When I moved out, my mother went through the kitchen cupboards to find stuff she didn't need that I could have and found two cast iron frying pans. I think my parents got them as a wedding present and had never used them. I was all "OMG OLD TIMEY WARM FUZZIES" (because I'd been reading a lot of American pioneer stuff at the time) and pounced on them. A few years later I wouldn't go back to non-stick frying pans but with some caveats.
My favourite thing about cast iron pans is that it's quite hard to really damage them. I grew up with 100% non-stick pans and we were constantly told not to take pasta out of them with a fork to test a piece in case we scratched it (so had to chase bits of pasta round with a wooden spoon) and to be careful when we put them away or else they'd scratch and so on. You can use whatever utensil you want with a cast iron pan. You can stick it in the oven, on the table, on any kind of hob. They'll always survive, or at least only need a clean and a wipe with oil before they're ready to go again. They really are BIFL.
When I first got them I read the entire internet about the seasoning thing. At first I was terrified to do it wrong in case I ruined them forever, and was majorly confused about the difference between a well-seasoned pan and a dirty one. What I discovered was that the entire internet gets its knickers in a twist about the precious seasoning. Our regime is the following:
- Preheat pan PROPERLY before cooking (this makes a huge difference and it took me a while to cotton onto it. Cast iron takes much longer than non-stick pans to reach the desired heat). I preheat the pan dry and then add my oil, as otherwise I end up with oil smoking everywhere or rushing to cook before the pan is hot enough.
- Cook in it. We only use it for frying/searing-type things, like eggs, bacon, fish, halloumi, tofu... We rarely do vegetables in it. That's just the way we cook. Some things use barely a drop of oil, others use a big splash - depends what we're cooking.
- As soon as it is dished up, take it off the heat and use the wooden spatula (we don't own any metal ones, just because we don't) to give it a quick scrape to stop any crudlets from burning on.
- After dinner, wipe out with kitchen roll. (This is my biggest problem with cast iron, that we end up using a lot of kitchen roll.)
- Look at it. If it looks clean, put it away. If not, pour in a teaspoon to a tablespoon of cleaning salt and scrub again. Rinse out with cold water (don't scrub with water, just rinse) and dry on the hob.
- Look at it. Are there still crudlets? (Very rare, only if we've fucked up in some way.) Scrub with wire wool and rinse with water until clean. Dry on the hob.
We don't have a dishwasher so have to do all of our washing up by hand anyway, so this isn't any harder then washing up a non-stick pan. I like that even if I went out and forgot and left something cooking on the hob all day so it burnt into a charred layer across the whole pan, I could actually clean it up again and it would be fine. I'll never need to throw them away because they chipped or whatever. I can do anything I like to them and they'll always bounce back.
I'll admit, though, that cooking efficiency is not the thing I get most from the cast iron pans. It is BIFL-ness and old timey warm fuzzies. Those, however, are priceless.