I use kosher salt and heat to clean the pan, chain mail on it when something burns on. I wash the whole pan with warm water and soap every month or so. I throw it in the oven with a light coat of oil every now and then.
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That 1/2 in of crusty carbon is the family crusty carbon and you can scrape it from my cold dead Griswold logo.
No seriously my mother won’t let me strip the pans to bare metal to get rid of it. And honestly I don’t want to take my great grandmother’s season entirely off the pans either (my brother put them in the dishwasher when he was 12, so its not entirely Mémé).
But the carbon builds up on the exterior because people tend to not bother cleaning the exterior. Whether they use soap or not. Its largely harmless, and its a habit I fall into with a lot of my pans. But you got a point, wash the outside of your pans people.
Holy Crap!
i no rite
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You gotta admit that Griswold had cool trademark:
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I think a Batchelor special was the first pan I bought at the flea market.
Bacon and two eggs?
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Yeah, vendors come from all over. You’re going to see that, and confederate crap, and racist Jim Crow era memorabilia. I pretty much ignore it, but your comment gets me thinking, maybe Brimfield could prohibit that.
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I’m at a rural auction. Couple interesting bits of cast iron. That extra large skillet would be a nice all purpose grill. Do you suppose that one with the round holes is for eggs or something?
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The really big one looks like it would be good for making paella. The one with all the holes could be meant for biscuits.
We’ve got a lot of cool cast iron stuff pushing out the bottoms of our kitchen drawers. My favourite is a big ass iron wok I got at the Tap Phong Trading Company - you can cook ANYTHING in there.
If you’re not using one of these as your first cleaning step, you’re working too hard.
Pro Tip: Works on stainless too.
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Aebleskiver pan (have one, not that nice.)
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Yep. Just casually strolling by someone selling framed Nazi flags? And this gets a) left in the video, and b) posted to Boingboing? Seriously? I get that you’re probably more likely than average to find reactionary right-wing nuts at places like this, but… Just no.
@jlw did you miss this?
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That shit turns up at every flea market, antique mall, swap meat or whatever that’s ever been held. Had a guy at a fucking church rummage sale out here selling the Confederate stuff.
There are legit reasons to collect and catalog that stuff, but that doesn’t mean you need 5 tables of creepy garbage at every buying old junk venue.
And from what I understand the vast bulk of such things on offer in those catagories are fakes. So I think it would make a lot of sense for events and regular venues to bar it.
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I did miss it. It is pretty common to see crap like that at flea markets and swaps, sadly.
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I use a new Lodge. It’s very heavy, especially with a lid, but that’s a good thing. a) that’s good for your grip and hand strength and b) the mass absorbs heat. Given that cast iron is not very conductive of heat, if you have a big mass of it, and it’s hot, it’s going to stay hot, and that’s better than having a light-weight pan.
It does have the pebbly finish in the bottom. I haven’t tried an old cast iron with a smooth finish, but I know that textured finishes provide a place for oil to hold on to. Also it seems like the pebbling is getting less as I scrub it occasionally with a steel scrubber. And if you really wanted a smooth finish you could probably get it smooth quickly with some sandpaper. Iron is soft.
I haven’t tried an old pan but I think the new Lodge is GREAT. I also know that we have better analysis of iron composition these days and can avoid having out of spec iron.
And by the way, using one thing is better than collecting and not using many things. The pan which is used is more beautiful than the collection which is collected.
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I also use mine for a takoyaki pan. Not as easy as it looks.
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Could you take a newer pan and get it machined smooth by some local shop, I wonder?
I’m sure you could, or you could just get some sand paper and do it yourself in 10 minutes. Cast iron is soft. If you have a drill you could use a sanding disk attachment for that and do it even faster and perhaps get a more even finish. But do you really want to? I find the pebbly texture is getting less pebbly, and I’m sure it helps hold oil onto the surface and keep the oil distributed. I do occasionally use a stainless steel scouring thing on it which does slowly smooth it out.
