The most comprehensive way to recondition your carbon steel pans

so I've got a very beat up old DE fry pan here I want to see what happens if I put that into a lie bath for a [Music] week so people talk to me a lot about the state of their pans people that have been using cast iron and carbon steel for a long time their pans are in great shape but they may have one pan that they started with that's you know 10 years old 5 years old or somebody who's new at using cast iron and carbon steel specifically carbon steel what we're talking about today and their pan is in pretty bad shape but they figured out how to go forward how to season properly how to get their pan where they want it to be but their pan is not looking amazing and people say to me all the time hey what can I do to strip and start again this is an aesthetic thing a lot of times their pans are in a good spot and they're looking good but they want their pans to look a certain way and I totally understand that I like my pans to look a certain way I've got a couple of matte Furs here that are in great shape I'm really happy with the color the overall seasoning and they are working incredibly well for me I've also got a couple of old Dubay here that were pretty badly abused in one of my teaching kitchens this was used just generically by a whole bunch of people on way too high I eat all the time I did Strip This pan at one point in time but as you can see there's a lot of carbon build up all around the edges and all around where the the rivets are and that is you know to me an aesthetic issue this pan doesn't look amazing and you know same one here the seasoning here is fine but it just looks crappy it's just had too high of heat for too many times and it's not looking amazing so what this is about is what is the most effective way to clean this pan totally get all the carbon off and start from scratch so a lie bath to date is the very best way that I know to totally strip a pan all the nooks and crannies and just put it away no F no M but it is costic so you have to be very very careful with using a lie bath so it may not be for everybody but for those of you that want to try it it's easy to get the LIE crystals you can get them from pretty much any hardware store and you can make a fairly concentrated lie bath lots of different instructions out there uh on the interweb and I will also put what I use in the notes of this video but let's take a look at the pan that I put away for a week and give it a scrub and get this thing into as new of shape as I possibly can okay so already I've got my gloves on I got my goggles on this is a lie bath in here so this is where I had stocked this pan a week ago and I am going to pull that guy out and we are going to take that over to the sink get this lid out of here nice closeup to that pan all right now as you can see that's pretty darn stripped um all even around the handle here and this has got some carbon still built on it but I'm going to give this a scrubbing right now and see if I can get this guy pretty much right clean [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so there we go so that pan is phenomenally stripped like absolutely fantastic how well stripped that pan is so I am very very happy with that that is smooth smooth smooth pans in looking great shape this handle has seen better days it could do with a bit of work and uh and cleaning and seasoning little close up on that handle this is what a flame over time a lot of heavy flame has taken this off also boiling in the oven that will happen to a Deo mineral B but we're going to make this pan like new so what I'm going to do right now is that I'm going to use the oven seasoning method for this guy but I'm going to warm it on the stove top here and then it's going to go into a 425° oven for an hour and that's going to be one single coat and then I'm going to do another one and another one and probably do three but that has been done lots of times so I will show you kind of one coating here but the multiple coating uh you know I'm not going to go through it in fine detail but we're going to get in a beautiful spot and then we're going to do a nice fried egg test and see how beautiful this pan is going to be when it's freshly seasoned okay so the pan is preheated I'm using cook culture seasoning paste you can use any sort of well really you can use any fat that you really want but a a seed oil or a unsaturated fat works works the best uh but you want to get this on right away what's going to happen you can actually already see this see that goldenness right in the middle there that's the beginning of oxidation so the exposed raw iron is going to start to rust right away so we're getting a layer of the paste on and paste is beeswax and two different types of seed oil and so nice thin layer all around all the nooks and crannies all right and that pan already looks fantastic just being shiny like that okay so that is nicely coated and that is now going to go right into a preheated 42 5° oven and it goes and you don't have to invert this one you can invert it being that we use paste this such a little amount it's not going to pull if you use oil sometimes it just gets a little pulled inverting is good practice this will be totally fine like that so it's in there for an hour at 400° 425° fhe and we'll see it when it's done okay so the pan is done had 1 hour in the oven and then I allowed it to ful fully fully cool in the oven I really like to allow the pan to fully cool that way I'm pretty sure that it is going to be rock hard underneath and it's not going to be tacky so like if I did that took it out it was still warm the seasoning would be a bit tacky and then I would be seasoning on top of that again so this allows it to harden right up and then we put it back in for another seasoning but this guy here is nicely done so so it doesn't look all golden and brown and fully done but this pan is seasoned this is a fully fully seasoned pan you could go ahead and just start cooking with this it has one layer on it which makes it a little bit fragile I do like to build it up it just takes a little bit more abuse that way but there's no reason to not just start cooking this way if that's what you choose to do so one round in the oven it is fully sealed the pan if you had a big gas burner you could do the same sort of thing on a gas burner I have induction I have a flat glass top stove top it doesn't do the job perfectly all around it'll leave everything kind of gummy the pen will heat up but it will leave it gummy around the top the oven is absolutely brilliant for doing this I I my absolute favorite way of doing it so this now will go back into the oven for a couple of more rounds just because that's what I like to do but this pan would work just totally fine if I if I was to fry an egg on this pan if I'm going to fry an egg after two more rounds the results from my experience is going to be exactly the same but will that give us a non-stick result this or even two more rounds will that give us a nonstick result that's what we're going to see so two more rounds into the oven and then we're going to try that out okay so there it is wonderfully seasoned so nice good dark seasoning this still of course is fresh right so I wouldn't want to do anything too harsh to this right away like start searing in it right away still want it to kind of develop a a dense seasoning something that's going to really adhere to it just when you're new with the seasoning please just go easy with it lots of people struggle with it when they season it and then they just go full bore and they're like oh it's all peeled off and I'm having problems that's really really common so just baby steps into using it what I suggest is to fry a bunch of onions fry a bunch of veggies uh don't do something like potatoes or something that's so starchy uh and use a decent amount of fat when you're first using a pan like this you can cut down your fat as you build a really good seasoning to you know just what you want to use but be a little generous when you're first starting with this guy and so what we're going to do now is get on the hob we're going to heat it up and we're going to fry ourselves an egg okay so here's a pan preheated we're going to do a little bit of grape seed oil that I'm just going to wipe off the pan again so just get it around and we're also going to use some butter as I was saying we want to make sure we have quite a lot of fat in this pan especially when it's new don't need to use quite as much when it's not new [Music] B [Music] [Music] as you can see that pan is looking great I'm going to take it over and give it a little quick wipe down in the sink and we'll be back okay so I got a deal going on our very popular iron cookware seasoning kit is $10 off right now till the end of May 2024 for you a YouTube viewer use code CC kit that's cook culture kit CC kit in the link in the description you can go and buy the kit and get $10 off the kit contains two 2 oz seasoning waxes a chain mail and a cloth and instructions on how to use this kit so you'll find all of that in the description below and right now to the end of May 2024 you save an extra 10 bucks so go do it okay so there we have it so if you want to go from something like this to something like this then that is the absolute easiest process that I know of so like I said be very careful with using lie but you know I've never had a problem with it I wear gloves I wear glasses some people say to wear a respirator or some sort of a mask uh and just be really really careful but it works incredibly well so if your pans are just in you know either dire need or in just a need of a tuneup this a really simple fast effective way to make them look absolutely pin so I hope this has been helpful any comments any questions please throw them below thanks so much [Music]

Channel: Cook Culture

Views: 24,298

Keywords: carbon steel, lye bath, debuyer, season iron cookware, iron seasoning

Id: AwQHAUr-ThE

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024