Bon jour!
Hello.
Welcome to Cuisine a la Pierre.
I, of course, am Pierre.
And on this episode, we will finish off our cast iron pan care series with part 3.
In this episode, we will show you how to properly maintain your newly seasoned cast iron pan
and how to clean it and properly store it.
So without further ado, let's head into the kitchen.
Now that we have our newly seasoned cast iron pans, we don't want all of our hard work to
go to waste by destroying the seasoning right away, so we need to learn how to take care
of them now.
For the first cooking after a seasoning of a cast iron, I like to cook something with
a lot of oil or fat so that we can just reinforce what we have already done.
So, we are going to cook bacon in this pan and then cook a egg over easy on this one
just to test out how non-stick it is and we will make sure we lube it up with some butter
and that will help give just a little more oil into it and then when we are done with
that I will show you how to properly clean a cast iron so that we do not destroy the
seasoning.
Since this is not a cooking episode about how to make bacon and eggs, we will get most
of it done in a time-lapse.
I've got bacon going in this one.
I already cooked one round to give it a little more fat.
I had the temperature on too high for the first one so it kind of burned so we are on
the second batch.
Just don't turn your bacon heat up to high and over here we have the melted butter, unsalted
butter.
See just a little bit of, uh, stickiness, but we used butter, not non-stick spray and
this is not Teflon and yet it is a very smooth release.
So that was pretty quick and painless.
I'm not very good at the egg over easy, but uh, we gave it our best try.
The whole point was for showing off the pans and getting them with a nice bit of oil and
fat.
So I do not want this to go to waste, so I'm going to stop really fast and eat it while
the pans cool down because it is way too hot to clean, but we have some nice tidbits in
there and that is perfect for our first cooking after our seasoning.
We are just reinforcing the oil we have put in and the same thing with this.
We have some nice grease right on there and that is also what we want.
You don't have to just cook fatty things in cast iron.
It's just this is our first cooking after our seasoning so that is why we are picking
some especially tasty morsels.
Ok, now before the pan gets completely cold, we want to come in here and clean it up.
If you have a lot of grease in here, I have a grease glass jar that I pour this into so
it does not clog the drain, however, this is not really very much so we shall just use
some paper towel.
And you see, it is kind of burnt on there.
That is ok.
Oops.
The doggy will clean that up.
I like to use Kosher salt.
It is a nice absorbent and also has some nice texture to it.
So you can see how it is not quite as small as normal salt, table salt.
And we shall just scrub it.
This one is not quite as non-stick as a new pan that you would buy from the store.
That one, it is much more non-stick the first time, but this is doing ok.
I'm only using the tongs because it's still quite warm and you don't have to do this over
the burner.
It's just a convenient place for me since I already have the camera set up for it.
So, as you can see, cast iron, it is a pan of love.
That is what I'm saying.
Every time that we do this type of thing, we are changing the characteristics of the
pan and soon it becomes your pan with all of your cooking and, uh, cuisine journeying,
whatever, in there.
And when you pass it on to your future children or whoever, if you choose to do so, then all
of your love and time and effort is in the pan as well and then they can continue on
and it can become kind of a nice keepsake for the family.
There it is.
Now you might see there's still some stuff in there.
We could continue to scrub this with some more salt, however, as I said, this is the
first cooking after a seasoning so things are a little stickier than they normally would
be, but I would not recommend washing this right away.
However, if leaving a little bit of the meat on there bothers you, you could use some water,
no soap for the first time, to kind of clean it out.
Just plain water will not hurt anything.
There we go.
If you look at my one I bought from the store seasoned, you can see it left a little bit
in there and you get that characteristic scorch marks, but I do wash this one with soap and
water.
That is fine.
It is a well put on seasoning done by the manufacture, so, and I have cooked with it
enough that a little soap and water will not hurt anything.
Yeah, you don't want to have your fingers completely disgusting when you touch it.
See, I can touch all of this and I am not getting oily.
That is a proper seasoning.
Now on to this.
Yes, you do use some paper towels.
But this one, I wish you could feel how slippery and smooth it is.
That is extremely smooth.
Yes, it's so smooth, nothing is really sticking.
The salt is just going everywhere and that is what we wanted with this pan.
So really, that is it on that one.
Now, after I get done with the scrubbing that I just showed you, I always take just a little
tiny bit of oil.
Not much, just enough to give it a light rubdown and this helps make sure that we keep it water
resistant.
If you do need to use soap and water on one that has a long standing seasoning, so after,
you could use soap and water after probably two cookings with this, you only want to use
dish soap, such as just some Dawn or whatever your favorite soap is.
Something very easy.
You don't want to use, like Ajax or anything like that.
And so, like I said, I just put a tiny bit of vegetable oil, whatever, on the pan, and
we set that aside.
And over here, same thing.
Come on.
There we go.
But this, you don't really want to feel it at all.
This is more microscopic rubbing and so if you feel any extremely greasy parts, I mean
you can come and scrub it hard.
We are just putting on a tiny, tiny layer.
And now, all we have to do is talk about storage.
So you see here, I also have a dutch oven cast iron pan, or pot, I guess if you will.
And so we just take a thin piece of paper towel, I just use the same one over and over
again, and all this does is help to make sure that if there is any moisture still in there
from whatever you cooked or if you washed it, whatever, this gives it a tiny chance
to evaporate.
So we shall just kind of build a little cast iron cake.
So next I put on that one.
And these aren't quite as important because there is plenty of room, but just for the
sake of doing it right, we shall do like that.
And there we have our cast iron cake.
Now before I go we need to check on our experiment from earlier in the episode.
Let's have a look.
Ugh, would you look at that.
This is exactly what I was talking about for a poor seasoning.
This is, this is what was on the flat skillet the first time and you can see, ugh, you can
see there is, like a layer and it is sticky.
Uuugh, look at that.
That is, that is disgusting and if we come in here, it, uhg.
See, oo, let me get..., see that.
I can scrape my nail through it and this is, this is exactly what why you want to put the
pan upside down.
So now with that, I hope you have enough information to properly take care of your cast iron pans
so that they last your entire culinary life.
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Until next time, happy cooking and bon appetite!
So, now zat we have some re-seasoned pans we need to know how to take care of zem so zat zey
do not..
That's a lot of Zs, heh.
Just in case...
I completely lost where I was going.