The Best Way to Take Care of Cast Iron Is to Use It
I hate talking about cast iron. It’s just a frying pan (or the material used to make frying pans, braziers, etc.), but it’s a frying pan that brings all the cretins in the yard, and they’re like “my way of seasoning is better than yours.” They love to talk about thermal conduction and polymerization, two topics I’ve tried my best not to think about since I quit my job at Honeywell and convinced people to pay me to write about food.
Thermal conductivity and polymerization are important topics – and I’ll begrudgingly touch on the second one shortly – but all this nerd talk is shifting the focus away from the most important cast iron tip: the best way to take care of your precious cast. frying pan iron to use it . Cook food in it, especially greasy. After you have eaten this food, clean the pan and cook something else. Keep doing this over and over and you will notice that your pan gets better and less sticky with each use.
This, unfortunately, comes down to polymerization. When you heat oil and fat to high temperatures, they break down and form long chains of molecules that attach to the surface of your pan. This creates the non-stick coating that nerds talk about all the time, as well as what allows you to wash your cast iron skillet with soap .
Washing cast iron with soap and water has been an acceptable practice for almost a decade, but there are still some nerds who find it odd. However, there is no reason to be weird about this particular pan. If you don’t believe me, trust Kat Kinsman, a very smart woman with a master’s degree in blacksmithing who happens to be a senior editor at Food & Wine. Two years ago, Kat wrote ” Don’t Be Surprised by Cast Iron ” in which she describes the restoration of a really crusty, rusty pan she found in an old chicken coop, essentially proving that – aside from the cracks – you really can’t ruin these pans beyond repair, and that’s what makes them so valuable. Cast iron does not need your worries, fuss, anxiety. It just needs to be cooked in .
To confirm that you don’t have to be weird when washing cast iron, Kat called Mike Otterman, CEO of Lodge , to inquire about his cast iron maintenance routine, and it’s not weird or nerdy in particular:
After dinner, I’ll scrape it off in hot water. I use soap and rub it on the inside, especially if I’m making salmon or something like that. Then again I put it on the stove on a low fire, I bring the rest of the kitchen in order. When it gets to a pleasant temperature, I spray it with oil, turn off the burner, dry it with a paper towel, leave it on the burner until it cools down, and then I obviously never put it away. When I finish cooking with him, he looks better than at the beginning.
But cleaning is only part of the iron care equation. Again, the best thing you can do for your cast iron skillet is use it over and over again. If your pan is brand new, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for first use, then start cooking and never stop. (Lodge pans are pre-seasoned and ready to go right out of the box.)
Start with something greasy that is unlikely to cause sticking problems. I usually cook bacon. Then fry vegetables or chicken. Wipe it off and rinse if necessary, then dry and re-oil. Bake a skillet of cornbread with butter. Repeat. Try to clear it quickly, but don’t worry if you don’t. No matter how dirty the pan gets, you can clean it again. Even if your roommate or spouse leaves it soaked in the sink, you can bring it back to its radiant beauty. (If you ever doubted that, just look at what Kat started her chicken pan with .) The more you cook, the more non-stick your cast iron becomes. Eventually, you’ll be able to fry an egg in there, a task that botanists see as the holy grail of a “correctly” seasoned cast iron skillet.