Look at that browned crust.

Tomato sauce, mozzarella, and “red devil” beer sausage.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Unless you have rocks stuck in the seasoning, neither polymerized oil nor steel is hard enough to scratch it. They literally can’t.

    this is not actually true. There’s still wear to the harder material. The harder material still wears over time, though less so. also: from proline:

    One of the most common causes of scratches on induction cooktops is rough-bottomed saucepans and skillets. If you are using a pot or pan that has a rough surface on its base, it may cause scratches on the cooktop.

    Most manufactures will also recommend not using rough bottomed pans. (or placing something under it like a cotton pad/cloth), it’s literally one of two warnings against cast iron (that, and weight.)

    Also, part of why that is, is that the rough surface does trap things (like carbonized foodstuffs.) which act like grit. a polished surface is much less likely to trap such things.

    and again, it makes the shake-pan-to-stir thing (like you see for stir fries or flipping omlettes and pancakes) easier with cast iron.

    • MentalEdgeOP
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      2 months ago

      Well yes, but that’s the kind of unavoidable material wear that any interacting materials made of molecules experience. The fact remains that softer things cannot scratch harder things, except in the sense that they can wear off molecules, which you might eventually notice under a microscope.

      To get visible scratches, you’d need to drag something made out of equivalent or harder material than the ceramic, along its surface. Most notably in a kitchen, that can be any crystal food ingredient, like salt.

      Hence I do keep my stuff clean, because a single salt or sugar crystal between pot and stove can produce the kinds of scratches you can’t unsee. And as a fine powder it can work as that grit, turning the surface cloudy.

      It’s not the roughness of softer materials that can cause scratches, but the fact that harder things can end up between the two. And that’s when rough things “may” cause scratches.

      As for the improvement in movement, I’m sceptical. One of the properties of a smooth extremely hard surface, is that other, softer things slide along it just about the same, because the surfaces cannot interact. Think of the way you can slide a knife along glass, sideways, frictionlessly, because there is nothing for it to cath on. I don’t really notice a difference between my scanpans and cast irons, aside from the weight.

      If you did, you may have had some trace amount of harder material in there, as that would have then been interacting with the ceramic, causing friction.