This Christmas my mom got me Miss Kay’s Cookbook. I’m sure most of you have heard of the Duck Dynasty craze that has swept the nation. Yep, I’m part of the problem! 🙂
As I was looking through the cookbook, I noticed that a lot of the recipes called for a cast iron skillet. Quite honestly, cast iron was a little intimidating to me. It’s so heavy, the handle gets hot, you can’t wash it! I mean…  what part of that sounds fun?
That night, I found a cast iron skillet on sale, so despite my hesitation, I decided to give it a go. OH… MY…. GOODNESS! I now love cast iron! I feel like I’ve wasted years of my life because I never knew how amazing they were to cook with! The skillet heats evenly. You can make just about anything in the skillet (I just recently made focaccia bread). AND clean up is a breeze!
I didn’t know how to clean cast iron when I first got my pan, so I had to look up how… I thought I would pass along these simple step by step instructions.
How to clean an already seasoned cast iron pan:
1. Cook your food.
2. After removing the food… here’s my dirty pan.
3. Wipe the pan out with a paper towel to remove excess food.
4. Tun on the burner med/high and let the pan heat up.
5. Add a little Olive Oil (or whatever oil you prefer) and sprinkle in some salt.
6. Using tongs to hold a paper towel, scrub the pan. HINT: the salt acts as the abrasive
7. The salt will start to turn brown and your paper towel will get a little black.
8. After you have scoured the pan, run it under HOT water. It will hiss and steam like crazy, but all the food will be removed. HINT: you may need to repeat steps 5-8 for an extra dirty pan.
Once the pan has cooled, rub a light coating of olive oil all over the pan and you are done! It’s seasoned and ready to go for the next time.
deanna
January 30, 2014 at 10:01 pmI just got a new pan. Thanks for the tips.
xo
joanna garcia
January 30, 2014 at 5:55 amI have never used a cast iron bc i heard it is a mission to clean did not know these steps! Now it will be on my to get list!
Ginny
January 29, 2014 at 3:09 pmSuper interesting post Shanda. I have a cast iron griddle pan that I don’t use because I didn’t know how to clean it. I’ll have to get that thing back out again. It was my husband’s grandma’s so it would be sentimental to cook with it. I’m just not so sentimental when it requires too much hard work to clean it up. 🙂
Shanda
January 29, 2014 at 10:24 pmI actually find it so much easier to clean my cast iron! You don’t have to wait for a pan to soak and then spend all that time scrubbing it… I hope you do give it a try! I am going to do a post on how to season a cast iron pan soon too 🙂
Jill A. Collins
January 29, 2014 at 12:41 pmSeems like a lot of work and I’ve never really been sure why you’d choose cast iron over other types of pans. I’m going to pass this along to my mom though since I know she has some old ones kicking around her kitchen.
Shanda
January 29, 2014 at 10:25 pmI’ve found this cleaning method much more enjoyable than having to soak and scrub other pans. This usually takes 3-5 minutes and 2-3 of those minutes is just the pan heating up 🙂 I hope you mom gives it a try!
Debby Chandler
January 29, 2014 at 10:44 amthank you for sharing these instructions, I have a cast iron skillet but rarely use it because it always seemed like such a fuss to clean up.