r/BuyItForLife • u/Macrauchenia • Oct 19 '11

[BI4L Request] Pots & Pans

I'm starting anew with all of my dish wares and such, and am thinking about investing in a nice set of pots and pans.

Any suggestions?

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u/blizzardbear Oct 19 '11

Been wondering about this myself. It seems like if you want good stuff you either get the expensive stuff like All Clad or you get the hard to maintain stuff like cast iron. I love cooking on my cast iron skillet, but it's a pain to clean. It's currently got a thick coat of crud on it, but I know it will outlast me easily.

2

u/upleft Oct 19 '11

Adding some water while the pan is still hot and then scraping the bottom a bit with a metal spatula works super well for clearing up that gunk that can build up after making something like fajitas.

2

u/goldragon Oct 23 '11

If you have a charcoal grill like a Weber then the thing to do is build a lump charcoal fire (lump burns twice as hot as briquettes) and put the skillet right in there. The fire will burn off all that crud. Then you need to clean and reseason the skillet. Clean it by spraying it all over with oven cleaner while holding it inside a garbage bag, tie the bag up and leave overnight or at least a few hours. Then wash it clean and immediately start to season it following these instructions under the last section. The key points are applying very thin layers and seasoning for multiple layers. I did six layers on my skillets, starting in the morning doing three a day. So yes the whole thing from start to finish took a weekend but now all of my cast iron is clean as new with great seasoning on it and will be good for years to come.

1

u/rebent Oct 19 '11

this gunk is the bane of my existance. When I cook bacon it's the worst. I've found that cooking an egg helps to clean it out, because the egg somehow sucks up the sticky shit that gets in there.

1

u/NoMoreNicksLeft Oct 25 '11

Pour the grease out into an empty can. Be careful not to spill it, it makes a mess.

Turn the fan on above the stove to high. Turn the burner on to high. Let it sit for a minute or two and get hot.

At this point you hardly have to scrape. A wooden spatula or scraper can peel it all right off. Would probably wipe too, but without wetting the cloth first, it'd catch fire.

Anything that won't scrape easily, don't keep scraping... you can expose bare metal that way (eventually). It will wipe out with a cloth (wet it). Anything that doesn't wipe, let it burn black. It's now part of the seasoning. It won't affect the taste of things cooked in it afterward, it's pretty much just carbon with maybe a little oil on it or embedded in it.