How to Clean a Cast Iron Skillet

How to Clean a Cast Iron Skillet: In my somewhat professional opinion I think cooking with cast iron is amazing I used to be terrified of these heavy scary-looking pans but once I actually gave them a shot I realized my cooking game went up like but I know it can be really intimidating to think about cleaning cast-iron pans so today I’m going to show you just how easy it is to clean and care for your cast iron pans and hopefully I’ll be able to convert you to a cast iron chef’s.

One of the cool or should I say hot things about cast iron pans is that they retain their heat long after you’ve taken them off the heat so that means cleanup is really easy all you need to do is take a simple paper towel use some tongs so that you don’t burn your hands and just give the pan a quick wipe down you’re going to remove any of the larger crusty bits but anything that’s oily or greasy that can actually stay on there that helps build what’s called a patina which helps create a nonstick finish on your cast iron and don’t worry about any bacteria growing on your pan because of course the next time you heat it up that bacteria is burned away anyway let’s say you’re cooking up a real festival and you end up with quite a mess in your frying pan something that you can’t quite wipe out just with paper towel you need to bring in the big guns and the big guns are actually really gentle all you’re going to need here is a little bit of dish soap and some kosher salt add about a quarter inch of water to the bottom of your pan and a squirt of dish soap put it back on the heat and turn it up to about low to medium heat you need to get a small simmer going then you want to add a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt into the pan and get yourself a wooden spoon or utensil and start scraping up any of those crusty bits or basically deglazing the pan with dish soap and salt this will help scrape any of that crusty stuff off.

Then all you need to do is dump the contents down the sink and wipe it out with a paper towel this is an easy and safe cleaning method but there’s a little cap here you don’t want to do it too often because if you do you’ll take off that valuable nonstick patina that you need to covet that’s what’s so great about these cast iron pans now that you have a perfectly cleaned pan you might notice a bit of an odor coming from it maybe you fried fish in here or something and it’s a little bit on the funky side easy fix for this pre-heat your oven to degrees Fahrenheit and pop your pan in there just let it sit for about minutes and what will happen is the heat will help lift out and burn off any of those bad odors bring it out let it cool down and then you can safely store your fresh and fresh smelling frying pan big rule big rule coming up here about cast iron never under any circumstances store these guys when they’re wet that also means that you cannot soak them overnight unless of course you want to fry up a rusty Pelican just a few best practices I want to cover about using cast iron first one is either use a wood or a silicone utensil designed specifically to be used in high heat situations if you use plastic it will melt take my word for it and if you use metal it will scratch the cast iron I get asked often about if it’s safe to use cast iron on a glass ceramic cooktop like what I have here and the answer is yes the concern of course is that cast iron is so heavy you can potentially crack the cooktop which you could do if you drop it or slam it so just be mindful of that when you are cooking it’s also important to remember to clean the surface that you are cooking on prior to cooking and also to ensure that the bottom of your frying pan is clean as well that way you won’t have anything that is really burnt on there which is super hard to clean again take my word for it and you won’t get those terrible burning smells why would you want those when you’re busy cooking up something beautiful.

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