Cooking..........Cast iron cookware

Hey I picked up some old old castiron pots and pans. What is the best way to Season them for use while camping.

warm tehm on the stove at 200 until its hot to teh touch. Then add crisco all around inside and out and stick in the oven at 375 till oil is absorbed about 1 hour. Then it should stay seasoned as long as you dont wash it with soap.
Mink

Cool thanks matser!!!

I was told to use renderd animal lard, can that be any animal lard, as i have some bvr fat i could render?

Ya you could use it, but it seems easier just to use teh crisco( might taste funky )
Mink

If I dont use soap what shoul dI use to clean them? After they have been seasoned and used to cook with.

cook in it

preferably bacon

i have never cleaned my cast iron with anything more than heat and paper towel. I wipe it out. But then I have a belief that people worry all too much about cleanliness in the kitchen...if you cook food to safe temperature, that which survives would have survived the cleaning anyway.

I just add water and rub with a scouring pad. If its just used for camping, it wont need to be super clean.
MInk

I agrre snowman, and thanks mink and snowman for you input. I love it.

NP
Mink

I season mine with bacon grease. preferrably Apple Cinnamon Bacon from McDonalds Meats in Clear Lake. Makes everything taste mighty good..

If they are rusty you might season
with grease, then need to wash good
and do it again. As many times as
it takes to get good and clean.
Once clean, just wipe up good after
cooking. The less soap and water,
the better. If you wash off the oil
you need to season again.

Cook in it is definetely the way to season it. Like snowman said, bacon would do a good job. I usually clean mine by boiling water in it and giving it a good scraping. If it is rusty, give it a good coat of vegetable or some sort of oil, inside and out.

We season ours by frying chicken or french frys something that uses a lot of oil.

If you need to clean them, scrub them good with soap and water... then throw them in a self cleaning oven and put it on clean. DON'T DO THIS WITH WOODEN HANDLED POTS/PANS/SKILLETS. Self cleaning ovens are the best-when done, tip out the ash and season as above-we use olive oil and do 2 thin coats-will gum up if too thick. Many good suggestions above. We shy away from ALL the non stick stuff-not healthy at all, gives off gases, scapes result in toxins release etc. but big chemical company bucks behind it so no big deal :-) same as those soft-rubber-like gloves and stuff-HOW can that stuff be safe/healthy? Cast Iron and stainless is the way to go-you can pick up a skillet and a dutch oven or large pot at a flea market for like 5-10 bucks each and cook for 100 years or more with them!

When you get a dark black shiny finish inside of your cast iron cook ware , you know you have done things right in seasoning and cleaning.... this will take awhile with regular cooking in them.... Happy cooking!

It's all I and the wife cook on. I have Wagner and Griswold pans that have seen 100 years of continuous use. NOTHING beats cast iron for cooking.

For the ultimate in disgusting heavily gunked pans/pots. Boil them in lye (just like traps). This is what my friend does that is a professional cast iron collector and sales guy.

In most cases....you'll never have to do this.

For daily cleaning... just wipe out after it is warm and grease it if it needs it with shortening. Some use lard...but it tends to go rancid.
If it is heavily fried on crud....say fried chicken coating...you'll need to boil some water in it and scrape out the interior with a plastic or wooden tool. Then grease it with shortening.

MOST IMPORTANT - if cooking on an electric range....do not put a cold pan on a hot element. They will warp. Instead put the cold pan on a cold burner and then bring it to heat. I'd also recommend not going above medium or medium high heat.

You guys are great. I love TRAPPERMAN!!!!!!

The best way to clean a castiron pan is a little water in the pan ad a lot corse salt and rub the pan clean want it cleaner rinse and ad more salt.

If you don't know where they've been or what was in them, I would stick them in the wood stove or a fire till they turn a dull red to burn off all the surface crud. Then wash well and dry. Then coat with vegetable oil right away, or just cook in them.

Thanks guys great tips. i have them all seasoned now! i cannt wait to use them this coming summer while camping.

why wait until summer? I have 2 and that's all I use, do like triple creek onced seasoned and working good to clean boil water drain sprinkle with salt wipe with a paper towel rinse and coat with oil and put away. The mother-in-law would use them and wash them with soap( lost the shiney look) I would growl so they would wash it and wipe with oil so it would look shiny but still stuck so I gave them one and told them paws off the other now that I got it working right I showed the wife over the weekend, I was frying eggs and told the wife to to look, I slid the eggs in my plate and told her "that's how cast iron is supposed to work!" lol

Why wait, the little lady has her pots and pans form the house hold. Told her iwas going to get some old cast iron for camping. She says she doesnt need my old rotten pans! But thats fine with me, as she willnot have a chance to burn anything in My castiron!!!!

I inherited one that looks like it was seasoned but some of that has worn off or chipped off. Do I need to start all over (the hot fire or oven cleaning tips?) or do you think I will be successful if I just season the unseasoned places by cooking with it?

Blister you came to the right place for you question. I am sure the fine folks of trapperman will help you out just fine. Thay all did right by me.

Blister now when to say chips I take it just the coating and not the pan if so then I would reseason the whole thing once or twice remember NO soap to clean up and if it sticks the first time then it will be stick free after acouple times cooking with it.

I get the over hot about 350 or I will use my grill. put some cooking oil in the pan let it sit in there for a while about 1/2 hour I will do this a couple times. then after each use I put oil on the pan to prevent rusting.

Blister

Dont worry about what has chipped out....just reseason the whole pan....little dips wont effect anything. I always recoat a pan as soon as Im finished with it and just put it on the cookstove or cast trivet. We use cast everyday for everything....so it always stays seasoned.

Here is one way to do it. Went fising one night with an old fellow in East texas. He brought an old 14" spider all covered with rust and 1/2" by 1/16" pit in it. Said he was going to cook supper in it. Built a hardwood fire and when it got good and hot, he put the spider in it upside down. When it had tuned black, he pulled it out and wiped it down good with a burlap sack, put it back in the fire and reheated it. Took it out, rubbed it good, inside and out, with some salt pork and reburnt it. After wiping it out again, he sliced sone bacon into it and cooked that, letting it burn a little bit. Then he sliced up the taters, fried them in the grease and then a big slab of steak. Wiping it clean again, he oiled it and set it aside while it was still hot. Never have eaten anything so good from the kitchen. Andno, the taters and steak didn't stick!

"Spider"??

Bigbob, spider is like a deep skillet
with legs.

Thanks Dave

Thanks for the suggestions. I will do a re-season on it. I was hoping it wasn't ruined because I love to cook on/in cast iron. You guys are so much help, I am going for broke here!

I have not learned how to use the cast iron Dutch oven. I would love to be able to bake biscuits over a fire like Gus did in Lonesome Dove, but my Dutch oven lid always gets moisture on the bottom/inside of the lid and drips on the stuff inside. What am I doing wrong?

I cannt help with your last question Blister. But am sure somebody here will know. What a great bunck og folks here!!

Does your dutch oven have legs? Is the lid concave or domed? Concave is for a baking oven to put the coals in, domed is a stew pot and moisture will condense inside the top of the lids when stewing.

I always use wood coals to bake with in the dutch oven, there is a science involved with charcoal briquetts (sp?)..a certain number of coals makes Xnumber of degrees...I've never tried it, never use the charcoal.

Generally speaking, I put the oven on a bed of wood coals, put coals on top and bake for ?? minutes depending on the contents of the oven, then move the oven off the bed of coals but leave the coals on top to finish the baking...again for ?? minutes depending on what's in the oven. Sometimes it's necessary to rotate the lid to distribute the heat evenly or more coals are added to the top.

It's easy to overdo the process as once the oven is heated, it's the cast iron that does the baking. Maintaining a steady temp is the trick.

Rule of thumb: Put 1 briquet per oven dia on top and bottom, plus 2 extra for the lid. ie: 12 in oven equals 26 briquet's.
This will give you approx 325 degree's oven temp. add 1 briquet top and bottom for ea additional 25 deg. Cold air temps may require a few additional briq's.
Rotate both lid and oven 1/4 turn every 15 Min's.
Those chimney type charcoal starters are great.
Keep the lid hot.
Wood fires take some getting used to.
Dutch ovens stack well and you can use the lid coals of one for the bottom coals of the the next.

Pies in dutch ovens:

Three beer bottle caps in the bottom of the dutch oven hold the pie pan up off the superheated bottom, and alow for air flow like a convestion oven. A home made wire rack alows for a second pie pan to be perched above the bottom one.

I have a matched pair of 16 qt ovens (with legs, otherwise they are not an oven). I have never cooked meat or other protien or fat in them. They are seasoned with canolla oil... 6 oil baths when they were new. These two ovens are ONLY USED FOR BISCUITS, BREADS, AND PIES, and my familly knows that they are not to even look at them, moreless touch them.

The ability to create 24 biscuits, 2 12" cornbreads, and 2 pumpkin and 2 keylime pies means that I have never yet gone camping with anyone who doesn't regularly re-invite me.


Bob, All that stacking and turning...what are you trying to do? Give away all our secrets? BTW, the formula for temp given by BigBob is the same basic one that I use, but it needs to be adjusted thusly: add one cosal to the bottom and two coals to the top for every drop of 10 degrees below 40...ie one step up at 30, two steps up at 20, three steps up at 10 etc. Also add coals (dont know formula) when you go up in altitude. I learned the hard way that coals burn cooler due to less oxygen the higher you go. You can barely bake at 9500 ft.


PS, Bob, I love the quote in your sig.
I have been using it often in everyday life since I first saw it.

The stacking is cool. I saw someone do that once at a TE class. I haven't used charcoal in literally years. I'll have to write this down for future reference.

Thanks!

BK1: Oh yeah, here's another, Line the oven with aluminum foil to ease clean-up and to help remove sticky stuff like cakes (especially Upside-down cakes) in one piece. LOL
Feel free to use the quote, I stole it from author Pat McMannus.

As I get older, I am learning that there are a few things that I will never be able to do again when Im involved in 'guy-activities' Ill never dunk a basketball again, and Ill never break a bronc again. I'll never be a woman's first lover again, and I'll never be worth a hoot on the day after a good whisky drunk again. But Im also learning that there are some things that Im getting better at as I age;


Sharpening a knife
Predicting a woman's moods
Wine making
Dog training
wood splitting with a maul
Cutting through the BS in a politician's words
Getting out of speeding tickets
the use of a paint roller
rope work and knot tieing
Charitable giving and volunteer work


& Dutch oven baking


Some things simply take a long long time to learn.

Amen brother.

Thanks to you all. I am going to print out this info and put it with my cookbooks. This is priceless!

I have the concave lid, BEyes, and I think I was not getting the lid hot enough. Now I will try again, when it warms up again, armed with this new information. (It is -36 here right now.)

I kept digging for this thread the last few days and getting distracted by others. I'm glad I found it again.

Thank God for curmudgeons! ;o)

There is a "Cast Iron Cooking for Dummies" book that has a lot of great tips and some recipes in it. We got it for my son for Christmas last year. It's got some interesting info on cast iron and the various manufacturers that used to be in business. It helped me understand that the old Griswold pan I inherited from my dad is truely an antique. In fact when I questioned my mother about it she told me that it was one that my dad had "on the farm when he was young". That means that it was actually my granddad's. Now it's even more precious as a family heirloom, and I still cook in it.

http://www.macscouter.com/Cooking/DutchOven.html

http://www.idos.com/

Here are a couple sites you might find helpful as well .

Drifter

Wow my little question got big. Great answers guys, I think yall bunches!!

min I usually just make a big fire out in the back yard put the pot in the fire inverted with the lid off then take it otu clean and put back in fire to get it hot wipe down with bacon drippings or else make cracklins in it will work too

i fyou have a domed lid you can still bake in it. Just turn the lid over and put coals on top. just be careful when removing lid as the handle will be inside the pot.

I have quite a collection of cast iron cookware and I use it almost daily for pancakes, bacon, chicken, chilli, baked beans, venison or pizza. I seasoned all of mine with canola oil and only use hot water and a plastic scouring pad to clean it. After it's completely dry, I just recoat it with canola oil. I season all of mine in the oven when the wife is at work(she don't like the smoke in the kitchen), but you could also season them outside on the gas grill if you have one.

Peanut Oil is the best oil to season cast iron with. It gets hotter than any other oil w/o producing smoke.

IMO, the next best thing to season with is lard. Cast iron seasoned w/lard could be considered the world's first no-stick cookwear.

I keep my corn bread pan seasoned w/lard. Corn bread just slides out w/no help from me.

Later,
45/70

I went on a web site that said to boil hay in your cast iron to "sweeten" it, then season it by filling it to the top with oil to 200 degrees in the oven.Has anyone else ever heard of this?I think it was the rural heritage site.