Cast Iron vs Carbon Steel | Which is Better For You? 

the no soap thing is a myth. clean with soap and it is ok. just make sure to dry thoroughly after washing, often finishing with stove.

The best way to prevent rust after washing is to place the pan back on the stove, turn on the burner and leave it until all the water has evaporated.

Its a tie for me between the two pans. Prices have drastically gone up since you made this video. For crepes and nonstick, it's carbon steel. Mine is Merten & Storck and it is the BEST carbon steel I've ever worked with. It has higher sides so more like a fry pan or skillet. To be honest I went with this brand due to price. Reputation was secondary. Merten & Storck is a German heirloom brand. I think that pros tend to have brand bias. I paid $24 for my 10" pan two months ago. Oven cooking or to cook something that I want to over with a lid, cast iron is the way to go. I wash my cast iron with soap and water. Rinse, towel dry and then maybe a minute on the stove to fully dry. It gets tossed into the cabinet. Two of my pans, I inherited from parents and grandparents. My care is the same that they did and its still standing strong at 70 yrs old and 140+ years old. They even survived my kids throwing them in the dishwasher when I was at work. Put a stop to that.

You _can_ use dish soap on a cast iron. The "coating" on a cast iron pan is no longer oil that can just be washed off after it's been burnt. It's some polymerized thing that won't wash off. You usually don't need any soap to clean it, but if you do it's fine.

I am using cast iron skillets from Lodge and a carbon steel wok from Taylor &Ng. It all performs very well. However, putting aside the weight, cast iron is my favorite. Keeps the seasoning very well and is low maintenances, in my experience.

Good video. Beyond this is the often taboo topic of non-stick cookware. Most of us embrace all three.

Love all my Lodge cast iron. I have owned some for almost 30 years and it is still going strong. I also love my knock-off enameled fry pan. I do think I will add a carbon steel pan to my collection as the cast iron is beginning to get very heavy to me. Lodge makes carbon steel products too.

Both carbon steel and cast iron are "TECHNICAL" pans... by that I mean that you as a user of them, need to LEARN how each type reacts to the foods you cook on them. Also you need to understand the very important "seasoning" process, the cleaning process and the drying process and "touch up" seasoning process. For me, I have one carbon steel pan totally devoted ONLY to EGGS. An Omelette PRO pan from De Buyer. Depending on your cook top, Gas, Radiant Electric or Induction, you need to understand for each pan and type, how it heats up, what oils if any to use, if food can go into a cold or hot pan and what temperature range works best. For cooking eggs, I went thru about a dozen eggs one day to dial in my De Buyer Pro Omelette pan in order to be consistent. So, for the novices out there be aware that these pans DO NOT LIKE ACID FOODS.... such as vinegars, tomatoes, lemons or limes, or pickled things. Especially for LONG periods of cooking. And lastly the carbon steels can take long oven times well with the exception of any De Buyer B which has a paint coated handle.... that line of pans needs oven temp of 400 or less F and oven time of 10 mins or less. Thus my use of the De Buyer PRO line with the stainless steel handles or my beloved Smithey hand forged carbon steel 12" frypan. Lastly, unlike non-stick (throw away) coated pans Carbon Steel and Cast Iron are indeed MULTI-GENERATIONAL pans. Top end pans are family heirlooms... passed on from generation to generation... so in the long view, cost is not and should not be considered an issue... buy fewer things of higher quality... and enjoy your carbon steel and cast irons.... your great great grandkids will thank you...

Though I occasionally use cast iron pans at home, I think they are overrated. I get by with nonstick, S/S and carbon steel most of the time. I'm also in the restaurant trade, we don't have cast iron pans out there They are too bulky. The cooks like to shake the pans, cast iron is too heavy for that.

Thanks for replying. That gives me confidence to try cast iron! Much appreciated.

I have a ton of cast iron, some old, some new, regular and high end, as well as carbon steel, stainless, and enameled. I find myself using cast iron 99% of the time. I prefer the smooth vintage, or my smooth modern cast iron. They do the trick easily, no fuss, easy to maintain, great results, very healthy, and I’m not replacing them every 2-5 years. If I’m making something with lots of water like pasta, or tomato sauce, I use stainless or enameled.

Thank you for the very informative video! I grew up with my mom cooking exclusively with cast iron for almost everything................. eggs/bacon/sausage for breakfast, shipwreck dinners, biscuits in the oven................ she did it all mostly in cast iron cookware. Love learning about the differences of cast iron/carbon steel-I'm just learning to cook properly with carbon steel cookware. I never knew about "seasoning" even when I was growing up - my mom never mentioned seasoning the pots/pans, but then that was kind of how she was.

People seriously need to research the Melting Point of Carbon Steel, Stainless Steel, Cast Iron, Copper and Aluminium...... it is 2-3 Times Higher than the Listed Safe Operating Temperatures ......

Hello.really helpful video,thank you. Have a question though, which material would u recommend for deep fry on induction? (We destroyed some enamel pan,enamel pot,teflon pan) Thank u for amswer.

Great video, thanks for such a clear overview of both pans. I recently purchased a carbon steel wok, learnt what ‘seasoning’ meant and I now feel like a pro! So I figure the next step is a carbon steel (or cast iron) frying pan. My only concern are the reviews that claim cast iron can crack if exposed to cold water when still hot? Has anyone experienced this?

I’ve never seen a carbon steel pan anywhere near the $20 price point!!!

It should be said that variety and availability have nothing to do with cooking properties. As far as oven safety is concerned, the only reason why you cannot put a de Buyer "Mineral B" carbon steel skillet in the oven is because the handle (!) is covered with epoxy resin. There are also other carbon steel skillets by de Buyer that feature a traditional handle (without epoxy resin) that are 100 % oven safe. I have such a de Buyer skillet and I seasoned it at maximum temparature for over an hour in the oven. It came out just fine. As far as cleaning is concerned, it couldn't be easier. Just hot water, that's it. Takes 30 seconds. No non-stick skillets survives the dishwasher on a long term. You also need to clean a non-stick skillet by hand. The only added labour for carbon steel / cast iron is that you must dry these skillets well immediately. No big deal.

For cast iron, since you go to thrift stores, look for the vintage stuff. They used to machine the inside to make it extra smooth.

First time I noticed the shallow angle sides to your Lodge cast iron. Apparently its the chef's Collection that have this. I would need this to slide out my soft taco tortillas, 4 at a time. But..., the carbon steel would be lighter for this maneuver. I guess need both!

This is legitimately good info. As a health conscious individual who likes quality equipment but if fairly new to the culinary world, I appreciate this.

I have a few pieces of carbon steel, and lots of cast iron. I just started going into carbon steel after years of using cast iron. Although CS heats faster and is lighter, it seems so much harder to maintain and can rust easier.

I just bought several Smithy cast iron pans. They are every bit as smooth as carbon steel.

They are both great. Sometimes for me i made cornbread or banana bread in the cast iron skillet. Gives a nice crust when you pour into a hot pan. For everyday use and or camping you can't beat carbon steel. You just have to experiment with temperature control. And if anything sticks or gets burned on Iran just rub it off w a steel scrubber and and ready to go. Cast iron is great everyday I'd your constantly using it. Otherwise the constant reseasoning is a bit time consuming. Both have their purpose

I was brought up using cast iron and still do! I have several pieces and love them.

This video was incredibly helpful! Thank you so much

I’ve always loved cast iron but I’m interested to try carbon steel now.

If i hear "dont use soap" one more time im going to go mental. We aint living in 1940, modern soap is fine ffs

Carbon steel is fine in the oven. Its just the epoxy coating De Buyer puts on some of their pans that's not oven safe. A Matfer or a De Buyer pro is good for 800F forever.

I have a pan addiction with 6 cast iron pans and one C/S. I got the 10.25 Matfer Black, due to the angle, really a 8.5in pan, I would go up 2 sizes. I am debating getting a larger one but I have a 13.25 and 17in C/I so the “need vs want”. I do feel it takes a lot of use to get the C/S truly slick. I have had mine for 1.5 years and finally happy with it. What I don’t understand is why people go thru all the work to clean/reseason just to cook eggs. I will make corned beef hash THEN fry the eggs after a quick wipe. The weight savings of the C/S is another major plus, my 13.25 C/I is a beast!!

From my experience there is no issue with washing cast iron with modern dish soaps like dawn. I have 2 vintage cast iron pans with great seasoning and I've washed them using Dawn soap ever since I've gotten them. The oil in the seasoning has actually chemically bonded to the pan itself and while old timey soaps that often had extra lye in them could damage that chemical bond, modern soaps are much less aggressive. The combination of the non-stick ability of the cast iron seasoning and modern soaps make cast iron really easy to clean by hand, in is my experience at least.

Sadly there is some traditioned misinformation here. The term "carbon steel" is not very useful and means different things in different domains. When talking about knives, you are right. It usually means something like 1% carbon. Steel by definition is an alloy of Iron and carbon, but even a steel with very low carbon like 0,02% - it is expensive to get the carbon so low - is considered to be steel. Those steel pans are usually quite low carbon content, like 0,1%. DC01 is a very common steel grade for such a pan. Just low enough carbon to get in shape easily, while still being a quite cheap raw material.

Thank you for all the extremely, useful information! I find that I like both the carbon steel and the cast iron. I don't live that far from the Lodge Factory in Jasper, Tennessee. They put on a Cornbread Festival every year and we never miss it...unless a pandemic shuts it down! Some of the South's best cooking is done in cast iron though...lol!

I have a bunch of cast iron pans, a pot, a three round griddles and two dutch ovens. Excellent cookware. Everyone should have cast iron. pots and pans. I also had a couple of non-stick pans. But the non-stick always wore off after a couple of years. I needed something else and I tried carbon steel pans. Fantastic! Much lighter than cast iron, heats up faster, easy to clean, and much better for egg dishes, pancakes, and crepes. I have pans from both de Buyer and Matfer-Bourgeat. After seasoning and cooking with them for a few months they get better and better.

Great videos. Have you ever used a Victoria cast iron skillet? Thanks.

My three cast iron skillets were passed down to me from my great-grandmother, to my grandmother, to my mother to me. They are likely about 100 years old. I use my stainless steel cookware for most cooking, but I pull out the cast iron for some things. I really should use the cast iron more, but it is heavy and not convenient to store while my lighter stainless steel pans hang on a convenient rack. My only carbon steel item is a nice wok that only cost $14. Once I used it a bunch of times and it developed good seasoning, it ihas become wonderful - easy to use, easy to clean. Because of the wok and dietary changes, I've been eating a lot of stir-fry lately. I would strongly recommend carbon steel woks over non-stick. The Carbon Steel quick heating works very well on a wok. The ability to use metal cooking implements makes stir fry better, and seasoning and cleaning are easy - as long as you use the wok fairly frequently.

I put my deBuyer and my Matfer carbon steel skillets in the garbage after BOTH developed humped bottoms, one up, one down. Cast iron skillets don’t buckle under the heat and are way way easier to season. My Lodge and Stargazer CI pans outshine any CS skillet and don’t warp.

I have three old cast iron pieces that my mom got as wedding presents in 1952. I have Lodge cast iron, but they are all retired now because I bought several cast iron pieces made by Field Company, which is American, and machined smooth on the inside. I also use carbon steel, I have a Matfer Bourgeat 11 7/8" skillet, a MadeIn 10" carbon steel which is a little thin for my taste, and I have a DeBuyer Pro skillet on the way which has an oven safe stainless handle. Matfer carbon steel are oven and broiler safe just like cast iron. I have used cast iron for more than 40 years and only recently got carbon steel skillets, however I have used carbon steel woks for many, many years. I have no preference really between the two, except cast iron is brittle and will break if you beat on it too much. Steel is steel. Carbon steel is easier to season in my opinion but needs more care to maintain seasoning than cast iron. I use both interchangeably. I also have 3 enameled Dutch ovens, they are great! I wouldn't recommend Lodge's enamel cast iron though, it is made in China, and is inferior. I had a 7 quart that chipped inside for no reason, I only use wooden cooking utensils in them. Lodge did nothing when I spoke to them besides telling me to keep using it. It was less than a month old when it chipped. The bonding agent that is between the enamel and the bare iron is toxic to my understanding, so chipped enamel cast iron should not be used for food preparation. I drilled a hole in the bottom and made a planter out of it. Someone stole it off my front porch.

I have both but I haven’t tried my carbon steel pan yet. I need to season it

Persaonlly, I prefer Smithey brand cookware. They make both carbon steel and cast iron cooking products. And they are, for the quality they produce, quite expensive. However, as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. They make some carbon steel skillets that look like hammered copper. Absolutely beautiful-$300.00. Their #12 cast iron skillet which is one of their most popular skillets, for its size and beauty because it has a smooth, polished cooking surface-$210.00. If you think about these prices, they really aren’t that expensive. If you consider the carbon steel 12” carbon steel skillet, and let’s say you use it every morning to cook eggs and bacon every day for the next 10 years or even longer-but for now just 10 years, that comes to a cost of less than $ 00.06 per day. To have a quality skillet with this much beauty, with this much quality, and one that will certainly last those 10+ years, AND something you did not mention, have the supreme NATURAL NON-STICK quality that carbon steel has, then you have made one of the best bargain purchases of a lifetime. In fact, I consider this to be a no-brainer purchase. Other companies make carbon steel cookware that is just as great in quality workmanship as Smithey, I just happen to like theirs because I own theirs. Cast iron cookware also has a natural non-stick quality but it’s not of the same high quality as that of carbon steel that I have found it to be.

Look for a video found yours just to show a friend to proved little points thanks. Exactly I just had to show a friend for the heck of it cuz he was wanting to bicker with me over carbon steel V cast iron and I'm like brother please they both have their pros and cons I grew up with them I'll explain some of my grandparents were born in the late 1800s I had a small part of My Life as a young boy to see them and read their stories I was born very late in life so I consider myself lucky out of eight children even stainless steel has its pros and cons I love cooking and I had to explained to him between the two types of pans AKA actually three but I prefer carbon and cast the most, all depends what we are cooking what types of food and how you want it done it's all simple things experimenting is fun and tasteful have a Merry Christmas.

I love how this guy presents information!

Not only can cast irons take a beating but they can also provide one. I speak from experience

UPDATED Matfer Bourgeat carbon steel pans are designed not to warp on induction burners

When did sheet metal pans become carbon steel pans?

Great video, but I can't agree with you on carbon steel being better at cooking delicate things. I just got done cooking scrambled eggs and fried eggs for my family and my pan of choice was cast iron. Why? Because it the best non stick pan I have, eggs slide around in it by just moving the pan. The "rough" surface of the cast iron pan helps holed the seasoning of the pan and makes a better and more durable non-stick surface. IMO, the only advantage of the carbon steel is that they are lighter and heat up faster. My most used pan by far, is my 12" cast iron pan.

ironically got your pun

Thank you for the info.

just as a comment: I seasoned my de'buyer carbon steel pan in the oven at 250°C (=480°F) for two hours (3 seasoning layers) without any issue.

There's a bunch of super useful information here. Unfortunately also a couple misleading stuff that is quite shocking to hear from a overall very good video. The main problem here is that this is a comparison between a PAN and a CREPE PAN. So when it's mentioned that the prices are similar...well, not really. They'd be similar only if you compare different kinds of pans. Carbon steel PANS generally cost quite a bit more than cast iron PANS. (crepe pans are generally cheaper but a motorcycle is generally cheaper than a bicycle too) It is mentioned carbon steel can only be left in the oven for 10min. NOT TRUE! Once again, that is for crepe pans. Crepe pans aren't designed to be left in the oven why? You don't put crepes into the oven for an hour so it doesn't need to. Carbon steel PANS however, can be left in the oven for a very long time. How long a carbon steel pan can be left in the oven is almost always determined by the material of its handle. Lastly..."carbon steel pans save more storage space than cast iron" Once again that's if you're comparing a crepe pan to a fry pan. A carbon steel pans could even cake up more space due to longer handles. Although one could say they're easier to hang up for their lighter weight (relatively speaking).

Lol a cast iron pan is better for self defense

Cooking or self Defense? What was Granny Clampett.

My expensive Matfer carbon steel pan warped on my electric cooktop. Now it spins like a top when I set it down to cook. My cheap 30 year old cast iron skillets are better than new.

the pancake carbon steel pan can't work great for anything but pancakes

From where can I buy the de buyer Carbon Steel pan for $20.00 dollars please? Can you share the link?? I paid $75.00 dollars for 9 1/2 Inch. I’m interested in adding more if I could get it for $20 dollar

How many times did this man say bofadeez 😂

this was an interesting watch. it's a little weird to try to compare a crepe pan to a skillet.

What will happen if I use my carbon Steel skillet on my glass cook top?

Nice information

If cast iron is not smooth, then you need to strip the seasoning, and start again. It should be extremely smooth and non-stick, if cared for properly. And can be used for just this side of everything. When I get a new Dutch oven, especially if it's a "preseasoned" one, I take a rotary grinder and or sand paper to it, about 2 inches from the inside rim, all the way around the bottom. Then I render lard in it. It becomes incredibly smooth and non-stick, plus I get cooking fat. Then after every use where I have to use water on it to clean it, I heat it up on the stove to evaporate all the water then use the same lard to re-season it. Does it take a bit more time, yes, is it way safer than teflon, definitely, so to me it's worth it.

Look at that food, duh.

This is gold.

If rusted how do clean cast iron 🤔

👌

Screw carbon steel which is outdated and useless. Give me a $60 tri-clad fry pan that is dishwasher safe for everyday. And cast iron which will hold heat for searing meat (and for everything outdoors on a gas grill or campfire). The physics of a heavy piece of metal means there will always be a place for cast iren. There is no need for carbon steel except for French chefs to look down their snout at the rest of us. OK - if you only have $40 to buy cookware you might buy a cast iron and a carbon steel, I suppose.

I have both but to be honest I use my carbon steel pans over the cast iron , My one pan has built up such a non stick surface I rarely use my non stick pans now .

Carbon steel can definitely go in the oven for extended periods without a problem.

Cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel all have their individual places. My go to is carbon steel, I really like their combination of heat responsiveness, searing ability, and non-stick properties. I will use cast iron for things like baking, camping, stuff like that. Stainless is my go to for recipes that are going to require a fond. I have only 2 non-stick pans, a flat griddle, and a 10 inch frying pan that I exclusively use for cooking eggs. I think it's really time we start phasing non-stick out of kitchens.