I do spaghetti sauce in a cast iron all the time. Am I doing something wrong?

You know, I've always read that cast iron (even properly seasoned) reacts with acid and as a result is bad for both your food and the iron, but to be honest I haven't tried it. Googling around some people say their food tastes metallic. Some say it's fine.

http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2010/03/cast-iron-and-tomato...

I do it all the time. If your pan is seasoned properly, tomatoes aren't acidic enough to react.

In any case, the result isn't bad for you -- it just tastes bad.

Unless you're talking about enameled cast iron (Le Creuset, Staub), then acidic ingredients like tomatoes will remove the seasoning from your pan. It shouldn't hurt your sauce, but re-seasoning your gear is a pain in the ass.

Not really, in my experience. I had a rusted pan I pulled out of the basement, spent 20 minutes scrubbing and rinsing, a couple of rounds in and out of the oven with vegetable shortening, and was non-stick enough already to easily cook eggs. Am I missing a step I should be doing?

Wow, you +1 for teaching me something new. I've been using stupid vegetable oil on a cloth all these years to season my cast iron, and it's the biggest pain in the ass. I never even thought to use shortening.

I think I just read about it on a blog, and I'm pretty new to cast iron myself. But from what I understand, any fat should work.

In theory, the acidity of the tomatoes breaks down the seasoning of the cast iron.

Isn't it the opposite? Doesn't seasoning of cast iron allow you to cook acid foods? Washing your pan is what breaks down seasoning, but also, seasoning is easy to fetishize. Just wipe the pan down with canola and stick it in a fast oven. Seasoning cast iron is even easier than sharpening a knife.

Correct. A properly seasoned pan creates a barrier between the food and the iron. How do you know if your pan is properly seasoned? If you can't soak it overnight in water and/or air dry it without seeing rust, it's not seasoned properly.

Thank you! Turns out my skillet has lost some of its seasoning. Whether this is because or in spite of how we use it for spaghetti sauce so much remains to be seen.

Takes a lot longer though. I don't want to bake a pan for 2 hours every time I use it.

I find cast iron very easy to take care of -- much easier than non-stick (but perhaps we use our non-stick for only messy things). Dump out the food, wipe it out, put back on the still-warm burner, put in some oil.

If something particularly hard to clean was in there, I do what scouts do on a campout: put an inch of water (with a little oil) in and set it to boil, then go back to the "wipe it out" step above.

True, but cast iron should be seasoned. If one doesn't season the cast iron, they are screwed anyway.