How to take care of your cast iron
- Locked due to inactivity on Jul 13, '22 3:54am
Thread Topic: How to take care of your cast iron
-
Okay, so I'm pretty sure most cast iron pans come preseasoned. At least the last time I went to Walmart, all of the ones they had there were.
So you've already cooked with your cast iron pan. How do you clean it?
DO NOT USE SOAP.
Rinse your scrubby out before doing this to make sure that there's no soap in it left over from doing the dishes. Soap unseasons the pan.
What you do is you use the hottest water your hands can handle and wash it with the scrubby.
When all the food is gone, wipe the pan off with a paper towel and put some oil in it. It doesn't really matter what kind. Spread it over the pan with another paper towel, and then put it away.
If stuff is isn't coming off the pan when you're scrubbing, dump the water out of the pan. Sprinkle salt on it, and start scrubbing.
Another trick is that when you're done cooking, fill the pan with water and let it boil. It will boil all the stuff off of the bottom. It makes it much easier to clean.
If you air dry it instead of drying it off, it's more likely to rust Putting the oil in it helps keep in seasoned, since it will still be in there when you cook it next.
If it rusts, first make sure that it's not rusted through. If it is, sorry, but your pan is going in the trash.
But most likely, it's just the surface.
What you do is you scrub it with salt.
If it doesn't come off, try using steel wool and the salt.
If you don't have steel wool but you have SOS pads, use those.
If you use the SOS pads, or accidentally wash it with soap, you're going to have to reseason it.
The way you do that is you take a paper towel, and put some oil on it (don't use olive oil or any other oil with a low smoking point. Canola or vegetable oil are fine). You coat the pan, top, bottom, handle, everything, and put it in the oven at 375° for an hour.
Some people say to just cook with it again. The problem with that is that it will only season the inside when whenever you season it you want to season all of it. It also won't be as good a quality of season, since there's going to be food touching the surface of the pan and it will be uneven.
The reason you want it to be seasoned in the first place is because one, it will be nonstick, two, it prevents it from rusting. A well seasoned pan can last for generations, over a hundred years.
So please take care of your cast iron. -
Just talked with my mom. Turns out doing the boiling thing only needs to be done if the scrubby and salt isn't working.
-
Thanks!
This thread is locked, therefore no new posts can be made.
