CAST IRON Cooking, Cleaning & Seasoning! Everything you Need to Know!

hey everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead happy new year and we hope that it's off to a great start for everybody we wanted to do a video for you guys today about our cast iron collection recently i did a video where i was making homemade jerky and in the background was our cast iron collection and since that time we've gotten a lot of questions about using cast iron collecting cast iron all types of things so we decided to bring a video to you today with tons of information about cast iron we actually put out a message on facebook and instagram asking you guys to ask us questions about cast iron so that we could provide you guys with as much information as we possibly can that you guys are all seeking now we use our cast iron every day for us it doesn't seem odd or strange to use cast iron right i think a lot of people have some laying around that maybe they think is only for cat using over a campfire or maybe they think it's just decoration but today we're going to try to show you guys how to actually use it on a daily basis and we think it is by far the best type of cookware to use and we hope that we can show you that it's just as easy to use as some of the more modern cookware now the cast iron here on these two racks here it's just some of our cast iron this is what we use really on a daily basis we've been collecting cast iron for going on 15 years now we have a really awesome collection but it also includes things that aren't here like dutch ovens and other things that we use that are bigger than just these pans right so one of the first questions that you guys have asked is you know where to find good deals on cast iron are there certain brands to look for you know what should you be looking for when you're looking for cast iron pots and pans we really have a variety of brands we really aren't looking specifically for a certain brand we have some of the good what you would consider good quality brands from like a long time ago griswold and wagner ware wagner but we also have some lodge pans that are also very good and quite a few of the pans in our collection don't have any markings at all when i'm looking for cast iron at garage sales or auctions estate sales things like that i don't worry too much about the name on it unless i'm finding something i think is really unique and then i try to look at the name to see because there are certain names like sarah said like griswold and wagner that are going to be worth more money but when you're looking for things to just use on a daily basis you're better off to look for the quality of the cast iron itself than the name now the name only comes into into play really if you want to resell it or if you're really just interested in collecting it for the monetary value now the main thing that i'm looking for when i find cast iron for sale is how smooth is it on the inside some of the cheaper cast iron is going to be real real rough on the inside and that's going to make it more difficult to ever really season it to the point where it's going to be like a non-stick surface you really want something that's pretty smooth on the inside it doesn't have to be like glass but it does have to be pretty smooth on the inside if you can find something like that regardless of what brand it is it's going to end up being a nice cast iron cookware for you now kevin touched on a couple of the places where we've gotten our cast iron collection we get a lot of them from rummage sales garage sales auctions estate sales we can find the best prices there but sometimes there's just a unique piece or shape that you're looking for and in those cases it's just easier to go to like the lodge website or just to try to find them online somewhere we have a couple pieces like that i do want to mention also that we have a couple pieces of cast iron that are enameled cast iron um like this one here and these are fantastic additions to your cast iron collection because i really feel that there is a time and a place where the enameled cast iron pots and pans and things are a better option depending on what you're cooking so today we're going to also talk a little bit about that when you should when i think you should use your enameled cast iron rather than your bear cast iron that's seasoned now one thing we get a lot of compliments on and questions is the rack here that we have holding up our cast iron i absolutely love this solution for cast iron because it's very easy to use and otherwise i would have these all like stacked on top of each other in a cupboard and it's just so cumbersome and heavy to try to get the pan you want so this is a fantastic option that kevin built for me and so we want to tell you more details about this particular rack so maybe you can have one at home also right now this rack is actually just something that we made it's not something that you can just go and buy but it's so easy to make and fairly inexpensive that anybody can really go ahead and make one so we'll go over the the basic components of it the the main bar here is what's called black pipe or black steel pipe if you go to home depot or lowe's or one of those places just ask for where the black pipe is and they'll be able to show you this this is super heavy duty steel pipe and it already comes this black color as far as what actually holds it up onto the wall it's black pipe fittings so those are also just from your local hardware store basically they just screw onto the pipe and it's just a 90 degree elbow and flanges and and it's just screwed up onto the wall i mean there's really nothing too fancy about it at all one thing we need to add though is it's really important for these to be attached to studs in the wall because i mean these pants are super heavy right you really don't want these to pull out of your wall right so make sure you line them up so that you can screw them right into uh studs in your walls right yeah when you're getting into a pan like this size this is probably 10 plus pounds right so i mean you add that toward all of these pans and you do need something really strong to hold that up on the wall now the rings that we have here these black rings um i think they're either curtain rod rings that you would um you know use as curtains or shower curtain rings i can't remember we've had this actually 10 years gosh 10 years so i don't remember exactly where these were but they just their metal ring their metal rings black metal rings they just slide on to your post pole before you attach it to the wall and then these hook things are strong s hooks that kevin has bent right yeah basically it was an s hook and i just bent one end so that the pots can hang on them so i mean nothing fancy at all but it does make a nice display it's amazing how many people talk about it when they come over you guys mention it in videos um and it's a good way just to start talking to people about cast iron and why we use cast iron right when we asked all of you your questions about using cast iron there were really three main topics that you guys want to learn about seasoning cast iron cooking with cast iron and cleaning maintaining cast iron so those are the things that we're going to talk to you about today we're going to start with seasoning and actually seasoning a brand new pan i actually got a brand new piece of cast iron from cast iron for christmas this year it is a cast iron pizza pan look at that sucker it is a lodge brand and we're gonna season that with you today so this is the brand new pizza pan that sarah got for christmas this actually came in a pet in the package and it says that it's pre-seasoned now there's a lot of misconceptions i think about what that means when a pan like this a brand new one is pre-seasoned it still needs to be seasoned it comes with a very light seasoning on it you could use it just the way it is but it's going to be much better if you take some additional steps before you start using it so today i'm going to show you the easiest fastest way to season a brand new pan or to season one that you may have just found at a garage sale or something else i think that the whole seasoning process is what turns a lot of people off to using cast iron they want to be able to bring something home and use it immediately and they're afraid that it's going to take a long time for cast iron to get to a point where they can use it that's not true at all but i do understand that it's really easy to go to the store and buy some of those like teflon coated pans bring it home and it's immediately ready to use the problem with those is is that there's more and more evidence that that stuff isn't good for you and especially when it starts to chip off i like to think about it like this when you buy one of those like teflon coated pans the best day that you're ever going to own it is the day that you bring it home that's the best it's ever going to get but with cast iron really the day you bring it home is probably the worst it's ever gonna be and from that time forward it's just gonna get better and better with age so the more you use it the better it's going to get and the thing with cast iron this stuff's going to last forever if you take care of it you know i'm in my mid 40s and i can tell you that those like teflon coated pans when we still used those when we were younger you know we blew through a set of those in about five years and then had to replace them so you know the cast iron will just last and last you'll be giving this to your grandkids when they're ready for it so this is an easy process don't let the seasoning process turn you off to using cast iron all right let's get started so like i said this said it was pre-seasoned which is good it at least has a start we're just going to make it even better so we're going to put this on the stove top you would do the same thing whether this was a pan or anything else the dutch oven even same exact process no matter what you're doing here put this on the stove top we're going to turn this on not quite on high maybe medium high and we're going to let this heat up we want this to heat up until even the handles are warm cast iron is a porous material so when it heats up all of those little pores will open up they'll get bigger and that's what we want to happen before we start putting any oil or type of seasoning on this we want to have all of those pores open up so when we put the oil on it actually gets down into those pores so i'm going to let this be on here for a few minutes until i know that the whole thing is hot then we'll come back and i'll show you the first step in seasoning this all right so we've had this on for a few minutes now and the whole thing is getting warmed up i've turned this down to only about number two so that we don't we don't want this so hot that you're gonna like deep fry something you just want it hot enough i mean you want it hot but you don't want it so hot that when you put some oil on here it's gonna splatter everywhere so that's about where i have it now um there really is no exact temperature so now that i have this on here let's talk about what type of oils are best for seasoning now there's two that really that i recommend uh the best is lard lard is going to be one of your best oils it's easy to put on and it's it just really soaks in well it gives a good coating if you either don't eat lard or don't have lard you can use coconut oil coconut oil will also do a really good job and then my third choice would be avocado oil because it's a very mild oil as well we're gonna go with lard today because that's what i have and that's what i like using so we're gonna use lard so what i'm gonna do is now that this is heated up is i'm going to take you know tablespoon or so of lard i'm going to put that on my pan and we're going to let that melt [Music] seeing how that's kind of splattering i'm actually going to turn my heat off because it's probably getting a little too hot as i'm standing here talking normally i wouldn't have allowed it to get that hot and then i'm going to use some paper towels and now that that large is on there i'm just going to now you got to be careful don't burn yourself we're going to just spread that lard all over the surface of the pan and we're just going to spread that all around the top of the pan want to make sure you get the handles get the surface really good and just really coat that into the pan all right now that we have that all on there we're gonna let that sit for a minute now you can do the same process to the bottom my opinion is the seasoning that comes on these preseason plant pans is really okay for the bottom um i really just worry about re-seasoning the top of the pan where you're actually going to be cooking but i know there's different thoughts about that that's just what i do so get this entire top coated now again remember the heat is off at this point what we're going to do now is we're going to let this sit for about three or four minutes not real long we don't want this to cool off all the way but the heat is off so we're gonna let this sit for about three or four minutes and let all of that oil soak in and then i'll show you the next step all right it's been about four minutes since we put all of that oil on this pan a lot of it has soaked in but a lot of it is still sitting there on the surface this is probably the most important step to this entire process and i think this is the step that a lot of people neglect to do so we keep an old towel around just for this purpose this towel is pretty saturated with old oil but it we keep it around specifically for this purpose and i recommend if you're going to be using cast iron on a real regular basis you have an old towel like this around for the same thing once you've let this sit you don't want to leave all of that excess oil on your pan you need to get that off of there so what we're going to do now is we're going to take our towel here we're going to start going over this pan until it's basically dry we want all of that excess oil to be off of this pan now that may seem counterproductive because you're trying to get a layer of oil on this pan but trust me this is the way you want to do it or you're going to end up with a sticky kind of gross pan that nobody wants to use so we're going to wipe this until it looks dry now that we have all of that excess oil wiped off you can see that it already has a much deeper dark color uh just really looks nice getting that excess oil off there like i said is one of the most important things because now what we're going to do is we're going to leave this sit here until it completely cools down as it cools down all of those pores that opened up when we heated it up are going to close back up and trap all of that oil in here after it cools down we're going to do this again we're actually going to do this four or five times this first day before we start using this pan and then it will be nicely seasoned and ready to use that may seem like a lot of work but trust me doing that the very first time is going to save you a lot of headaches down the road so we're going to just leave this here we're going to repeat that process several more times i'm not going to show you because it's going to be exactly the same but that is in my opinion the absolute best way to season a new piece of cast iron now i do want to add that just because you've gotten this seasoned so even after i do this five times that doesn't mean that this pan is going to be a complete non-stick surface cast iron is never going to be 100 non-stick like your teflon or some of the other artificial type things but over time it's going to get much much better and it's going to be almost nonstick and in fact if you take care of it correctly it's going to get to the point where you don't even notice anymore in a little bit we're going to actually show you how to cook some things and then how to clean the pans afterwards so that you can see what it looks like to actually take care of them and we're actually going to be using some of our pans that are already well seasoned so you'll get an idea of how good they are over time now that i've showed you how to season a new pan there is one more thing i want to talk to you about before we get into the cooking section and that is how to strip a pan that you may have found at a garage sale i think a lot of people are kind of confused about the differences between stripping an old pan down and seasoning a pan if you find a pan at a garage sale that is already fairly smooth doesn't have rust on it and it pretty much looks like you could take it home and start using it i would take it home season it once or twice the way i just showed you and it'll probably be good to go but sometimes you're going to find pans at a garage sale or someplace that need to be completely you need to start over with them so this is a pen that i just recently bought at a garage sale and this pan needs to be completely stripped and started over you can see on the inside hopefully you can see that there's you know it's bumpy it's got a lot of old build up on there someone didn't take care of this pan the way that it should have been taken care of um probably still worked just fine but you know there's a couple ways that you can do it you can take something like this you can put it in your oven you can put it face down you can turn the oven on 450 or even 500 degrees if your oven goes up that high and let it sit for a couple hours what that is going to do is it's going to basically bake off every a bit of seasoning that's on this pan and get it back down to bare metal if you have an oven that has a self-cleaning function you can also just put your pans in there on self cleaning and let it go through that cycle it'll do the same thing the way that i actually prefer to do it is not in the oven at all but in a gas grill outside because it's gonna burn off all of this old oil and it's going to really smoke and it's going to smoke up your house quite a bit so if you have a gas grill do it outside on your grass grill put all the burners on high throw your pans in there for about an hour maybe an hour and a half even until you don't see much smoke coming out anymore and then let them cool way down because they're going to be super hot let them cool way down and then you can start the re-seasoning process of all of those pans and that is a good way to to get some at the garage sales that may look kind of gross and nasty and start over with them okay let's get to cooking we're going to cook two separate things for you today in two different pans and then we're going to clean both of those pans for you so you can see the entire process i'm gonna start off cooking two fried eggs in a smaller cast iron pan now one thing that i've learned with cast iron is you always start with oil or some kind of fat you need that fat in order to prevent it from sticking so i'm gonna put some oil in that pan i'm using lard and i'm gonna turn this on about medium heat i'm gonna wait for that fat to completely melt before i add the eggs that's another tip never put food in a cold cast iron pan it just works best if the pan is already hot and can start cooking that food right away time for the eggs i'm going to be frying two eggs our home grown eggs one thing that i've learned about cooking eggs in cast iron is to not disturb the eggs while they're cooking for quite a while you really want them to have a really nice cooked edge so that they don't stick to the pan i think that's one of the tricks to learn when cooking eggs in a cast iron pan just leave them alone even scrambled eggs put your scrambled eggs in there leave them alone don't mix them all around a whole lot wait till they get pretty firm on the bottom before you start flipping them around that will prevent a lot of the sticking i think it's time to flip these fried eggs so i just want to show you [Applause] how fantastic that is look at that it's like a nonstick pan right there i'm just gonna separate these eggs because that's what i like to do and flip them my pan is well oiled and it is well seasoned that's what makes it so easy to cook on these cast iron pans pans like this and this kind of easy cooking with cast iron pans it doesn't come right away so don't get frustrated if your pans don't work as well as these we actually had to decide to throw out all of our non-stick teflon pans in order to force ourselves to work with and get used to cooking on cast iron so if that's the direction that you're heading in your family just throw all those pans out and force yourself to work with the cast iron pan it's seriously like getting used to cooking on a gas stove when you've had an electric stove there is like a break-in period there's a learning period and that's what's gonna happen when you're switching from non-stick pans to uh cast iron but it's totally worth it okay these guys are done they're actually a little bit more done than i like i'm an over medium girl so our eggs are done and you can see in the pan there is really nothing stuck in that pan it looks fantastic now that the eggs are done i'm just going to move this hot pan off the burner so it can start to cool we're going to cook one more thing and then i'm going to show you how to clean both of the pans that we're going to be using the next thing i'm going to make for you is taco meat and i chose taco meat because the end result of the taco meat is going to leave stuff stuck in the pan so i want to show you how to clean a pan that has stuff stuck in it versus a pan that doesn't have anything stuck in it so we're going to start off just like before we're starting off with some oil in the pan again i'm using lard and this time because i'm going to be using a larger amount of food i'm going to use a larger amount of oil it's probably a tablespoon of lard i'm gonna turn on the heat again to about medium and let that melt before i put the food into a hot pan one thing we've learned cooking with cast iron is that the cast iron pans themselves seem to they burn hotter i guess than other kinds of pants i rarely ever need to have the burner on high in fact when i do i feel like things are splattering out of the pans it's really hard to not burn my food in a really really hot pan that's been on high so i just wanted to forewarn you that when you're cooking with cast iron you can bring the temperatures way down because the pans themselves just cook hotter i'm making our taco meat with ground pork i know that might seem weird to some of you because most people use ground beef but the only ground meat that we have on hand right now is ground pork we raise all of our own meat ground pork is what it is today so i'm starting off with just browning some ground pork now like the eggs i'm actually going to let this meat just sit on there and fry without doing a lot of mixing that will really help the meat from sticking to the bottom of the pan now that i can see that some of the meat is pretty brown on the bottom layer now i'm going to go ahead and mix it up this is almost done once it's fully cooked then i'll add all my seasonings okay the meat is all done it's time for me to put in the seasonings i actually just turned off the heat for now this is just a really quick homemade taco seasoning mix that i'm going to be doing so i actually put in a couple tablespoons of chili powder i just measured in my hand two i'm gonna put three in today about a teaspoon of cumin or cumin however you say it the same thing with the garlic powder about one teaspoon of garlic powder and a teaspoon of salt we use pink himalayan salt i buy all of my salt and spices in bulk from azure standard put that in there mix that around [Music] i'm going to add one quarter cup of water turn my heat back on to medium after i get this all stirred in there nicely i'm just gonna let this simmer and i'm gonna keep stirring it so that all those flavors distribute really nicely on all the meat okay i turned the heat off of that because it's done and i've cooked this i've simmered it uh long enough for all of the water to evaporate so there's really just meat and seasoning left in here now i didn't tell you before that our meat is super lean so i didn't have to drain the fat off of this before turning it into taco meat but if yours is super fatty you may want to drain some of that off so because our next step is to clean these pans for you i'm actually going to transfer this meat into a different bowl so we can get ready to clean these now this taco pan is still really hot so like before i'm gonna put this on a different burner and let that cool down before we clean it let's start cleaning the other pan though this is the easiest thing ever okay now this pan is still very warm i can barely hold it without an oven mitt on so it's very hot this is probably the easiest it's ever going to be for cleaning a cast iron pan there's really just oil in this pan there's nothing stuck there's nothing dirty about it it's essentially exactly what kevin did with that pizza pan that he seasoned before in this situation we're just going to wipe out all of that oil this oil this amount of oil cannot stay in this pan until it's cooled it's going to get thick and gummy and then you'll need to strip your pan if that happens so like before i'm going to actually just take a paper towel and i'm going to wipe this pan out after it's all wiped out and cooled down it's ready to be used again for the next eggs or whatever you cook in here it doesn't need to be washed in the sink so that is a cleaning technique number one just wipe out the pan because there's nothing stuck in it the pan that we use to make the taco meat needs to be washed in the sink because this stuff just isn't going to come off with a paper towel a lot of that taco seasoning is going to remain on there and it's going to get sticky and it will just not be very good the next time that you cook something so i'm going to go ahead and put this in the sink and show you how to wash these pans in the sink and what to do with them now cleaning cast iron in the sink is really easy you're only using hot water you don't use soap you don't put it through the dishwasher you don't put it in your sink full of soapy water just hot water and some kind of scrubby you can use a cloth if there's nothing stuck on there you can use a loofah that's what i have on standby and some kind of like scraper okay start with hot water and you just clean your pan like you normally would with any other kind of pan but you're not using any soap you're just using hot water if you have something really stuck on there then you're going to want to use something that you can help scrape off the stuck-on stuff and this is actually just a little square scraper this one is from pampered chef but you can get these really anywhere we'll put a link to something like this in our amazon shop if you want to take a look this is what you'll use to scrape something off the bottom of your pan or the side of your pan these little scrapers work so well and it won't damage your pan it won't take off any of that nice seasoning that you've worked so hard to get and that's really what we're trying to do here we're trying to clean these pans without affecting the seasoning that's on the pan that's exactly why you don't want to use soap you want to keep your precious seasoning on your pan and if you take the seasoning off your pan with the soap those pores can actually suck in some of that soap or any of the chemicals that you would try to use to clean this you don't want those in your pan you just need to get the food off and we're going to dry this off and i'm going to show you what we're going to do next i'm going to dry this pan off really well from all of the water water on your cast iron pan is going to make your pan rust regardless of how well you have it seasoned your cast iron pan cannot be put away wet or with any water on it at all so first we're going to dry it off really really well we're going to put it back on the stove top and turn the heat back on because even though you dried a lot of the water off the cast iron is still a little damp so we need to heat it up and evaporate any of the remaining water this pan is warm enough that the handle is warm so i'm going to turn off the heat and i am going to re-season this pan with a little bit of oil using the same exact technique that kevin used when he was seasoning my pizza pan for the very first time the reason i'm doing this is to make sure that that seasoning that wonderful seasoning stays on there every time after every time i wash it put a little bit of oil in there rub it around with a paper towel or you know a rag or an oil brush i'm gonna let it sit here again for three or four minutes and i'm gonna come back and wipe off the excess just like kevin said now when you're just first starting out with a brand new pan you will want to do this process after every time you wash your pan but when your pans are super well seasoned you don't really have to do this after every time you wash it but maybe every sixth time by that time you'll probably learn your pans when they need to be re-seasoned and when they don't but the best thing that you can do is to continue building the seasoning on your pans i've wiped off all of that excess oil just look at how beautiful that looks now once it cools down it is ready to go back on the wall rack of all the other cast iron pans now i've got a lot of questions about whether the wall behind our pans is like oily from the pans being on there because we wipe off all this excess oil the wall doesn't have a single bit of oil on it that's important that's another reason it's important to wipe down your pan so your wall doesn't get oily now the last thing that we wanted to touch on today is when is it is appropriate to use an enameled cast iron instead of just your regular cast iron with regular cast iron pans there's a few things that you don't want to do with them the most important is you don't want to really cook anything that's really acidic in them so anything that has a tomato as its main base anything that has a lot of vinegar or citrus juice i mean a little splash in something isn't a big deal but if that's the main base of it you want to keep that out of just a regular cast iron pan because that acidity will actually strip off the seasoning of your pan in those situations is when we use our enamel pans because there's not gonna be a seasoning like that on here the enamel is the seasoning also when we're boiling water for like cooking pasta and stuff like that we've gotten questions do we use our cast iron for that no that's a situation where we use our enameled cast iron right or our stainless steel pots exactly well you guys we hope that you learned a bunch about cast iron we also hope that we took some of the fear and maybe some of the anxiety about cooking and taking care of cast iron away and maybe you're a little bit more confident now you can try those you can get out your grandma's cast iron that she gave you and give it a try the main thing with cast iron really is just to start using it there is a learning curve but once you get used to it you're never going to want to go back to those other pans the cast iron beats it in so many ways but again you just need to get used to it give yourself the time to do it we love it and actually our girls love it they've been cooking on cast iron since they started cooking that's going to be a great skill for them to take with them to their husbands and to their families so you guys if you're enjoying our content and you're not a subscriber yet i hope that you'll hit the subscribe button before you leave don't forget that the best way that you can help us as always is to share our videos on all of your social media so others can learn about this way of life as well and until next time thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 195,642

Rating: 4.9615145 out of 5

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: 06Tm4AuOoY4

Length: 35min 18sec (2118 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021