sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2021-03-01 12:18 pm

My husband and I have unresolvable differences

If only I had known before I married him. :(

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 65


What is the proper way to care for cast iron cookware?

View Answers

Wash, wipe dry, oil
26 (40.0%)

Wash and allow to air dry at its leisure like a BARBARIAN
7 (10.8%)

You are both wrong and I'm going to tell you about it.
13 (20.0%)

Well, your first mistake was cooking in cast iron in the first place.
19 (29.2%)



He insists that it's bad for the iron to oil it before it's completely dry because otherwise it traps water underneath the oil layer, but I can't see how that could possibly be worse than letting it RUST. My lot in life is to find rusting cast iron cookware lying about the kitchen on a semi-daily basis and oil it back to health, like the Sisyphus of skillets.

ETA: Tone is always hard on the internet, but I hope it comes through that this poll is flippant and I don't actually think it matters all that much. The thing I love best about cast iron is that it is literally INDESTRUCTIBLE and couldn't care less if you let it sit around and rust or oil it immediately, whether you use soap on it (his way) or no soap (my way, although I have slowly come around to the Way of Soap). QED: the fact that we've been doing this for 20 years and the cast iron is still exactly the same regardless of which of us is in charge of it. The point of the poll is that there is no point. All of that being said, oiling it is obviously the right way and I am glad so many of you agree that he is WRONG.
aelfgyfu_mead: (Harriet Jones)

[personal profile] aelfgyfu_mead 2021-03-07 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
^^^ this is much what I was going to say. We wash ours, usually without soap but with chain mail for cast iron (Google it; it's a good thing!), and then we put it on a burner on low for 15–20 minutes. Every once in a while, we put a little oil in before we put it on a burner. You don't need to oil it every time, but doing so won't hurt it. Oiling it before it's fully dry won't really hurt it.

It's really hard to hurt cast iron!