Modern mass-market cast iron is garbage. Lodge's marketing department has managed to convince people that their garbage pans are actually better, and that the texture holds on to seasoning, but it's all nonsense. It's vastly cheaper for them to produce pans by skipping the polishing step. You can still get good polished cast iron, but the pans cost hundreds of dollars. Next time an old relative dies, go raid their kitchen for the good stuff.

I have a 20 year old Lodge and I also use some of my grandmother's old Lodge/Griswold pans which were polished. My pan is well seasoned and pretty smooth after constant use. I've never noticed any practical difference except that mine can easily be replaced

What’s a good brand? I am new to cast iron and have a lodge and am okay with it for breakfast stuff.

I polished a Griswold older than anyone on this site and the eggs still stuck.

Someone then claimed my pan was manganese deficient due to some war in Gabon pre-WWII. It will always be something with these people.

Maybe you just aren't used to cooking on the pan or it needs to be seasoned further? I can cook amazing eggs on my Griswold, so I doubt the issue is the pan itself.

Lodge is just fine. All of the cast-iron snobbery overlooks the fact that it's a big hunk of metal that cowboys used to throw on a campfire to make beans. Keep cooking with it, and the bottom and its seasoning will smooth out.

Yep.. just fried an egg on my rough surface 12" cast iron Lodge with no oil, and lifted it off with my fingers in one piece.

I don't know; too rich for me. I just use some pans I stole from my dad's basement after he refused to give them to me, despite not having used them in 20 years.

I have a lodge pan that I took an orbital sander to. It's smooth as glass.

My parents gave me a new set of cast iron pans shortly after I started living on my own. I noticed they didn't have smooth bottoms like theirs did, so I asked my dad if he could help me smooth it out. He put a grinder attachment on the drill and went to work. I still remember it as one of the nicest things he did for me. And the pans still work great, 40 years later.

>If you get a polished one (or polish it yourself - there's plenty of youtube videos on that) it'll be incredible non-stick.

Sounds pretty inconvenient to me, which directly opposes author's thesis.

You can also see it as an example of the author's point. New cast iron pans are subtly worse than vintage ones and people don't know about it.

Carbon steel pans are dope, I wish more people knew about them.