I love my cast iron griddle. You see the television chefs using them all the time!
What's that? Mine doesn't look quite like theirs? Sigh. I know. This used to be a beautifully seasoned Emeril Cast Iron Grill/Griddle.
Now it's just a griddle that has lost it's natural non-stick coating. How does this happen? Cast iron and water are not friends you see. Cast iron doesn't like to be immersed in water. It's the Wicked Witch of the West of cookware.
My kitchen staff likes water . . . they like soap. They like copious amounts of soap and water and scrubbing. This is excellent in the staff's day job which involves surgery. It's not so excellent for my cast iron and Teflon coated pans.
Why don't I wash my own darn pans? Well the impressionable male children need to see the staff helping mommy you see. Shared workload in the household blah, blah, blah, blah . . .
But no worries! We can fix it!
Turn up the heat! You're going to want to make sure you have some good ventilation for this process.
There's smoke involved. Lots and lots of smoke! Most of my cooking involves smoke. I have a love/hate relationship with my smoke detectors. I lean heavily towards hate.
If you have birdies in the house or anyone who's sensitive to smoke may I recommend you do this on a grill outside? If you have one of those glass top electric stoves, I don't think it would like this process much either. Stick with your outdoor grill--gas or charcoal will do. We need to bake a new coating onto this pan.
Add a little vegetable oil to your pan. I'm using a lovely soybean oil. Any bland, flavorless oil will do. This is not the time to use olive oil!
Use a nice clean paper towel to spread the oil all over your pan. It's safer to use tongs.
Heck, what do I need fingers for?
Can you see the oil start to smoke? That's what we're looking for. When the smoking starts to diminish . . .
Add some more oil! Notice that pan is so hot I'm using tongs to hold the paper towel now. It's really the best bet.
Even more smoke! Let the oil burn off and the smoke dissipate and do it again!
What we're looking for is the pan to turn black! The way it looked originally!
After about 20-30 minutes I thought that maybe, just maybe I had accomplished it. So let's test it. Add a little cooking oil . . .
. . . and an egg. Who doesn't like a nice fried egg? I don't like broken fried eggs! Hmm . . .
Not exactly like Teflon, but it's NOT STICKING!
But will I be able to get it back off of there?
YEAH! No leaking. My work here is done! Well it's almost done.
A cast iron pan likes to be cleaned with a little oil rub down. See the browned stuff that is wiping up? Let your pan cool with a little oil on it. Wipe all the excess oil up and put it away.
If you happen across an old rusty cast iron pan at a garage sale or flea market give it a good scrubbing with steel wool and then try this process with it. Most of them will come right back to life.
No comments:
Post a Comment