>>Hilah: Hey dudes!
I am Hilah, and today on Hilah Cooking I am not actually going to be cooking.
Instead, I am going to tell you how to take care of your cast iron skillets.
I have gotten several requests from people asking me how to wash cast iron, and since
I use it all the time, and I you know, tell y’all to use it, then I figured I should
show you how to clean it since I already showed you how to season one.
So, here we have a dirty cast iron skillet.
It’s got some oil residue.
It’s got some dried up corn stuff in there.
Not super-dirty, but it doesn't really matter.
What I used to clean that in I’ve got this little scrubby brush, and I just scrub it
out with some hot water, and this little guy, most of them have a little sort of edge here
that you can use to sort of scrape, make a horrible sound, but sort of like scrape any
crusty stuff on there, you can scrape it off of there, and then rinse it out, and then
I use just like one of these really soft, plastic scrubby sponge deals to clean it the
rest of the way, so I am going to do that, and then I’ll show you how to sort of like
partially season it in between uses.
[pause]
And if there’s anything really stuck, I use one of these little scraper dealies.
I got it for like literally 79 cents or something, and it’s made in China, so you know it’s
good.
We’re just scraping it off, and then give it another rinse.
Okay, so most of the time after I wash my skillet, I will just dry it out with a rag
and I am good to go, but about every tenth time I use it, and especially if I’ve used
it to cook something like tortillas or something kind of dry where you’re heating the skillet
up a lot without any oil on it, after that it might look a little lighter and not quite
as like ink black, and that’s because it’s a little bit dried out so-to-speak, so in
that case we’ll want to heat it up over a kind of a medium-high heat.
Do not walk away from your skillet when you’re doing this.
I have done that so many times and almost burnt my house down more than once, just like,
oh, I’ll be right back in 30 seconds, and then I come back and my pan is like smoking
and the house is disgusting and smelly, so anyway, letting it heat up here.
We really just want to add like a couple of drops of oil.
It doesn't really matter what kind.
You want to use something that’s got a fairly high smoke point, so you wouldn’t want to
use like an extra virgin olive oil or anything, but like any kind of, like sunflower oil,
corn oil, peanut oil, anything like that will work.
I am using safflower oil, and then you just take a little napkin or even just like a clean
rag.
Just kind of smear it around in here.
Okay, so you can see how it turned from that sort of lighter, grayish color to black as
the oil got in there and soaked in.
I am just going to leave it on the heat for maybe another 30 seconds, and then turn it
off, and let it completely cool.
Doing that every ten times or so, like I said, will help keep that really smooth patina,
that finish on your cast iron skillet and prevent it from rusting and prevent you from
having to like re-season it, the whole deal, in the oven for like three hours and stuff
like that.
So, there you go, just, those are the few rules, so you want to make sure you use only
plastic instruments to clean it, no metal, or like, don’t use any steel wool or anything
like that.
Don’t use soap.
Although, honestly, sometimes I will use a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of soap, not detergent,
but soap.
If it’s really, really greasy like if I had fried chicken or something just to get
that film out of there, but usually I don’t, and then do this little re-treatment on the
stove every, every ten times or so, so that’s it.
That’s the rules for taking care of cast iron.
If you have any questions, or if you have any other tips that you’d like to share
with everyone, please leave them below.
Thanks for watching!