I was (and to a degree still am) a big cast iron guy, but I find that these days I use my carbon steel pans much, much more frequently. They share many of the benefits of cast iron in terms of durability, oven safety, high temp cooking, natural non-stick, etc. However they can be much, much lighter and their heating properties make them superior for many, and I would argue most (but not all!), applications.
These days if someone said they needed 1 quiver killer pan, I would unquestionably recommend a carbon steel skillet over a cast iron one.
If you're someone who likes using cast iron, I think you are doing yourself a major disservice by not trying carbon steel.
Especially carbon steel crepes pans (https://www.debuyer.com/en/poele-a-crepes-mineral-b-1472.htm...) are completely unbeatable. I have two of them and I can feed a small crowd of family and friends faster than they can eat. Nothing sticks if you take proper care.
The best thing, they are dirt cheap.
We do, however, still use our cast iron griddle for making bacon in the oven. Comes out perfect every time.
For anyone reading who is new to carbon steel, the trick to non-stick cooking is making sure the pan gets hot. And if something does stick? It pretty much wipes right off while the pan is still hot.
By complete accident my spatula is also from DeBuyer (https://www.debuyer.com/en/flexible-turner-slotted-fkofficiu...). It is very sharp and it easily scrapes anything that dares to stick (due to my mistake of not getting it hot enough), without smearing it.
Pros are they can take very high temperatures, you can be rough with them, are non-stick when seasoned and at a proper temperature (like cast iron), and much lighter than cast iron.
Cons are you don't want to cook liquidy acidic foods in them that often (removes the seasoning off the pan), they can rust easily if not seasoned, and require slightly more maintenance then stainless steel or Teflon pans. Basically you're not washing these with dish soap. Just a rinse, maybe some scrubbing with kosher salt, and heating it on the stove to dry and sterilize it.
Keeping it lightly oiled when cooking or storing it helps too. They're a great work-horse pans. We got ours after having to throw out our last scratched Teflon pans. Making scrambled eggs in carbon steel was hard at first, but over time as a better seasoning developed and figuring out the right temperatures to use, I now get the same results as I use to in Teflon.
In my experience the searing/frying performance of carbon steel is not an issue for the overwhelming majority of things I cook, ergo I don't really care that cast iron has a higher capacity. The tighter temperature control, on the other hand, is always nice.
I still use my cast irons sometimes for things where that heat capacity is really nice (searing a huge steak or something like that), but I use carbon steel much more frequently.
It's now like 7 years later and my skillet shows no signs of giving up, and I don't think buying yet another kitchen device would make my wife happy. Should have gone with a bigger skillet to begin with.
Also, induction cooktops are amazing.
Just wait until your kids get their hands on it. Mine is literally inherited from somebody's grandmother and it's awesome. Though sadly, its sibling died doing what it loved -- making bacon.
Lodge casts their pans without surfacing, so you have a porous surface. I have a lodge and it's okay, but I prefer my antique Wagner when I can. It sticks less and it also has been in my family a really long time.
One drawback is they are often bundled with ridiculous touch-controls rather than knobs, even though that shouldn't need to be the case. You can find those without.
Anytime you are cooking something acidic, tomatoes, vinegar, wine. I try not to deglaze meat brownings into sauce in cast iron.
A stainless steel dutch oven is a great universal pan as well. For a "first pan" I'd probably suggest tri ply stainless over cast iron. The main thing I like about cast iron more is the pan temperature not dropping when I put something on it, so its great for reverse searing baked steaks inside the house. Most other things I find functionally equivalent in stainless and cast iron, including browning meat before I cube it or break it apart. (brown cuts of meat and ground meat whole!)
I wouldn't simmer an acidic sauce in cast iron for hours, but this is poor advice. Deglazing will not damage the seasoning on cast iron pan once it is properly seasoned (and maintaining that is easy, contrary to lots of what you hear).
Unlike to your experience, I don't find them functionally equivalent for a number of things, which is why I have both (and enamel cast, much better than almost all clad steel dutch ovens that aren't really expensive, as most of them don't clad far up the sides)
I have both, and I use 5-ply fully clad more than I use cast iron. My 9 qt is bottom clad only, but the lack of clad up the sides hasnt been an issue. The bottom surface is hot which is what needs to be hot on the stove. The sides arent getting hot spots in the oven, during brazing and stews.
https://www.calphalon.com/cookware/cookware-by-product-type/...
I did once ruin a seasoning making a tomato sauce, which was a way to learn about acidic interactions - but that was over hours.
FWIW I had a 5 qt like that calphon but found I was always using my enamel cast one instead, so gave it away.
One thing I really like about the cast iron skillit is you can treat it roughly and use it anywhere. Mines been in fire pits, on bbq, stovetop, oven, even a bread oven. Handles temperature changes without issues (unlike enamel and some clad) is unbeatable to sear things. Doesn't care what tools you use in it. Nonstick property is pretty good (better than steel pan, worse than teflon) and will still be pretty good in 20 years.
Deglazing itself is a very fast process, usually seconds. If you are doing something over an hour, it's likely simmering. If you did that in a sauce that was still acidic (rather than had some acid thrown in to deglaze or whatever) then I could see that being a problem.
I'm not super careful about not using acidic things in cast iron, and I do deglaze in it on occasion, it's just a little harder imho. I can see how my original comment reads.
Metallic taste/smell in beer is a pretty significant fault traced to untreated wwater, old equipment, or lipids in the malt.
There’s lots of stuff in Hoegaarden (and witbiers in general) that can be unexpected or off balance (e.g. coriander, lactic acid, orange zest).
Metallic, at Hoegaardens scale, would be quite unexpected
Oh, and if a tomato or anything else somewhat-acidic touches it then the entire dish will taste like blood. So that's fun.
It's alright for cooking steak (preheating for a few minutes on high is a must, though, it's gotta be terrifyingly hot or everything will stick, including steak), and if I drown things in scorching-hot oil or fat (say, from bacon) they they don't stick much, but that sure isn't healthy. The pan has zero inherent non-stickness, only what it acquires from whatever lake of oil I put in it.
Screw babying it. Get a chain mail cleaner for it (and you definitely can use soap), use the pan often and especially when you’re doing something oily, and soon enough you’ll use it a lot.
And iron leached into whatever your eating. I know thats considered in the myth category, but I have at least one dish Ive prepared that ended up tasting pretty metallicy. Could be expectations manifesting reality.
I think people get turned off to steel when they put a new pan on the stove, dont let it heat up, bake something to it, and its an arm and a leg to clean the first time. Unlike nonstick, it has a bit of a learning curve. Cast iron doesnt show stains the same way, and you can use a chain mail scrubber. Scratching steel does slightly change its nonstick properties, so dont use steel wool.
When I'm searing something, I even prefer that it sticks slightly more to the stainless as it typically releases when it's done anyways -- and my anecdotal experience is that I get a better sear from the surface of the meat sticking to the skillet more firmly.
Cast iron gives additional radiant heat because it's black, so if I am cooking steak in the oven I pretend like it gives me more uniform temperature increase than depending on conductive and convective heat. If I am browning meat and not baking it after, Ill use steel.
I like cast iron for potatoes too. Hashes. Not sure why. Holds temp better?
Carbon steel is great, requires a little upkeep, but part of what makes it great is how it works with a really high heat source; the stoves in a restaurant behave very differently than your home one.
An extreme case of this is woks. There is very little you can do at home to reproduce the effect of an 80k BTU burner and a carbon steel wok.
Food stuck to the (Lodge) pan no end as well, even when I spent money on all the seasoning oils and seasoned it.
I'd rather just buy a new cheap modern pan every year. Chuck them in the dishwasher, job done.
But handling them now is just part of the ritual.
The biggest change I’ve had since starting using them a couple years ago is moving from the ball scrubby disposable two a Chainmaile ringlet style scrubby.
Using the chain mail has a different feel it slides easier and it washes clean much easier.
I recommend checking out the chain mail style scrubbers for cast-iron.
You can mostly do the same soap and water scrub as everything else. Assuming you use a reasonably modern dish soap an not something harsh, if you don't leave it soaking in the soapy water it will be fine.
If your seasoning is perfect (it isn’t) you could in theory leave it to soak too since it would be completely encased in the polymerized fat.
Contrast with fraying teflon (which you should immediately discard, of course) that we ought not ingest.
With the closed-back cups sealing over my ears, and the noise cancelling active, I can only just hear normal-volume conversation next to me. When also playing music, I can't hear any normal sounds around my house. With white noise and earplugs as well, I literally can't hear a baby screaming.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/7/22424367/sonova-buys-sennh...
> With white noise and earplugs as well, I literally can't hear a baby screaming.
That's one benefit of headphones: if the earplugs aren't enough, you can do earplugs + headphones for ultimate noise-cancellation.
You can try both for a week, and return the set that doesn’t fit into your life. Both Apple and Sony can handle a refund.
For sure, that moment when you power them up on the airplane it's heavenly.
I do wish the max volume for the aftershokz where higher, and they didn't have the play/pause button trigger a redial when double pushed. I've accidentally done that multiple times (Including scaring my parents with a middle of the night call, due to 9 hours time difference.)
The preheat in the oven trick is good for steaks too.
Aftershokz are perfect.
Cast iron is awesome but I now have the reverse problem, constant fear I’m going to crack my counter top.
Personally I think these are a waste of money unless you live in a house. Trying to season one of these smoked up our apartment for hours. Apparently we didn't do it right because it's still sticky even with oil, but there's no way we're going through the headache again until we have a house.
The cast iron community of the internet overthinks its care and usage. To season, just use it. To use it, don't restrict yourself (some recommend against tomato sauce because of the acidity, for. example). To clean it, get yourself as scrubber [1] to remove the high spots and wipe the remaining residue with a paper towel. Done.
It's a hearty hunk of metal that's been in kitchens for generations. It can withstand a lot.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Cleaner-Stainless-Chainmail-Scrubber-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5owtnm/why_i_dont...
Ditched my cast iron in anticipation because the one I have has a rough bottom that would definitely scratch up the glass cook top of the electric stove.
Since I ditched the cast iron, honestly haven't seen much of a difference in how well I can cook things using a regular nonstick pan - my main use is cooking/frying up chicken thighs so the skin is nice and crispy.
Buying the cast iron did give me the original inspiration to start making these recipes though.
Regular non-stick works just as well for about 3 years or so (very much depends on how much you use it, and how careful you are), then the non-stick wears out and they stick worse than anything else.
I have stainless pans that work just as well as cast iron, but they cost more. They end up spending most of the time hidden away but I do use them and won't get rid of them.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/tillreda-portable-induction-coo...
I'm imagining the size of your phone case right now.
The real advantage is that they're so cheap relative to their utility. They heat evenly and stand up to incredible abuse at a fraction of the cost of a normal pan.
Leave it shiny on your stove and ready for next use.
The important thing with cast iron is to clean it immediately, before you've started eating. But this is actually pretty easy because steam cleaning is so effective and cast iron is really durable.
It takes about 30 seconds to clean it and rub with oil.
For seasoning to form the oil needs to turn into plastic. A wet layer of oil that isnt heated wont do that.
Clad steel is a nice middle ground, either with aluminum or copper. More even heat distribution, long lasting without the care regimen of cast iron. They arent expensive either.
I still argue that the care regimen is overblown, you can scrub with soap and a sponge and as long as you're not just grinding at the surface it will be fine. You can soak it, it's fine. We treat our cast iron like any other pan and it's really not a big deal - we just add appropriate oil if we took off too much of the bonded oil the last time we cooked.
Edit: The cooking oil we mostly use is Ghee (clarified butter) to cook vegetarian dishes on our cast iron skillet.
A metal spatula is necessary as well. Plastic and rubber aren't stiff enough to scrape the cook surface smooth.
Not everyone lives in an apartment with a range vent that goes outside. I've personally never seen that in my life.
Picked up a chainmail-like "dish rag" (it is truly just a swatch made up of links of metal) that beautifully cleans the skillet after meals but preserves the seasoning.
Yeah, iron skillet is our go-to now.
They’re not, and if seasoning is a concern, you can get preseasoned; you should almost never need to reseason with proper care.
In houses (notice I never said anything about ownership, don't know why you brought that up), you can open up windows on all sides and generally have at least two doors, which allows for much better ventilation than what's possible in the apartments that I've been in recently.
Music is actually pretty unsatisfying at any volume above background levels in an otherwise-quiet room, since any significant bass through the conduction 'phones actually makes them jump out of contact with your head, resulting in a buzz you can feel + hear. Calls, podcasts, YT videos, etc. all work great.
I sometimes allow APM's but I have to keep the volume really low and the duration short. I probably shouldn't use them at all but I miss the richness of music too much.
I was asking if by not exposing the inner ear to sound pressure, but instead vibration through the bone, it would do less damage.
I wasn’t looking to cover tinnitus, but to avoid making it worse.
Just be aware that they make it practical to tell that something is happening around you, but with spoken word you'll usually have to pause to tell what is happening around you. I.e., I can't understand what someone is saying to me if a narrator is already speaking into my ear.
As for headphones, I obsess over the Sony MDR-7506s, which to my ears are the best sounding headphones ever made. These are old-school wired studio monitors and they outperform any hyped “high-end” overpriced headphones. They have a neutral, accurate sound and are surprisingly inexpensive. You can still get then new for about $100. They are my secret audio weapon.
Oh and I love Jetbrains tools. I specifically use RubyMine quite a bit. VSCode (with the Ruby and Rails plugins) is great, but RubyMine is just very mature and polished, and it feels professional.
Least with Howard Light it's Greens<Pinks<Oranges. Greens should be more than enough and are 'softer' if you've got a smaller ear canal. All of them work well.
You have to ensure you're putting them in correctly. Read the box. Roll the plug in your fingers, reach your other arm over you head to grab the top of the opposite ear, gently pull on the top of your ear, and insert the plug. You should feel & hear it expand forming a seal.
You can reuse foam ones a couple of times(can even get them corded), but be very, very wary of infections. And always put the same earplug back in the same ear(thus you don't spread anything).
If you aren't singing or don't need to hear your own voice as well, you can also get away with cheaper percussion earplugs like these: https://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/vater-earplugs
I would say these are both good enough for the casual musicians / audience members. I would only upgrade back to electric ones if I were buying actual in ear monitors, but I doubt any of my bands will get to that point.
Expensive but also helpful for in person concerts.
The best would be custom molded earplugs, but those are fairly expensive.
Can't recommend that people wear hearing protection enough in general and at least for me etymotic make for a pleasant experience.
Foam earplugs are supposed to me more effective, but apparently harder to wear and sometimes less comfortable.
I also think they make the best earbuds on the market as well.
The amazing thing about them is that they let you go to a live concert and hear all the music properly, without pain.
But your last sentence makes me wonder WTH is going on. Why would so many people want this experience?
First, humans associate louder sound levels with higher quality, up to a point. Frequencies which can't be heard at lower levels become audible at higher levels.
Second, human ears adapt to a reasonably large range of sounds.
Third, sound levels decay with distance, which is why in ear phones use tiny amounts of power (a few milliwatts) and speaker systems for arena concerts can use megawatts. They also decay unevenly by frequency.
A classical Western concert with a full orchestra, unamplified, often has peak levels around 90 dB in the first few rows of seating. An amplified rock concert is trying to provide body-stirring levels of sound for people a hundred meters or more away from the stage.
That's the technical why. The personal why? Loud music literally moves you. It's not something I want every day, but it's fun on occasion.
Thank you.
This was a big one for me. I donate ~2 to not just projects I happen to like, but to ones that I've used and have given me a good return on investment.
Honorable mentions: Vuejs, Bootstrap Vue
Just do a search for "noise reduction earmuff" for this option. They're obviously not a good solution for sleeping but work well for working.
Super cheap sound ... basically no bass response.
My brain got used to it thou and I still use them daily, listing to (mostly speech) podcasts on the (bike) commute.
It's the comfort + durability + awareness + good price + still decent sound quality imo, which makes them worth it to me.
No idea why people need noise-canceling, those (and my drumming headphones) seal pretty well against the outside ... once I put music on I don't hear a thing anymore.
That said ... I use the bone-conducting ones pretty regularly on the bike and while running.
[1] Not really 5 way ... 1x low, 2x mid, 2x high balanced amatures.
I run a whole bunch, so it matters a lot. My favorite thus far have been surprisingly cheap ($20) "retro" JLab phones that look like the kind I used to run with before everybody switched to earbuds. Build quality is mediocre but I just want to be able to hear stuff.
I'd be willing to spend $79 on the OpenMove (that's what I see on their web site), but it's a very different approach so it's good to know that it works for you.
I'm looking into getting a new watch, so maybe I'll get one that can play bluetooth audio to fix the bulkiness.
They're designed to be reusable and tend to be really comfortable. Some of them don't stick out of your ears like the plugs.
"audiophile noise dampeners" googled just give speaker isolation products, etc.
Ear plugs (silicone). Don't waste your money on noise-cancelling headphones, I have $200 ones and they don't compare to simple ear plugs. If you live in a moderately noisy area and you want peace and quiet, get them. They basically just make everything quiet. 24 from CVS = $10.
OpenMove by Aftershokz - Bone-conduction headphones. Perfect for running and just good for listening to music. They work, they're way easier to wear and more comfortable than earpods, I haven't had any issues since I got them about 8-months ago. Plus, you can wear them with earplugs for music + noise cancellation. $99
Cast iron skillet. This is more of a personal preference. I hate getting new kitchenware and then worrying about breaking it or getting it all stained. But these are super easy to clean and AFAIK practically never wear out. Also very cheap (iirc $15).
Software:
JetBrains tools. Basically the only software I can imagine spending $250 a year on, and it actually being worth it.
Patreon and Github sponsors. Not much (I think $15 a month total). It's sad how few sponsors a lot of these projects have. I'm not rich, but I can afford donating $5/month here and there. I really think the world would be a better place if more people donate to open source and content creators they like.