My Skillet is all orange after soaking in water

irlforum

Hi,
I have a skillet that I am brining into use after storing in the garage for a while.

I soaked it in boiling water overnight with dettol I think. An orange substance came off into the water. I rinsed the skillet and tried very well but there is still alot of orange on it. Anyone know how I can get this off and how I should then create the antistick surface on it.

Thanks.

irlforum

By the way the orange colour is rust type substance I think. This is a quality skillet from nisbets aswell. Surely someone has experienced this before?

Thanks.

The Sweeper

Two choices:

Bin it
Season it

It must be a metal skillet. I wouldn't go soaking kitchen appliances in dettol by the way. If you have something in storage for a long time, just wash it in hot soapy water and dry it over a high heat on the stove - that'll kill anything you could be worried about.

For now, you need to remove the rust, and then dry and season the pan so it won't rust up again.

To take the rust off, cut a potato in half. Pour some neat washing up liquid on the dry, cool pan. Use the cut half of the potato to rub the liquid into the pan. Keep scrubbing with your spud until the rust comes off.

Rinse away all of the rust and washing up liquid with hot water until it's clean. Then immediately place the still-wet pan on the heat and keep a hawk eye on it until the water has all dried, but don't let the pan scorch.

Pour about a half a cupful of oil into the dry pan. (It has to be dry - if you pour the oil in while the pan still has beads of moisture, they'll crackle and spit and could burn you). Rotate the pan gently over the heat so the oil coats every surface.

You can do this for as long or as short a time as you like - when I'm doing a wok, I continue to heat the oil until smoking and the metal of the wok discolours as oil burns onto it. Of course this takes some attention because you don't want a pan fire, but a wok is designed to conduct and then release heat the second it's removed from the heat source, so you can do it without igniting the oil. The burned-on oil creates a patina that works as a non-stick surface for each cooking - that's what seasoning is about.

Once you've oiled the pan as much as you want, take it off the heat and allow the oil to cool to the point where it won't burn you. Then pour the excess off, and use a piece of kitchen towel or a clean cloth to rub the remaining oil into the interior of the pan. You're not going to wash this off, so you want the thinnest slick of oil to cover your pan so that it won't rust, but you don't want it to be puddling and sticking to everything in your cupboard.

Before the next use, put the oiled pan (it may have collected a little dust) on the heat. Add about two tablespoons of oil. Heat until rippling, and then pour off and wipe the remainder around the pan and return it to the heat. Then add the oil that you would use as the start of your cooking process - this 'double oiling' technique helps to prevent food sticking to the pan, even if it's not seasoned.

You will need to do this style of technique every time you use this skillet, as it's prone to rusting and will rust up again if you wash it and leave it to dry without oiling.

I haven't put soap anywhere near my woks since that first soapy wash when they're home from the shop. I never do - after cooking, the wok is scalded out with the hottest water from the tap, and scrubbed with a split bamboo wok brush to take food off. It's then put on the heat to dry and then oiled and wiped before being put away. Subsequently, I get that marvellous non-stick effect with my carbon steel woks.

GHOST MGG2

Alternatively you can just coat the skillet pan or wok with salt.
put it on the heat and let it get quite hot..this cleanses the dirt from the pan,empty the salt from the pan and then let the pan cool down,then you can rub with oil and store.This is an old chefs trick for seasoning pans.

the beer revolu

+1 on Sweeper's instructions.

Another thing, if food does stick to your pan, don't scour it.
Just leave the pan to soak for a while and then gently scrub the stuck food off.
The more you use the pan, following sweeper's instructions, the better it becomes but if you scour it, you're back to day one!

Sparks

I generally find it a bit easier to do the seasoning in the oven though - rub cold shortening into the pan until you can feel it but not see it and put it in a cold oven and turn the oven all the way up, as high as it will go (250-260C for most ovens). Leave it bake for two hours and make sure the ventilation is on and the smoke alarm is off because it will smoke as the shortening breaks down (but the whole house won't stink of frying because it's shortening rather than oil). Then turn off the oven and leave the pan cool off for a few hours. Job done.

Oh, and if you have to scrub the pan, don't soak it in water (you can, but you have to remember to put the pan in the oven or on the hob to dry it off afterwards, or it will rust up quickly and you'll have to take a wire brush to it and then re-season). Pour some salt (the larger the crystals the better) into the pan and add enough oil to make a paste, and then use a paper towel wadded up and held in tongs to scrub that paste around the pan. Once clean, pour out the paste (rinse with a little oil if you have to) and job done.

irlforum

Thanks for the great ideas. I will try it out at the weekend.

By the way I need to buy some saucepans for kitchen and also some sort of utensil for moving stuff around the skillet etc. Are the tesco utensils good enough?

What do I need to look out for when buying saucepans?

Thanks.

The Sweeper

Utensils are much of a muchness. Where you might spend a few more quid is things like a can opener or garlic press, where there's a "mechanism", however simple.

I have a mixture of metal utensils, plastic utensils and wooden utensils. With metal, I like ones with a rubber grip handle instead of metal all the way up (I've done things like leave a metal ladel in the soup and then burn the hand off myself as I go to grab it and its conducted heat all the way up its length.)

I'd say get one egglifter, one ladel, a couple of wooden spoons, and more than one serving spoon - it's always better to have one in the sauce and a clean one in the starch!

When buying saucepans, there is a place for both stainless and non-stick pots and pans in every kitchen - for instance anyone trying to cook a skin-on fish fillet, it's just EASIER on a non-stick pan, to get that lovely crispy skin on one side without it sticking to the pan. I go stainless for my pots, non-stick for my frying pans, and I spent money on an All-Clad Sauteuse Pan that cost me the equivalent of 200 Euros and is simply one of the best kitchen pans I have ever owned and I use it for virtually every single sauce-based dish I cook.

However, the most important thing about pots when you're starting out isn't that they match - it's that you have one that suits what you want to cook. You need a large pot for stock, and this can double as a pasta boiler. You want a medium pot to do rice, or pasta for one person. A small saucepan can be your milk boiler, or for making pour-over sauces. A nonstick frying pan will do all your fried breakfast, fried or poached egg, and scrambled egg needs, and a stainless or non-stick chef's pan with a lid will do for every sauce you want to make.

Heavy pans aren't always the best option - it depends on your hob. Also, they're useless if you're risking your life lifting them when they're full of scalding food. (I have an enamelled cast iron risotto pot with a lid that must weigh over 5kgs when it's empty and has the lid on. Try hefting that about when it's full of food...)

You need pans with good handles that let you get a good grip - I have a set of pans with skinny handles that, if you have a large hand, mean the handle might twist in your hand when you're trying to tilt the pot - very dangerous with hot food.

Lids should fit well, but not necessarily create a vacuum seal on the pot.

Look at how the handle is attached to the pot - rivets, a screw, a weld - I'd personally steer away from pots where the handle is screwed onto the pot. If its welded, it better be a good weld - you don't want it to break when you're lifting a pot of hot food. That said, most pots and pans these days are well made, and if you can get a good set of stainless steel pots that are unbranded I wouldn't necessarily spend money on the mid range just for a brand.

irlforum

Thanks for that. I actually ordered a Victorinox chefs knife from Nisbets but it's serated so I'm sending it back - my mistake.

I'm just looking now to try and find a non serated one but there does not seem to have anything less thatn 75 euro.

However I can find this...It's called a cooks knife - http://www.nisbets.ie/products/productdetail.asp?productCode=C654

Do you know what the difference is in the cooks from the chefs?

Thanks for the help so far.

Sparks

irlforum wrote: »

I'm just looking now to try and find a non serated one but there does not seem to have anything less thatn 75 euro.

If you're in Dublin or Kilkenny or anywhere near one, go to TK Maxx. I've gotten perfectly servicable chef's knives in there for €12 in the past. They won't last for fifty years, but by the time they're done, you'll have learnt enough to justify buying a better one.

Do you know what the difference is in the cooks from the chefs?

There isn't any. Line cooks do the work the chef directs them to do, so a cooks knife is just an unfancy term for a chef's knife.