![]() ![]() The "new" one Cory found was a smaller version (8") of my big one (11 1/2") and every inch of it was covered with rust. I've made some amazing pork chops and steaks in my large cast iron skillet that would not have turned out the same without it! I love that I can cook food on the stovetop and then move it straight into the oven to finish it off. Over the past couple of years I've come to find out that cast-iron pans are pretty awesome. Either way it was ours now, rust and all. Who knows where it came from since we collect things that tenants leave behind and friends and family give us stuff all the time that they no longer want. One of those projects was trying to salvage a rusty cast iron skillet that Cory found in the basement in a box. ![]() The situation stinks, but on the bright side I'm getting so many projects done that have sat on the backburner for years. I'm sure most people who are also in their houses 24/7 are doing the same thing. Despite the myths, it is okay to use a small amount of soapy water on cast iron at any time, especially at this point, since there’s no seasoning to damage.I'm sharing some cleaning hacks to the blog since I'm stuck at home during the quarantine and I've been busy deep cleaning my house. Always use warm water to clean your cast iron after cooking, so it doesn’t warp or crack from a shock of cold, and here it’ll help speed up the drying process, too. It may take some elbow grease, depending on the severity of the cast iron rust. Wash your pan with a drop of mild dish soap and warm water, and clean away any lingering rust with a mildly abrasive sponge, like a green scrub pad or this Kamenoko Tawashi scrubber made from palm fibers. If that happens, retire it to a piece of farmhouse-chic kitchen decor. The vinegar solution will dissolve the rust, but once that’s gone, it can penetrate further and start eating away at the original cast surface of the pan, the ultimate death sentence for your skillet. ![]() This process can take as little as an hour or up to eight hours frequent check-ins are important to ensure your skillet doesn’t soak for longer than necessary. Check the pan every 15 minutes or so and remove it from the solution once the rust easily flakes away. Make sure the entire pan is submerged in the mixture, handle included. Mix equal parts water and distilled white vinegar and add it to a container that will fit your rusty cast-iron skillet, such as a bucket or a deep foil pan. If you’re a *seasoned* cast-iron user who knows that submerging in liquid is a major no-no, this may shock you, but don’t worry-you’ll re-season your skillet before you cook with it again. For more serious cases, start with a vinegar soak. If you’re dealing with minor surface rust, you can probably skip this step, opting instead to use a scouring pad or kitchen towel to rub about ⅓ cup kosher salt into the surface of the pan until the spots of rust have been removed. Soak your cast iron in vinegar (or don’t). Once your pan is rust-free, be sure to get in the habit of properly cleaning and seasoning your cast iron so that we never have to go through this again. A few steps might seem counterintuitive, but the goal here is to remove the layers of seasoning entirely, eliminating the rust so that you can start over with a fresh, even surface. Fortunately, there is an answer for how to get rust off cast iron, so don’t throw it out. Cast-iron cookware is meant to last a lifetime, so even if you picked up a far-gone skillet or Dutch oven at a tag sale, it is possible to restore it to peak form. So you haven’t been seasoning your cast-iron pan-or worse, let it sit in a wet sink-and now it’s plagued with rust. ![]()
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