Cast Iron Skillets

stanmann571 wrote: »

Lizarking wrote: »

Lodge is good to go. Also consider their carbon steel pan - I use this more frequently than my cast iron.

YOU CAN DEFINITELY USE SOAP WHEN NEEDED. Use a little bit of soap and very hot water. I use soap 100% of the time when cooking fish or other stuff with potentially super stinky oils.

Soap is 100% fine. It's an old wive's tale that it ruins the seasoning. Those people just enjoy unhealthy, rancid oil sitting on top of the seasoning.

http://www.lodgemfg.com/use-and-care/cast-iron-lets-cook

Don't use soap, It's NOT an old wive's tale, The soap will get in the pores of your iron and then your food will taste like soap.

You can scrub your cast iron pan with salt to get rid of the stinky oils.

It should be noted that acidic food should also not be cooked in a well seasoned cast iron pan.

I am in midst of reconditioning my cast iron pans and griddle. I am using this method: http://blackirondude.blogspot.com/2009/01/easy-cast-iron-skillet-reconditioning.html I'll let you know how it goes.

pans & dutch oven are coming along, but that griddle I live in a neighborhood of tiny lots and old homes--it would be difficult for me to dispose of a lye bath. The garbage bags and toweling of used caustic oven cleaner get carted away with garbage...for some reason this is more p.c..

UPDATE: oven cleaner (pro) works great and doing it with cast iron inside a plastic garbage bag minimizes fumes and keeps cleaner in contact with cast iron overnight. After rinsing object I would do a light scrub with scrotch pad and pick at raised debris with paint scraber. One piece needed treatment twice and another thrice. (con) not environment friendly
self-cleaning oven cycle (pro) This site does not recommend this method on vintage ware or items not easily replaceable: http://www.castironcollector.com/restore.php. I used it on post 1960s skillets and griddle. It works great. The griddle that I thought was a goner came out so clean that I discovered it was cast aluminum! I did not find that my cast iron turned permanently reddish. (con) warning from aforementioned website that it can damage pieces.
vinegar bath: (pro) all minor surface rust came off with light buffing with fresh scotch pad. (con) can't think of any--as an added bonus I used the vinegar&water I made in my wash tubs as a weed killer in all the driveway cracks.
EvapoRust castironcollector recommended this biodegradeable product for stubborn rust spots. (pros) although the product instructions directs to submerged objects at $8.99/qt it is much pricer than white vinegar, so I was not going to create another bath. I had great results pouring a few tablespoons out onto the castiron surface and using #0000 steel wool to lightly buff areas. I would rinse the cast iron, wipe dry, and place on gas stove top over a low heat for a complete dry. Sometimes a light film of rust would reappear and I would retreat. ***My oven broke during my cast iron restoration weekend. Technician is coming on Wednesday--so are all my freshly stripped pieces going to sit and rust until then? No. I applied a generous rub-down with EvapoRust with a towel and they are sitting pretty on my counter nice and grey.

salt and oil Crisco smokes at 500, which is a popular choice. Rice bran oil also has a high smoke temp. Olive oil smokes at 350, so not as suitable. Flax seed oil is popular, but because rags can spontaneously combust, I did not want to work with it. Since grapeseed oil is also a "drying oil" but does not have a spontaneous combustion reputation, I was satisfied with its 420 smoking point. Avocado oil offers the same at 480 smoking pt, but I had grapeseed oil already in the house, so I used grapeseed oil.

On another site I read about rubbing with salt to "drive the oil in", but salt on an unseasoned surface seemed to me to invite the rust I had just gotten rid of, so I instead experimented with using oil a buffing abrasive. As I said I have no oven yet, but I was a bit impatient so I took 2 of smallest skillets and tried seasoning on my gas cooktop. Basically, this was sufficient to apply the initial layers of seasoning, but I will have to finish in the oven to adequately season the handles. I pretty much followed the castironcollector recommendations: prewarm pcs/do not shock cold pcs over w high heat; less is better than more when applying oil/wiping off excess before heating is slower but results in a smoother finish; gradually heating pcs up to near smoke point over successive times does transform the pcs from grey to bronze to black. I allowed the pcs to cool slowly too.

Then this is were the the salt comes in: I would a take a cooled pc and put a 1/2 teaspoon salt (the finer the grind the more gentle the buff) into a pc then with a towel I had wiped off the excess oil I would use to buff the bottom, walls, and outside of a pc. This removes a little of the seasoning and increased the my expected seasoning repetitions from 6 to a dozen. On the upside, the bottom of my vintage skillet is looking glassy and the rougher-formerly preseasoned skillet has its texture surface evening-out.


all for now

@Luna3386 You are correct; soap is fine... AND my pre-1960 lodge skillets are just as fine as my BSR. It's the Lodge "pre-seasoned" pcs whose bottoms are not milled fine. They were purposefully textured so that the manuf pre-seasoned coating would adhere.

lpina2mi wrote: »

@Luna3386 You are correct; soap is fine... AND my pre-1960 lodge skillets are just as fine as my BSR. It's the Lodge "pre-seasoned" pcs whose bottoms are not milled fine. They were purposefully textured so that the manuf pre-seasoned coating would adhere.

@lpina2mi ah, good point. My old ones, passed down from my husband's grandma or great grandma (honestly can't remember and am scared to ask my mother in law lol) do better than new ones I bought.

I'm a passionate home cook, and I actually prefer carbon steel pans to cast iron, but I have both as needed. I like my cast iron, but I LOVE the performance of my carbon steel pans

naomi8888 wrote: »

I always wash my Le Creuset cast iron pan with soap... now I'm wondering if I need to change - does anyone know? I looked on their website and it's not very clear.

If it's enamel, you don't need to worry about anything except chipping it. If it's bare metal, you should treat it like any other cast iron surface and avoid washing away the seasoning w/soap or detergents.

Another Lodge user here. It's a really impressive company story if you have a chance to look it up. At least I was impressed. Makes me feel good about buying from them but their stuff lasts forever so very little replacement business I would think. My nearest sporting goods store sells Lodge.

However, I have read that 100 year old cast iron is much, much lighter. Hand cast vs machine cast or something like that. Evidently you can sometimes find them at flea markets. I can't stand flea market kinds of things so I won't find one, but I would love to. Lodge is heavy.

We don't use detergent, FWIW. If there's crusty stuff stuck to the pan, we heat it a little and scrub w kosher salt.

I've got a carbon steel pan that I bought from a restaurant going out of business. It was brand new and had to season it b4 it stopped sticking.

Heats up really fast and I find it hard to control the heat/cook times w/it. Steaks sear fast but don't cook properky in the middle unless you stick it in the oven. Better results w/my cast iron grill pan for steaks and chops.

So, I seldom use the carbon steel pan except as a wok substitute where high heat and quick cook time is desired/expected. It works better than the stainless and teflon woks that I have for doing Chinese stir fry.

cmriverside wrote: »

I read all that @lpina2mi but I got a little lost on the vinegar thing. Did you just soak it in the vinegar and then use the scrubby? Or did the vinegar and the self-cleaning oven somehow have something to do with one another?

self-cleaning oven thing removes old baked on crud that the oven cleaner left behind. Worked great on the grill side of my contemporary retangular griddle. Site mentioned caution with vintage pans, as the super high temps during self-cleaning may crack them.

Vinegar bath removes rust. I used equal amounts of white vinegar and water ( I used 30% vinegar) in one of my laundry baskets so I could submerge my larger skillets.

Love my lodge skillets! I use cooking spray on them and it's fine. I use soap once in a while and it's fine, most of the time I just scrub with steel wool and hot water. Also, if you dry them after washing you don't have to oil them and they don't rust.

Another Lodge user here and very satisfied.

dabearo wrote: »

Sticky pans? My mother in law lives in the country and exclusively uses cast iron. Every year she put her pan in the fires from cleaning up the land. She swears it cooked off all the sticky and did not mess with the seasoning. Probably the same as an ovens cleaning cycle.

Yesss! Putting the pan in a bonfire is how my bf and his family season fresh cast iron