Sticky Cast Iron Pans

By

siris

Put your cast iron pan in a bonfire. It is the old country method of burning off the crud. Works great.

By

DearWebby

Keep in mind that old cast iron is porous. It is a lot closer to a sponge than to glass. Just like old Diesel engines always used to sweat oil, cast iron frying pans do the same. You can slow down the migration of the oil from the inside to the outside, if you season it and let it build a good patina. Oiling it and heating it enough to cause smoke is not seasoning it. That is just burnishing and rustproofing it.

To properly season a cast iron pan or pot, get it red hot until it stops smoking, and let it cool slowly.

Clean it with a wire brush and vacuum it thoroughly. Keep it totally dry!

Warm it up until it is almost too hot to touch and rub it with bacon rind. When it is all shiny and slick, throw a tablespoon of very dry powdered sage into it and distribute it until it looks fairly even. Then put the pan into the oven or onto a BBQ and heat it gently until it just starts smoking. Don`t get it too hot at this step! The powdered sage will get wicked into the pores of the cast iron and will help seal them. If you don`t see an even sheen everywhere inside the pan, repeat the bacon rind, sage and heating parts.

If the seasoning is done right, then there is a nice and even satiny sheen all over the inside the pan, and it is just as non-stick as if it was a new Teflon frying pan.
Clean the inside as gently as you would a Teflon pan.
Those 3M sponge pads work well.

You can scrub the outside with anything, but purists prefer to use just a wire brush wheel.

Have fun!
DearWebby
http://webby.com/humor//blog

By

Corene

If you have a self-cleaning oven, put the pans in and run a cycle. If not, put your oven on the highest temp (500+ degrees) and put the pan in for about 30 minutes. It will turn all of that gummy grease into carbon that can be brushed off with a wire brush.

Why do my cast iron skillets get this gummy sticky residue on them?