Cooking with Cast Iron
A couple of excellent websites for the care and feeding of cast iron cookware.
I have a dutch oven that I love -- zero stick and very even heat.
Here are the sites:
The Irreplaceable Cast-Iron Skillet
Lots of info on cleaning and re-seasoning. What to do and what not to do. (Cast Iron will warp and crack if not treated correctly.)
The Wagner and Griswold Society (WAGS)
These people are fanatics (grin) they even hold annual conventions.
The site is a forum with topics ranging through Foundries, eBay, Patents, Cleaning and Restoring and Items for Sale. Lots of info here -- a very deep site.
The Pan Man
Online retailer of antique cast iron cookware.
Some of the prices are pretty reasonable -- $25 for a nice skillet...
And for cookware that has rusted to heavily to be treated with sandpaper, here is a very cool technique that I just used very successfully for something else at the Farm:
Electrolytic De-Rusting.
If the material is so badly rusted as to have pits, the pits are there to stay but this process will convert all of the Iron Oxide into Iron Metal but as a powder which can be scrubbed off after the treatment. You use a tub filled with water and a little bit of washing soda (Borax - Sodium Carbonate) and connect a battery charger to the workpiece and some sacrificial anodes. Do something else for a couple hours to a day or two (depending on rust level) and let electrolysis do the work for you...
Posted by DaveH at December 26, 2005 8:56 PM