[Doxin]

> Also, how do you deal with food sticking to it? How can you make pancakes or crepes in it, for instance?

I mean... you just do? Pancakes and crepes especially work VERY well in a cast iron pan. You'll know the crepe is done because it'll start sliding around in the pan when shaken.

There's a lot of words out there about how to perfectly season a cast iron pan, but in my experience the best way is to just treat it sort of badly. If you want to be slightly more purposeful about it you can occasionally overheat some oil in the pan. I tend to just bang it back on the hob after cooking and heat the remaining oil/fat in the pan to the smoke point before turning it off.

re: scraping: I think you're overestimating the sort of scraping I mean. I'm not talking about scrubbing with a lot of effort. I just mean you take a metal spatula and scrape some of the burnt stuff into the trash. Doesn't really take any force either.

Yeah it's not quite as effortlessly nonstick as a nonstick pan, but at least I'm not worrying about flaking poison off into my food, and having to be careful with metal utensils. You can treat a cast iron pan badly and it'll make it work better, not worse. The one fragility it has is rust, and even that is largely overstated.