#skillets

GAaaaaahh!!!!!

Do I have your attention? 😄

Good. Now that all the purists, who never actually COOK using their cast iron but who love to dole out cast iron commandments, have all had a heart attack... You and I can talk a little bit about care of cast iron stuff.

There's a couple of pointers that I can give you if you've never used cast iron stuff to cook with before. These are all methods that work for me. There may be better ways to do them and usually there are at least a couple of ways to do anything that are equally as effective.

1. Experts will tell you :

THOU SHALL NOT USE SOAP AND WATER TO CLEAN THINE CAST IRON!!

Bullshit.

Look, avoid soap and water, yes. Unless you need to use soap and water. And then understand what it will mean when/if you do. Most of the time, if you develop good habits, you won't need soap and water to clean your stuff. Soap will remove the (wonderful) almost microscopic "seasoning" layer of oil that makes good skillets virtually non stick. So if you have to resort to soap and water you'll have to re-season your cookware.

But that's the worst of it. To hear people go on about it you'd think the introduction of soapy water to cast iron is the third sign of the apocalypse or something.

There are times when you will need to resort to soapy water, like I have done with the chicken fryer pictured above. So, I figured this would be a good time to explain how I handle seasoning cast iron, since I get messaged about it A LOT.

The fryer I recently bought is in excellent shape. No rust at all, no pitting, perfectly level and flat on the bottom (not warped) and smoooooth as glass on the cooking surface. Most modern stuff is roughly textured because they don't take the time to sand it down smooth when it comes out of the mold at the foundry. I like that smooth, glass like surface, which is one of the reasons that I seek out older pieces.

Anyway, the only issue with this old girl is one commonly found with pieces bought at flea markets and other outside sales. Cast iron is prone to rust when exposed to the elements, so sellers often coat their pieces with heavier amounts of oil as a rust preventative. A lot of times this ends up being a thick, sticky layer of funkiness that grosses me out. The same 'sticky layer' can result from poor seasoning techniques - but more on that later.

Anyway, I'm not going to say some antique cast iron dealers coat their wares with motor oil.... but it's probably best not to eat out of the sticky, gross skillets until they've been properly cleaned and re-seasoned.

So, into the hot soapy water the Old Girl went and scrubbing with a no-scratch scrubber commenced. I used this one. Doesn't it look cheerful?

I scrubbed and rinsed until the gunk was off, then dried the fryer and lid as dry as I could get them using towels.

They will look bone dry, but don't fall for that shit.

There is microscopic water hiding in the pores of the iron just waiting to rust. So the iron goes onto a stove burner on medium low heat for a bit. You don't want to get her smoking hot. Just heat to the point that it's not comfortable to handle bare handed. This will evaporate the remaining water 👍.

Now take the piece off the heat and rub a thin layer of some type of fat all over, inside and out. You can find TONS of recommendations online for seasoning agents with DIRE predictions of what will happen if you don't follow the author's advice...

I use Crisco. It's a cooking shortening that is solid at room temperature, has a low melting point, a pretty decent smoke point, and has been around forever.

Some folks swear by olive oil. Some people won't use anything but grapeseed oil or cottonseed oil or flaxseed oil. Some people will sell you expensive specially made seasoning stuff that comes in what looks like a can of snuff or a tube of deodorant. All have their pros and cons and defenders and detractors, including my beloved Crisco.

You use what you want.

The piece should be hot enough so that the crisco (or whatever) liquefies immediately on contact, but not so hot that it starts to smoke or burn. Rub the stuff all over in a thin layer and then turn your oven on its lowest setting.

Take a clean towel and rub the seasoning agent (crisco) off the piece being seasoned. Lint free towels are best so you don't leave little bits of paper towel on your skillet.

You will be tempted to not wipe it all off and leave a visible layer.

Don’t.

You want to build up multiple thin microscopic layers of oil/fat on the surface of the cast iron. Any more than that super thin layer can result in the tacky sticky mess I mentioned before. Its the most common mistake that I made when first learning to season and re-season my cast iron. I’d leave too much behind and the next time I got my skillet out to cook with it I found a sticky mess. 

So give the piece a good rub down and have faith :)

Turn the oven heat off and put the cast iron piece inside the oven on the rack upside down. You will read in some instructions that you should "put down a layer of foil underneath the skillet to catch the oil drippings"... but you won't have to worry about that because you wiped ALL the excess oil/crisco out like I told you.

Didn't you ? 😊

When the item has cooled off take it out of the oven. Put it back on the stove top on a low/medium burner to warm up and then apply another super thin layer of seasoning agent inside and out. Then wipe ALL of it off the piece again.

You can leave out the oven part this time if you like. I've found that it makes no difference for me in the process after the first round. In either case, let the item cool and repeat seasoning for a total of at least three times.

You're done!

Beautiful!

Glass like surface that's ready to go. If you care for it, the seasoning will just get better over time. Here's some hints for preserving it easily.

1. Don't use your cast iron to boil water (like when making pasta), unless that's all you are going to use it for. Boiling water will remove the microscopic seasoning layer like soap does. Stews and chili are fine since there is usually enough oil/fat in the food to maintain the seasoning.

2. If you are done with dinner and are ready to clean up, warm up the skillet a bit first if it has cooled off. Not super hot, just warm. Warm food comes off easier.

3. Depending on what I am cooking, often my clean up consists of just wiping out the skillet with paper towels. But if more cleaning is required you usually dont have to resort to soap.

Instead of soap to clean with, I usually put my (warm, not hot) skillet in the sink. Add several tablespoons of water and instead of soap add about 1/4 cup of salt. I use a soap free scrubby pad and the salt acts as an abrasive. Usually any stuck on bits come right off. The pan gets dried off and goes back in the stove top to evaporate any residual moisture and to warm up. Then I wipe on a maintenance micro thin layer of crisco and wipe it all off afterward.

Done! Takes less time than it takes me to clean a steel pan and cast iron is much nicer to work with.

4. The best thing you can do to improve your cast iron stuff is to USE IT. Repeated uses with the little re-season treatment at the end will soon have your cast iron just as non stick as teflon - without all the nasty chemicals.

5. The VERY best thing you can do to improve your cast iron is to deep dry something in it. All that oil heated to 350°F for a typical cooking session really does wonders for getting the iron to soak up the oil into its pours.