Cast iron woes

[Deleted]

I bought my first set of Cast iron last year and it's been going great. I've always been able to clean it, make sure to put it on a hot burner to get all the moisture off, then little leaf lard and put away. I felt I was building up the seasoning between this and using them for frying bacon, fried chicken, etc. Well my mom just visited unexpectedly (literally showed up from 12 hrs away without even a phone call, but that's another story) last weekend and for some reason "cleaned" my griddle, 8" skillet, 10.25" skillet and domed lid when I wasn't looking. I tried to question her but she got quasi sad/upset when she realized how precious these were to me so I just let it go. I don't know what she did but it's got orangish/greyish stuff in different shapes/patterns on all four which I guess is rust from googling it. I've never owned anything that's rusted so that's why I'm not sure it's rust, I thought rust was super dark orange and smelled weird. Seems I should go get steel wool and get to scrubbing? Anyone have any suggestions on what to do now and how to prevent it in the future (other than keeping my mother away from them lol)? Thanks!

[kkbhf]

It is just a little surface rust at this point. Give a real good scour with Brillo or steel wool, stripping off your current seasoning in the process. Dry on a burner as usual.

Then do a proper "first seasoning" e.g. light coat of leaf lard, place in cold oven, bring oven temperature to 450F and hold for an hour, turn oven off and wait till cool, remove pan.

Let DM use the Teflon pans!

[spacecase0]

if the easy cleaning methods don't work,
I cook the pan in a bond fire if possible, I connect off a wire so I can find it later
or I use a very high heat camp stove and/or a torch outside and get the pan red hot,
that burns off everything and leaves the pan all ready to season again

[manygoatsnmore]

No need to get it red hot, but if you do, make sure you let it cool down slowly. Sudden changes in temp can crack your pan.

At least at this point, you only have a little rust on it. Do like kkbhf said, and to really get a good seasoning on it again, repeat the process multiple times. Then fry french fries in the pan a few times. You want to get that oil deep into the pores of the pan and sealed in.

The good news about cast iron is it's nearly impossible to ruin it - you can always get a good seasoning back on it with some time and effort. I LOVE my cast iron.

[okiemomof3]

after you do all the above, make it your go to pan for the next month or so, try to cook in it every day. it really help the pan season good.

[Deleted]

Thanks so much! I'll get to reseasoning. Will check out Muller's site and read up on her article as well. Yeah DM wasn't using it to cook anything, I don't know why she handled it, perhaps it looked oily and thus dirty to her. I know to hang them up next time instead of leaving them on the burner (convenient since I was using all three almost every day).

[oldmania]

As I have mentioned before, I have a lot of cast iron, some of it around 100 years old. I am not a fan of heating skillets to dry them. Leaving a skillet a little too long on a hot burner will actually remove seasoning. Drying with a dish towel is all that is necessary. A well seasoned skillet can be washed with dish soap and even scrubbed with an sos pad. As okiemomof3 mentioned, the secret to seasoning is to use cast iron every day. I now use skillets every day that my mother used every day, as did her mother before her.

[horseyrider]

Aug 31, 2015 23:05:48 GMT oldmania said:

As I have mentioned before, I have a lot of cast iron, some of it around 100 years old. I am not a fan of heating skillets to dry them. Leaving a skillet a little too long on a hot burner will actually remove seasoning. Drying with a dish towel is all that is necessary. A well seasoned skillet can be washed with dish soap and even scrubbed with an sos pad. As okiemomof3 mentioned, the secret to seasoning is to use cast iron every day. I now use skillets every day that my mother used every day, as did her mother before her.

I'm of the same opinion. Too much temperature change on a pan can warp it, too. Since I use a glass cooktop, I have to be extra choosy about my iron skillets. My favorite little one is a Griswold I found at a thrift shop this spring. My second favorite is a WagnerWare one that had been my mother's.

Although I have a big WagnerWare with a smoke ring that I use a lot, my favorite big one has already been passed to my daughter, due to a slight warp on the bottom. My daughter cooks for her sons with it. My grandmother used it too. How fun to know that the same skillet that feeds her boys also fed their great-great-grandfather.

I wash my pans by hand, using a scrub brush and soap scraps. Rinse and air dry, and I don't worry about rust. These pans have surfaces as smooth as a baby's bottom.  Nothing available new today can come anywhere close to their quality.

[manygoatsnmore]

I put my pans on the burner on low to dry, on the occasions I actually have to wash them. For many foods, I can simply wipe out the pans with a rag, wipe with a bit of oil or bacon grease, and they are good to go.

[spacecase0]

I stick the cast iron on my induction stove for 15 seconds to heat up after drying to get rid of the extra moisture,
heat used to dry the pan is only an issue if you leave the heat on to long

[okiemomof3]

Aug 31, 2015 23:05:48 GMT oldmania said:

 Leaving a skillet a little too long on a hot burner will actually remove seasoning. 

Yes, i have had this happen, due to a daughter of mine, after previously getting in trouble by me for leaving a CI pan of mine in the sink with water in it, to always dry it on the burner on low for 5 minutes....she turned it on high and it wasn't until we wondered what the horrible smell was did we find the smoking pan and yes, it had to be reseasoned. 

For that reason now, i turn my oven onto 275 and put my skillets in there to dry, for about 10 minutes. I am not taking the chance again of my good pans being hurt

[Deleted]

One initial seasoning isn’t enough. Lots of use and subsequent seasonings will produce a pan that will weather about anything, at least with the old cast iron. I’m not sure that the new cast iron will act the same way.

We wash our cast iron skillets with mild dish soap and a scrub pad, rinse them, and stand them up in the dish drainer to drip dry. It’s the same routine that our ancestors used on them before us for the majority of them. We don’t wipe them down with anything after washing, but then we use most of them daily too.

CD in Oklahoma

[Deleted]

Looks like other than the consensus of don't leave it in water and use it lots, different people use different methods to dry/store/care for them. I've been doing the low heat burner method after washing (with a bit of Dr. Bronner's mild castile soap) and felt I got my pans cleaned and building seasoning well that way. Seasoning wasn't flaking off or showing rust until "this incident of 2015" almost a year after I got them. So I think after getting the rust off I should stick with this regiment. Could be the new Lodge brand (pre-seasoned) ones are different than the good old ones like Griswold. I've also never put them on more than medium heat, which gets plenty hot (oil smokes and great sears on meat) so never experienced any warping to date. Thanks for all the different input!

[Bear Foot Farm]

I dry mine by putting it on medium heat and watching it until I see the water droplets boil and steam away, then turn it off and immediately re-oil before it cools.

That way it rarely gets over 250 degrees and it only takes a minute to do

[farmchix]

I don't heat my cast iron to dry, either. After washing, I let it sit on the stove until it is mostly dry. Then, I moisten a paper towel with lard/oil and wipe down the whole inside of the pan thoroughly. I use mostly cast iron for everything and even have some of my grandmother's old pans/skillets.

[NJ Rich]

I didn't read all the posts....

It could be just rust??? Perhaps, and this is just a guess, she used oven cleaner on them. I would do the hot water Brillo or scrubby method. Wear rubber gloves please. When rinsing with hot water a few times all you need do is wipe the pieces with paper towels and immediately put on the seasoning oil or lard.

Re-season them inside and out including the handles.which is the recommended method of seasoning.

I bought an old cast iron skillet and it was a mess. We used the self cleaning oven method which totally stripped all the old crusted seasoning off. Place the cast iron upside down in the oven. Put a piece of aluminum foil on the shelf below to catch
the stripped seasoning. Let the oven totally cool before taking the cast iron out. Use oven mitts just in case the pieces are still hot. Wipe them out and season inside and out. My wife was amazed how the old seasoning just fell off the old skillet like dust.

Go on. www.youtube.com Type in re-seasoning rusted cast iron. There is a ton of good videos showing many methods of restoring cast iron.

Good Luck. Let us know how you make out.

[manygoatsnmore]

@rachelmcmurtrie, how did your pans turn out? Were you able to get them cleaned and re-seasoned?

[woolybear]

Don't you all go screaming at me for what I'm about to say.... I have a griswold hearthstone chicken fryer with glass lid, that I've used for over 30 years. This pan is used for everything, frying, baking, stir frying, whatever. If it is really dirty after being used (like frying chicken) I've been known to let it soak, in the sink, with soap, sometimes for 2 days. I'll scour it up, with more soap, dry it with the dish cloth and set on the stove (that is off) to dry. This pan never gets rust, keeps it's seasoning and is ready to go again.
Wrote all that just to say you can be a bit abusive with CI - it takes a lickin' and keeps on nonstickin' And don't be calling the CI police on me, lol.

[wally]

Oct 3, 2015 17:37:37 GMT woolybear said:

Don't you all go screaming at me for what I'm about to say.... I have a griswold hearthstone chicken fryer with glass lid, that I've used for over 30 years. This pan is used for everything, frying, baking, stir frying, whatever. If it is really dirty after being used (like frying chicken) I've been known to let it soak, in the sink, with soap, sometimes for 2 days. I'll scour it up, with more soap, dry it with the dish cloth and set on the stove (that is off) to dry. This pan never gets rust, keeps it's seasoning and is ready to go again.
Wrote all that just to say you can be a bit abusive with CI - it takes a lickin' and keeps on nonstickin' And don't be calling the CI police on me, lol.

If it works for you ,go girl go

[Deleted]

Oct 2, 2015 20:10:12 GMT manygoatsnmore said:

@rachelmcmurtrie, how did your pans turn out? Were you able to get them cleaned and re-seasoned?

I have been slacking and sticking only to using the dutch oven (which escaped my mother's abuse) since we haven't found steel wool without soap. All the steel wool here has soap, so I have just hung the three (damaged) ones and am waiting to order soap-free steel wool before I do it. I know it's been so long since I asked and I haven't even done the pans like you guys suggested yet (hangs head in shame). I will definitely post when I get them done, I just don't want to use the soap steel wool and destroy them more because of the soap in them.

[Deleted]

Oct 3, 2015 17:37:37 GMT woolybear said:

Don't you all go screaming at me for what I'm about to say....

This made me laugh so hard! 

[Deleted]

Oct 2, 2015 13:43:42 GMT NJ Rich said:

I didn't read all the posts....

It could be just rust??? Perhaps, and this is just a guess, she used oven cleaner on them. I would do the hot water Brillo or scrubby method. Wear rubber gloves please. When rinsing with hot water a few times all you need do is wipe the pieces with paper towels and immediately put on the seasoning oil or lard.

Re-season them inside and out including the handles.which is the recommended method of seasoning.

I bought an old cast iron skillet and it was a mess. We used the self cleaning oven method which totally stripped all the old crusted seasoning off. Place the cast iron upside down in the oven. Put a piece of aluminum foil on the shelf below to catch
the stripped seasoning. Let the oven totally cool before taking the cast iron out. Use oven mitts just in case the pieces are still hot. Wipe them out and season inside and out. My wife was amazed how the old seasoning just fell off the old skillet like dust.

Go on. www.youtube.com Type in re-seasoning rusted cast iron. There is a ton of good videos showing many methods of restoring cast iron.

Good Luck. Let us know how you make out.

Thanks for your tips!
I probably should have done this when I initially posted, but here is what they look like (it's the same pan, one with flash, one without flash, the other two pans and the domed lid all have similar patters/shapes on them). We don't have oven cleaner, nor does our oven have a self cleaning cycle (that I know of at least), so I'm not sure that's what my mom did.



Alternatively if my attempts at attaching images to this post fails, they can both be found at imgur.com/a/a9WCx

[manygoatsnmore]

Oct 5, 2015 0:34:54 GMT @rachelmcmurtrie said:

Oct 2, 2015 20:10:12 GMT manygoatsnmore said:

@rachelmcmurtrie, how did your pans turn out? Were you able to get them cleaned and re-seasoned?

I have been slacking and sticking only to using the dutch oven (which escaped my mother's abuse) since we haven't found steel wool without soap. All the steel wool here has soap, so I have just hung the three (damaged) ones and am waiting to order soap-free steel wool before I do it. I know it's been so long since I asked and I haven't even done the pans like you guys suggested yet (hangs head in shame). I will definitely post when I get them done, I just don't want to use the soap steel wool and destroy them more because of the soap in them.

Go to the paint supply section of your local hardware store (or WM, for that matter).  Buy a package of steel wool there.  Tear off a hunk of the steel wool because you won't need the whole thing, and scrub away.  Get a fine grade, not coarse. 

If you use SOS pads on any of your casserole dishes or anything, this also makes a MUCH cheaper alternative - just add your own dish detergent.

[Deleted]

Oct 5, 2015 3:03:36 GMT manygoatsnmore said:

Oct 5, 2015 0:34:54 GMT @rachelmcmurtrie said:

I have been slacking and sticking only to using the dutch oven (which escaped my mother's abuse) since we haven't found steel wool without soap. All the steel wool here has soap, so I have just hung the three (damaged) ones and am waiting to order soap-free steel wool before I do it. I know it's been so long since I asked and I haven't even done the pans like you guys suggested yet (hangs head in shame). I will definitely post when I get them done, I just don't want to use the soap steel wool and destroy them more because of the soap in them.

Go to the paint supply section of your local hardware store (or WM, for that matter).  Buy a package of steel wool there.  Tear off a hunk of the steel wool because you won't need the whole thing, and scrub away.  Get a fine grade, not coarse. 

If you use SOS pads on any of your casserole dishes or anything, this also makes a MUCH cheaper alternative - just add your own dish detergent.

I did not know I could find that in the paint isle!! Maybe that's why there is only soap steel wool in the cleaning section lol. I will check the next time we're there, thanks!

[manygoatsnmore]

Glad to have been of help. Let us know how your pans turn out.

[Deleted]

Will do

[sss3]

Can Crisco be used.  Instead of lard?

[wally]

I use cisco,or evoo,