using a cast iron skillet ain’t so hard!
Using water short term (minutes, not hours) has its uses. cast iron cookware in a nutshell:1) use a good cast iron skillet with a glassy- 2) keep it dry! 3) use a little oil or grease 4) a little smoke is a good thing 5) too much heat on an empty cast iron skillet can 6) clean cast iron immediately after each use leaving a very thin layer of oil/grease 7) avoid soap! 8) use a stainless steel spatula with a perfectly flat edge 9) seasoning cast iron is nice, but you probably don’t need Look into the skillet, Clarice. Lean over it and look Sit down at the table, Clarice. Look into the skillet. We are elaborations of carbon, Clarice. You and the skillet
“Hannibal” by Thomas Harris I’m convinced that “non stick” surfaces, such as teflon, are Cooking with cast iron helps folks get more iron in their diet to build more red blood cells. Doctor’s recommend that those with anemia cook with cast iron. Many of my happiest memories involving cooking, involved cast iron. I remember my grandad cooking almost everything we ate in a cast iron skillet. My grandad was a really great guy, so I find I like to do a lot of stuff that he liked to do. For a long time he was a professional mountain guide – how cool is that? And when he took me with him, the cast iron skillet would come with us! Using cast iron is a skill from a simpler time. Cast iron can last hundreds of years. Many moderm skillets/griddles last only a few months to a few years.
You have a brand new cast iron skillet from the factory. Modern cast iron skillets have a layer of gick on it that the manufacturer has decided to label as “seasoning”. I suspect that the stuff on that cast iron skillet has a lot more to do with marketing, shipping and profit margins than what you or I would want to eat. I think you really want to get that gick off. It’s pretty common advice on the forums that you should get that gick off. There is rust on the cast iron skillet.
b) oil/grease has been used regularly. I don’t use oil/grease for pancakes, but there is a tiny bit of oil in the pancake batter. I think it somehow comes out of the pancakes as they are cooked. c) no soap or scrubbing for the last several uses. Sometimes something happens and you need to scrub. And the next time you try to use it, it just doesn’t seem as slippery. d) used recently (a few days without use and it starts to get kinda sticky).
Wipe with a paper towel: Sometimes this is all that is needed. If this works, you’re all done! A little salt: If there is just a little bit of something sticking, and a paper towel alone doesn’t do the trick, put a little salt on the little bit of sticky stuff. The salt usually gives just the right amount of abrasion to remove the sticky stuff without scratching the seasoning off of the cookware. If this works, you’re all done! Boil water: Put a quarter inch of water in the cast iron skillet and boil the water in the skillet. About 80% of the time, whatever was stuck just lets go. You could use the flat edged stainless steel spatula for a little help – being careful to try and leave the seasoning on the cast iron. Pour out the water and then wipe out the skillet with a paper towel. Follow the instructions below for “Drying a clean, wet skillet.” Scrub: First do the boiling water trick – complete with the spatula treatment. Drain the water. If there is still food stuck, use a plastic scrubby thing. I like the kind that is a green rectangle about a quarter of an inch thick. Using a metal scrubby thing is going to take the seasoning off of the skillet. I think that any kind of scrubbing is going to take off some seasoning – so the trick it to take off all the food bits and leave as much seasoning as possible. Follow the instructions below for “Drying a clean, wet skillet.”
wash cast iron in a dish washer leave cast iron outside leave food in cast iron
using a cast iron skillet ain’t so hard!cast iron cookware in a nutshell:cast iron cookware detailsA lovely homage to a cast iron skillet: Cooking with cast iron is one of those things where I failed utterly and repeatedly until I finally reached out to people for help. While the mighty internet had lots of advice, my eggs still stuck! I needed the collective wisdom of dozens of people to just be able to fry an egg without a big cleanup job. I can now get that egg to slide off a cast iron skillet every time. This article is my feeble attempt to relay what I have learned so far. I should mention that at the time of this writing, I have updated this page more than a hundred times. I want to emphasize that getting stuff to slide right off of cast iron is easy – once you get the hang of it. A little knowledge and a little practice will give you a cast iron skillet that will last a lifetime and will never poison you. why use cast iron?There are many things that drive me to use cast iron: start with a good piece of cast iron cookwareI bought a brand spanking new “Lodge Logic” cast iron skillet at some department store. After seasoning it, I used lots of oil … sometimes food stuck to it, sometimes it didn’t. I gave google a big workout and I found lots of internet forums to ask lots of questions. The most common feedback was to take a close look at the cooking surface of this new skillet. It’s rough. Apparently, long ago, there were two grades of a cast iron skillet one could purchase. The first is where molten iron is poured into a mold and that’s it. The second is where they take the first and machine out the cooking surface to make it much smoother. But that machining process usually doubles the price. Today’s new cast iron cookware is all the first kind. The surface is rough. I shopped around for a long time to try and find something new with a machined surface. The closest thing I found was a griddle made from sheet steel. Many of the experienced cast iron folk recommended buying a heavily used skillet. The most popular brand being “Griswold” – a company that went out of business in the 1950’s. Not only were these skillets machined, but if they were heavily used, their cooking surface would be downright glassy! I bought a Griswold number 10 cast iron skillet for $20 plus shipping on ebay. This was a huge improvement over the Lodge cast iron skillet. I have to mention that I tried to buy a Griswold cast iron skillet for a friend a few months ago and the price was more like $50! But I easily found other old (Wagner) cast iron skillets for $15. Time passed and I thought “Why not take the Lodge cast iron skillet with the rough surface and grind it down myself?” I bought a bunch of sandpaper designed for use with metal and figured 20 minutes with my different power sanders and some elbow grease should make it right as rain! Three hours later I had burned through way too much sandpaper and the results were so-so. It was a messy, icky experience that left me numb and wobbly with a ringing in my ears for a few days. The skillet worked okay for a few weeks and then cracked. I think a person could buy a new cast iron skillet, follow all of the advice on this page and if used twice a day for six months it would probably be just as good as an old skillet. The most important ingredient would include the use of a stainless steel spatula with a flat edge: as it is used over and over, it will take the “peaks” off as the “valleys” fill with “seasoning”(more on the spatula and the “seasoning” below). It’s just that the first few months will have more frustration than if you started off with a great cast iron skillet. My impression is that general consensus to get the best cast iron skillet is to buy a Griswold cast iron skillet from ebay (try for a number 10 cast iron skillet for about $35 plus shipping). The other techniques are just too much work or add too much frustration. I’ve bought cast iron cookware with a lot of crusty stuff that I managed to get off with a fire. And I’ve bought cast iron cookware that was seriously pitted that seems to work okay – although I far prefer the cast iron that is not pitted. I see ads mentioning “no warp” or “not warped” or “level” and am grateful that I have yet to encounter this sort of thing. There are people that collect Griswold cast iron cookware, so there are sometimes pieces that have something interesting going on that sell for something like $500! This might be a good time to point out that I picked up a Wagner cast iron skillet for a dollar at a yard sale a couple of years ago. It seems like the iron is a little thinner, but it works great! It might not be widely considered the best cast iron skillet, but it is widely considered to be far better than the “lodge logic” stuff found in stores today. A Wagner cast iron skillet usually runs a lot cheaper than Griswold on ebay. cast iron seasoning“Seasoning” cast iron is the act of creating a hard layer of petrified oil/grease on cast iron or steel. Maintaining a good cast iron seasoning is the most important aspect of keeping stuff from sticking to cast iron cookware. Each time you cook with oil/grease and don’t have to scrub the cookware afterward, you probably add another layer. Scrubbing, scratching or soaking the cookware in water probably removes many layers. Some layers of cast iron seasoning are better than others. What makes better layers probably has to do with what kind of oil/grease was used, what temperature created the layer and how thick the oil/grease was when it was put on. A well seasoned cast iron skillet will have dozens of very thin, very hard layers. So many that the cast iron skillet will appear to be black instead of the silvery gray of the raw cast iron. I think the best way to season a cast iron skillet is to use it. In the beginning, you might use a little more oil/grease than you would normally use – just to make sure that you don’t have to scrub afterward. Once you have some seasoning layers built up, you can use less oil/grease. That’s it! All of your cast iron seasoning needs are taken care of by just simply using the cast iron cookware. And most folks are gonna be unsatisfied with that. Most folks believe that “seasoning” cast iron means that you put some oil/grease on the cookware and bake it. Cast iron seasoning recipes include varying temperatures from 100 degrees to 550 degrees. And processes from an hour to several days! Okay, okay, okay …. to please the masses that need some sort of oven based ritual …. If I was gonna try this sort of bake style seasoning again, I would: The nice thing about the oven approach is that you get a layer of seasoning all over the cast iron skillet all at once. I became a bit obsessed with understanding this stuff and was getting more confused by the minute until this fella Alan straightened me out in a forum: “What you want is a layer of heavily polymerized fat which typically includes a fair bit of carbon black bound up with it.” So it is polymerized fat which is hard and slick. The carbon is the black stuff. A couple of chemistry savvy friends explained to me that “polymerized” means that the substance re-arranged its molecules to be in a different state (I hope I have that right). In this case, slick liquid oil becomes slick, rock hard solid oil. Apparently, this is very similar to how paint works. This is the beginning of my education. It turns out that there are an infinite number of kinds of seasoning layers. It depends on the type of oil, the quantity of oil, the temperature, the duration of the heat. Some have lots of carbon, some not so much. Some make a glassy layer and some make a “sticky” layer that turns squirmy slick when heated. Some stick to the cast iron skillet better than others. The oil/grease will often go through a sticky phase before becoming a seasoning layer. If you have too much oil/grease, you might never get past the sticky phase! The moral of the story is that thin layers are best. I once tried to do a thick seasoning layer. It came right off as gross black stuff all over my food. One time I watched a fella seasoning a commercial steel griddle by patiently pushing some oil around the hot surface. In the beginning, it started to get yellow blotches. By the time it started to get brown blotches, the fella started to make pancakes. The more pancakes he made, the more seasoned the surface became. I think variations of this are the best approaches. If you bought used cast iron, chances are that it is already seasoned with years of hearty use. You probably don’t need to worry about seasoning it. An interesting thing about seasoning: It is usually quite mottled, or spotty, or spider-web-ish. Once in a long while I can get one consistent/contiguous/plain layer – but I have yet to be able to repeat it when I want to. I wish I knew the secret here.
I feel really comfortable with my current philosophies on seasoning cast iron. While back a blogger named Sheryl contacted me and appears to have embraced my stuff and taken it a bit further. Here is the discussion in the forums about cast iron: polymerizing oils and a better seasoning and here is her related blog entry chemistry of cast iron. I have to admit that I’m having a hard time getting it all to fit in my head. I would really like to have more discussion of it, and … well …. you know … try to get it in my head! removing the seasoning layer from cast ironThere are three reasons I know of for why you might want to do this: While I have read of many ways to do this, the technique I use is to toss it in the fire. I have a stove for wood heat. When the fire gets to the point of being just coals, I toss the cast iron skillet on the top. The next morning I fish it out. All of the crusty or rusty stuff is turned to ash. I brush the ash off with my hand, then dribble a little oil on it and wipe that all over the cast iron with a paper towel. Then I start using it. I got a fascinating e-mail from “Shannon in NC” telling me about how you can start a cast iron skillet over by using a self cleaning oven. I’ve heard of this about a half dozen times in the past. I’ve also heard of some people saying they tried this and their skillet cracked. Since this is the most complete information I have seen on this topic, I’m posting it here: I replied asking for permission to put this here and got one more tidbit of useful information:
which oil or grease to use on cast iron cookware?I think that any edible fat will probably work fine. Oil, lard, shortening, animal fat, butter, etc. I’m still doing a lot of experimenting and asking around. Lately, I’ve been favoring the use of bacon grease – the kind that is saved after frying bacon. I think a big part of this is that it is solid at room temp. Somehow, I think that that makes it harder and slicker as a seasoning. I tried olive oil exclusively for a few months. If the cast iron skillet needed scrubbing, it seems that the scrubbing would take off some seasoning! I could see fresh cast iron (silver color – not black!). Some people swear by shortening (Crisco). But I’ve heard some scary things about shortening, so I avoid it myself. I have used “organic shortening” which is actually palm oil. I’ve researched it pretty thoroughly and I like it! Here’s a great quote I found at homesteadingtoday.com: My obsessive searching for information on this led me to this page which compares many different oils for their different strengths and weaknesses. Of note is “Grape Seed Oil” where they make the following comment “One caution: it’s a fast drying oil so you want to clean up splatter right away because cleaning will be a lot harder in a few days. On the other hand, this makes it very good for seasoning bare steel and cast iron cookware.” – this is the only oil where they even mention cast iron. So I tried grape seed oil for a couple of months. Everything started to get a gummy residue on it. I have switched back to bacon squeezins, palm oil and sunflower oil. I’m looking around for organic lard (since I’m not raising pigs right now). let’s fry some eggs!For most folks, this is the big test. When I first started tinkering with cast iron, I thought “I just season the skillet and then the eggs won’t stick!” When the eggs stuck I figured I must have seasoned it wrong. So I reseasoned that skillet about a dozen times and sometimes my eggs would stick and sometimes they wouldn’t. I started looking for more information on the internet. The gold mine was forums. People offered tons of advice. I’m pretty sure that I currently use all of the advice I was ever given. At times I try to skip some of the advice only to discover that every little bit helps. 1) Cast iron skillet history. 2) Use oil/grease. It doesn’t have to be a lot. One teaspoon should be plenty. Try to spread it around evenly. 3) Preheat. Maybe about three minutes? I’ve found that medium, or a little lower than medium is the right temperature for almost everything. Somebody told me that if you flick a little water on the surface, that if the water dances, the cast iron skillet is ready! I usually wait until I see a little smoke. 4) Add spices before the eggs. If you are using a little salt and pepper, sprinkle that on the cooking surface before the eggs. My video of frying eggs on cast iron. First, I fry a single egg on a cast iron griddle. Then, I do a six egg scramble in a cast iron skillet. This is my first ever digital movie. The sound has lots of pops and it took me a really long time to edit it. It’s pretty boring, but the important thing is that it gives you a really good idea of how slippery good cast iron should be – and how easy the cleanup is. cast iron clean upThis is something that will be completely different from other pans. With other pans, you generally want to leave a sterile surface. While you can do that sort of thing with cast iron cookware, it is better if you don’t. Leaving a little oil and salt behind is a good thing. If you try to wipe at the surface of cast iron cookware with a paper towel afterward, you might get a slight brown or black residue – that’s fine. That’s oil and browned oil on its way to becoming part of the cast iron seasoning. Most of the time, everything slides right out and there is no cleanup. Sometimes, I’ll use a paper towel to mop up a bit of excess oil/grease and take out any leftover food bits. As long as the skillet looks clean with a thin film of oil on it, it’s ready to be put away! Sometimes something sticks to the cast iron and a bit more cleaning is required. The first thing that rolls through my mind in this case is to figure out why it stuck and see if there is a way to prevent that in the future. The mission here is to try and get the yucky stuff out and leave as much of the seasoning on the skillet as possible. It is possible to scrub the seasoning off of the cast iron. So, try the gentler approaches first. For any cast iron skillet I have cooked anything with, this is the complete list of things I have ever done to clean a skillet. The gentlest (best) approaches are at the top. Drying a clean, wet cast iron skilletIf you ever use any water, make sure that you thoroughly dry out the skillet right away. Otherwise you will get rust! It is really important that you use heat to dry the skillet. A towel just isn’t going to get it dry enough. I place the skillet on the stove and turn it to high. When the visible water is all gone, I turn the heat off. Keep your full attention on the skillet while the heat is on! I’ve had people over for dinner that insisted on “helping me” by cleaning my cast iron. I would mention drying by heat, and they would turn the heat on and get busy with something else. Suddenly the kitchen is full of smoke and the seasoning is all gone! This has happened three times now! This is also a great way to crack a skillet. So I say it again: Keep your full attention on the skillet while the heat is on! Always leave a thin layer of oil/greaseThere is moisture in the air that can rust your skillet. A thin layer of oil/grease will keep your skillet safe from this. Since most forms of cleanup leave some oil/grease all over the skillet, then you really don’t have to do anything here. What’s there is just fine. If you did some cleanup that leaves the skillet looking pretty dry – with no oil/grease layer, put a few drops of oil on the skillet and spread it around super-thin with a paper towel. Never:Avoid using soap on cast iron cookwareAbout half of the people that use cast iron are sworn to never let soap touch it. This concern comes from folks that tried to make soap in cast iron containers. All soap is made using lye. The lye will destroy the seasoning layer. Lye is a really nasty substance and the only reason I have never tinkered with making soap. Once the soap is made, there is no more lye danger. You can even use soap on your skin. Lye on your skin will probably take your skin off. The bottom line is that soap and detergent used on cast iron will not harm the seasoning layer. So use soap if you want. Most people don’t. I don’t. Since the mission is to try to not hurt the season layers, and to try to leave a thin layer of oil/grease behind, there isn’t much value in soap. One could say that soap helps to remove bits of food smaller than you can see. I think there is some truth to that. Of course the residual oil will help to preserve that food. And the future fry will kill anything funky that might have grown on that food. And the food is so small that it cannot be seen, so it really isn’t too much of a problem to begin with. I think this is a case where the upside (preserving the season and the oil layer) has more value than the down side (removing 0.001% more food). My cast iron clean up videoI start with a cast iron skillet with some pretty petrified gunk on it. Boil some water and it pretty much lets go. I then show proper drying and then adding a layer of organic shortening for a seasoning layer. the right kind of spatulaThis is sometimes called a “pancake flipper.” It has to be metal. Some folks will get concerned that the metal will scratch the surface and ruin the skillet, and their thinking is spot on, but the wacky thing is that in this case, we want it to scratch the skillet. But not just any scratching. We want just the right kind of scratching. Because with just the right kind of scratching, the surface of the skillet will get better and better. Smoother and slicker. Flatter. Bumps of fused on gick will be scraped off and any pits will be slowly filled in with seasoning. As I travel and people show me their cast iron, I sometimes see a piece that has big black tumors on the cooking surface. And then I put on my Sherlock Holmes deer stalker cap and deduce “You use a plastic spatula, don’t you?” – Gasp! “How did you know!” …. At some point something kinda stuck to the skillet. The plastic is not able to scrape it off. And then other little bits got stuck to the first bit. As time passed, this bump got bigger and bigger. If a metal spatula were used, the first little bit would not have been more than a few minutes old before it got scraped off. These skillets with the big tumors are going to have to have all the seasoning removed and started over. This is the super closeup of the cast iron skillet of my mind showing the original lumpiness of the raw cast iron, followed by layers of seasoning and the occasional bit of stuck on something-or-nuther. The idea in this pic is that a plastic spatula is used. So the surface is never scratched and lumps and stuff just do their lumpy thing. Now we start with a similar cast iron surface and the only thing we change is that we use a stainless steel spatula with a flat edge. A scratchy edge. But just the right kind of scratchy. As time passes, the peaks of lumpy seasoning get scratched off and the cast iron pits get filled in with seasoning. The cooking surface gets smoother and smoother. Unlike teflon, years of regular cast iron use makes for a better cooking surface. So now you can see the value of avoiding plastic, or anything other than metal spatulas. Stainless steel is all that I use. I have seen some steel spatulas that rust. Yuck! I have seen spatulas that have some sort of chrome-ish covering – you really need to avoid that – that stuff flakes off into your food! Yuck again! Stick with solid stainless steel. Now for a bit of focus on the shape. There is the edge of the spatula that will contact the surface of the skillet, and there are the corners of the spatula that will contact the edge of the skillet. Here are the two stainless steel spatulas that I have now. The one on the bottom is the one with the rounded corners. gimmie gimmie gimmie!This is the one I like far more than any other spatula I have encountered. care of wood handlesI have a lot to say about this – take a look at my article on care of wood handles in the kitchen. bacon squeezinsWhen cooking bacon, I like to save the grease, then use the grease later for eggs, or corn bread, or whatever. This is the way my grandad did it. He had a little metal container that had a sort of filter at the top. Without the filter, sticky, chunky bits end up in your grease and leads to cleaning hassles. I found a similar contraption that I like much better than the one my grandad had. Mostly becase it is stainless steel and I think my grandad’s was aluminum. But this one also uses a screen for a filter instead of a …. well … pan-like thing with a bunch of holes in it. See the picture below. If you use the grease regularly, you can keep it on the counter – just a little ways away from the stove. Otherwise, you should probably keep it in the fridge. I’ve heard of folks using a canning jar for this. Some people use a tin can – but I cannot help but think this is a bad idea: The can might leach something into the grease. The jar is far better than the can, although I have to admit that I really like the results that the filter gives – and the jar doesn’t have that. I tried one of these that was ceramic and had a filter, but it was heavy, hard to hold with one hand, and didn’t have a pour spout. I tried another stainless steel container but the filter was kinda hard to get in and out. These are kinda hard to find. I would say that only about 1 in 20 kitchen stores will carry even one design, and this good design is much harder to find. This one is stainless steel, has a pour spout, a handle for grabbing it with one hand and the strainer comes out easily. This one is far better than the others, and cheaper. container for bacon squeezins from amazon cast iron bits and bobscast iron cookware and tomatoesNote that tomatoes, tomato sauces and other acidic foods eat away at the seasoning. I would generally avoid cooking these in cast iron. cast iron cookware and baconSome bacons leave petrified goo on the skillet. This is actually sugar that is used to cure the bacon. The heat causes it to come out and turn into a sort of caramel/candy. Some people call it “bacon brownies” and they fight over who gets to eat it. Frying this kind of bacon almost always leads to needing to boil some water in the skillet to get it all out.
more on cast iron:Thanks!I’m not going to ask for donations. If you like this article, please link to me. Click on one (or many) of the social network links below. Linking to this article from a forum is nice. Or even better, mention this article in a blog! Many thanks!
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