Cast Iron Update

Hello again, food people!

So I found out another reason why I was getting that mottled coating in my cast iron skillet. I was cleaning today and decided to do a slight experiment after having let my skillet sit a little too long before cleaning: I cleaned it out and re-wok'ed it, and then set it upside down in the hot oven to dry a bit after a very light coat of oil. I checked it in 10 minutes and I found out why this is a bad idea. I quickly remedied it, but here's the gist of why this has been happening in the past.

Many of the methods for curing/seasoning the pan suggest that when you wipe your pan down, you then invert it and put it in the oven. While there's nothing wrong with putting it in the oven, putting it in upside down is the issue. When you put the pan in upside down, even if you have the thinnest of oil coatings, it doesn't drain evenly over the rest of the pan, and you get patches where there is oil and where there is not oil. If you leave it like this, it will bake in that way, and you will have an uneven surface.

One thing that Black Iron Dude recommends is that if you have a skillet with an uneven surface, make certain that you wipe it down regularly during regular cleanings and reconditioning to make certain that oil doesn't pool. This is indeed important, especially when you consider that to avoid the mottled surface we're trying so hard to get away from, you need to have the pan upright in the oven. Oh yes, the oil will pool, and if you simply put your pan in there with a coat of oil, and the cooking surface facing up, you get deposits of gummy oil in odd places on the pan (depending also on how level your range is), even if your oven is at 500+ degrees, that you will have a royal pain cleaning out later on.

Anyway, that's it for this little escapade, hopefully I'll have some actual food to show you next time I write, I'm hoping to do some photo-worthy cooking this week, so we'll see if that works out.

Happy cooking!