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For the big stuck on pieces, you use a stainless steel chainmail scrubber. For cast iron pans you can scrub as hard as you can with that and you aren’t hurting the pan. Try doing that on your aluminum, Teflon non-stick pan, or your nicely polished stainless steel pan and let me know how that goes (don’t do this). For cleaning off oils and grease off cast iron, regular liquid dish soap (like Dawn) works great and is totally okay to use for cleaning cast iron.
For your cast iron, don’t use lye based cleaners and don’t put your cast iron in the dishwasher.
I usually just wipe up oil and leave it. Thin layer can remain for the next time I use it
I recommend people use lye-based cleaners and put them in the dishwasher in a whim.
You can throw a cast iron pan off a fucking roof, leave it in a wet ditch for 2 years, it won’t be harmed.
Quarter teaspoon of oil rubbed in, be back to cooking.
You can throw a cast iron pan off a fucking roof, leave it in a wet ditch for 2 years, it won’t be harmed. Quarter teaspoon of oil rubbed in, be back to cooking.
Sure but if you don’t use lye and just use dish soap, then you can skip that step and you keep cooking.
You can throw a cast iron pan off a fucking roof, leave it in a wet ditch for 2 years, it won’t be harmed.
Well if you leave it in a wet ditch for years it would rust and pit eventually. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t regrind the surface to get it smooth again, then seasoning to get it back into cooking form.
If you consider the lifetime, it’s the cheapest type of pan by far.
Also you can clean them stop spreading misinformation pls 😘
If it’s too heavy for you there is stainless steel or carbon steel which also last but those aren’t as cheap.
The lifetime is usually about 1 week. I can leave all my other pans soaking in the sink for a day without rusting… I don’t have the time or energy to do dishes every day.
If you’re soaking it to get stuck on stuff out of it… well stuff shouldn’t be sticking to it that aggressively. and if you’re soaking it to keep stuff from drying on, well, just rinse it out before leaving it to clean later.
Don’t soak it if you aren’t going to wash it… like just leave it on the counter or if you want to really get ahead for it pour some salt in the pan and let that sit until you feel like cleaning it. Because you can use metal on it without damaging it it’s not even hard to clean.
Teflon pans are disposable with a limited life that releases toxins into your body which is bad
Stainless steel is much less non stick but can at least stand up to soaking
Carbon steel also shouldn’t be soaked
Copper is expensive and also has care requirements
This. Just leave it on your stove with oil / food in it til you’re ready to clean it. Then use soap water and a chainmail scrubber. Be as aggressive as you want. The smoother it is the better. If you have a cheap lodge, taking the time to actually use a sander will bring it to high quality smooth like a more expensive finex or other.
After cleaning toss back on the stove on the heat for like 1 min to dry it out and you’re good to go. Ideally toss a little oil in the pan after heating and use a paper towel to rub it around, but if you are in a rush don’t even have to do that.
Honestly I just swipe it with a dish sponge until everything is off, rinse, then swipe it with a dish towel
Lol.
A) yes you do. You’re conflating not wanting to slightly alter your habits with not possible.
B) you can also leave it on the counter or the stovetop. You shouldn’t leave any metal object soaking in the sink for a day. Leave them on the counter and then put them in the sink to soak like 5 min before you start cleaning them.
A) you don’t know someone’s situation so don’t pass judgement when there are very valid reasons theg may not have the time of energy, as if mental health isn’t a valid reason already
B) soaking for 5 minutes is definitely not the same getting a good long soak
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I usually put water right into the hot pan. Flakes all the food off instantly, and it’s a lot of fun to quench it. Then a squirt of dishsoap (I keep a bottle of diluted dish soap by the sink, super handy!), scrub, rinse, and you’re done in actual seconds.
Okay even if you forget to clean it and it rusts, you can just use a steel sponge to get all the rust off and then you just need to re-season it for a few mins and you’re good to go again
Yeah I’ve been using my mom’s cast iron pan since she died like 7 years ago. Barring a level of fuck up I don’t think I can manage it should last the lifetime of the person who inherits it from me
You basically have to drop them from a second story window to break them
I did warp one slightly one time by getting it super hot and allowing it to cool unevenly. I still have it and use it. It might not sit flat on a cooktop but it’s just fine for camping.
And you will break the floor too
Preferably the street
I’ve got a little pan that’s on it’s third lifetime now, and no idea what it originally cost, but guaranteed it was worth the price for a multigenerational product.
…why are you not cleaning your cast iron pan?
It’s old wisdom from way back when soap was made from lye.
That kind of soap is much harsher and can dissolve the seasoning, which is just a bunch of layers of polymerized oil that protects the metal from rust and gives it a glossy, almost non-stick coating.
Modern dish soap is nowhere near that harsh and is completely safe to use on a seasoned cast iron pan. It’s just that your grandparents and great grandparents beat that lesson into their kids and it stuck.
Cast iron is fine to cook on, but I much prefer stainless steel. It’s a bit harder to get the results you want, but it’s way easier to maintain.
Thats interesting, I heard it was a smear campaign by marketing companies to sell Teflon pans.
There’s a good chance the dry detergent for a dishwasher can still strip the seasoning off cast iron. Especially generic brands. They’re supposed to have buffers in them to prevent it, but every additive, and mixing time, adds cost.
Your typical hand dish soap is probably safe as long as you’re not scrubbing with steel wool.
IIRC, powdered dish washing detergent is mildly abrasive, and it gets jetted around at relatively high speeds (compared to hand washing). That’s also why it’s bad for knives.
They say high temp stainless basically becomes non stick. I just get stuff sticking then immediately burning and smoking out my kitchen.
Heat up the pan on medium setting and then apply oil, if it smokes it is too hot. And don’t use olive oil, use an oil with a reasonably high smoke point. And you need to use more oil/fat than you’d normally do on other (non-stick) pans.
Don’t use extra virgin / virgin olive oil.* Regular olive oil has a higher smoke point.
It takes practice and making sure it’s at the correct temperature. If I can fry eggs in stainless steel without sticking you can too friend. Follow the instructions on this page to get you started:
https://theskillfulcook.com/how-to-know-when-stainless-steel-pan-is-ready/
Lower your temps. Stainless only sticks like that if you get it too hot.
no, medium-ish temp.
stainless steel has pores that close at the right temp so food wont stick.
you need to practice it on your cooktop yourself to find out what setting. after its heated, drip a big drop of water on it and it should dance around and sizzle. too hot or too cold it will stay where it is in the pan. theres prob a video you can watch to see what the drop of water should look like
Godort’s grandma probably: come here Godort. Grandpa’s gotta beat you again for using soap on the cast iron pan
at least Godort didn’t use The Good Scissors
AHHHHH NOT THE GOOD SCISSORS
This meme brought to you by The Chemours Company
Cast iron dorks are just skill issue people that can’t handle using a $20-40 stainless pan from a restaurant supply store. It’s an objectively worse pan that holds onto heat forever. Pan got too hot? Too fucking bad, guess you’re waiting a bit. Need to toss something or slide it around? Good thing the pan weighs 800 pounds. They have a role and purpose but the cast iron cult will come out in any cooking thread and be like “you should only use cast iron or you’re a goddamn fool”.
bro’s mad he ain’t swole like us
Bro’s mad he ain’t swole like a grandma
Aaaw is itty bitty stainless pan user on bad mood. Did you got a bad sear? Or did you notice your pan has uneven bottom? Poor little weak armed stainless pan user.
But seriously. Use what ever you want :D both pans have good thing going for them. And nobody says you need to use only one pan for all the cooking.
I mean if you want to use a cast iron pan more power to you but they are objectively worse for 90% of cooking tasks.
Why do you think if you go into literally any restaurant in the entire world 99% of the pans are either stainless steel or carbon steel woks with the occasional cheap nonstick pan thrown in for a crappy cook that sucks at doing eggs and fish
But if you go onto like a cooking subreddit, twitter thread, youtube post, etc I guarantee any post about cookware will have a bunch of cast iron zealots that are like “just get a cast iron pan, season it, end of story, no other pans, other pans are stupid, anyone who recommends another pan is an idiot”. It’s a goddamn cult of people who bought a lodge at target.
Also fwiw I do have a cast iron tamagoyaki pan and I have a 16” carbon steel wok. I highly recommend the (awesomely named) powerflamer wok burner if anyone is ever into wok cooking and has outdoor space. 160k btu and my Chinese food finally has that wok hei
I really need a new wok
Do you live near a city with a Chinatown? Carbon steel 14” wok about 2mm thick is perfect for home use imo. The 16” is more if you’re cooking for several people at once. Either one should be 30-40 dollars. I have both and I use the 16 more because I like the space but I should probably use the 14 to control portions better for my health haha
I wanted to take a trip out to New Wok myself.
Hmm. Well i only have 8 years of experience in professional kitchens so i cant speak for every kitchen in the world, but there are tasks where cast iron is objectivelly better, like tarte tatin, pann pizza searing meat is better and they can be nifty looking when serving the dish from there.
The reason why i use steelpans in work is in fact that they are lighter and i can toss them in to dish pitt. But when im cooking at home i dont need to juggle with six pans and it does not make any difference if waiting for the pan to cool and washin it takes few minutes longer. Also steel pans are generally cheaper so many restaurants buy them.
You really cant compare home kitchen and professional kitchen on same metrics. Things like deep fryiers are abnormal at home and can be a real nuisance, but those are excelent tool at the professional kitchen.
By the way. If you like out door cooking you should take a gander at “muurikka” i have two at home. The older one is from my parents and its close to be 40 years old (older than i am) they can be used on gas or open fire and are borderline impossible to break.
I don’t have 8 years but I did about 5 during college and grad school before I diverted into my current career path, though tbf that was like over a decade and a half ago now (oof). And agreed, like I said it’s not that cast iron is useless. It has a role, it’s just that the role is greatly overemphasized by the cookware zealots.
Cost is pretty negligible - a lodge 12” skillet is $30, the first result for 10” steel pan on webstaurant is $21. Though there’s an aluminum 12” for $15 (yuck). Though again tbf at least where I worked the owners would def penny pinch over $9 haha
FWIW I would absolutely love a proper deep fryer in my house. I unironically looked into this once bc I regularly go to restaurant auctions to get gear super cheap (ask me about the deli slicer I got for $50. Having a deli slicer rules) and one had a super cheap single basket deep fryer. But it needed a dedicated 220 line and as I looked into it more it turns out I would potentially be violating all sorts of building codes and invalidating my homeowners insurance. At a minimum I would’ve had to disclose it to my homeowners at get a bunch of paperwork to get the policy changed, which likely would’ve required me to have a ton of work and documentation in terms of ventilation, fire suppression, possibly inspection from local fire authority, etc. not worth the hassle even for the insane fries.
I am not familiar with the muurikka. I am looking at the website now. It is intriguing. My outdoor setup at the moment is the wok burner and a small charcoal grill. I was considering getting really into pizza and depending on my approach this could be a good fit. My other idea was to build a small brick oven. I am historically not great at building things like that but I am also dumb
Deep fryer is one of those things that sound much better than it really is. It takes a lot of room, its hard to keep clean, its messy and its dangerous if you have kids/ drunken people running around.
Muurikka has also lid that turns it to a makesift oven. Its not perfect, but its best pizza i have made on open fire in the middle of nowhere.
About pan. If i was forced to pick one pan that i would need to use in my home kitchen for the rest of my life i would choose cast iron.
Its unbreakable, i like the way it sears meats and veggies, it can be used on everything from open fire to induction. And i love how well it works if want to slow loock something in oven.
Homeowner’s insurance agrees with you
It looks interesting (muurikka). The cost is very reasonable too which is surprising given tariffs and shipping. I could see this being a very good option for camping and fire pit. I am intrigued
I look at pan this way: I have a stack of 3 steel pans, a cast iron skillet, and a cheap nonstick. 90% of the time I’m grabbing a steel pan because it’s the easiest to use for most things. If I need to get a pan ripping hot to do a reverse sear? I’ll bring out the cast iron
I suppose the agreeable thing here at least is hexclad is stupid
Agreed hexclad is stupid.
As for muurikka. The bigger oner are heasy as sin, so i cant recomment those if there is lots of trekking on the camping trip.
Have a sympathy upvote for your wok hei. I love my cast iron. And my enameled cast iron. And my carbon steel. And my copper. I love my Japanese santoku and my German steel. Different tools for different jobs my friend.
That said, if you had to populate a kitchen, from scratch, on a budget, cast iron as your main skillet is a good idea.
People that can’t handle cast iron are the same that can’t get their car’s oil changed on time.
After breakfast this morning I washed my skillets with the other dishes. The only difference is I put it on the stove to dry.I don’t know if people will be angry with me but I just cook in it for iron. So I just clean it normally with water later (no soap most of the time). Heat it to dry, and apply a bit of oil and store it. That way I never have grimes and dirty pieces there.
They’re way cheaper and they last multiple lifetimes. I don’t know what you’re on about.
The truly enlightened use carbon steel pans.
Not enough thermal mass in most carbon steel pans which is why the super truly enlightened use multiple different materials depending on what they are trying to cook
Some of us have limited space and funds, so for me it’s cast iron
They retain and distribute heat well. Also I can move it directly from my stove to my oven or vice versa
Heat retention is true but when it comes to evenness of heat distribution cast irons are not great. I remember trying out different pots and pans when I first got an induction hob with a FLIR camera and being really surprised.
Yup. I’m an enameled cast iron guy. They just soak up heat, but they don’t distribute it well. They have high heat capacity but low conductivity.
Copper with stainless steel interior has the best of both worlds. However, it’s nearly as heavy and very expensive.
Yep, I didn’t notice a huge difference between All Clad D5 and copper core to be honest. Certainly nothing big enough to justify the cost. The size of the hob matters more than the heat conduction of the cookware itself.
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IIRC the forever chemicals are not the coating that stays on the pan. The Teflon coating is inert, the toxic part is the water soluble PFAS they use to apply it that would go away (away meaning everywhere, each and every corner of the planet) while or shortly after manufacturing, or with the first uses.
So if you already own non-sticky pans don’t get rid of them, but look for another alternative when you buy a new one tho.
It’s not quite inert, a too-hot Teflon pan will release toxic gasses that can kill smaller pets like birds.
And cause flu like symptoms in humans
It’s still inert.
Inert simply means that the chemical bonds are relatively stable, not that they’re indestructible.
You can decompose anything if you get it hot enough.
Is this part of that decomposition process?
Don’t they release microplastics as well?
The old cast iron skillets might have lead.
Only if someone melted lead in it. I can do that in a new iron pan too.
Everything contains chemicals, and if it lasts forever it must contain forever chemicals.
But it doesn’t have PFAS which is good.
no, cus it is just iron. the “seasoning” is the cover you make yourself which is why most people say you can’t clean it.
Well but that seasoning is also random collection of polymers, probably not very healthty either when dissolved in a tomato sauce
it’s just an oil? like rapeseed oil is what I used – like you make it yourself you know 😁
Yeah start out as oil but with temperature end up a bioplastic
That’s like saying wine is just grapes. Cast iron seasoning is a highly temperature resistant biopolymer made by burning thin layers of oil onto cast iron (or carbon steel). There’s no evidence it’s harmful to ingest or that it offgasses at cooking temperatures, but it is a polymer. If it was still oil it would still be liquid.
Once again, no evidence it’s harmful and if I had to bet on the health and safety of popular cooking surfaces it would only be beat by glass because that shit is stupid inert without flaking. Then cast iron and carbon steel (same seasoning). Then stainless in the middle (I’m not certain I trust all the metals to make it stainless. And Teflon and copper vying for last place as known to contain risks to health if misused.
Even cast iron pans have toxic things in them like lead, cadmium, and antimony. https://www.mychemicalfreehouse.net/2025/08/le-creuset-toxicity-review-lead-cadmium-pfas.html
It’s just very unlikely to get into your bloodstream and even then it’s an incredibly small amount. Completely different than PFAS where you’re getting double dipped on toxic chemicals: those dumped by the chemical companies into nature and those that offgas into your home.
lead
I’ve seen multiple people recommending to test the lead levels of any cast iron pots you buy secondhand, since apparently a common use for them is melting down scrap lead to make your own bullets and family members sell them off after their owner dies without knowing they’ll now poison anyone who cooks with them.
Yeah that’s good to do, but the link I provided was testing brand new pans. Turns out metal doesn’t just come out of the ground as one big blob, but mixed together with lots of other metals that are hard to separate! 🤷
But yeah good to check.
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I have one that I only use to make cornbread. Cornbread doesn’t make it dirty and cast iron is the only thing that will give you a proper crust on the cornbread.
I use mine for steaks. Since I can put the whole thing in the oven after searing them.
Yeah, I don’t really eat steak. Or any meat in slab form actually.
I’m a vegetarian and use mine for pizzas and breads
Oh I’m not vegetarian I just don’t like steak. I only eat beef or pork when it’s cooked into something like a curry or stew because it has an unpleasant texture and no real flavour of it’s own. But yeah breads are good done in cast iron.
Yeah, I use mine on the grill for the same reason. It’s the only pan I have that can just get tossed on without worrying about anything melting or cracking
That’s why it was originally called a cornbread pan. Cast iron is actually a miss translation.
Keeping the old tradional of cast iron misinformation alive.
Little Miss translation, we called 'er.
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.
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.
Thank you!
more expensive?
I once had a girlfriend whose mom bought a 300€ cast iron pan that she was talked into at one of those marketing events. Eastcon is a fucking con.
I can be tempted by cast iron with a nice image on the base, though probably not for that much.
300€ WTFFFFFFFFF!!! For a pan??
So what they do is they tell you you won a free lunch (the irony is not lost on me) from like a raffle or something, which you can claim at location x at time y. Aaaaand then it turns out the free lunch is actually a marketing event where they make you (and the people who come with you) barely any food, while extolling the virtues of their ridiculously overpriced products.
I’d just gone through it with my grandma who’s luckily a moderately sharp pencil and invited me and my mom along. We just outright refused to buy anything and ate the cookies and shit (they were demonstrating a cookie maker lmao, made like 3 cookies). But my ex’s mom went there I think either alone or with someone who yes-manned her into spending money on the pan. And I think she did it in installments too.
This was like 10 years ago. It’s a proper scam, idk if they still do it, but I bet they do.
And yes, the pan was excellent, it came with a removable handle and a kinda cone shaped lid that had a hole in the center, which was useful (lets humidity out, but fat doesn’t splatter everywhere). But I was still flabbergasted to hear someone would spend 300€ on a pan. In like 2015 or 2016 Estonia. Her net salary was under 1000€ a month.
I have a set of cast-iron I found under an abandoned trailer next to a junkyard. They cost exactly nothing and I got to have nerdy fun restoring them over a weekend afternoon, I have been using them for 20 years.
Lol a few minutes with an angle grinder and a flap wheel will take it back down to metal real fast.
Sure, but not having those tools, I used the wonders of SCIENCE.
Some washing soda, a steel rod, a 12v battery charger and a tub of water and overnight all the rust had migrated to the steel rod.
That is a much cooler way than simple abrasives.
That sounds like the best set of cast iron.
It’s in the name.
Yeah, I understood that, but try saying that to a woman in her 50s in eastern Europe ~10 years ago lol, it’s not like she spoke English
Vintage, or nicely finished pans with polished surfaces or extra greebles and nubbins can be expensive.
Something liked a lodge pan will be cheap but the bottom of it kind of sucks without being ground down ether by long usage or by tools.
I cook on gas, couldn’t care less about the smoothness of the bottom but I get people would if cooking on glass top
In general thought, cast iron is cheaper than any pan equivalent in performance… the cheaper stufq they sell at grocery stores are practically dispossable
I mean like, the interior cooking surface is rough.
I’m not sure if you are joking or not but when you buy the pan you are supposed to do the first seasoning in the oven a half dozen times. By the end of that the pan should be smooth. I tend not to look at new cast iron since I have so many I yhrisfted over the years. I suppose the import mass produced stuff might look awful on close inspection.
Nah, you’re not gonna smooth that out with seasoning. Like, it’s the texture of the sand mold just like the rest of it, zero sanding or grinding on the cooking surface to smooth it out and this isn’t a “cheap import” kind of thing, the brand I’m thinking of, lodge, are made in America. Like, they’re functional pans, but the roughness makes them harder to use than something with a polished or even sanded cooking surface, stuff just catches on the nooks and crannies regardless of seasoning. Like a quick pass with a sander or grinder improves them immensely, but that’s not really something most people are going to bother with.
I’ll keep an eye out then. Wild that something that quality survives on the market.
What they’re talking about sounds like the pan I have. Bought it in the camping aisle, and it was much cheaper than the ones in the kitchen aisle. I haven’t found the roughness to be much of an issue; I probably have to use more oil than I would otherwise. It has gotten smoother over many years of use.
I mean, there are a bunch of American cast iron companies still making really good stuff, most are just kinda pricy, like 100 bucks for a skillet. Lodge is just notable for being super cheap, 20 bucks for a skillet, and having a very crude finish compared to the others.
The glass cooktops are insanely scratch resistant. I use a metal scraper to clean mine.
They don’t mean the underside.
They mean smooth on the inside. The bottom as In where tu out your food to cook.
My brother has one like that that was ground smooth brand new. I had mixed opinions when I uses it.
My gigantic cast iron had a rather annoying raised ring around the bottom. It was fine on a coil electric range, gas stove, or campfire, but when I moved into a place with a flat top, it was annoying since it didn’t actually make contact. I took an angle grinder to it and ground it flat. Night and day differerence.
It helps with iron deficiency.
This can look like a joke for some, but it’s actually true. For anyone skeptical, search fr academic articles on the matter and see it for yourself.
