Cast iron is the best. The hardest part of cast iron is all of the nonsense people believe about cast iron, leading them to think it's inconvenient and, worse, that gets them to actively make cast iron problematic.
I still have a cast iron skillet, but I mostly stopped using it once I got some carbon steel pans. In my experience they beat cast iron in nearly every way. I only use my cast iron now if I need a huge amount of thermal capacity (like pre-heating it to make pizza on or something) or for the presentation value.
It’s hard to talk to cast iron zealots. They’re usually people that never seriousky cooked before and went from cheap, thin steal pans to cast iron and assume all pans are like the thin pans they had before.
Cast iron is fine for certain applications but not many others. I’d fry and egg in one but you can’t make a great matter in one due to the thermal capacity properties they have.
Steel lined copper is the king. But yes they are cost prohibitive for some. Carbon steel is nice too.
"It’s hard to talk to cast iron zealots. They’re usually people that never seriousky cooked before and went from cheap, thin steal pans to cast iron and assume all pans are like the thin pans they had before."
Maybe they are the same people who praise Apple and Tesla products for the same reason?
Cast iron is so easy I honestly have no idea why people think it's hard. Even the people who claim you can damage the seasoning. They're not wrong. You actually can. You know whats great though? You just reseason it by cooking in it with a lot of oil.
The pans are magic. I even take my pans camping for cooking on a fire. Truly amazing things
If you have cast iron and you’re having a lot of food sticking issues then you may need to reseason it. As a person that uses mostly cast iron, I prefer it, but I think it does require a bit more care.
Oh! Very grateful for the correction. I do feel that’s a third-degree burn waiting to happen. Are you saying heat the pain to high, then put on the oil? Doesn’t that splash painfully?
I am not used to be around the kitchen but I actually did an omelette two days ago with a cast iron. I was worried it would stick. I used a small amount of oil and pre heated the pan at high temperature. After putting the eggs I lowered the heat to medium low. The idea is to have a thermal shock on the outside of the egg so that it solidifies. And then cook it at lower temperature. It worked wonders.
I’ve made scrambled eggs in it before too but these were the things I did today and I’m not expert enough to minimize them without experimentation. I frequently eat eggs and don’t have much trouble.
But I don't want a crust on my eggs. I want them pale and fluffy, especially my scrambled eggs. Any brown spots on my eggs and I consider them ruined. If you tell me I won't be able to make eggs the way I prefer them in a cast iron pan, then cast iron is not for me.
I don't get why it seems like people are all of a sudden talking about "crusty" eggs. I've seen it so much online in videos in just the last year. It definitely feels like some kind of fad. Eggs that have browned to the degree to which I'm seeing on YouTube would have gotten me fired at Waffle House.
That said, at Waffle House, we used carbon steel pans for eggs. There was a point where every pan would start to stick, no matter how it was heated. Those pans, we would clean with oil and salt, which is very abrasive. I'm not sure exactly what the effect was: either cleaning off accumulated dirt or filing out scratches and dings that would develop. I'm not sure because the salt should have created more scratches, but there was definitely a "worst" pan that had a deep scratch in it that always had some sticking problems.
