I saw some greentext about some list of caring for castioron/developing and maintaining seasoning. The list was some collection of a bunch of progressively more absurd tips. The comments were:
The thing is, cast iron cookware is a criminally under researched segment of metallurgy and food science. Like, most of what is known is just oral tradition and folklore. It’s mystical in a sense, we preform these old practices and rituals in an attempt to coax an outcome in to being, not based on rigorous testing or knowledge based conjecture, but on myths and ancestral knowledge.
Like we can draw parallels from other areas of metallurgy to get a rough idea of what is going on but most of the modern research is for industrial uses (not cooking) and not for cast iron specifically because it’s not a super common material in engineering anymore.
Some of these old rituals and practices were developed in specific circumstance that are different from the modern day, and from each other, leading to conflicting ideas and practices as different traditions run In to each other. Some old knowledge is applied incorrectly, like people saying you can’t wash it with soap because that will damage it, which is true in the context of an 1800s homestead where they’d be using lye and fat based soap which would strip away the polymerized oil coating, but most dish soap is surfactant based and won’t strip the seasoning.
This level of mystery is not true. It’s just a hunk of iron that gets a polymerizered coating of oil on it. That used to be hard to achieve before we had reliable ovens and cooking oil. Now it’s easy.
That’s all there is to it.
They’ve continued to today because some people are paranoid / like to feel special / don’t understand things well, so default to perpetuating rules they heard someone say confidently rather than questioning why that rule was created in the first place.
There is actually a lot we don’t really know about the polymerization and how it layers and adheres. Particularly about how certain heating regimes and oil type effect it. There are a handful of papers about it, but there is a lot missing particularly about what effects the resiliency, porosity, and toughness of the layers. Best practice for what oils to use for seasoning, and how to best apply them and get them to form even layers is up in the air.
We understand generally what is happening, but the specifics are poorly understood and not well researched.
I for one am onboard with pursuing this research. Not just because I think it’s interesting and love to scientifically dispel (or support!) “traditional wisdom” but also because pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake is an admirable goal on its own.
Knowledge is shareable power and I don’t believe in “knowing enough” about something we clearly don’t know enough about. Knowledge and research have far reaching effects; researching cast iron pan seasoning is an intersection between several sciences and engineering disciplines and no one can guess what knowledge may be gained until we gain it.
Best practice for what oils to use for seasoning, and how to best apply them and get them to form even layers is up in the air.
Best practices are not up in the air. Best practices are to use a thin layer of high smoke point oil like rapeseed oil, baked above it’s smoke point for like 20m. Repeat to create a thicker layer.
What you are describing is min/maxing, and getting more specific from there. Yes, eventually researchers may discover even better oils or treatment plans for cast iron, but right now, best practices are known, reliable, not a mystery, and not hard to follow.
If there is min/maxing to be done then by definition our current practices are not best. They may be (and generally are) good and functional practices but until the research is done we don’t know what best practices are or when to apply them.
If there is min/maxing to be done then by definition our current practices are not best.
No.
Best practices explicitly and always refers to currently best available current practices.
On top of that, in the context of a discussion with an explicit goal, best practices would explicitly refer to how to the best practices for achieving that goal, not some other nebulous context of “best” practices.
I saw some greentext about some list of caring for castioron/developing and maintaining seasoning. The list was some collection of a bunch of progressively more absurd tips. The comments were:
I own cast iron, and none of these are true.
I own cast iron, and all of these are true.
I own cast iron, and some of these are true.
Thank you!
The thing is, cast iron cookware is a criminally under researched segment of metallurgy and food science. Like, most of what is known is just oral tradition and folklore. It’s mystical in a sense, we preform these old practices and rituals in an attempt to coax an outcome in to being, not based on rigorous testing or knowledge based conjecture, but on myths and ancestral knowledge.
Like we can draw parallels from other areas of metallurgy to get a rough idea of what is going on but most of the modern research is for industrial uses (not cooking) and not for cast iron specifically because it’s not a super common material in engineering anymore.
Some of these old rituals and practices were developed in specific circumstance that are different from the modern day, and from each other, leading to conflicting ideas and practices as different traditions run In to each other. Some old knowledge is applied incorrectly, like people saying you can’t wash it with soap because that will damage it, which is true in the context of an 1800s homestead where they’d be using lye and fat based soap which would strip away the polymerized oil coating, but most dish soap is surfactant based and won’t strip the seasoning.
This level of mystery is not true. It’s just a hunk of iron that gets a polymerizered coating of oil on it. That used to be hard to achieve before we had reliable ovens and cooking oil. Now it’s easy.
That’s all there is to it.
They’ve continued to today because some people are paranoid / like to feel special / don’t understand things well, so default to perpetuating rules they heard someone say confidently rather than questioning why that rule was created in the first place.
There is actually a lot we don’t really know about the polymerization and how it layers and adheres. Particularly about how certain heating regimes and oil type effect it. There are a handful of papers about it, but there is a lot missing particularly about what effects the resiliency, porosity, and toughness of the layers. Best practice for what oils to use for seasoning, and how to best apply them and get them to form even layers is up in the air.
We understand generally what is happening, but the specifics are poorly understood and not well researched.
I for one am onboard with pursuing this research. Not just because I think it’s interesting and love to scientifically dispel (or support!) “traditional wisdom” but also because pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake is an admirable goal on its own.
Knowledge is shareable power and I don’t believe in “knowing enough” about something we clearly don’t know enough about. Knowledge and research have far reaching effects; researching cast iron pan seasoning is an intersection between several sciences and engineering disciplines and no one can guess what knowledge may be gained until we gain it.
Best practices are not up in the air. Best practices are to use a thin layer of high smoke point oil like rapeseed oil, baked above it’s smoke point for like 20m. Repeat to create a thicker layer.
What you are describing is min/maxing, and getting more specific from there. Yes, eventually researchers may discover even better oils or treatment plans for cast iron, but right now, best practices are known, reliable, not a mystery, and not hard to follow.
If there is min/maxing to be done then by definition our current practices are not best. They may be (and generally are) good and functional practices but until the research is done we don’t know what best practices are or when to apply them.
No.
Best practices explicitly and always refers to currently best available current practices.
On top of that, in the context of a discussion with an explicit goal, best practices would explicitly refer to how to the best practices for achieving that goal, not some other nebulous context of “best” practices.