The seasoning is not enough – it is the secret of success in cast iron

We have written a lot on the cast iron stoves of Serious Eats, covering subjects such as how to season them, how to clean them and how to bring them back to the deaths. There are endless debates on the oil to be used, whether soap is a friend or an enemy, and how many cycles of seasoning a new pan really need. I edited an entire kitchen book on the subject, and I know the speech well. But to be honest, none of this is much important if you are not using Your stove correctly.

And use it correctly starts with an often neglected but simple step: preheat it carefully. The seasoning counts, but that does not do you good if the pan is only half hot when you throw your eggs or your chicken thighs. According to my experience, almost all “cast iron failures” (stuck food, pale Sear, unequal browning) can be traced to a cold or uneven heated pan.

You may not see this step written in each cast iron recipe on serious eats (even some of our most popular), but consider this your invitation to add it anyway. It is a fundamental habit, a small change that can give significantly better results when applied to the recipes you already cook.

What is melting (and is not)

The cast iron kitchen utensils are incredibly dense and thick, and it is excellent for keeping heat. Once it is hot, it remains hot, and it is a major advantage when you want deep cooking, even seized or consistent.

But making it be uniformly hot is another story. Fonte is a bad heat driver. This means that the heat does not spread quickly or evenly on its surface. This slow heat flow is the price you pay for legendary meal heat retention.

As Dave Arnold put it in his room on the science of cast iron cooking, the thermal conductivity of the cast iron is about a fifth that of aluminum. Place a 12 -inch cast iron pan on a small burner and wait a minute or two, and you will have a burning center with a fresh outdoor edge. Add a steak to this saucepan, and the room touching the hot center brown beautifully while the rest sweat and vapor.

Why preheating counts

The solution to guarantee even the browning is quite simple: give your stove the time it needs to preheat properly, allowing the entire cooking surface, not only the area directly above the flame, to reach a uniformly hot temperature. This means more cooking and better browning, particularly important for techniques such as the pan, the pan or the shallow beam.

It also makes the pan functionally more non -stick. The seasoning does its job only if the food strikes the pan hot enough to adjust the surface proteins before having a chance to bind with the kitchen utensils itself. If the pan is cold or heated unevenly, proteins are much more likely to bind with the surface and cling to expensive life; This can even happen in a well -seasoned saucepan.

How to preheat your stove

Preheating is not complicated, but it requires a little patience and attention. The best approach is to heat the vacuum pan, oil without oil. Adding oil too early can make it decompose or burn before the pan is completely heated. The heating of the dry pan allows the pan to warm up evenly and carefully, by preparing the ground for clean and well controlled entry.

• To preheat a burner: Adjust your cast iron pan over medium heat, ideally on a burner about the same size or larger as the base of the pan. If your burner is smaller than the pan, rotate the pan several times during preheating to help even hot spots. Give him 3 to 5 minutes to reach the temperature. Then, and only then, add the oil and let it heat until it sparkles or simply start smoking. If you are targeting a specific temperature, use an infrared thermometer to read the surface directly. For softer cooking tasks, such as blowing up onions or frying eggs, a surface temperature of around 400 ° F is generally sufficient. For high heating work such as entering a steak or a pork chop, let the pan reach a temperature closer to 500 ° F.
• To preheat in the oven: When you need a heartbreaking hot pan to put an appropriate entry on the steaks or chops, I recommend using the oven, which can heat the pan uniformly while making it exceptionally hot. Place the empty cast iron pan in a cold oven, then turn the oven at 500 ° F. Once it has reached the desired temperature, carefully remove the pan using oven mittens or thick locks (it will be very hot, so make sure the towel is not even the slightest little wet).

  Set the pan over high heat to the stove, add oil and wait for it to smoke (which should occur almost immediately). Then continue with the kitchen. This ensures that the whole pan is uniformly heated and capable of creating an appropriate entry as soon as the food strikes the surface.

Current errors and how to avoid them

Even experienced cast iron users (semi-intentional word game) may encounter problems if they are not paying attention to some key details. Here’s what to watch out for:

1 and 1 Heating too quickly: The launch of the heat of a burner may seem too high, but the boosting of a cold cast iron pan can cause unequal heating and hot spots. The bad conductivity of the pan means that it will not distribute this sudden heat uniformly, and you will get a burned center and fresh edges. Hold on medium heat and give it time.

2 Adding oil too early: Pouring oil in a cold pan is one of the most common faux pas. As the pan warms up, the oil can smoke prematurely before the whole surface is evenly heated or polymerizes unevenly. Always dry the pan, then add oil once it is preheated.

3 and 3 Undeheating preheating: Three minutes may seem long when you are hungry, but jumping or precipitating the preheating step is the fastest way to ruin a meal (your onions, steaks and eggs will thank you). A half hot pan will not brown properly, and it will certainly not stop sticking.

4 Using bad burner: A large skillet on a tiny burner means that you only heat the cooking surface fraction. If you can, use a burner that corresponds to the size of your pan. Otherwise, rotate the pan during preheating to promote more heat distribution.

The point to take away

People tend to treat cast iron maintenance as a sacred ritual, but good cuisine comes down to a good technique. A dozen layers of polymerized linseed oil will not matter if your pan is cold and heated unevenly. You have to give him time to become hot – like, Really Warm – Before you start cooking.

Preheating is a key way to transform the melting of a frustrating and sticky mess in the power it is supposed to be. This is the difference between pale chicken and crisp broken skin, between the scrambled eggs that hung and fried eggs that slide clean.

So, by all means, season your stove, wash it gently and oil it after each use. But just as important, heat properly.