hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are talking all about how to clean your cast
iron pan when you're out camping this was a common question on one of my recent cleaning videos so
i'll link to that in the description below it's about how to clean your dishes at camp but when
you're dealing with cast iron things are a little bit different because iron plus water plus very
little bit of time equals rust and we do not want our beautiful cast iron pans to rust so
i'm going to show you how i clean my cast iron pan in this video i have been saving this one
because it is very very dirty there is sticky i made a dessert so it's very sticky and it's
dried on here so this is a really good example of sort of an the extreme or end of the spectrum of
what i would do for cleaning food that's sticky and stuck on my pan most of the time when i'm
cooking simple things like pancakes for example i don't actually really officially clean the pan
i just maybe take a piece of paper towel and wipe out any excess oil and then i'm good to go
so there's a lot of times where i don't actually need to do a deeper clean but this right here is
a pretty good example of a time when i would need to do that when you're cleaning your cast
iron pan you want to make sure that you're not using any harsh chemical soaps or abrasive metal
cleaners that could potentially scrape your seasoning off of your cast iron pan
so the seasoning is this dark layer of carbonized oil and it gives your pan a non-stick quality and
it also protects your pan from rust so you can't use a cast-iron pan unless it's been seasoned
properly raw iron will just rust in seconds and so the seasoning is this lovely dark layer that we
want to make sure we preserve as we're cleaning lastly before we get started you never want to
rapidly cool your pan so let's say it's like really hot you were cooking with it over the
fire and then you dunk it in a ice cold lake or something i don't know why you would do that
but rapidly cooling your pan leads to thermal shock which can create warps and even cracks in
your cast iron pan so when you're done cooking just let it cool naturally and then start the
cleaning process a common question is can you soak your cast iron pan the answer is a firm no so you
might have a stainless steel or an aluminum pan at home that you would just soak in your sink if
it's really dirty you do not want to do that with your cast iron because again that leads to rust
so without further ado let's get going because this pan needs to be cleaned so that i can use it
to clean i have my trusty pot scraper this is going to be your best tool this one has two ends
this one is kind of rubbery and then this one is a hard plastic and so i'm definitely going to want
to use that harder side so really get in there and scrape off all those food bits so this is going to
be the best tool for the job and then i also have a little sponge that i'll use after i've scraped
off all the food a little bit of camp soap can be used i tend to not use soap again you don't really
want to use any harsh chemicals but this is a mild biodegradable camp soap and you can use a little
bit of that if you choose most of the time i would say i don't use any soap if i've cooked something
with a really strong flavor let's say i made salmon in here then i would reach for a little bit
of soap just so i don't have any lingering flavors left in my pan but for the most part i don't use
soap with my cast iron i have some seasoning spray which we'll use at the end i'll show you that
and then a clean dry towel so let's begin so as i mentioned my first step is going to be
just trying to scrape out as much of the food bits as i can and then putting them in my trash
as you can see this tool is amazing
so there's still quite a bit of food bits stuck on here so now i'm going to bring
some water into the mix so i just have some clean water i'm going to pour that in there
just a little bit now at this point you can add a little bit of that mild camp soap if you want
and you can go back in with the pot scraper if you need to
or if you've gotten it pretty good on that first pass then you can go in with a sponge
so i think i'm pretty good i'm going to go in with the sponge now
okay
i have my camp sink and i'm just going to pour the dirty water in there
so i'm happy with how this looks but if you need to you can go back and repeat that same
process again just continuing to get all the food off of your cast iron pan if you did use
soap then make sure of course you do a rinse with just water to get any of that soap residue off
but since i didn't use soap and this looks pretty clean i'm happy with this and i'm going to now
dry it again you don't want to be leaving this wet or leaving it out to air dry so a
clean lint-free towel is what i'm going to use to just get in here and completely dry
i mean that looks really good lastly before i store it i'm just going to use some of
this seasoning spray you could also use a mild oil like i use avocado oil sometimes i'm just going to
put that in there get a piece of clean paper towel and just spread that oil around wiping
off any excess oil probably sprayed a little too much make sure you get all the edges
so that is it for how to clean your cast iron pan when you're camping as you can see it's
really an easy process just don't be soaking your pan and you'll probably be fine so if you
like this video make sure to give it a like check out some of the other camping videos
on my channel and if you like them consider subscribing i will see you in the next one
you