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Hello cast iron people. I have a pan that gets heavy use, but not heavy cleaning. It has built up a lot of extremely flaky... material. And it's very hard to get off. I suspect I need a way to basically strip the pan to bare metal. How do I do this? The catch is, I live in an apartment and don't have access to an outdoor area where I can get real rowdy with chemicals. If that's the only way, I guess I could figure something out.
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Mar 18, 2021 15:15
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| # ? May 6, 2024 10:48 |
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JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:Hello cast iron people. I have a pan that gets heavy use, but not heavy cleaning. It has built up a lot of extremely flaky... material. And it's very hard to get off. Do you have an oven with a "clean mode"?
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Mar 18, 2021 15:21
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No, just a broiler and it goes up to ~500F. Very basic gas oven.
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Mar 18, 2021 15:31
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I know when I’m cleaning off rust, a steel or brass wire cupbrush on a drill works great. I’m pretty sure I remember it taking off cast iron seasoning pretty well too.
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Mar 18, 2021 15:57
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Bloodfart McCoy posted:I know when I’m cleaning off rust, a steel or brass wire cupbrush on a drill works great. I’m pretty sure I remember it taking off cast iron seasoning pretty well too.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:05
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Unless your front door inside an interior hallway, oven cleaner spray inside a trash bag works wonderfully, and ventilation will be fine. Some had issues finding it early in COVID, not sure what the current status is in stores but it's available online.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:11
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Got fed up of branding myself with the end of the skillet when making breads in the oven, and covered the end of it with Sugru. Seems to hold up absolutely fine at 240c.
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Jul 3, 2021 19:32
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Kept it in the oven for a good 3 hours today making pizzas for people, and it held up fine. It doesn't make it not-hot, but it's enough that it's not gonna brand you as instantly as the bare iron does, if you touch your arm to it.
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Jul 4, 2021 20:26
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We got two of those lodge branded silicone handle covers, in red and purple, has been a pretty great quality of life improvement, plus makes telling them apart a snap
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Jul 4, 2021 22:48
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Yeah I looked at those, but making bread we take them in and out of the oven constantly, and I didn't want any risk of it rotating in my hand and dropping it. How secure are they?
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Jul 4, 2021 22:59
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I mostly deal with liquids which are evenly distributed... Wanders over to oven at 2am during Netflix... P123 skillet, could not rotate it 90 degrees sitting on a flat surface Standard 12" lodge skillet, rotates 90 degrees under pressure I've had them on for nearly 5 years, never questioned the rotational qualities. I suspect pizza would be safe. The width of the handle appears to have the largest impact. That said, I'm pretty impressed with your solution, I had no idea that stuff was heat resistant, and it sure looks a hell of a lot better than my stuff
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Jul 5, 2021 09:36
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I finally managed to find a griswold waffle iron for a decent deal. I Stopped at a heritage fair/car show put on at my county's historical museum. Their white elephant sale was tiny compared to previous years but....  I saw this guy in the silent auction section with a minimum bid of $75 and no bidders. I have been looking for several years for a decent CI waffle iron for my collection and while $75 was a bit steep I have never seen one in decent condition for less than $150 and they are in the $300 range on ebay so I jumped on it. No cracks or chips, hinges were perfect, no rust just caked in dust. When I checked out I asked the lady what the tags were from. She said they were clearing out space in their collection and this was a donated piece that had been in storage because they already had one on display in the museum. She said that according to the collection number on the tag it had been donated back in 1965 and been sitting in storage since then which explains the dust.  Took it home, washed all the dust off and there was still a decent layer of seasoning underneath.  Hit it with a fresh coat of oil and made a batch of Waffles to test it out and figure out how much batter it takes/cook times etc.. Worked my way up from 1/4, 1/3 and found slightly over 1/2 cup of batter is perfect. I used the sideburner on my Weber Silver C grill since it's summer and with the burner on high and the iron preheated 1 minute per side worked perfectly.  
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Jul 12, 2021 05:44
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That is an excellent New Adventure in Old Cast Iron. Nice find!
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Jul 12, 2021 05:49
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https://twitter.com/jigsaw_quotes/status/1414345059672027136
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Jul 12, 2021 07:50
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That waffle iron is so cool. Seasoning holding up fine for 55 years: you love to see it.
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Jul 12, 2021 08:45
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That thing is very cool! I've been thinking about getting a waffle iron for a while, but it wouldn't be anything as neat as that. Is the big bit underneath just to catch and diffuse the heat?
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Jul 12, 2021 17:43
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Nettle Soup posted:That thing is very cool! I've been thinking about getting a waffle iron for a while, but it wouldn't be anything as neat as that. Is the big bit underneath just to catch and diffuse the heat? The collar/base/ring etc.. is there to hold the waffle iron above the source of heat and to keep the ball joint connecting the 2 halves together when you flip it over. Very early waffle irons (and all cast iron pots/pans etc) were designed to cook on a woodburning stove. You would take a circular metal plate off the top of the stove and set your waffle iron over the hole so it would be exposed to heat from your fire but still block most of the smoke and soot from the fire. Since there was a hole the early collars are very short because the waffle iron can swing down below the stovetop when you rotate it. Once gas and electric ranges became commonplace they made the taller collars to lift the iron up higher so you still had room to rotate it without lifting it up. Here is a video showing how it would work on a wood stove. https://youtu.be/pUVXFYu7MhI This is also why old cast-iron pans have what's called a heat ring or a smoke ring around the bottom. It would seal the bottom of the pan to the top of the wood stove and keep more of the smoke going up the chimney rather than into your kitchen.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:20
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my turn in the barrel posted:I finally managed to find a griswold waffle iron for a decent deal. That is an extremely sexy waffle iron you've got there. Nice find
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Jul 12, 2021 19:50
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my turn in the barrel posted:The collar/base/ring etc.. is there to hold the waffle iron above the source of heat and to keep the ball joint connecting the 2 halves together when you flip it over. drat. This is cool as heck. My mom still has her cookstove. A red enamel queen Atlantic. Have many fond memories of cold winter mornings curling up in front of it and her baking or making pancakes on it, obviously not while I laid there. Can't find a single pic of a red one online weirdly. My dad bought it brand-new for my mom back in the mid 1970s when they lived in West Virginia doing the "back to the earth" hippie thing and lived without electricity or running water for a while. Scraped some pics from my sister's Instagram.    The queen atlantic is super nice from what I've been told. You can take the burner covers off while it's going and the draft from the chimney still pulls the smoke right through to the chimney pretty handily. Obviously if you took them all off it prob wouldn't work well.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:12
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my turn in the barrel posted:The collar/base/ring etc.. is there to hold the waffle iron above the source of heat and to keep the ball joint connecting the 2 halves together when you flip it over. This is super interesting, thanks!
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Jul 12, 2021 23:56
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The Sugru has started to go brittle and crack off. Experiment failed! I got a new toy yesterday, though! £5 off the junk market. It says "Victor" on the bottom and the font/design there looks pretty modern, and cast is more like a lodge-texture, than an older smooth cast, so I don't think it's that old. The wood is chipped under the handle near the pan, but it's very firmly held in place still.   Breakfast was Welsh Cakes! It's kinda thin so even on the lowest heat, the big ring was a bit much. Need to work out what it likes, but I'm gonna try one of the back-rings next time and hope they come out a little less dark.  It's so easy to flip them with the spatula when you're not fighting the edges of the pan! Edit: Back ring works much better, pancakes for dinner! 
Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 14:37
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After getting my pan really hot to make tortillas, my seasoning started to really flake, so I think it's time to strip and reseason. When I first got going with cast iron it was about flax oil, but I understand that there might be better oils out there now to put down a base layer. Should I just do basic veg? Any thoughts on the best one to use?
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Sep 12, 2021 19:03
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I'm still a dyed in the wool flax person, and will "no true Scotsman" anyone who reports flaking ever  You do you, boo. On one variable, here's a hierarchy for non-flax oils, in order from best to worst but still acceptable: safflower, soybean, sunflower, canola. I'd draw the line before vegetable / corn / grape seed / peanut oil. Source, sort descending. There may certainly be other factors which come into play, but this is the best place to start imo.
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Sep 12, 2021 19:19
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BrianBoitano posted:I'm still a dyed in the wool flax person, and will "no true Scotsman" anyone who reports flaking ever What's the reason then that you think people are getting flaking? Too much applied in one go so the layers aren't run enough?
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Sep 12, 2021 20:23
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All it takes is one layer of not well bonded / polymerized / dried layer sometime in the history of the pan. Then it gets covered in more layers which harden normally. That weak layer can fail, which makes layers above it slough off, due to temperature or trapped moisture or some degradation of impurities. If every layer is just as strong as the previous one, this is not a problem. Strength comes from the layer being thin as you say, fully dried / heated, and the right kind of oil.
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Sep 12, 2021 22:41
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Carillon posted:After getting my pan really hot to make tortillas, my seasoning started to really flake, so I think it's time to strip and reseason. When I first got going with cast iron it was about flax oil, but I understand that there might be better oils out there now to put down a base layer. Should I just do basic veg? Any thoughts on the best one to use? I use The Field Company method with grapeseed oil. My experience with flax seed oil is the same as theirs, but clearly some people seem to have it work fine for them. The Field Company posted:On the flipside, beware of drying oils that are very high in unsaturated fatty acids, such as flaxseed oil. While flaxseed oil is a popular choice on the internet, we’ve found the seasoning it produces can be brittle and prone to flaking. Grapeseed strikes a good balance, is easy to find in most supermarkets, and it’s also a great everyday cooking fat.
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Sep 22, 2021 00:55
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The correct way to season a pan is 1) buy new 2) scrub it good, but don't work up a sweat doing it 3) wait until sunday morning 4) make the whole family breakfast tacos using jimmy dean hot sausage 5) use pan for 100 years 6) deed pan to favorite grandchild
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Sep 22, 2021 04:47
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Hadlock posted:The correct way to season a pan is In between each of the above steps: Always be cooking bacon.
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Oct 2, 2021 00:33
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Not exactly cast iron, but Darto has free shipping AND customs until December 22nd. https://www.dartointernational.com/
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Dec 9, 2021 06:30
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Ummmm.... I belong to a Seinfeld memes group on Facebook (Seinfeld SoupPosting), and right now the memes are all about cast iron: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/castironposting
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Jan 7, 2022 05:39
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How good an idea is it for me to buy a new cast iron pan then sand the inside smooth? Any reason not to go as smooth as I can get it prior to seasoning? My current nicely-seasoned pan is really quite rough.
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Jan 20, 2022 19:17
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Sir Sidney Poitier posted:How good an idea is it for me to buy a new cast iron pan then sand the inside smooth? Any reason not to go as smooth as I can get it prior to seasoning? My current nicely-seasoned pan is really quite rough. I’ve done it three times. No reason not to beyond your own comfort / skill / tools. E: 3 different pans 
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Jan 21, 2022 01:24
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What's the deal with enameled cast iron? I have real cast iron and I love it, then I got a Le creuset for Xmas, and I can't imagine why I'd ever want a dutch oven that's fragile and can't go past 500 degrees. It seems like a solid loss of function compared to lodge in exchange for the extra zero. I'm returning that poo poo. It it just a scam on suburban moms? A tax on people who just have to let it soak in the sink?
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Jan 27, 2022 20:54
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poverty goat posted:What's the deal with enameled cast iron? I have real cast iron and I love it, then I got a Le creuset for Xmas, and I can't imagine why I'd ever want a dutch oven that's fragile and can't go past 500 degrees. It seems like a solid loss of function compared to lodge in exchange for the extra zero. I'm returning that poo poo. It it just a scam on suburban moms? A tax on people who just have to let it soak in the sink?
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Jan 27, 2022 22:10
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That's it exactly. You get the heat retention of iron without having the worry about the seasoning or anything. Let a tomato sauce simmer in it all day, go nuts.
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Jan 27, 2022 23:08
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Yep, it's said not to do a tomato sauce in cast iron because the acidity is a problem, so enameled is the solution.
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Jan 28, 2022 00:37
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There are cheaper options for enameled cast iron as well (mine's a Tramontina I got for $40; I've had it for over a decade), but if somebody was willing to shell out Le Creuset money for a Christmas gift for me, I wouldn't turn it down.
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Jan 28, 2022 17:51
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Meaty Ore posted:There are cheaper options for enameled cast iron as well (mine's a Tramontina I got for $40; I've had it for over a decade), but if somebody was willing to shell out Le Creuset money for a Christmas gift for me, I wouldn't turn it down. It's also only 3.5qt, so I'm sure I'll never use it. I can find a better use for the money at williams sonoma
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Jan 29, 2022 16:45
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I just recently got my first enameled dutch oven and it's greatly improved my chili/tomato sauce/braising game I hadn't realized how much even my stainless steel seemed to be affecting flavor and the ceramic also seems to distribute heat in a nice even way throughout my aromatics, making for better browning It's been a real roller coaster I can tell you
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Jan 29, 2022 17:37
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Brawnfire posted:I just recently got my first enameled dutch oven and it's greatly improved my chili/tomato sauce/braising game Enameled cast iron is the poo poo for pot roasts, ossobuco, stuff like that. I should try red sauce in it, I always make mine in my hugest saucepan.
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Jan 31, 2022 06:32
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