Russellkhan
Senior Cook
Whoops, there were questions! I got so involved in reading and responding to the rest of the thread that I almost forgot the OP.
It sounds like you're leaving a lot more on the pan than I would. Hot water and a thorough scrubbing with a wok brush (after pouring off excess fat) takes off any bits of food/spices, etc and leaves the seasoning. Very rarely, I've needed to use salt as an abrasive to clean off major crud.3 You never wash the pan. Primarily you drain the excess oil off while the pan is still hot. You just leave whats left. I have it on good authority from a CIA trained Chef that the oil won't go rancid. Now the wash the pan with salt instead of soap works. I you get gunk in your pan sprinkle it with salt like you would ajax and lightly scrub. Well right now I am alternating cooking bacon on a C. I. pizza pan and a 2 burner grill pan. Both live in the oven. I clean the fat off the grill pan when I think it will start over flowing to the bottom of the oven. The pizza pan when it looks like what I am going to cook next will be swimming in fat and the 2 burner is full of fat and the 2 other grill pans and 3 other regular pans are too small or to buried away.
But, point being, I can rub almost anything out of the bacon pans with my finger and salt. Occasionally I have to take a butter knife to a grill pan but even then it's not a fight.
Questions
1 occasionally I cook fish or chicken in the oven. For now I use a different pan cause I didn't know how the flavors would work together. Now can I do fish or chicken on the bacon pans?
2. My CI wok, can cook bacon in it to season it and not totally jack up the flavors of asian food ?
3. Since the grill side of my pan is always up and the griddle side down I am noticing that the coating on that side is flaking off . Should I be concerned about that? If I flip it there's all that bacon fat.
- Yes, absolutely.
- Sounds good to me.
- Not sure. Don't have one of those. Haven't worked with a piece of cast iron that's supposed to have two cooking surfaces. I tend to neglect the outside of my CI most of the time and occasionally (once every couple years or so) scrub it down when it begins to rust with a salt/oil paste and then reseason it.