Though I've used cast iron dutch ovens for a number of years, I've recently come to know and really enjoy using cast iron skillets in place of teflon-coated aluminum pans. The 10.25" and 12" Lodge pre-seasoned skillets are only $11 and $17 w/ free shipping for purchases over $25!!

Question:
Those of you who use cast iron when car camping - how do you pack/stow it?

I've thought about making plywood boxes to protect them and to protect other gear from them, but I worry that the wood might somehow absorb water and invite rust. I wonder if using the board with one-sided plastic laminate - built so the plastic is on the inside - might be better.

Any advice?


Ken

A friend, who is the best camp cooker I have ever seen, keeps his cast iron, and other kitchen goodies, in an old GI foot locker. He of course keeps a good coat of oil on his cast iron when in storage...

A properly seasoned and reoiled unit will not rust. What you do need to watch for is the oil becoming rancid.
This usually happens when The ovens are stored with the lids in place.
A simple soution is a wash in natural cider vinegar, a quick reheat and fresh oil application.

I have read that you are not supposed to wash cast iron, only wipe it out. But the idea of never actually cleaning it just doesn’t sit well with me. Most times there is a lot of food residue that requires soap and water to remove. I’ve been cleaning them with soap and water for years, it doesn’t hurt the pan at all.


I have 2 cast iron pans that I use at home and I wash them all the time and when dry I just spray the inside with pam spray.

You might try this site Idos a wealth of info there.

Lee

Cast ironware is very porous. The idea of seasoning is to slowly build up a sealed and slick, non stick surface from the application of oil and the juices from foods cooked ( think of the 'pickling' done to a carbon knife cutting fruit and vegetables.)
By washing with soap, you are continualy reopening the porous iron surface.It's like eating a store bought cherry pie from the aluminum pan vs aplate. You get that metallic taste.
Older and properly seasoned ovens will make far superior tasting dishes than a brand new one.
The heat of cooking kills any nasties, and as I said if you let the seasoning go rancid cier vinegar will zap it and a reheat and recoating sets things straight.
I pack mine in hard paniers when horsepacking. The stoves are filled with cooking supplies and wrapped snug in an old burlap sack.
Some dutch ovens have been handed down for generations having never seen soap and water. The generation manages to produce another generation to pass them down to: Mine did. I have my great-great grandmother's that crossed the palins in a Constoga. It outcooks the ovens I've been seasoning for 20 years now.

I have a rather large collection of cast iron cooking items, and have been using it personally and semi-professionally for some time now.

Most of my iron are camp dutch ovens; the type with three legs on the bottom and a lip around the top of the lid. Most of those are big enough that I don't want to carry more than one in a container at a time. For this reason, I put most of my dutch ovens in their own canvas bag container. Both Lodge and Camp chef sell dutch oven bags. I've toyed with the notion of building wooden crates to hod my cast iron in, and there are pros and cons to that idea. The box will add weight, but will allow the round ovens and skillets to be stowed a lot more securely. As I keep all my cast iron seasoned, I am unconcerned with the presence of a little moisture, and if you did crate them I am certain the moisture content of the wood they would be packed in would not be a concern.

Generally, a properly maintained cast iron pot or pan can be cleaned using water and a scrub pad that won't cut the seasoning finish. That is the most common way I clean my pots and pans. If there is excessive food detritous left, I will let it soak, or in the rarest cases, I will scorch the food out, meaning I expose the pot to enough heat to essentially char the food and remove the ashen remnants. In all cases, I sterilize my pots by heating them up to smoking temps (in excess of 450 degrees) after every use. Usually this is in combination with applying another seasoning coat to the pot/pan, depending on how rigorous the cleaning out process was. There should never be a need to use soap and water on a cast iron pot or pan. However, you can do that, but as Chris warned, eventually the use of a surfactant will deteriorate the seasoning which makes cast iron stick resistant (non-stick it definitely ain't). I find that over prolonged periods, the application of soap will cause the base layer of the seasoning to ablate off, even if you are diligent about reseasoning regularly, and will eventually have to start the pot or pan over by burning off the failing seasoning mess and starting a new base layer. It may take a year or more, but using soap to clean with will eventually catch up to you.

Also, I never store my pots or pans with residual grease or oil. Some folks find that a rancid pot gives the dish a "nostalgic taste", but I was raised to expect the food to taste the same coming out of cast iron as it would coming out of a glass pan. Besides, rancid oil is unhealthy, and it is a dust magnet.

Generally, I store my cast iron clean will sometimes put a paper towel between the lid and the pot, or turn the skillet upside down. This keeps the pot from developing condensation, and the skillet from collecting falling debris.

Seasoning a cast iron pot or pan is like a professional paint job on a hot rod. You want to do several very thin coats rather than one big glob. Also, the directions on seasoning you get from Lodge and the rest are not very effective. To properly season cast iron (and not take all day doing one pot), you need temps above 450 degrees, and at least an hour of exposure. This will make the seasoning turn black, shiny, and hard, rather than the brown, gummy mess you'll get if you follow the mfr's directions. If it is just smoking, it is at a good temp for seasoning. Don't ever use spray oil like Pam, it is too light to do the job. Shortening is better, so is lard. Tallow will also work, but not butter, or any fat with salt in it, so no bacon grease either. I get the best results using a cheap shortening and a swab. I rub a thin layer of grease into the cold surface, then heat it to seasoning temp, then as the grease smokes out, I swab the surface with another light coat and let it smoke out (cook until it quits smoking), repeating this process 3 or 4 times on a new pot, once to keep an older pot in shape.

I prefer to use a propane burner or grill outdoors, as the smoke process will stink up the inisde of the house for a day. I can do two pots/pans at a time usually on all but the biggest of my pots.

Once they are seasoned to a shiny, dry, black finish, they can be stored in the garage for a long time without much further care. The one thing to avoid during storage/transport is letting them rub together or against something else hard enough to scrape the finish. Otherwise, they are fairly maintenance free. I have pots on the shelf now that I've not used in more than a couple years that are just as usable right now as the day I last seasoned them, and this despite having moved my household and them along with it twice in that period. They've even gotten wet and not shown any sign of deterioration.

Now there is one pot I use for demonstration purposes that I left out all year long in the Florida rain. It is well rusted on the outside surfaces. However I kept the lid on it, and the inside is just as usable today as it was when I last seasoned it. I will use this pot to demonstrate how easy it is to deal with rust/abuse and bring the pot back to pristine quality in a couple hours. Most would be surprised how what looks like a ruined pot will shape up to good as new in such a short period and with such little effort.

I contest the idea that soap and water harms or is in any way bad for the pan or its seasoned coating. Why I say this is my first hand experience with them and what I have seen my mother do for my whole life.

My mother has several cast iron pans, in fact she gave me the two I have years ago. She washes them with soap and water and has done it since I can remember. She has had them for over 60+years (she’s 78-years old) they are seasoned (as are mine) great. There is a good somewhat shinny black coating on them. And she like me uses pam to coat them after washing them.


After I wash them, I put them on the range and heat them to quick-dry the pan and while it’s still hot I spray pam on it and wipe it around with a paper towel. The pans look and work great, I would say there are a lot of ways to do this and as long as one works for you, go for it.

"...My mother has several cast iron pans, in fact she gave me the two I have years ago. She washes them with soap and water and has done it since I can remember. She has had them for over 60+years (she’s 78-years old) they are seasoned (as are mine) great. There is a good somewhat shinny black coating on them..."

Mine did the same thing. Sadly, I don't have that jet black skillet anymore...

Just to clarify ...

So after using a cast iron pot/pan you clean the P/P with water, dry (towel or heat?), and stow - without adding any oil?

Lodge suggests adding a thin coat of oil to warm pan after each use. You don't do this?

I'm finding that my P&P's get a kind of sticky texture if I follow Lodge's advice and don't heat it for a while at high heat afterwards.

Now I'm wondering if at least with the first few uses I should clean, dry, VERY thin oil (need to get lard), heat to smoking for a good amount of time (how long?), cool, store ...

and then after that just clean, dry, & store.

Thanks,

Ken

Yes, like I said soap and water will work, and if you are judicious about oiling and heating it ever time after you wash it, you are going to mitigate the soap's effect considerably, maybe even completely. There has been debate about soap or not soap in various cast iron circles (including IDOS) probably forever. The majority still prefer not to soap their pots unless something went wrong and they are starting the seasoning process pretty much over. I have no doubt using soap will work fine for some, and I've tried it in the past without adverse effect, but I don't feel it is necessary and doesn't improve on my process for cleaning CI as it is now. That's my process, YMMV. I am by no means the final authority on the matter. I just came to the same conclusion as the majority of my peers and choose not to use soap.

Typically, I remove what food I can with utensils (not metal ones, unless I intend on a vigorous re-seasoning session). If there is a lot of food residue in the pot, I will put water in it and boil it for a bit. Depending on how stubborn the residue is, I may let it soak for a few minutes, then when it is cool enough to get my hand in I will use a plastic pot scrubber to ablate off the hopefully loosened residue. Anything still stuck to the pot at that point needs to be scorched off, so I put the dry pot on the heat and watch for the stubborn residue to carbonize or otherwise burn off. By then the pot is hot enough to swab down with a light coat of oil or grease. I keep the pot on the heat and let it go till it is pretty much done smoking. You'll have to try it a couple times to learn when it is right at that sweet spot where it is no longer tacky but not starting to flake off. Usually you can pull it off the heat while it is still smoking just a bit, and the residual heat will finish it off. Occasionally I pull it off too soon and it still has a bit of a tackiness to it, so I might put it back on the heat for a few minutes to finish it off. Generally a standard 12" skillet can be smoked off on a propane burner on med high heat in about half an hour. Figure on roughly 20-25,000 btu per pan, depending on how efficient the heat transfer from the source to the pot goes (on grills, it generally takes the higher side because of the relative distance and diffusion of the elements).

Lard is okay, but cheap shortening is probably ideal (saturated and hydrogentated actually is preferable) and will be less expensive. Once you have a new pot/pan seasoned with a few coats, you should figure on re-seasoning it once every two or three uses on average. That's about where my average is, and they will slowly improve over time so long as you don't scorch them or get too zealous with scrubbing or let food sit in the pot on the counter too long before removing it. Food enzymes work a lot like soap to loosen up the seasoning as well, acidic foods like certain fruits and vegetables or foods with a significant salt content are particularly reactive.

I don't put cast iron away with raw oil or grease on it. It invariably gets gooey and contaminated with dust etc, imparts a bad taste to the next dish, and gets oil/grease on anything the pot comes in contact with. I've not had a pot or pan rust on me while in storage on a shelf in the garage, unless I wanted it to. From my experience and correspondence with other avid Cast Iron users, the methods I use are pretty close to commonplace, but certainly not the only way folks do things.

Whew, good thing I don't eat fruits or vegetables!

... just kidding

If something is that hard to remove from my cast iron pans, I usually fill the pan with water and let it boil until it comes off easier. Scraping is done with a wood or plastic only, nothing metal. So far, it's worked for me. I understand cast iron is making a comeback. I read somewhere that modern 'no-stick' pans can give off nasty fumes if you overheat them.
Years ago, I found two really disgusting cast iron pans way back under the kitchen sink in one of the houses I bought. It looked like someone burned dinner in them 20 years ago and just shoved them in there and forgot them. They weren't damaged, just filthy, and they were Griswolds! I just had to find a way to clean them.
Somewhere I read an article about using 'electrolysis' to clean old cast iron pans. It seemed simply enough.
Hang them in a large non-conductive container (I used a plastic trash can). Fill with water and add some washing soda. Hook up to a battery charger to it, one to the pan and the other to another conductor. One is a cathode, the other is an anode, though I don't remember which is which. Turn it on, and after some time, the crud floats away. At the time, I had no battery charger, but I do have a Miller stick welder. So I turned it to it's lowest setting and hooked it up. Within half an hour the water in that trash can was close to boiling, and a layer of scum covered the water. I don't remember how long I left it go, but when I pulled it out, it was absolutely spotless and a bright shiny light gray. Virgin cast iron! I just re-seasoned them and use them at least twice a week.

You're lucky you didn't get a lovely rust collection, but oh my gods, you to took it back to the grey! The luck gods smiled on you.

Season it with beeswax it never goes rancid and will shed water and never rust. Just don't treat the outside if it comes in the house, it can mske a stickey black mess.

I've tried wax seasoning in the past, and it burns off(or evaporates?) before it volatizes properly to leave a carbon layer behind. If beeswax will cure like grease does during the seasoning process, it shouldn't be sticky when it is done, it should leave a hard shiny layer of carbon, like grease or oil does.

Raw beeswax would not only leave a honey taint in the next meal, but would also put a layer of melted wax on the top of whatever food you cooked, assuming it was applied to the inside of the pot.

Usually mfrs put a coating of food grade wax on their cast iron pots and pans before shipping, the idea being to keep them from rusting in transport and storage. The wax is removed by the end user either by washing in hot soapy water (one of the only times I would agree that soap and water should be used on a cast iron pot), or burned off on the grill or fire, which is the way I prefer to do it. The wax doesn't actually burn off, but it volatizes completely, leaving behind virtually no carbon when it is done. The metal is thus unprotected and will rust up if left exposed.

If a pot is so rusted out that it has developed scaling fissures beneath the surface, it will usually require some wire brush work at the least to get it to bare metal again. I've only seen a pot get that bad once, when someone used a camp oven as a flowerpot. It was agreed that it probably wasn't worth it to try and recover it to cook food in. Usually, the worst I see is a very badly rusted surface with maybe some food or seasoning residue, but it is all surface rust with a slight patina underneath. A good scrubbing in a hot water and soap bath (the only other time I would use soap and water to clean cast iron) will remove the surface rust, usually leaving just a light rust stain on the metal. I will grease the pot inside and out real good, then smoke it off on the fire till it is nearly all burnt off. Doing this allows the grease to actually work under the rust patina and lift it out the pores. Washing the pot in hot water again usually removes the rust stain from the pot, and I can then start a new seasoning coat on the pot. Sometimes on really stubborn stains it will take a couple of good grease burn-offs to pull all the rust out of the pores, but the end result is a pot that always comes out nearly good as new for me.

This is the simplest, most straightforward, and quickest way I know of for bringing a weathered pot back to usable form. That's why I let one of my pots get all rusty and crusty, so when I do demonstrations I can show folks how easy it is to take care of them, and how durable they are.

Electrolysis, chemical dip, a wire wheel on a drill, sand blasting or scouring, and a whole bunch of other techniques I am sure will work just as well. I prefer to keep it simple and do it like most folks have been doing for the past couple hundred years, when all they probably had was soap, grease, and fire to work with.

Ben - Thanks for the tip to season the oven at a higher temp than the manufacturer recommends. I was wondering how to fix that tackiness on my oven's surface.

You're welcome. I am a member of the 500 club over at IDOS. That means 500 degrees farenheit for an hour in the kitchen oven, or the equivalent elsewhere.

Hope it works out for you.

As I reseason with beeswax it stays "stickey" because it cools and sticks to it. It leaves a protective layer that keeps it from rusting no matter if I use lt 2 days or 2 years from when I put it away. For my rendezvous set this is a concern because it may sit all winter. It also doesn't seem to leave any discenable taste behind. I've even used the beeswax instead of oil cooking things like pancakes.
'

If you put beeswax on and it is still sticky after you have heated the iron, then it is not a seasoning layer you have applied, but just a melted wax layer, and the wax will come off into your food the next time you cook with it, unless you do something to remove it, like wash it in hot soapy water or finish the seasoning process by heating the metal to smoking and keeping it hot until the smoke is darned near gone. It is not re-seasoned until the surface is dry and shiny. Reseasoning removes all the volatile compounds from the oil/grease/wax, leaving behind only hard carbon. In the case of beeswax, there is very little carbon left behind when it is completely volatized, certainly not enough to coat the surface of the metal. If it is still sticky, it ain't done.

Wax is a good way to seal cast iron when not in use, but as per the manufacturer's recommendations, it needs to be removed prior to the pot/pan being used. If there is no seasoning layer under the wax, then the pot will not be stick resistant, and it will begin rusting once the wax is removed.

A fully seasoned ready to use cast iron pot should never feel sticky before it is used. It should feel dry and look black or darned near black and shiny. If it is sticky, then it most likely has a layer of unvolatized hydrocarbon on it which if they used grease or oil is probably rancid if it has been that way for very long. Some people find the rancid taste and smell a pleasantly nostalgic addition to the food they cook in their cast iron. The majority of experienced cast iron cooks know that this is an undesirable quality and will keep their cast iron in a well seasoned and dry condition as it is intended to be.

If you prefer to keep your cast iron cookware wet with grease, oil, or even wax, it will work to keep your cast iron from rusting up. Just realize most folks who eat food prepared thus will find the taste peculiar and often objectionable.

I get it now.To start the seasoning process I have always started with oil and my "indoor" set gets treated that way all the time, but my rendezvous set asit gets its cleanup gets the beeswax all over it. Makes it weather proof and condensation proof as it sits in the van between uses. I do even sometimes heat the wax off the inside before use over the campfire. This set is only used over a campfire.

If you season your cast iron at the campfire like you do at home, it will be fairly weatherproof and more suitable for transport than with the beeswax coating. Not saying that the beeswax idea won't do, just that it shouldn't be necessary. If you need to coat the pot with something beyond what the seasoning process furnishes in order to keep them from rusting, then something is wrong.

This is how the factory seasons cast iron, sound is not the highest quality. The seasoning process is near the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgTKTh1UfiU

I've seen the video from lodge showing their seasoning process, but it isn't on the one in the link you posted.

Lodge and Camp Chef both make pre-seasoned cast iron pots. While they are what I would consider only marginally ready for cooking in (I generally add at least one more coat of my own seasoning to the pot before I start cooking in one of these), they do not come with a wax coating, as it is unnecessary to prevent the pot from rusting or otherwise deteriorating during shipping and storage.