Cast Iron never dies

[Texan79423]

I went outside to my grill and left my favorite cast iron skillet on the stove with a plastic spatula in it. Melted the spatula covering the entire bottom of 9 inch skillet and smoking up the whole house. The skillet was my grand mothers and over 70 years old and well used/abused.

Last night after taking some ribs off my Primo pit I removed the grate open vents wide open got pit up to 700 degrees dropped skillet in upside down closed lid and went to bed.

This morning skillet was cooled and white with ash and no more burned spatula. Washed skillet sanded with 100 grit then cleaned with steel wool. No BS the skillet looks like brand new. I seasoned with grape seed oil and baked it in, twice. The skillet looks better than ever.

 

[16Adams]

Nicely done

 

[SMOKE FREAK]

Great save.

 

[cdhbrad]

Your Grandmother would be proud or you. A round of Chicken Fried Steak would help with reseasoning. :-D:-D

 

[Bluebird]

Glad it was saved!

 

[souroull]

Nice save, dont get me wrong but i would never blast an entire plastic spatula worth in a porous.... cooking chamber of all things, but thats just me.

 

[Learning to BBQ]

Nicely done! Cast iron is fun. I inherited our old cast iron skillet that we had at home when growing up. It was in pretty nasty shape, but I rehabbed it and the cooking surface is top notch.

Question for you cast iron guys. Do you worry about the outside of the pot or pan. My cooking surface is good, but the outside is pretty knarly. And I don't really care about that, but can it be rehabbed too. I don't recall what it looked like when new, if it were smooth or it just had a sand cast finish to it.

 

[Titch]

Did you get a smoke ring on the spatula?


nice save

 

[FrankZ]

What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger

 

[thirdeye]

You may have been able to scrape the plastic off if you slowly heated the skillet to 300° or so. CI is resilient but it does not like heat-shock. It prefers slow heat transfer, even if you are baking sour dough at 500°. Heat-shock can cause the bottom to warp or worse it can crack near the handle. The good thing in your case was that it was able to slow-cool inside the Primo.

 

[MJ_Tenn]

Love me some cast iron

 

[rwalters]

Nicely done! I absolutely LOVE cooking with cast iron

 

[SMOKE FREAK]

Nicely done! Cast iron is fun. I inherited our old cast iron skillet that we had at home when growing up. It was in pretty nasty shape, but I rehabbed it and the cooking surface is top notch.

Question for you cast iron guys. Do you worry about the outside of the pot or pan. My cooking surface is good, but the outside is pretty knarly. And I don't really care about that, but can it be rehabbed too. I don't recall what it looked like when new, if it were smooth or it just had a sand cast finish to it.

No the outside is what it is.

The cooking surface is what matters.

 

[Cook]

I MO for restoring cast iron is to use the self-cleaning cycle of an oven. I usually go three hours for not-so-bad pieces & four hours for caked on pieces. It strips them back to bare iron, and when the oven lock pops open there is enough residual heat in the pan that I can quickly wipe out the ash & give it an overall initial seasoning simply by wiping it down with lard. I typically then just wipe it as dry as I can get it, and let it cool...at least for a bit. Then I heat it up on the stove top, let it smoke, allow the smoke to pretty much stop, and hit it with another coat of lard. Wipe it dry, cool, and start cooking.

I guess every piece of used cast iron I own has received that treatment...and every piece will fry eggs as non-stick as I need them to.