That is how I clean mine. NEVER soap and water. Occasionally I’ll cook something acidic but I always make sure the pan is seasoned properly and quickly after cooking. Leaving acidic food (or water) in the pan will make it tough to get it seasoned well again, but it can be done. I’ve been this close to ruining my cast iron pans but I always seem to get them back in condition with some TLC.
I’ve heard it a lot, but I’ve never been able to get it to work in practice. Some food residue just won’t come off unless it has a little water to loosen it. The ideal is to not need more than a damp paper towel, but the salt thing has never worked for me.
I use kosher salt or sea salt, not table salt. I found that the finer salt didn’t work well. Usually I’ll put the salt in while the pan is still hot and let it sit for a while. The salt absorbs the grease but sometimes a good scraping is required to get all the cooked on bits off.
If you use kosher salt or some other large grain salt there really isn’t any problem. If food sticks so hard that salt won’t get it off, the pan was improperly seasoned to begin with.
Which is the terrible conundrum of cast iron cleaning: the less seasoned it is, the harder you have to scrub, and therefore the less seasoned it becomes. When my frying pans are in prime condition they’re ridiculously easy to clean. But somehow, despite every care I can take, with each use they get a little less seasoned rather than a little more.
Could it be I’m adding too much oil when I season, or not letting it cure long enough? I tend to get sort of a soft waxy or rubbery coating rather than the hard black shiny lacquer that builds up on the non-food portions of the pan
Crisco will set you free. The end.
This is almost certainly the problem. You just want to wipe on a light coat.
Just use it. And use it and use it…
If you do this it doesn’t really matter how you treat it. It will eventually build up a nice smooth blackened tone. And become well seasoned.
I have a restaurant and the dishwashers will sometimes wash them up with soap and bleach and whatnot. No biggie I have been using them so long that there is really no way they can remove the seasoning at this point.
The ones I use at home are the same. I don’t take any special seasoning efforts for my fist uses anymore. I just give them a wash at first and start cooking in them. They will season with time. And become beautiful. I like to watch the process happen over time.
It is cast IRON. Do what you want. You are not gonna ruin it.
Just use them all the time.
I’ve noticed that most modern cast iron pans are made with a rough sand-cast surface everywhere, even on the cooking surface. I’ve also noticed that on old pans (ie from 1960 back to the Dawn of Time) the cooking surface was milled smooth at the factory.
Now getting a smooth-surfaced cure on a sand-cast surface means building up & maintaining a very thick, in fact unrealistically thick, cure. In other words, they’re making pans so cheaply now that they don’t in fact work. They’re nostalgia peices, or “giftware” (ghastly term) not cooking tools for real cooks.
Facing one of those rough-surfaced pans I got a circular sander & some rough-grit grinding pads & ground the cooking surface down to flat, with just fine scratches remaining to hold the cure. Night and day difference. That pan cures easily & stays that way. But it was a butt-load of work & messy.
If anyone knows of a US source for cast iron fry pans with milled cooking surfaces I’d like a link. Hint: “Lodge” brand ain’t it.
Do you mean ‘US made’, or just that they can be bought in the US?
I have four cast iron skillets. One of the 10-1/2" pans is made by C.K.P in Taiwan. It hasn’t been used in quite a while, and it’s a bit crusty so I can’t tell if it had been milled smooth. Wait… I’ve just wiped it with a paper towel, and I can see some mill marks there the crust has come up. I have two other pans, an 8" and a 6-1/2", that are milled smooth. I didn’t know I had the smaller one. Must’ve gotten it from mom. The 8" has been seasoned to a glossy non-stick surface. Very nice. The 8" is by C.P.K. The 6-1/2" is by Griswold, Erie, PA.
I’m not entirely sure all of these pans are mine. I think they are, as I think my roommate says he’d never used cast iron before. But he may have picked one up somewhere along the line and never used it. I’ll have to ask him when he gets back from England.
Oh, the other 10-1/2" pan. It’s the one that gets used. I’m guessing I got that one from mom, as I think I’ve only bought one cast iron skillet in that size. Its build-up is heavy enough that I can’t tell if it’s milled or not. And the bottom is seasoned too, so I can’t see the manufacturer.
I also have a cast-iron bacon press I got from mom. I never use it, as bacon comes out fine without it.
Griswold pans are forever. The ones I have were my mother’s, and she inherited them when her grandmother died, and I’m not at all sure that they were new with great-granny.
I have 3 small fry pans (wonderful for crepes), 1 round medium, 1 square medium, a dutch oven, and a cover that fits the large pan & dutch over.
I’d sooner give up having a dishwasher than those pans.
I don’t mind the slight roughness in my Lodge (maybe I just don’t know better), but Le Creuset makes skillets; if you don’t mind the enameled outside (and the expense), they’re very smooth. They’re made in France, but fairly readily available here in the States.
Yeah, what he said.
Same here with my cast iron dutch oven. I always use water. And a plastic scrubber - not one of the really heavy-duty ones, mind you, just the one that’s loosely knitted from a strand of thin plastic. No harsher than salt, I’m certain. However, I always wipe it dry with a paper towel, add a dollop of Crisco shortening - liquid oil leaves it feeling sticky - and always, Always, ALWAYS heat it on the stove to drive off any moisture, spread that Crisco around, and heat it to the point of smoking slightly. If I’ve just cooked, say, bacon, I won’t add the Crisco but I still do the heat-to-dry step. .
Part of the reason I always do the crisco step is because oftentimes I do cook something acidic in it - nothing worse than chili or spaghetti sauce. I like the fact that the stuff winds up with a higher iron content, plus it’s much easier to get it to simmering temperature, and simmer it for several hours while only having to stir occasionally, and it never scorches. I figure the mini-seasoning I do afterward repairs any damage the acidic sauce may have done.
I’m lusting after a cast iron griddle now. I’m sick of making pancakes on the cheap silverstone pan that yields misshapen, unevenly-cooked stuff.
How’s this?
Awesome. Thanks all.
I’d found Lodge all over the place, even at Home Depot (?!?), and Le Creuset makes fine stuff, but just not right fer fixin’ up a mess o’ vittles, which is what cast iron always feels like to me.
So Griswold it is. eBay, here I come
… sings: Old McDonald had a pan … ebay ebay o …
The pan works wonderfully now. I cooked up some chicken breasts and snap peas last night. Yum.
BTW - I spoke with my wife’s grandmother, it seems the pans had been sitting unused in my Mother-in-law’s garage for the last six years, which is how they got int he shape they were in.
I’m doing a sirloin and mushroom sauce tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to that one too.
I was just recently thinking of getting one of the new George Foreman grills, with the plates that are removable for easier cleanup. I had an old one, I can’t say how well it works becaue I don’t know much about cooking, but it was good enough for me and it was easy to cook chicken breasts and vegetables and things. Some people seem to complain that it’s not really hot enough, it can’t sear meat. There’s a new searing version that goes up to 525F for 90 seconds and then goes down, but it costs $100.
So anyway, I was reading this thread and thinking maybe I should try a cast-iron pan for indoor “grilling” type stuff. I can get a 10-inch pre-seasoned Lodge for just $10, a good one though it does have the rough finish. For the milled type, on Ebay there are plenty of Griswolds, but they go by numbers instead of inches. What number do I want for a 10 or 12 inch skillet? I don’t care about collectibility, I just want one in good condition and hopefully clean and seasoned. Alternatively, where can I find that CKP brand or any other new milled ones as LSLGuy already asked above?
I have a 12 inch Lodge which had the rough finish when I bought it. It was relatively inexpensive and took forever to get seasoned properly. Out of all my cast iron pans, that one is the most troublesome for me (loses it’s seasoning even though I take care of it, rust is forming on the underside, etc). Maybe because it was cheap quality? Won’t buy another Lodge because of it. Besides, the 12 inch is too big for my electric burners and food around the outside of the pan doesn’t cook at the same temperature as the center. I’d recommend a 10 inch (sorry, don’t know what number) if you have an electric stove.
Does anyone know about using cast iron pans on a ceramic or glass top stove? I have a new stove on order (with the ceramic top) and I’ve heard that it is not recommended to use cast iron on them. Anyone know why or have experience with this? I’d hate to give up my cast iron!