Cast iron love

[freedom]

so, whats the opinion on carbon steel?

from what i've read, carbon steel is better than cast iron as a cooking surface.


just seasoned these today...

[Tracker]

so, we have gone the heavy pan route, but we went with carbon steel. we didn't have a ton of cast iron cooking experience to begin with, so we figured we would start with the one that seems like it is less sensitive to acids..

we grabbed one that i can use on the grill/outdoor burner, went with lodge with that one, not sure how i feet about them using their same cast iron seasoning process on the carbon steel, but figured that could handle the grill/smoker a little better


the nice pans we got are from misen.. they come as raw smooth carbon steel that you have to season yourself, and they also have this neat "seasoning wax" thats coconut & soybean oil with beeswax.. makes for a really neat color to the seasoning regardless, if you zoom in, you can see that i have a lot of learning left, managed to get the oil to bead up on the seasoning one round...


from my understanding carbon steel is going to look particularly awful most of the time.. the seasoning is gonna be different colors, with different oxidization rates because of what got cooked.. some foods will strip off a layer, some foods will leave one.. if it gets screwed up, its just a good scrubbing away from starting over

[JeeperCreeper]

Oh boy I can't wait to explain to the Mrs later why I'm pulling out pots and pans to photograph

[Tracker]

so, in the fall, i caught a deal for a 300k BTU outdoor burner. that way i have the pieces for boils, deepfrying, wok-ing or panfrying/searing without pissing off my smoke detectors..

i seared a nice ribeye last night.. couple of things ill need to learn is how to better control the temp, and how to watch for overheating.. the tallow in the pan came out kinda dark, and i know some of the seasoning got burned to a black crisp.. thankfully it wasnt enough to give the oil that "burnt taste"

the lodge loved it though.. the seasoning looks back to brand new.. lodges factory surface is NOT paper towel friendly FYI.. the paper towel gets up the oil fine, but doesnt do shit about the fuzz that shows up on everything