I love my cast iron skillet! It is really heavy, though. I pretty much only use it for fried chicken. I also have a wonderful cast iron wok.
My husband bought a rusty old dutch oven with lid for a song at a garage sale. I was mortified to find out he cleaned it with WD-40!!! I won’t use it. The reason cast iron gets to be non-stick is because when heated, the oil gets absorbed into the pores of the metal.
Any suggestions? Should we try to clean it with soap and water, and start the re-seasoning process again? It grosses me out to think of eating WD-40.
Here’s what you do…buy a can of oven cleaner, get a Hefty bag and steel wool. Spray the pan all over with over cleaner, make sure it’s well covered. Wrap it up in the Hefty bag and leave it for a week. Unwrap it, rinse it off with very hot water and scrub well with steel wool. Dry and re-season. You may need to reapply the oven cleaner and leave it a second time if all the original seasoning doesn’t come off.
I have used this method and it works very well. A friend of mine who makes a hobby of rescuing and reseasoning cast iron recommended it.
Or (upon preview) try the link Johnny L.A. suggested.
Don’t let aruvqan’s unique health issues put you off using cast iron. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone have that happen. I personally am anemic, and really want to cook more in cast iron because my body doesn’t absorb supplements well. And I rarely re-oil after cleaning…maybe twice a year. I also don’t re-heat to dry them, because like you I don’t want to wait around! I leave them in the dish drainer until dry.
I will admit to occasionally using a teensy amount of soap after I have cooked something exceptionally aromatic, since it seems to pick up the flavor and my mom complained that her pancakes tasted funny after I’d used the “wrong” pan. Then I do add a bit of oil. Most of my cast iron is at least 50 years old. When I was a teenager I bought a bunch of skillets from a yard sale down the street to start out my own collection…the woman I bought them from was in her eighties and that was 35 years ago! Plus the pans I use daily have been my mom’s for my entire life. I’m debating giving one or two to my daughter now that she’s finally getting married.
It may not be the right choice for you…and obviously not for aruvqan - yoiks! I’ve never had that sort of a response to cast iron cookery and I’ve simmered tomato sauce in a cast iron dutch oven deliberately to get the iron infusion!
But - think of this: The mandate to clean and put away right away is actually a good thing. I’m a slob and would otherwise leave things to stand (and in fact I ruined our cast iron dutch oven by forgetting to do so once… it now needs to be stripped / derusted / reseasoned).
Anyway - the Le Creuset or other enameled cookware is a good compromise if you don’t need the iron in the diet. I don’t own any, but want to at some point. The best part of the cast iron dutch oven was I could set the food on low and if I forgot to stir, nothing scorched.
I’ve heard that makes it less non-stick. I don’t do enough cooking in cast iron that this would make a big deal to me, but I have read of people using sandpaper or a sanding tool to get the inside of their Lodge stuff to have a near-mirror finish.
I actually don’t oil it up after I clean it out. When it was new I did, faithfully as the instructions said, but the light film of oil was absorbed into the pores of the iron by the next time I used it.
Now that I’ve had it for a decade, I just rinse it and wipe it dry with a paper towel and put it away. It’s slick and black and a lovely nonstick - I think oiling it after each use at this point would indeed produce that sticky residue as the pores are all nicely sealed so there’s nowhere for it to go. I’ve never had anything stick so bad I needed to scour it out with kosher salt, it’s always come clean with just water and elbow grease.
