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Cleaning, Seasoning, and Cooking with Cast Iron Cookware

Posted by & filed under Blog, DIY Projects.

I love cast iron. You can spend a fortune on all-clad cookware that probably won’t work as well or last as long as a cheap cast iron skillet. I got my skillet at Dick’s Sporting goods of all places.

I was talking to my friend the other day and he was talking about how he gingerly cares for his cast iron cookware. He was telling me some of the problems he was having with his new cast iron pans. I’ve been using cast iron cookware for many years now and thought I would share with everyone some of my tips for cast iron cooking and seasoning

Cleaning

It is always best to clean the cast iron when it is hot.

To clean your hot pan I use just plain hot water and a plain sponge . If your pan is nice and hot you won’t need to apply very much pressure to clean it off. Never try to clean a room temperature pan.
If you have let food cake on your pan for days, as I sometimes do… it is no problem at all to clean it off. Just fill the bottom of the pan with water and bring it to a boil for a minute or two, then dump the water and clean it immediately.

Dry off your pan with a towel as soon as you are done cleaning it. Put your pan back on the burner on a very low heat for a minute or two to ensure that it is 100% dry.

If you haven’t been cooking fatty foods on your pans you might need to apply a bit of oil, lard, or bacon grease at this point to the pan to maintain the seasoning. Just put a dab in the pan and spread it around to coat the pan. Now just heat it up on very low heat until the grease gets to the smoke point and then remove it from the heat. Let the pan cool down and then just wipe off the excess grease and store it away.

If you want to be safe you can do this every time, however the key times to do it are when you are cooking with high acid products such as tomatoes or vinegar. If you just cooked a pound of bacon you probably don’t need to add any more lard to the pan!

Seasoning is something that gets better over time. Cast iron cookware is one of the few consumer items that really gets much better with age. When your children inherit your cast iron cookware it will be really humming!

Seasoning and Re-Seasoning

Occasionally you may end up wrecking the seasoning on a pan by accident or maybe you got a new pan off craigslist that needs some help. I’ve done this twice before by accident. I have left pans on the burner unattended and all of the seasoning has burnt off. Unlike an aluminum pan that would have been ruined, my cast iron pan just needed to be re-seasoned.

  • Heat up the oven to 500 degrees
  • Coat the pan in lard or grease such as bacon grease
  • Put the pan in the oven upside down on top of something such as some foil
  • Remove from heat 30 minutes

There are other ways to re-season the pan, but as long as you have access to a stove this is the method that seems to work best.

After you season your pan, plan to cook something greasy like bacon in it initially and this will help to reinforce your seasoning.

If your cooking stuff, such as hash browns or eggs, and it is constantly sticking to the pan then you need to re-season your pan.

Cooking

I, unfortunately, have an electric range. The trick to success with cast iron pans on an electric range is to preheat them slowly. I keep the heat at a medium to low heat until the entire pan is warmed and then I can raise it from there. No matter what type of heat you are using you should make sure that your pan is up to temperature before cooking, it is going to take longer to evenly heat up your cast iron cookware than it would your steel or aluminum cookware.

Removing Rust

My grill’s cast iron grates tend to get rusty here and there. The first winter I had that grill my grill cover had a leak over the winter and when I pulled the cover off in the spring the grates were 100% rusty. Luckily knocking out rust is pretty easy to do.

Just put your cast iron in your oven and set it to “self clean” cycle. Once they have completed this cycle just wipe the rust off with a bit of hot water and a steel scouring pad. It will wipe right off. Be sure to do this while it is still hot, and be careful not to burn yourself.

If you come across some old cast iron cookware that you want to restore this method will work well for that.

Once your cast iron has cooled to room temperature coat it down in lard and season it as per the instructions above.

Misc tip

Avoid those burnt hands! The handles can get quite hot while cooking and sometimes we forget about it. Be sure to have handle covers for all of your various skillets.

These are available online or even at big box stores

Did I get it correct? Let me know in the comments.

  • http://twitter.com/joewevans joewevans

    In the past I have taken a Dremel and removed the rust from a skilled and an old dutch oven then just gone through the seasoning process again.

    Quick clean and easy,

    Great post BTW

  • http://twitter.com/j0n_phillips Jon Phillips

    I’ve recently begun using my cast iron skillets again. I’m making it a point to try to use cast iron exclusively. I even use it for cooking scrambled eggs now. Cast iron will last forever.

  • LJH

    Talk about perfect timing – I’ve got two cast iron skillets that are older than I am (pretty freaking old) and I use them almost every day. Just acquired a funky, rusty old Dutch oven and wasn’t 100% sure how to rescue it but now it’s about to become cookware instead of a planter, thanks! :-)

  • Anonymous

    Turn it upside down in the Oven. I would put it on the top rack and line the bottom rack with foil to catch all the crud

  • chezrad

    Another tip that was handed down by my Grandmother was to clean cast iron piece that had burnt on greasy sections with salt. The salt is abrasive to get the gunk out and it also soaks up the extra grease so your pot or pan does not get rancid. I’ve used this method many times over the years and it works great. I also use salt to “polish” a pan that has become sticky.

    Also, for all the women out there, cooking in cast iron might be a great way to ensure that you get some daily iron. Once we got rid of the cast iron and aluminum got popular, didn’t the iron supplements start showing up? Just a thought.

    Great post.

  • LJH

    Will do, Nick, thanks!

  • http://twitter.com/WeWantLess Want Less

    Thanks for the tip on using the oven’s self clean cycle to help remove rust. I found a couple very old cast iron skillets in one of our pack houses when we bought this farm and I hoped they were still salvageable – they are nice sizes that I don’t already have.

    Question — I’ve seen that some people recommend storing and leaving your cast iron skillet(s) in your oven on a lower rack while you’re cooking. My immediate thoughts are that you’d eventually cook off your seasoning as well as alter the even-ness of your oven’s cooking. Have you ever heard of this?

  • http://twitter.com/WeWantLess Want Less

    I’ve read that about the iron too, that cooking in cast iron helps supplement it in your food. I wonder by how much?

  • Onthego

    Another way to remove rust and scale from cast iron is to soak in Coca Cola. The acid in the soda does a nice job of getting rid of surface rust before you re-season it. The best kind of cast iron you can find is Griswold or Wagner; the new stuff is poor by comparison to those two brands. I am suing a Griswold No. 9 frying pay my husband’s grandmother revived in 1921 as a wedding present from her mother. It is a beauty!

  • http://www.findingserenitygulch.blogspot.com Sherri Cripe

    I have a cast iron frying pan that got put away dirty (I didn’t do it!) and now has mold growning in it. Any tips for cleaning it? The oven in our house is from the 1970′s and doesn’t have a self-clean cycle.

  • Anonymous

    All the self clean cycle does is crank the oven to super high heat to burn up anything in the oven to ash. You could do the same thing by putting your pot in a really raging camp fire for example. You could try cranking your oven the whole way and leave the pot in for an hour and see if it works.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1646346681 Ben Grooms

    You posted this just in time! Last weekend I bought four pieces of cast iron at a garage sale (croc w/ lid, skillet, and a deep pan). They were not in too bad of shape and I got the lot for cheep (all wagner).

    So I tried the self-cleaning oven tip….the first time it didn’t really work and they actually got rustier! But it was my fault because I left them in there too long after the cycle was done and they cooled down. Round two worked out great! Although the rust didn’t just “wipe off”, a little (a lot) elbow grease with steel wool and a steel wire brush did the trick. I plan on seasoning them tomorrow and experimenting with cooking with cast iron!

  • Anonymous

    I’m guessing the age of the rust might have something to do with it? When I removed the rust from my grill grates it came right off with some water and minimal elbow grease… but maybe it was a thin layer that had only been on for a month or so

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1646346681 Ben Grooms

    Update: I seasoned my “new” cast iron in my electric stove as per advise above. Probably used too much lard and smoked up the house pretty good. While explaining a small burn on my had to a co-worker, he said he seasoned his cast iron in a homemade fire pit that he made. Got me thinking at least…

    Why not season in a gas grill? It gets to 500 degrees and is outside. Just a thought

    So far I have cooked something everyday and am enjoying the experience.

  • Anonymous

    it would work. I seasoned the grates for my grill using just plain kingsford and canola oil

  • Anonymous

    I should have mentioned the smoke.. i doubt you used too much lard, I’ve read online you can also season on lower heat… like 350 and just leave the pan in for like an hour or so… maybe that version would not smoke??

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    My advice to all you vegans is to get as much fresh, local and organic fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds and beans as you can. That is the base to your healthy vegan diet.That’s good advice for vegans, but it’s equally good advice for vegetarians and omnivores as well. Just because there’s a lot of calcium in milk doesn’t mean it’s getting used since, among other limitations, milk has barely any magnesium to balance it out.