know how to cook pork chops and reddit potatoes, so obviously they'd think cast iron is the universal do-everything pan

He just worded it terribly. They weren't trying to imitate anything. It was in use for several other applications for decades before the wife of one of the scientists wanted to try it on a pan because it was really slick. This isn't an attempt to imitate another product, it's using an existing product another way (like your Viagra).

And for the disclaimer, I dislike Teflon as a cooking material.

Plebetards who've spent literally zero time in the cooking zone

Cast iron can take you places Stainless & non stick cannot even dream about.

>electric
Sry for your loss

Again Aspergerererer's here

ALWAYS cast

Yaya

Shit tier

Def Myth

^^^^^^^
RETARD ALERT
You can wash cast iron with soap as long as you dry/oil it as necessary. NEVER scrub it

buy it ffs

TLDR: real cooks excel with cast iron, wanna be's whine aboot it

Spergy, wrong, and oblivious

Classic cast iron faggotry

Include me in the screenshot

I bought a set of stainless steel pots and pans but my main pan is getting discolored. Obviously im doing something wrong but i dont know what, am i letting it get too hot, should i use more oil?

You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. If you want them to look shiny then clean them harder. But pans will accumulate some color with real use.

Thats good to hear. I just remember my moms pans being pristine so i thought it was bad. I wish i helped her cook more

Only an idiot thinks a cast iron pan is only good for niche applications.

Nah dude just use steel wool with increasingly higher grits if you want smoother to get it off if things start sticking too bad. Otherwise that happens to all aluminum and steel pans in a professional kitchen.

You can grab an antique Griswald pan from many thrift stores, look for the name in italics, it old and smooth and you can resason it. I use mine several times a week.

but it literally is, non stick can do 99% of what cast iron can do faster and more effectively

But you have to buy a new nonstick every five years and a cast iron pan lasts essentially forever.

For general cooking stainless steel is superior in every way
For steaks cast iron is best

if you cant afford a new 12 dollar pan every 5 years i think you have bigger problems than your pan

Yeah, only if you eat chips of it after scratch the shit out of it with improper utensils.

my ceramic pan is like 12 years old n still good?

Maybe I just buy both?

>If you ever start making bread
I actually already bake my bread. :D

>A lot of people only know how to cook pork chops and reddit potatoes, so obviously they'd think cast iron is the universal do-everything pan
Well, I'm pretty sure, that on average, a random Finn is a better cook, than a random American.

>609
>talks about finnish chan

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Buy Lodge, made in USA

I keep an oiled rag in a dish next to where the pans are stored that I just wipe it down with really quick before putting them away. Makes it very quick and easy, only have to add more oil to the dish every few weeks or so. Obviously you then have to wipe the oil out with a dish towel before use because it's old, oxidized oil and that shit is bad for you (although you should be doing this anyways)

If you don't understand why it would be cool for your kids to be able to inherit something that you used and cared for for most of your life then you're too much of an insect to have a conversation about food with

Ehh, restoring a rusty pan is kind of a fun project if you have the time for it. I did this recently with a dutch oven I found in our basement that had rusty spots on it.

the “thank god for mississippi” of cooking

epic digits

cast iron pans are a meme and are only good for campfire cooking

what is invaluable however is a 12" stainless steel pan.cast iron isn't worth the weight and annoyance

Teflon stopped being used like 15 years ago bro..

I have this one.

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For me, it's Lodge. Good quality, good price, made in the US of A.

As long as it's made in the USA.

I'd say yes buy a single nice piece of cast iron. It can be fairly versatile and will also do some things much better than other alternatives.

there carbon steel not stainless
here we call them forged steel

it's nice to have a cast iron skillet in the kitchen
bacon
fish
grilled cheese
Potatoes Anna
Dutch Baby

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it's nice to have a cast iron pan but i wouldn't get anything more than 20 or 30 dollars online. Be careful because there has been (not so much in the last year or so) a pretty big hipster trend about cast iron.

Its not bad, and its certainly worth having one, but they are not revolutionizing cooking or anything like people allude to them doing.

That's true of most cookware too.

At the very least, avoid Chinese. The quality is awful

They sell those here in Finland. Maybe I should buy a Lodge.

I probably buy both. In the end, pans are pretty cheap.

I bought two Lodge's pans.

>Should I buy cast iron cookware or more specifically a cast iron pan?

It really depends on your needs.

> Does the brand of pan matter?

The smoothness of the inside of the bottom of the pan is most important. Some companies have rough terrible pans while others are super smooth because they were machined after casting. Company seasonings don't really matter since you want to strip it and apply your own seasoning.

>Any recommendations?

Go to an antique store, thrift shop, and/or yard sale to find old smooth pans.

This is completely untrue on all accounts.

They are correct.

It is.

bought a cast iron and restored two from the family crypt after coming to Veeky Forums. The pan is fine, the best person for it in my house is my father when he drinks like a motherfucker. he cannot break it or damage it and it never leaves the stove.

My family had a whole set of stainless steel brazilian cookware. The single medium skillet from that set has been paramount for me, and I can do quite literally everything on earth in that pan alone. Its a thousand times better than cast iron.

tl;dr yes, they are cheap and cost effective if you do lots of meat. care is minimal if you never wash it, which is half the point.

If you have a buddy with an orbital sander, just give them a few bucks to smooth it out.

If you want to cook restaraunt grade steaks, shrooms, eggs, fish - buy it. It's absolute must for a complete kitchen. It's kinda annoying to maintain it, but you will get used to it.

This is dumb or you never had bits of food stuck on your cast. I always scrubit with sponge and salt. No soap, of course.

>This is completely untrue on all accounts.
^ Just take his word for it.

Nobody outside maybe an industrial job, and I've known several engineers and a couple people from a machine shop, have said forged steel.

Again, since the definition of steel is iron+carbon, calling something carbon steel unless you just mean high carbon feels kinda pointless to us.