Cookware Special Seminar: Heirloom Cast Iron

Somehow, we have rural medicine to blame on this one.

Back during my rural medicine rotation in November 0f '07, I cooked for the other five medical students at this remote clinic site in Whoknowswheresville, Pennsylvania. I used cast iron for the first time, and it was badass. In the intervening two years, I would always swing by the pot and pan isle of what ever chain department store I happened to be in. It usually ended up only being a short visit due to a 1) lack of cast iron in stock on the part of the store and 2) a lack of capital on the part of my bank account. I eventually broke down and bought a preseasoned cast iron dutch oven. I will admit, it's care was a little bit more than I expected, but I use it constantly for roasts, soups, polenta, really any application that fits the size of the pot both on the stovetop and in the oven.

Flash forward to these past two weeks. First, I went to visit my parents. They are Italian, so I always leave their house with more stuff than I showed up with. During the visit in question, I left with one 4 quart cast iron chicken fryer and two long, shallow edge baker/broilers. They weren't in the best condition. My girlfriend catches wind of this, and offers me her late grandmother's cast iron 4 quart fryer and two skillets. Feast or famine, folks. I went to having no cast iron pans to having SEVEN in the course of 2 weeks. Most of them severely needed attention (Fig. C.1)

Figure C.1 - Cast Iron after lots of soap, and 20 some-odd years in a basement.

Before I would be making some badass corn bread or paella or something, I had some work to do. I did a lot of research, and some trial and error. Here is what I came up with:

Tony's Foolproof Method for Restoring Heirloom Cast Iron Cookware

This whole process takes up about half a day, so have other stuff around the house planned, as your oven will be on mostly the whole time and therefore poses a fire hazard.

1. 
   
   Examine your new old cast iron. If there is too much black stuff caked on, or if there are spots of rust, proceed to Step 2. If you're just skeeved out by using someone else's pans, proceed to the next step. If your new old pan has a non-crusty black layer on it, and you don't care what other people have been eating, proceed to Step 7.


2. 
   
   Place your pots and pans upside down in your oven and set it to automatic clean mode. This will get pretty much everything but the rust off of your pans. It will also take like 3 hours, so get a book or a video game or something. Depending how much crap is on your pan, there will be a lot of smoke. Open some windows and fire up some fans.


3. 
   
   Using a stainless steel scouring pad, scrub the crap out of the pan. Once the rust is off, you should see bare gray iron staring back at you. This is good. Dry them off with a rag you don't care about ruining, but is clean enough for you to use on a pan you'll eventually be eating with.


4. 
   
   Put the naked pans right-side-up into the oven at 325 Farenheit for 10 minutes and make sure they're dry. Any water left on the pans will cause more rust, and you'll be back to step 3.


5. 
   
   Once dry, rub a medium layer of solid cooking fat onto the hot pan. I use Crisco, because I'm poor. I have read of other people using rendered (read: left over after cooking) bacon fat, lard or any number of other solid-at-room-temperature fats. Put your greasy pan back into the oven, up side down again and let this first layer of "seasoning" bake on for one hour. "Seasoning" in this sense does not mean tasty things like black pepper or sage or Zesty Italian. It is just a layer of fat that keeps your pan from rusting and food from sticking to your pan while cooking with it.


6. 
   
   After one hour in the oven, take the pan out and repeat steps four and five once or twice more to get a good base of seasoning on the pans. After 2-3 coats of seasoning, it's okay to transition to vegetable oils for any baked-on seasonings you use. Avoid olive oil, as it has a relatively low smoke point, unless you enjoyed airing out your house in Step 1. After at least two coats, your pan should have a fine black finish to it (Figure C.2).


7. 
   
   After each use, scrub the pan with a stiff-bristled brush. I use a bamboo brush I bought in some kitchen store in Vermont that I can't find the website too. Plastic bristles are fine too. The important thing is to NEVER USE SOAP, unless you want your pans to look like Figure C.1. After scrubbing, dry thoroughly with a dish towel (mapine!). Rub the inside of the pan with a thin coat of vegetable oil while it's still hot from the water. It's safe to use olive oil here, as the smoke point doesn't matter. You're not going to heat the pan again until next time you cook with it. If there is a lid, put a piece of paper towel between the lid and the pan when you store it, and keep the lid a little off kilter from the pan. The seasoning needs air to be able to drift by.

Figure C.2 - Cast iron after Tony's Fool Proof Method for Restoring Cast Iron Cookware
Class dismissed.