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Bought a $4 rusted cast iron pan at a flea market in Tulsa just to practice seasoning, turns out it cooks better than the $180 one I got as a wedding gift
Picked it up mostly as a throwaway learning project. The thing was orange with rust, handle was crusty, I figured worst case I waste an afternoon and four bucks. Took it home, scrubbed it with steel wool and vinegar, dried it on the stove, rubbed it down with Crisco and baked it upside down at 450 for an hour. Did that three times over a weekend.
Made eggs in it Monday. Nothing stuck. Made cornbread in it Wednesday. Slide out clean. The expensive pan my wife and I registered for has a rough factory finish and eggs still grab in the middle no matter what I do to it. So now the fancy one sits in the cabinet and the rusty four dollar one from a folding table in Tulsa lives on the stove.
I think I learned more about how cast iron actually works from fixing a junk one than I ever did from babying a new one. Something about seeing the bare metal and building the layers back up yourself.
Anybody else got a cheap beater that flat out outperforms the nice stuff? What is it and where'd you get it?
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blakehenderson9d ago
The rough factory finish thing is backwards, actually. New Lodge pans come pre-seasoned with that pebbly texture on purpose, and it smooths out over years of cooking, so eggs grabbing in the middle is usually a heat thing, not a pan thing. Your Tulsa pan probably cooks better because you stripped it down to bare metal and built up thin layers yourself, which is exactly how the old ones were made.
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