5 ms·

Agree on hot oil. Not only non-stick, it also keeps meats moist and vegetables fresh (actually fried, not fry-boiled). A few things I do: Use wire mesh to cl

• ars 12y ago
  > Heat the pan after cleaning, evaporating all water. Don't do that. It causes rust. Metal rusts MUCH faster when hot than when cold. If you have wet metal that you are worried will rust get it as cold as possible, and let it dry. Best place is in the fridge - it's cold, plus low humidity helps. A fridge is not necessary for cast iron, but don't heat it when wet.
  • learc83 12y ago
    How is heating it up for 2 minutes to dry it off going to cause rust compared to the 20 minutes you spent cooking with liquid in the pan?
    • ars 12y ago
      Much more oxygen as it dries. You are not supposed to boil water with cast iron, you need oil when cooking which protects it from air. The point is don't warm it to dry thinking it will rust less since it's wet for less time. Just let it dry in regular air.
      • learc83 12y ago
        I suppose that might be true, but have you actually done the math here? If it dries say 50 times faster, does iron rust more than 50 times faster at 400F than at 70? I have no way of knowing either way, but I've got a cast iron pan that belonged to my great grandmother and I remember my grandmother heating it to dry it off. My mom did the same with it, and now I've done the same--no rust.
        • ars 12y ago
          I didn't do math. I did an experiment. I took two identical pieces of metal. Dried one in a warm stove the other on a table. The one on a table had no visible rust. The one in a stove was completely orange.
          • learc83 12y ago
            I don't doubt that warm metal rusts faster, just how much faster. There's a pretty big difference between drying something in a warm stove vs applying a direct flame to it on the stove top. It takes just a few minutes to get the skillet hot enough where the water pretty much instantly evaporates. I'd imagine putting it in a warm stove took much longer to completely dry it.
            • ars 12y ago
              Direct flame would be even worse. It will rust much faster than it will evaporate. Reaction speed doubles for every 10 degrees F, but evaporation doesn't.
              • lkbm 12y ago
                If my cast iron can rust from two minutes on the stove, I need to stop cooking wet foods in it. It has yet to be a problem, though.
                • ars 12y ago
                  Of course. But that isn't what I said. What I said was that if you are heating the iron in order to speed up evaporation to avoid rust, you are being counter productive. You will avoid more rust (if any would be formed in the fist place), by just letting it air dry.
                  • lkbm 12y ago
                    I don't know what you said, then. People are saying we put our cast iron on the burner for a couple minutes to dry it off and you're saying the direct flame will cause it to rust.
  • webnrrd2k 12y ago
    Maybe iron will rust faster when hot, but I don't think heating it to dry it is an issue -- I do that fairly often, and haven't had a problem. Here's a counter example: There are many tons of metal in hot desert climates that have a small amount of rust on them, but nothing like the kind of rust from a cold wet climate. There may be complications from cooking, but, and this is without giving it much thought, I'd say that water is a much larger factor than heat.
    • ars 12y ago
      > in hot desert climates You still need water.
• chockablock 12y ago
  Yes on these 3, especially the 'no soap' rule. For stuck-on food, I've had best luck with a coarse copper mesh pad (e.g. Chore Boy), which I use lightly, and only to remove the gunk. In the past, I'd also used coarse salt as an abrasive, but I like the copper wool better. I also heat the pan to dry it off. As to the comment about this promoting rust: if you have a well-seasoned pan, you don't have any wet metal; you have a wet seasoned pan. You could just as easily dry it with a dish towel, but this tends to get your dish towel dirty.