What is the best way to clean one of these when you are done cooking with it? I just bought a small Lodge to start playing around with and getting the hang of. I cooked eggs on it the other morning for the first time and it was a bit of a pain to get it clean. I know they say don’t use soap to clean them.
I have a set of my grandmothers I will break out once I get it figured out.
Screwed around with sanding discs for a bit, then picked up a flap disc for the angle grinder. That was the ticket.
Cheap Lodge pan before:
View attachment 238428
After:
View attachment 238429
Time to season it.
Best place to find cast iron pans, is at yard sales and estate auctions. They are usually the old (better quality) pans and you can usually buy them for pennies on the dollar.
This. I still have one from Goodwill I bought a decade ago for $2 or something silly.
I wish Dutch Ovens were easier to find though. I finally broke down paid paid for a new one (that has a lid that can hold charcoal).
For what it's worth, Smithey just came out with a really nicely polished eight incher. Yeah, it's right in line with their usual pricing. But my wife wants one anyway, and she's the omelette queen and, well, she's my wife and she lets me spend too much on guns and ammo, so...
https://smitheyironware.com/product/no-8-cast-iron-skillet/
Ouch.
Pumpkin spice chloroform .....
Of course my mantra is 'happy wife, happy life', so I get the expenditure
Of course the Walmart two-fer will work just as well .....
Well, I will say that having and using two other Smitheys (as well as Lodge skillets and others), it would take a LOT of work for me to get a Lodge acting the same as the Smithey right out of the box. It's like every other form of tool improvement ... you chase diminishing returns with extra $, and eventually have to admit it's because of the aesthetics or, more likely, because wife. Considering we can't even get two good salads, a fancy pizza, and a bottle of digestible wine and a non-insulting tip for a hard working waiter without approaching $100 around here, I guess it's all relative these days.
NOTE TO SELF: Charge my own customers more. Everyone else is doing it!
Ouch.
Pumpkin spice chloroform .....
Of course my mantra is 'happy wife, happy life', so I get the expenditure
Of course the Walmart two-fer will work just as well .....
Best place to find cast iron pans, is at yard sales and estate auctions. They are usually the old (better quality) pans and you can usually buy them for pennies on the dollar. We cook almost exclusively using cast iron pans. A well seasoned cast iron pan can be as non-stick as any of those chemically coated newbie pans.
I just got a 14" cast iron skillet... My new favorite thing!