Cast Iron — To Use or Not to Use
A long time ago, we accidentally discovered a way to effectively clean old cast iron cookware. And when I say clean — I mean — remove ALL seasoning, back to the beginning kind of clean.
You see, John was in the habit of storing things in the oven. I never store anything in the oven. I knew we had a long day out of errands and thought it would be a great idea to run the Clean Oven cycle on the self cleaning oven. No, I did not open the oven to check if anything was inside.
Fast forward to several hours later, opening up the oven only to discover John’s mother’s cast iron skillet, with 40 years of well-deserved seasoning on it, looking as if it came right out of the box. Let’s just say there was a discussion and some sadness on that day.
Anyway, fast forward a few years and dreaming that we’d be camping someday, we picked up a couple of used cast iron pieces — unafraid of where they came from because we had hard earned knowledge of how to get off someone else’s yuck.
And recently as we readied for our first outings, it was time to tackle the cast iron.
I wish we’d captured a picture of the before — but it was gross. Not only did they have yuck on them but they’d been sitting in our garage for several years, sawdust, bugs, webs, and other unmentionables had collected. They were really gross.
We started by soaking them in hot water and dish soap. (Please, don’t tell me how many Rules of Cast Iron this violates. They were gross and we had to start somewhere.) After scrubbing them to get layers of crud down to tolerable levels, into the self-cleaning oven they went. And off to work we went!
(Okay, I went off to work. John worked from home and managed to turn off the smoke alarm several times as well as capture the lovely haze in the air.)
The aroma in the house when I returned — ugh — pungent. And this is what I found:
Rust and the yuck – now mostly ash – ready to be scrubbed off.
I’ve read a lot of how to restore cast iron posts and watched a lot of videos (some of which I would NOT recommend unless you have 18 minutes of your life to spend watching someone use a bench grinder on his cast iron) and I know our experience with our cast iron, so I was pretty confident I could get these babies back into working order.
First, I dumped out the dry slag. Then using a damp cluster of paper towels, I wiped out as much dust and debris as I could. Some of the recommendations at this point are to use a vinegar and water soak, but let’s face it, I’m not that patient. I sprinkled vinegar into the pans and started scrubbing with a copper scrubby. Layer after layer of stuff came off.
As far as the seasoning part of this story, back to the stove top and oven combo I went. First I heated the pan on the stove top hot enough to melt lard. I smeared it around and let it smoke while the oven heated up to 250°f. Once all of the pans were ready, into the oven they went for 20 minutes. Then out for a wipe down with a paper towel and back into the oven for another 20 minutes at 350°f. Out again, wiped down again and back into a 425°f oven for 45 minutes. The key to a smooth surface (according to one video) is this heat and wipe, heat and wipe with no addition of more oil or fat. They did come out clean and pretty!
One of the posts that I really liked said the best seasoning you can do for cast iron is to cook in it. Because these will be used over a grill or open fire, I have no doubt they will be seasoned by time and flame just fine.
So now they sit in an old milk crate, ready to be used, ready for bacon and hamburgers and eggs and potatoes…. and whatever else we’re hungry for.
By the way, this process is stinky and messy. The self cleaning oven part – whew! The vinegar and iron smell – pew! The seasoning with lard — don’t do if you’re feeling a bit off. The seasoning in the oven — can bring tears to your eyes if done correctly. And my hands and nails…… well, they looked like I’d been scrubbing an old cast iron pot……
P.S. I have a friend who highly recommends the flax seed oil method. I did not use this method because it sounds like you have to be dedicated to the process. Again, I’m not that patient. Because of the high heat level, he said the entire family was suffering with tears in their eyes as the oil plasticized and bonded. And he did it several times. However, they now have cast iron they use every day, which they scrub and soak (I know, the horror) and nothing has broken through the seasoning. Something to think about……
