Does the thought of cleaning your cast iron give you the heebie jeebies?

Well, you're not alone.

Today, I'm going to show you how to go from rusty crusty to smooth and shiny and ready to cook!

I'm Tracy Barnett and welcome to Garden Party.

Today is Cast Iron Care 101 where I'm going to show you how to restore, re-season, and maintain your cast iron so you can cook with it for generations to come.

Now, cast iron cookware is super durable, but also there can be some maintenance problems.

Just ask my team around here.

All of these cast irons came from their kitchens and they have a plethora of problems.

A lot of these are just a simple storage problem where there was something stored on this cast iron that was a little bit wet, had some moisture, and it's caused that to rust just in the middle.

And then you have this pan here that has just not been properly maintained.

It hasn't been stored well, it has not had that nice little grease massaged into it after cooking.

Just needs a little cleaning.

And then of course, let's fast forward to this one here.

And that's just crusty crust, right there.

So no matter the level of neglect on your cast iron, there's still a lot of life left in it.

To bring your cast iron back to this mortal coil of life, take a little bit of regular dish detergent.

And I'm going to put an ample amount of detergent here.

And I know a lot of you people who use cast iron are just like, oooooh, dish detergent in your cast iron!

Well, now's the time that you can just scrub away everything in that pan.

We just really want to loosen up any kind of debris or any kind of set on food there.

This is lukewarm water, ample amount of water.

But you don't want a ton of water where your dish detergent is super diluted.

And to give that a good stir there, And I'm going to put our cast iron directly in it.

And so we're going to loop some water up there into the cast iron itself.

So wash out.

You can already see that the color of the water is already discolored.

So there was quite a lot of staining in there.

I'm actually going to put quite a bit of dish detergent directly into this cast iron too.

I'm going to use just a nice bristle brush here.

As you can see, this one's been used quite a few times.

Specifically for this purpose and in slow circular motion.

I'm just going to start working around the cast iron.

Now I'm going to work on the inside first really cover every inch of the cookware.

This is one of those times too, where you don't want to leave any part of the cookware unbrushed.

So we're going to brush down the back side, the handle, the front.

I mean, just look at all of the debris we're lifting up off this pot already.

All right, I'm going to switch our cast iron over, and I'm going to scrub the back too.

It's a little bit loud out around here.

Periodically, every few years, even my good cast iron, I'll just go ahead and scrub it down an re-season it.

Because if you use cast iron for quite some time, it's going to need to be re-seasoned.

All right.

So now we are going to wash off our residual detergent here and rinse it well.

So if you're over a sink just give that a good rinse.

We're going to wipe it off too before it goes into the oven.

There's no real set rules in stone.

Until we've got it re-seasoned, and then you better not mess it up.

I would literally get a divorce over someone destroying my cast iron pan.

No lie.

All right, so let's take a look at this one here.

So this one has this little bit of rust.

And I've got a trick that's going to help us out here for that I'm going to wet it with our dish detergent.

So and I'm not leaving a ton of water in the bottom of the pan here.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to cover this in some salt.

So this is a great option if you have a pan that's just really corroded and you've had stuff that's just really cooked on there, the salt is going to give us a nice gentle abrasion.

Again, I'm going to go for my little scrubber here.

And I'm just going to dip it ever so slightly in a little bit of water.

What that's going to do is it's going to make a little paste here.

And you can kind of see I'm just going to get wet get all in it here.

You can kind of see it lifting that rust right up off the surface.

If you find yourself with a cast iron that's kind of built up a rust on the back of the pan, which is completely normal, this should help alleviate that too.

All right.

Let's see where we are here in our cleaning.

I'm going to just dip that.

As you can see that little bit of salt tricks already removed quite a lot of that rust actually see a little bit more there.

So I'm going to go back in And then I'm going to dip that in there.

And I'm just going to follow the same steps and scrub all around this cast iron.

So now that we've got our skillet adequately scrubbed and all of that rust and crust removed, I'm going to line a baking sheet with tin foil.

now comes the fun part.

you don't really need any special equipment.

You don't need any special oil or wax nothing for your cast iron skillet.

the key to re-seasoning our cast iron is solid vegetable oil.

So old fashioned old timey.

But what I love about the kind of solid vegetable oil here is you can get that in any nook and cranny.

So I'm going to use my fingers here.

And I'm going to just start rubbing this whole skillet down in shortening.

Now you can see that I'm putting a thin layer.

And then I'm going to take my paper towel, and I'm going to rub that down even further.

If you're using an oil that is just liquid, don't pool it up into your cast iron.

You just want that thin layer.

We don't want to mess all over our stove.

So that being said, to vegetable oil, shortening, whatever you want to call it, it has a really high smoke point.

So we don't want to use an oil that's going to smoke up our kitchen.

So definitely no bacon grease.

No lard.

And I wouldn't waste the money on peanut oil.

You can see that the skillet looking beautiful already.

It's kind of looking brand new.

My cuticles will too!

Don't forget any part of the cast iron.

Every piece should be covered.

Now, if you see a place, for instance, that just has a little bit caked up, take your paper towel and just kind of rub that in.

I'm going to leave almost like a transparent layer there where you can see my fingertips in it.

I'm gonna do the same for this one.

So now that we have our pans all nice and seasoned up, let's put them in our preheated 400 degree oven.

Ugh, I need a mini forklift here.

I'll meet you all over here.

So place your cast iron skillet in the oven for one hour upside down so the oil doesn't sit it in the skillet.

And it all uniformly melts and drips out of the skillet.

And to our tin foil pan.

So a lot of your jaws are going to hit the ground here.

But I do use a very diluted amount of detergent when I'm cleaning my cast iron.

Now, this is all going to depend on what you've cooked in it.

say I've cooked something that is sticky I love a cast iron steak situation, and that's perfectly fine to use a little bit of detergent.

Just be sure and dilute it.

Don't ever let your cast iron sit in the soapy water.

Be sure.

Wash it out.

Dry immediately.

And absolutely never to the dishwasher.

Or not even when we're re-seasoning it.

So the hour of spa time is over for our skillets and the stove, and they look very much shiny and alive.

So what you want to do is just use a rag that's not going to leave any debris in our skillets.

And all I'm going to do is just lightly just wipe off any extra so it doesn't drip down in our cabinet or anything.

And plus it reveals that beautiful shiny pan.

Can you believe this was this was that rusty crusty when earlier that someone had stored something on top of be sure wipe the entirety of the pan that includes the bottom.

Look at that.

It's ready to cook some bread in.

now, after you've re-seasoned your cast iron, let's talk a little bit about maintenance.

the best thing that you can do is wipe it out with a good cloth that may be just a bit damp, depending on what you've cooked in it.

And then what I'll do is I pour just the tiniest amount of oil can be any kind of oil that you have.

It can even be the spray oil in a can.

And then I'm just going to use a rag.

It's probably good not to use a paper towel for this, since we are just kind of maintaining it.

We don't want to leave any kind of debris on our surface here, but by just wiping out and wiping that little bit of oil on your skillets as you store them, we'll keep them lustrous, bright, beautiful, shiny, and ready to go whenever you need a good pan.

So with just a few simple steps, you'll be able to keep your cast iron around for generations to come.

But., shhh!

And don't tell anyone, because you'll have 5 to 6 people staring at you in the face wanting you to do their cast iron.

Send them the link to our Garden Party Cast Iron 101 instead.

Happy cast iron cooking.

I feel like the shooting a garden party is very like Julia Child-esc.

Chaotic.

We need like a huge flash card for the middle one.

re-season re-season.

So there, you can either use shortening which is just what what is shortening.

Is that like the vegetable solid vegetable or like... Yeah, my, so my pilot light stay lit all the time, just in case I need to do some emergency cooking.

The one hour is up and our skillets have just been in their little spa oven time.

And they look like they've been rejuvenized well rested, shiny, glossy.

I don't know about Rejuvenized.

Now just need to find somebody to hit in the head with this.

I don't know, so how should we end it?