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I started off cooking almost exclusively with nonstick Teflon-coated cheap pans acquired for peanuts on an as-needed basis (usually when one of the cheapos had lost most of its Teflon, and everything began to stick to it). But replacing pans so often felt wrong; am I alone in feeling slightly ill when throwing a pan into the garbage? Nor did I want to ingest any flaking-off Teflon bits.
I gradually began to experiment with all kinds of pans -- woks, copper, aluminum, stainless, enameled cast iron, and good old-fashioned cast iron. Woks were difficult to store and took up too much space on my tiny stove. Copper is absurdly difficult to care for, as I found out after spending some $300 on a pan and never using it because I couldn't deal with it. Aluminum didn't work for me -- it feels too flimsy and gets hot spots. Stainless is a good choice for many types of cooking, and I still have a few cherished stainless pieces (primarily my mighty All-Clad Dutch oven). Enameled cast iron is quite nice; it is essentially just cast iron (and thus very heavy) with a coating applied to it that makes it stick-resistant. But, I discovered, properly cared-for cast iron is completely nonstick, so why bother with enameled?
It took me a while to warm up to regular cast iron; I had a cast-iron pan that I must not have cared for properly, because it rusted a bit and food tended to stick to it. But after cooking in the kitchen of a friend who only used cast iron, I was hooked; her pans were truly nonstick -- I've never seen such nonstick pans! The secret, she told me, is to never use soap on them; just rinse under very hot water and wipe with a scrubby. And after it's washed, cast iron needs a few drops of vegetable (or other) oil and a quick wipe with a small piece of paper towel.
What about "seasoning"? Most cast iron pans sold today come preseasoned, but it's really not a big deal. If you do need to season one, simply pour about a quarter-inch of vegetable oil into the pan and bake it at 375 degrees for about an hour. That's it! But if you care for it as I described above, this shouldn't even be necessary.
I now cook almost exclusively with cast iron. It's ideal for cooking meats (the heat is very even, and it retains heat incredibly efficiently), vegetables, eggs, pasta sauces . . . just about everything, really. It also goes from stovetop to oven or broiler beautifully.
The cost of these wondrous pans? About $15, making them surely the greatest bargain in culinary land. Share you cast iron stories here!
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