Soap on a cast iron and nobody died, why do we still panic

I scrubbed my 12 inch Lodge with dawn dish soap after a salmon dinner last Tuesday, then reseasoned it with a thin coat of crisco and it cooked eggs like new the next morning. The whole no soap thing came from when lye was in everything, and modern dish soap just does not work that way. Are we really still treating soap like it is acid, or did someone else figure out the real rule is about drying and oiling after?

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the_sage1mo agoMost Upvoted

Friend of mine bought his grandma's old cast iron skillet, the one she used for fifty years. He washed it with regular dish soap the first week he had it because he didn't know any better, and then called me asking if he ruined it. He was all doom and gloom about having to throw it away until I told him to just dry it on the stove and rub some oil on it. He did that, cooked bacon in it that weekend, and now he's the one telling other people soap is fine as long as you don't soak it overnight. The panic is just leftover habit from when soap had actual lye in it, plain and simple.