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When I have really stubborn stuck items to my cast iron. I boil salt in it.
by shadycuz 4y ago
When I have really stubborn stuck items to my cast iron. I boil salt in it.
- teddyh 4y agoWhat stovetop can reach 1465 °C (2669 °F)?
- chihuahua 4y agoMaybe GP's mention of "boiling salt" does not refer to "table salt" but salt in the more general chemical sense. Perhaps they use Ethylammonium nitrate with a boiling point of 240 C (464 F).
- lostlogin 4y agoBoiling water with salt in it works well, and seems likely to be what OP means. Even boiling water works great. I suspect a degree of sarcasm just wooshed over me.
- teddyh 4y agoIt wasn’t sarcasm, per se, it was just a joke.
- stjohnswarts 4y agohe's obviously talking about boiling salt water.
- mod 4y agoI put in dry salt and use it as an abrasive (while hot). It also soaks up any excess fluids.
- mitchbob 4y agoOur most used cast iron skillet had a tenacious crust of burned-on grease and carbon that had collected over the years, and because the surface of the bottom of the pan was no longer smooth, many foods would stick. Initially I thought the unevenness was the result of corrosion, but no. I took a sturdy stainless steel spatula to it and with quite a bit of elbow grease over a few days managed to scrape off all the crust and get down to the smooth surface underneath. Now anytime anything sticks and the surface isn't perfectly smooth, I use the spatula with a little water and Dawn dishwashing liquid and quickly scrape until it's smooth again (it's easy to feel with the spatula), followed by my normal routine anytime we use the pan: drying the pan with a dishcloth and then by heating it on the stove, wiping the surface with a few drops of olive oil, and leaving the pan on low heat for a few minutes before hanging it back up on the pot rack. Works great!
- orangepurple 4y agoAny food on a cast iron pan is converted to carbon ash by holding the pan at 750F for a few tens of minutes if you have a functional exhaust fan. This is useful for the most extremely stuck stuff like large amounts of meat mixed with blood. No amount of scraping would get that off. However the ash came off effortlessly. The electric range was old and worn out but got the job done easily.
- tonyarkles 4y agoI found a hoard of old unused sad cast iron pans at my wife’s grandma’s place. Putting them in the electric oven and running a self-clean cycle completely stripped them down to bare metal. From there, they were seasoned from scratch and have been in service for a decade now.
- orangepurple 4y agoHow bad was the smoke
- tonyarkles 4y agoOh, terrible. Acrid. I’m lucky I did it during the day and my wife wasn’t home.
- stjohnswarts 4y agojust get a plastic hard plastic scratch (lodge sells them on amazon) never had any burned on thing not come right off.