How to Season Cast Iron Pots

Eric: How’s that? Female: What? Eric: So at the agricultural supply store. Henry. So at the agricultural supply store down at the next door sale, they had a sale on cast iron. So they had this whole box of cast iron cook ware worth 50 bucks, so I couldn’t pass that up. Because I like cooking with cast iron but I think a lot of people are either doesn’t know about it. They don’t know to season the cast iron properly or how to take care of it. So today we’re going to take our brand new cast iron and season it ands learn about how to cook with it. And we’ll watch Henry too. Up here, up, up. So we’ve opened up our box of cast iron. There’s a ton of stuff in here, I’ve got a grill , a fry pan, sauce pan, and a dutch oven. I already have one dutch oven but this one’s kind of neat and that it has a concave lid which means that put this one in a like a fire place or wood fire or a charcoal fire for that matter. And then stack additional coals on the top of the lid here, so you make some dump some charcoal on there and you could bake bread or a stew or whatever. Female: So man, you like burry it? Eric: You could burry it in the fire yeah, and you got the lid here and you got this gizmo here to pull it back out. And that’s perfect for there. . Eric: What do you want for a $50.00 for the cast iron? Eric: Let me show you—I already I had a grill like this one already that I have for a couple of years. And this is what seasoned cast iron looks like, as opposed to— Female: Looks dirty. Eric: So this is a seasoned griddle that I have for a couple of years and this is the brand new griddle here. You can see here this really nice and smooth, what seasoning does is it fills out the high and the low pots of the ground. And the oil basically gets absorbed by the steel and creates a non stick surface so this is really quite good. When you’re using cast iron you basically you oil and you cook your food and then when you’re done, you just wash it down with some water and like a sponge or a nylon scrubby. You can use a tiny of soap if you want. It just depends on how much crap is on there if it seasoned well the stuff should come right off. The first thing you want to do with the star to seasoning. You got to pre heat your oven here. I tried the oven to about 300 degrees. Eric: That’s on. Eric: This is my dutch oven that I have for a couple of years and you could see how nice and black that is. You have a question? Female: I have a question, can you help the lid up again. Eric: Yup. Female: What are those bumps for? Eric: Those bumps allow water that has condensed up in here to drip back on the food or juices that come out of the steam when you’re greasing something or cooking it on the oven. They collect here and they drop back on the food. Female: Clever. Eric: Instead of going along the edge here and falling off. They drop on the food rather than off the edge. Female: Is the new one have that? Eric: I don’t think so, now it doesn’t. I’m going to season one piece of cast iron and show you hoe you to do this. We’re going to take the frying pan, we’re just going to wash with a little soap and water. Female: Good luck with that. Eric: Now we got a soap. Female: You don’t know it, you open the lid Eric: So we just wash this off, you do basically want to get off. You know, it’s has been a factory being manufactured some gets it some oils and stuff on it. Male: Oh, I hear the washing machine. Female: We’ll save that for another day. Eric: This washing machine episode is kind of preparing to take off. I think one of the stabilizer springs in the washing machine is broken and just have to take the part of the washing machine to take it done. But that is something you can do, I mean you don’t have to just throw up the washing machine and get a new one. When you’re going to season cast iron and you want to use some vegetable shortening and have some paper towels in it. You can’t everyone got paying on how to season cast iron, this is how I do it some of your friends may have a different opinions about this. Why do you use, I’ve washed this with soap and water and I take some shortening and I just coat it the whole thing. And I do the outside as well. Female: Leaving it coated on the outside? Eric: No, but I just like the color. You take this, I’m going to leave it in there for about a half hour to an hour and then I’ll take it out and I’m going to add more shortening and put it in there again. And you could do that once you can do it 3 times, the more times you season it from the get go the better it will be earlier on. The anti stick or the whatever that work is on thinking of. Female: Teflon. Eric: The Teflonessity og cast iron. Female: Essity? Got it. Eric: Teflon it like elasticity, Teflon elasticity. Female: Yes, yum real cheese. Eric: And the griddle makes great real cheese out of this. Any way,the more you season it, you can do it two or three times, it will be quite fine. Couple of things about cast iron, you don’t want it to store food in cast iron. Male: There’s a light blinking. Female: It’s the take bite. Eric: Okay, when you’re done baking everything in your oven it looks like this. It’s going to be completely black, it’s start to get darker. When you bake this on the oven it’s going to smoke, so you want to turn the range hood or open up the windows. You can even do this on the gas grill outside even it’s in the middle of the way you just put close the lid, put them in and turn the heat all the way. And let it cook and comeback and place a couple times of oil. To clean them it’s just really simple, you just basically put your griddle, put your cast iron in your sink. I use a copper of scrubbing pad with no soap on it, if you got something that’s really stuck. Some people will use salt because it’s like abrasive, you can use this to cut the dirt off or there are some people, and I like this because this is totally fine. Use a tiny bit of soap, because this griddle it has just have some grease stuck in the corners. And a little bit of soap and nit will cut it right out. After you’ve washed the cast iron you need to just dry it off. The quickest to dry it off, I found is to put it back on the stove. After this is dried, what I do is I have one of these oil sprayer gizmos with some vegetable oil and I just spray that on really lightly. Turn off the heat and I’ll just oil it back up again since the griddle is hot the cast iron is hot the oil sinks in to the pores. Let it cool off and put it away. Female: Internet celebrity sneezes. Eric: And that’s a celebrity sneeze. Put that on YouTube. Male: Ha, ha.