I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I’m just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
I used to pour it into a glass jar. But these days I’m just using a paper towel or 3 after it dries and chuckin it in the bin.
I respect that you were brave enough to admit on the internet to using a little soap now and again with your cast iron. It took me about a year after I rehabbed mom’s pans to work up the courage to gently swipe a little soap on them now and again. They still get dried in the oven and moisturized with avocado oil. Mah bebes.
I do not baby cast iron at all. I use plenty of dish soap and scrub it. But then again, I’ve also to completely refinished cast iron before. You learn to appreciate how durable seasoning can be when you actually try and remove it. My main skillet I’ve in the past taken it down to bare metal with an angle grinder, then built the seasoning back up from nothing.
I did the same with these pans too. Though I didn’t need an angle grinder. A day or two in a trash bag marinating in oven cleaner, then some steel wool and elbow grease. That’s why I call them my babies, they are antique pans that sadly had gotten rusty and I gave them new life. They were my mom’s, and before her, her great-grandma’s pans (and maybe someone else’s before then but we, the family, have lost track).
My first exposure to cast iron was through boy scouts with cast iron griddles and Dutch ovens cooking on an open fire.
They got left out in the rain, blasted with heat hot enough to melt lesser metals*, had all manner of acidic foods cooked in them, got scrubbed clean with steel wool and dish soap, spent most of their lives when they weren’t in use in a garage with no climate control where the humidity often got pretty gross, and generally got used, abused, and neglected. Never had any issues with the seasoning, rust, etc. I think one time after a camping trip by the beach where they sat out getting lightly twisted with salt spray all weekend, they picked up a bit of rust, so someone’s dad got them sandblasted at his job, and after a trip or to through the oven for reseasoning they went right back in service, and that was the only special treatment they ever got.
So it was really weird to me when I got older and got some pans of my own to see people talking about babying their cast iron like they do. I’m a little more careful with my pans than I was with the ones we had in scouts, but not by much. And when I take them camping I’m not above throwing them into the fire to burn off any really stubborn, burnt-on crud.
And at the end of the day, there’s not much that you can realistically do to a cast iron pan that you can’t fix with some sandpaper and elbow grease and a quick reseasoning.
*At one point, we somehow ended up with an aluminum griddle in one of our cook kits. It was a pretty much indistinguishable from our iron ones except that it weighed less, it was a pretty solid griddle. On one camping trip it was left on the fire after breakfast, and I don’t know exactly how it came to pass because it was another patrol, but they somehow got the fire up hot enough to melt it. I still have a blob of aluminum somewhere that we fished out of the ashes.
I’ve tried olive oil. Idk what it is, maybe user error, but those cures seem to be very delicate. Like the olives are all primadonna about touching such a base metal like iron.
I don’t use lard with cooking. My beef these days is limited to pho and a bi-yearly burger, but my rationale was, what did grandma use? Why was she soaping hers up in the sink with impunity?
Lard. And layers.
I respect the baby it approach too, and vegans, if that is your way.
Whatever works, it’s in.
Pretty much the same rationale. WWGD. But I used shortening for my base coats only because that’s what I had on hand. Then I basically only cooked bacon, sausage, ham, and pork chops in them to build up the seasoning.