Confused about De Buyer Mineral Element B pan, is it iron or steel? greatly confused..

[certifiedhumane]

Hey guys good afternoon. Well I ordered a De Buyer Mineral Element B fry pan from Amazon for Christmas because I wanted a cast iron pan that didn't have any coating on it or seasoning so I could put my own on!
I went with this one
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00462QP1G/r...
because it claimed to have a 100% organic beeswax coating which is fine with me, and I could've swore I read and researched that it was all iron! I had first seen it at Williams Sonoma so that is how I first discovered it!

I have received it and am greatly confused. On the back of the insert (when you turn the pan around) it says iron, however on the little booklet at the top it says "steel frying pan" so I am greatly confused. By just looking at it and feeling it it looks to be steel, it doesn't feel or look like my lodge cast iron pan at all!

I emailed Amazon that they sent me the wrong one and was just about to send it back when I started looking at pictures of this supposed pan on a search engine and they all looked the same as mine!

So I am starting to wonder if what they mean is a mixture of iron and steel or something . . It's a shame because I didn't want steel I wanted the iron for safety reasons (I think iron is the best cookware in terms of metals from the cookware leaching into food) . ..

Can someone help me out here? I wanted to ask you guys because I heard De Buyer is horrible with responding to customers, which if I had known before-hand I wouldn't have ordered a product of theirs :(
Thanks :)

[paulj]

Apparently you don't understand the nature of iron, cast iron, or steel.

The De Buyer pan is carbon steel, and is actually purer (higher percentage iron) than your Lodge cast iron.

To put it simply, when iron is refined from ore, it is not pure iron. It has a few percent of other minerals, most notably carbon. That carbon makes the iron hard, but also a bit brittle. The easiest way to make a pan from that iron is to melt it and pour into a mold made from wet sand. The result is a cast iron pan. The pebbly surface comes from the molding process.

It is possible through further refining and or pounding (as done by a blacksmith) to remove most of the carbon, producing wrought iron. This metal can be shaped and formed, even pounded into sheets. But it is also relatively soft.

But adding just a bit of carbon back into the pure iron (1% or less) produces steel, an alloy that is much stronger and harder. Big steel mills form this steel into large sheets (rolls actually) of plate steel. De Buyer cuts this plate steel into rounds, and shapes it around molds to form their pans. Because steel is stronger than cast iron, the steel pan can be thinner and lighter than the cast one.

The carbon steel can be seasoned in the same way as the cast iron. From a health or toxicity stand point there is absolutely no difference between this carbon steel and cast iron.

[certifiedhumane]

ok i appreciate it guys... well gh that is disrespectful to say, it's not "it is what it is" . . . i will return it then. i paid for a cast iron pan and that is what i was looking for.

so there must be a difference between a cast iron and a carbon/iron then, and that is a big enough difference for me to want a pure cast iron pan . . . i feel if anything is going to leach into my body then better be iron as that is what our bodies need . . just how i feel on the subject and i do better when i eat from things that i feel safe about, so i will have to find a non-seasoned cast iron then . . . virtually impossible, NIIIIICE!!!

thanks guys

[Chemicalkinetics]

"there must be a difference between a cast iron and a carbon/iron then"

Cast iron has more carbon than carbon steel.

"i feel if anything is going to leach into my body then better be iron as that is what our bodies need"

I doubt cast iron cookware are any more pure than carbon steel cookware.

[GH1618]

I don't know where you got the idea it was "cast iron." I've never seen anything from de Buyer which states that. And by the way, cast iron has less iron than steel.

It would help if you would say what, exactly, are the chemicals and compounds which concern you. Mineral B is 99% iron. The other 1% is carbon, and probably some manganese. Carbon is the basis of all organic (life) chemistry. Are you worried about that? Manganese is an essential element in trace amounts, and you ingest more of it from many common foods than you will from any cookware. Other trace minerals which are in carbon steel without being specifically introduced will also be in cast iron and in any other cookware material.

I do not mean to be disrespectful, but with all due respect, I do not think you know what your body needs, let alone what it takes in from your cookware, food, water, and air.

In my opinion, carbon steel pans such as de Buyer Mineral are completely safe. If they are not good enough for you, perhaps you should cook on a wood spit, or give up cooking altogether and eat only raw foods. Raw foods have the additional danger that they can contain bacteria, which are completely natural, but some of which can nevertheless cause illness and even death in humans.

[certifiedhumane]

wow man well thank you for enlightening me, I guess I have a lot to learn. you can't blame me, I am surrounded by things called teflon, cermaic, non-stick, it doesn't take a genius to feel the material, see it flaking, and realize I don't want this in my body! I truly didn't know steel was iron.

I knew steel was better than non stick or teflon or something, but I still knew there are steel toxicities too and if you want any metal in your body iron would be the best choice...
but as you said this pan is more iron than a cast iron . .
so that was my mistake, i really truly appreciate the enlightenment man, i am all the more wiser now! and i get to keep this awesome pan :) can't wait to use it :)
have a good one then :)

oh and i hadn't read the raw food comment.. no no no ahaaha i can't stand the raw movement! i believe cooking breaks down foods that we otherwise can't consume and makes them digestible for our body! i LOVE cooking, i actually don't eat anything raw besides fruits! i truly truly believe things like whole grains are actually worse for us because we aren't supposed to be eating the whole grain, cooking lets our bodies absorb all of these nutrients that we otherwise wouldn't get if we ate these things raw!! that is my 2 cents for the day :)
alright take it easy then

[Chemicalkinetics]

"I still knew there are steel toxicities"

If you starts to worry about toxicities from iron and steel, then I don't know what is not toxic.

Dude you are freaking yourself out. It is like scaring yourself about "having nightmares will shorten your lifespan... so you try not to watch scary movies"

[aburkavage]

Agreed! If you're concerned about toxicities in steel, you've got much bigger fish to fry than your cookware! As George Carlin so eloquently stated, "take a f*&%ing chance!"

[paulj]

Stay away from surgeons. They have been known to leave teflon coated strings, cloth patches, and stainless steel pins inside peoples' bodies.

[Kelli2006]

The difference between steel and iron is the amount of carbon in it. If it has more than 2% carbon is is iron but if it has less than 2% it is steel. Most iron is cast but those pans are formed of heavy sheet steel that has been stamped.

There are many trace elements in food grade steel and cast iron but nothing that is going to be toxic.

[Chemicalkinetics]

Just like GH said. It is steel, but steel is mostly made of iron. Have we answered your question?

[GH1618]

I think he's concerned about impurities. Carbon steel would have carbon, and probably some manganese, but could also contain trace minerals. I expect that even if you tried to make a pure iron pan, it would have trace minerals in it. There are also trace elements in the food we eat and the water we drink. And in the air we breathe. What's a person to do?

[Chemicalkinetics]

Oh... in that case, everything have impurities. This isn't just carbon steel cookware. It is everything. Stainless steels are not just iron, carbon nickel and chromium, as there are many things. My guess is that aluminum pans are not just aluminum.

[GH1618]

It's steel, but steel is almost entirely iron. Don't worry about it — it is what it is.