Keep in mind that the enamel will dull with age and some staining is normal, but neither occurrence will impair the performance of your cookware. If the interior of your enameled cast-iron cookware is lightly stained or the outside of the pot is covered in grease stains, you can remove them by making a slurry of a couple of tablespoons of Bar Keepers Friend or baking soda and warm water.
Use a non-abrasive sponge such as a Dobie sponge to gently scrub away the stains. Bar Keepers Friend can also remove metal scuffs from the enamel though you should use cooking utensils made only from wood, silicone, or other soft materials to avoid scratching the enamel in the first place.
For dark, stubborn stains, fill the pot or pan with one part bleach to three parts water and let the solution sit for several hours, or up to 24 hours depending on the severity of the discoloration. Rinse and thoroughly wash the pot with a non-abrasive sponge, dish soap, and hot water—no scrubbing required. In writing this guide, we tested many cleaning methods and products that were specifically marketed to extend the life of cast iron or make cleaning easier.
But we found that most of them were not worth your money. I found it much more effective to use regular dish soap and then oil the pan after. On the OXO, the handle was too short and the bristles were spaced too far apart. Both the Full Circle brush and the Lodge brush had longer handles that provided more leverage and were easier to hold. If you apply too much pressure, you can actually scratch off your seasoning as I did, woe is me!
For that reason, I found the chainmail scrubbers more useful for removing the crackly carbon buildup that can develop on the bottom of pans after years of use than for everyday cleaning. Online cast-iron forums and blog posts are full of varying advice about the best oil to use for seasoning. Seasoning sprays are oils in an aerosol can. You should also avoid using nonstick cooking sprays, such as Pam, which have additives that are not suitable for seasoning. Eric Decker, professor and department head of the Department of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst , email interview, July 29, Michael Sullivan has been a staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter since He has worked in various facets of the food and restaurant industry for over a decade.
What you need How long will it take to clean? How to clean a cast-iron skillet after everyday cooking How to remove rust from cast iron How to re-season cast iron How to completely strip a cast iron pan and when to do it Cleaning a dutch oven and other enameled cast iron Our thoughts on products marketed specifically for cast iron Sources.
What you need. For everyday cleaning and seasoning. Kosher salt: For stuck-on bits. A neutral oil: Think canola or vegetable oil. Paper towels or a clean rag : For rubbing the oil. For deep-cleaning tasks like removing burnt-on crud or rust. Rubber gloves: To protect your hands from cleansers and rust. Stainless steel scrubber: Scotch-Brite scrubbers , for example. Cleanser: We like Bar Keepers Friend. Items for removing severe rust: Distilled white vinegar and a container big enough to submerge the pan.
We've consulted with our team of licensed nutritionists and dietitians to bring you informed recommendations for food products, health aids and nutritional goods to safely and successfully guide you toward making better diet and nutrition choices.
We strive to only recommend products that adhere to our philosophy of eating better while still enjoying what you eat. There's a reason actually, a few why cast-iron skillets are heirloom cookware: they're reliable, indestructible, multi-purpose, affordable, and extremely easy to use.
Best of all, the more you cook with cast-iron cookware, the better it prepares all your favorite cast-iron skillet recipes. That is, of course, as long as you care for it properly. Properly caring for and cleaning cast-iron starts with understanding what sets this cookware apart from the stainless steel or non-stick pans in your kitchen cabinets.
The secret lies in an age-old process: seasoning. No, we're not talking about seasoning like salt and pepper. In this sense of the term, seasoning refers to the process by which you add a fat—like oil—to your cast iron to create a protective varnish that keeps your pan non-stick. It's this seasoning that has been at the root of a hotly debated topic in the culinary world: how do you clean a cast-iron skillet so that you maintain this seasoning but also make sure the pan is clean?
And is it ok to use soap on your cast-iron cookware? One school of thought is that you should absolutely never use soap on cast-iron.
The assumption is that it could remove this non-stick seasoning and get rid of all those built-up flavors that get caked into the pan from years of use. We set out to settle this debate once and for all. That's why we wanted to see what a professional chef, the food experts at America's Test Kitchen, and the makers of the famous cast-iron skillet—Lodge Cast Iron—had to say about how to clean cast iron. Before Teflon non-stick pans, there was cast-iron. Seasoning makes the pan easy to clean, prevents rust, and keeps food from sticking.
Preheat the oven to degrees Fahrenheit. Wipe down the pan with vegetable oil, then pop it into the hot oven for one full hour.
Using a potholder, remove the pan, let it cool slightly, then rub a bit more oil into the warm pan. Wait a couple of minutes, then wipe down the pan with a dry paper towel. Using a potholder, remove the pan from the oven and allow it to cool slightly, just five minutes or so. Fold a paper towel into a small square and use it to wipe the oil into the surface of the cast-iron pan. To prevent burning your fingers, hold the folded paper wad with a pair of tongs.
Wait another couple of minutes, then use a second paper towel to remove any remaining oil from the pan. The last, but no less important, rule is to always thoroughly dry cast-iron cookware before you store it away. In a properly seasoned cast iron pan, one that has been rubbed with oil and heated repeatedly, the oil has already broken down into a plastic-like substance that has bonded to the surface of the metal.
This is what gives well-seasoned cast iron its non-stick properties, and as the material is no longer actually an oil, the surfactants in dish soap should not affect it. Go ahead and soap it up and scrub it out.
The one thing you shouldn't do? Let it soak in the sink. Try to minimize the time it takes from when you start cleaning to when you dry and re-season your pan. If that means letting it sit on the stovetop until dinner is done, so be it.
The Theory: The seasoning in cast iron pans is delicate and can easily flake out or chip if you use metal. Stick to wood or nylon utensils. The Reality: The seasoning in cast iron is actually remarkably resilient. It's not just stuck to the surface like tape, it's actually chemically bonded to the metal.
Scrape away with a metal spatula and unless you're actually gouging out the surface of the metal, you should be able to continue cooking in it with no issue. So you occasionally see flakes of black stuff chip out of the pan as you cook in it? It's possible that's seasoning, but unlikely.
In order to get my cast iron pan's seasoning to flake off, I had to store it in the oven for a month's-worth of heating and drying cycles without re-seasoning it before I started to see some scaling. More likely, those flakes of black stuff are probably carbonized bits of food that were stuck to the surface of the pan because you refused to scrub them out with soap last time you cooked. The Theory: Metal is metal, cast iron is cast iron, the new stuff is no different than the old Wagner and Griswold pans from early 20th century that people fetishize.
The Reality: The material may be the same, but the production methods have changed. In the old days, cast iron pans were produced by casting in sand-based molds, then polishing the resulting pebbly surfaces until smooth.
Vintage cast iron tends to have a satiny smooth finish. By the s, as production scaled up and was streamlined, this final polishing step was dropped from the process.
The result? Modern cast iron retains that bumpy, pebbly surface. The difference is more minor than you may think. So long as you've seasoned your pan properly, both vintage and modern cast iron should take on a nice non-stick surface, but your modern cast iron will never be quite as non-stick as the vintage stuff. The Theory: Acidic food can react with the metal, causing it to leech into your food, giving you an off-flavor and potentially killing you slowly.
The Reality: In a well-seasoned cast iron pan, the food in the pan should only be coming in contact with the layer of polymerized oil in the pan, not the metal itself. So in a perfect world, this should not be a problem.
0コメント