Dutch Oven Cooking

[rps]

How to revive an old DO with gunk, rust or whatever:

Scrub using anything you want including soap. The final scour should be a dry one using rock salt. At the end of the scour, fill the vessel with more rock salt and bake at 400 for more than two hours. This will leach any and all foreign matter and moisture from the pores.

After the vessel cools, pour out the salt and discard wisely. Fill the vessel to the brim with refined peanut, safflower, or canola oil and bake for two hours at 400. Do not use olive oil, lard, or unrefined oil as 400 is above their smoke point. At the end of two hours turn off the oven and Do Not Remove the vessel until it has cooled. Safety, right?

When the oil has cooled, pour it off, your call on whether you save it. It will be slightly salty and will have a bit of "used" taste from the heat.

Wipe the vessel down and bake empty a couple of times per the advice above.

[David Unnerstall]

Who has watched someone wash a Dutch Oven with soap?

And what did you think at the time?

[rps]

I agree. Do not use soap or any other solvent on a seasoned cast iron dutch oven or pan. However, we all know that sometimes bad things happen and a seasoned pan becomes rusted or contaminated with foreign material. When that happens, the method I describe is one that professional chefs use to re-season their tools. It is very similar to the original seasoning method used at the factory.

If you were just tweaking me, you succeeded.

[Gavin]

Thanks for the tip...will give that a go next time I need to do a complete re-season.

[David Unnerstall]

Oh no. I ain't tweaking nobody. I have seen it twice and I about bit my tongue in two.

[Wayne SW/MO]

If you want to re-season an oven that is clean, run it through an oven cleaning cycle if you have one.