Take my housemate...please!

[JoitheArtist]

Ok, so this housemate and I have not gotten along together for awhile now. She thinks that because she's thirty and i'm not, she has to be my mother. Irritating enough on its own.

So tonight I go downstairs to wash some dishes, take care of some stuff in the kitchen. I go down, set my stuff down, realize I've forgotten something upstairs, and go back to get it. As I come out of my room, Housemate meets me in the hallway.

HM: Hey, don't leave the lights on for Other Housemate, she's not coming back tonight.
Joi; Um...that's not why I was leaving the lights on, I was just going downstairs to finish something.
HM: Oh.

Not a big deal--I'm actually really fanatical about turning lights out, but whatever. Simple mistake, no biggie.

I go back downstairs...to find my newly acquired cast-iron skillet sitting in an inch of water in the sink!!!

I spent an hour last night starting the whole seasoning process with that skillet, and had carefully oiled it again after cooking in it tonight. Had to pull it out, rinse out the soap, dry it thouroughly, and re-oil it. Have to do the seasoning again tomorrow night.

That just really ticks me off!

[Akasa]

If you can't take care of it don't touch it!

[telecom_goddess]

I spent an hour last night starting the whole seasoning process with that skillet, and had carefully oiled it again after cooking in it tonight. Had to pull it out, rinse out the soap, dry it thouroughly, and re-oil it. Have to do the seasoning again tomorrow night.

That just really ticks me off!

She put soap in a cast iron pan? I have tons of cast iron skillets and a good pot with a lid ....all of which I'm fanatical about taking care of. I even have one that's devoted to JUST roasting coffee, and it's smooth as glass from all the coffee oil. The kids once used it to cook something and I came unglued.......

[HYHYBT]

So why aren't you supposed to use soap on cast iron, and how *do* you get it clean?

[JoitheArtist]

So why aren't you supposed to use soap on cast iron, and how *do* you get it clean?

It isn't so much the soap itself, as the water. A well-used cast iron skillet will build up a "seasoning"--basically, the oil seeps into the pores of the iron. This makes it durable and gives it an unbeatable non-stick quality. Ideally, you never have to clean a good iron skillet, just wipe it out.

If you put soap and water in the skillet, the soap cuts through the oil, leaving the raw iron vulnerable to the water--which creates rust. If your pan rusts, you have to scrub it out with steel wool, and restart the seasoning process. Pain in the neck!

[thegiraffe]

There's absolutely no reason to use soap on cast iron anyhow. Cast Iron is, by nature, antimicrobial/antibacterial. Early surgical tools were made from cast iron for this very reason (or so I've heard).

Your roomie would SCREAM if she saw how we cleaned our cast iron pans at camp (and the new kids would always look disgusted):

1. Place cooled pan on dirt.
2. Pick up handful of dirt.
3. Place handful of dirt in pan, and scrub with a dry, soapless scrubby.
4. Rinse and dry.
5. Season with oil and hang up.

The kids loved it because it wasn't technically "washing dishes".

[the_std]

Another way is to use salt, preferably a kind with big grains, scrub it around inside the pan with a paper towel or two, then dump out the salt and give it a little oil. Learned that little tip from Alton Brown!

[thegiraffe]

Well, I guess salt and dirt both do similar things...scrub and absorb.

We just used dirt because it's not like we had a short supply or anything.

[AccountingDrone]

I spent an hour last night starting the whole seasoning process with that skillet, and had carefully oiled it again after cooking in it tonight. Had to pull it out, rinse out the soap, dry it thouroughly, and re-oil it. Have to do the seasoning again tomorrow night.

That just really ticks me off!

I had an ex roomie helpfully scrub all the "black yuck" off my 50+ year old wok It has been over 20 years and it still isnt seasoned properly [yet]

[AdminAssistant]

The big thing there is you have to tell them not to do it. As in, hold the pan up to them, and explain why you don't wash cast iron. A lot of people simply don't know.

[dalesys]

The big thing there is you have to tell them not to do it. As in, hold the pan up to them bounce pan off empty noggin, and explain why you don't wash cast iron. A lot of people simply don't know.

Corrected procedure

[Dreamstalker]

The big thing there is you have to tell them not to do it. As in, hold the pan up to them, and explain why you don't wash cast iron.

That's assuming they're willing to listen.

Oh, the stories I had about my apartment-mate in college who thought she was my mom....among other things, she washed an otherwise-salvageable motherboard with soap and water after she had been told many times that morning to Not Touch. When confronted about it she said she didn't know what it was...well if you don't know what it even is keep your paws OFF!

[ArcticChicken]

I've been thinking about getting all our cast iron properly seasoned, but I don't really know where to start. Anyone know a website or something?

[flybye023]

Well, I don't know about websites but it really isn't all that difficult.

1. Clean it well (you can use soap and water at this point) then dry it out (popping it into a hot oven would work best ) and scrub any rust off.

2. Wipe it down really well with lard or bacon grease

3. Put in oven and bake at 250-350F for 2-3 hours.

Repeat steps 2 & 3 until you have a nice, dark finish. Also, periodically you'll need to re-season so again, just steps 2 & 3 until you get the finish back.

This past summer, though, my dad just put ours on the grill for an hour each time and that seemed to work really nicely too.

[Evil Queen]

The big thing there is you have to tell them not to do it. As in, hold the pan up to them, and explain why you don't wash cast iron. A lot of people simply don't know.

I did that with DataJager's Steel Wok. I held it up to both him (even though it was his christmas present, I took care of it) AND our then roommate and said "NO TOUCH! DO and DIE are important words with this rule."

It's been nearly a year and I managed a GORGEOUS patina on that puppy. It's so slick you can see yourself as if it's a mirror.