cast iron pan maintenance & refinishing question

"sally pepper" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@magma.ca:

The seasoning on skillets is cooked on fat (grease or oil). If you scrub a cast iron skillet after cooking in it, you may well remove the seasoning. If you are using the skillets for cooking,

a) do not spray any enamel or other foreign substance on the pan!!!!

b) never use harsh abrasives to clean them (some people will also tell you not to use soap on them)

c) clean using hot water, and then dry promptly. A gentle abrasive, like coarse salt, can be used to dislodge stuck-on food.

d) cast iron pans that need seasoning can be coated with a film of vegetable oil and then either baked at a low temperature or heated on the stove until the oil turns black. Wipe off the excess. Repeat if necessary.

Debbie

Take your cast iron skillet or what ever you have and coat it with shortning or lard. Stick them in your oven for an hour at 300 F. I never use soap on mine and nothing any more abraisive than those little plastic scrubbers.

If you still use the pots for cooking- look at

Sand blast, then re-season the traditional way. Bake at high temp. after covering with a heavy coat of olive oil.

Dad and mom used to totally season them using a campfire.

After a good scrubbing, they would coat the pan heavily with oil, and bury in the red hot coals for a couple of hours.

K.

Wouldn't "red hot coals" extrude enough heat to *remove* the seasoning from a Cast Iron pan?... The same as a self-cleaning oven cycle...

~john!

I dunno... Mom and dad were camping fanatics. :-) Every time I mention cast iron seasoning to dad, he quotes me that and swears by it! I have not personally tried it. Yet.

Funny too. I'm still in the process of trying to get my #10 back into shape after he burned those damned shredded potatoes in it a couple of weeks ago..... Not all of the silver streaks are gone yet, but I've not had much trouble with sticking.

Not quite the same thing I don't think. I usually just use the "time" method. I carefully cook with the hot pan cold oil and gentle cleaning thing and can usually re-season a pan with daily use within a couple of weeks or so.

I think you have to really burn _food_ in it to de-season it. Roasting oil in it seems to be the key to season them?

Works pretty well for me, just babying them for a couple of weeks. Don't cook any eggs in them for that period. Just meat and mixed veggies.

Remember, I did say that he coated it heavily with oil prior to roasting the pan in hot coals.

Yes. I've cleaned nasty cast iron skillets by burning them in the wood-burning stove. Wipe out the ash and grease the pan thoroughly with Crisco. They reseason much quicker than the first seasoning when they were new.

Best regards, Bob

I've burnt out a few pans/ griddles, etc. and have found they need greased immediately or they tend to rust badly quickly.

SNIP

About once per year, Mum would give the old frying pan a good clean. To restore the non-stick properties, she boiled potato peelings in it for a while, after which she would just give it a quick wipe before allowing it to dry.

Graham

The better pans are lathe turned inside, so I thought, why not grind mine with a stone on the drill press.....

Should have tried the egg pan first!

That last 20% surface area is a real bitch to clean up with such an underpowered grinder. I gave up on it.

I'll try the egg pan some day. It cooks a single egg McDonald's style.

Yours,

Doug Goncz (at aol dot com) Replikon Research, Seven Corners, VA

To clean an old cast iron pan I fill it with charcoal and set it on fire, outside. By the time the charcoal is nothing but ashes the can is evenly clean. I wipe it off with a damp ray, then oil it with regular old cooking oil, then stick it in the oven at 375 for a couple of hours, adding oil a couple of times during the baking process. Thye come out black and non-stick

"Graham" wrote in news:VOrxb.506033$6C4.159670@pd7tw1no:

If you say so, but it makes no sense at all to me.

A lot of things in life don't make sense, even when they work. Presumably, starch particles coated the surface and acted like a primitive teflon. I've not bothered with the technique because I rarely fry anything and I don't have a cast-iron frying pan.

Graham

A physics professor in my AP physics class was always saying "nothing really makes sense, but as long as it's working, leave it alone."

In Memory of Dr. Joseph Rosen. I truly miss our quiet lunches while contemplating on life on other worlds and the Earths core status.

Richard

My sister has a cast iron skillet that she loves to use when making spaghetti sauce. It has high sides and she says it's perfect for this. Well, needless to say, it's not all that great for the "seasoning" of the skillet, especially when after the meal she throws the thing in the dishwasher for cleaning. Our father saw this and about had a stroke. He then "rescued" it and proceeded to give it the "propper" cleaning and seasoning that it should have.

And as soon as his back was turned, into the dishwasher it went. Funny - - she's never had any problem with sticking or rusting or anything. Perhaps she's just lucky? Either that, or the darned thing was so well seasoned before she got ahold of it that nothing can touch it.

Maybe the starch particles absorbed some fats or protein that made it sticky. Potato is great in absorbent ability.

Cleans frying oil after frying shrimp - throw them away or eat shrimp laced fry's. Martin

Take a chunk of stainless steel. coat in oil. put in oven and either put it into a clean mode or just turn it on for a while - 550F naturally. The oil transforms into patina.

Martin

Howdy,

I know that I am touching on religious matters here, but...

Consumers reports rated cast iron cookware perhaps a year or two ago. They compared brand new stock with "My great grandmother has carefully seasoned this piece since 1848 stock" and could not detect a difference.

In my experience, brand new iron, and steel, cookware will have great non-stick properties if I am careful with the temperature when I cook.

All the best,

BLASPHEMY!!! Blasphemy I tell you! ;-)

You are going to go to hell...... ;-D

K. (with her Antique Griswold collection)