Believe it or not, lodge is the best bang for the buck. Pores don’t really matter once you’ve got a decent layer of “season” built up. If anything, it makes the polymerized oils hold on a tiny bit better.
But, if you don’t mind starting the seasoning process over, you can hand sand the cooking surface and get it as smooth as you prefer. Well, you can machine sand it instead, but that’s less forgiving if you aren’t used to doing that kind of thing.
Just get a lodge and use it a lot. It will get good fast. Alternatively go check Craigslist or ebay or shopgoodwill for something cheap that looks good to you.
The difference between cast irons is pretty small at the end of the day is pretty tiny and you shouldn’t spend too much money or brain power on getting one. You don’t need to be too selective because the biggest determing factors are how heavily seasoned it is and how practiced you are using it so you are better off just getting something and using it rather than looking for the perfect pan. I don’t even know who made my main pan, it just says “Taiwan” lol
You’re overthinking it. As long as a cast-iron pan isn’t nearly rusted through or cracked in half, it’s fine. Get a cheap Lodge, get an expensive one, get an old one at a yard sale – doesn’t matter. If the surface is rusty or something, just put it through an oven self-cleaning cycle, sand it down to the state shown in the meme, and re-season.
On the topic of cast iron pans, any recommendations on a quality pan? All the cheap ones seem to have a rough surface are very porous.
Believe it or not, lodge is the best bang for the buck. Pores don’t really matter once you’ve got a decent layer of “season” built up. If anything, it makes the polymerized oils hold on a tiny bit better.
But, if you don’t mind starting the seasoning process over, you can hand sand the cooking surface and get it as smooth as you prefer. Well, you can machine sand it instead, but that’s less forgiving if you aren’t used to doing that kind of thing.
Just get a lodge and use it a lot. It will get good fast. Alternatively go check Craigslist or ebay or shopgoodwill for something cheap that looks good to you.
The difference between cast irons is pretty small at the end of the day is pretty tiny and you shouldn’t spend too much money or brain power on getting one. You don’t need to be too selective because the biggest determing factors are how heavily seasoned it is and how practiced you are using it so you are better off just getting something and using it rather than looking for the perfect pan. I don’t even know who made my main pan, it just says “Taiwan” lol
You’re overthinking it. As long as a cast-iron pan isn’t nearly rusted through or cracked in half, it’s fine. Get a cheap Lodge, get an expensive one, get an old one at a yard sale – doesn’t matter. If the surface is rusty or something, just put it through an oven self-cleaning cycle, sand it down to the state shown in the meme, and re-season.
Go carbon steel instead.