Post by Glen Carman aka Delmonico on Apr 27, 2019 21:17:48 GMT -6
People who are in this group or read my writings about cast iron cookware elsewhere know I am someone who washes my cast iron with soap/detergent. I get people who tell me all the time it ruins/removes the seasoning or gets soap in the pores that will never come out. Well since I season properly I have never had any of these problems, if you do, you can read my doc on restoration, seasoning and cleaning of cast iron cookware here:
cicc-recipe-forum.freeforums.net/thread/41/cleaning-seasoning-care-cast-c
I also get the old song and dance about "that's the way they used to do it" and they quote mom, grandma or someone else. Of course I have no real knowledge of this person and what they really know, they might have told you Santa and the Easter Bunny were real for all I know.
Well my doc explains my thoughts, research based on science and over 50 years of experience, yet the people who tell me I'm wrong seem to never really have anything but hearsay or other lack of documentation to back them up.
Often information from post WWII says no harsh detergents, but these are the good stuff with high phosphate now banned for good reason, to help stop water pollution.
I have asked for years if anyone had documentation from pre-WWI
telling us not to use soap because it seems to me the makers of the new fangled aluminum and stainless steel cookware may have started the rumor about no soap to convince people that cast iron was not sanitary, to better sell their products.
Well no one has shown me anything from that era and to be honest I never had either one way or the other so I figured if it was bad, a lot of old time cookbooks would have warned us, makes sense based on a lot of tips they cover.
My favorite is when they use that popular term "old school" to justify not using soap/detergent even though Lodge says it's fine and the old Griswold company did too.
Well while doing some unrelated research, I ran across this, about as "Old School" as you can get, notice the 1884 Copyright date in the following scan of the title page.
For those who don't know, The Boston Cooking School was the leading culinary school in the United States at that time, Mrs. Lincoln was one of the instructors and the principal, one of her students Fanny Farmer, later became the principal and wrote the well known Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, better known as the Fanny Farmer Cookbook.
"Ironware should be washed, outside as well as inside, in hot soapy water, rinsed in clean hot water, and wiped dry, not with the dishcloth, but with a dry towel."
That just confirms what my experience/ experiments say.
The part in the scan that says soda means Sodium carbonate not Sodium bicarbonate, Sodium carbonate aka Washing Soda will soften water and make your soap work better. It can be bought in the laundry detergent section of most grocery stores. I keep a box in my supplies because a lot of the well water in my area is very hard.
Scan of title page and information mentioned above to follow.
cicc-recipe-forum.freeforums.net/thread/41/cleaning-seasoning-care-cast-c
I also get the old song and dance about "that's the way they used to do it" and they quote mom, grandma or someone else. Of course I have no real knowledge of this person and what they really know, they might have told you Santa and the Easter Bunny were real for all I know.
Well my doc explains my thoughts, research based on science and over 50 years of experience, yet the people who tell me I'm wrong seem to never really have anything but hearsay or other lack of documentation to back them up.
Often information from post WWII says no harsh detergents, but these are the good stuff with high phosphate now banned for good reason, to help stop water pollution.
I have asked for years if anyone had documentation from pre-WWI
telling us not to use soap because it seems to me the makers of the new fangled aluminum and stainless steel cookware may have started the rumor about no soap to convince people that cast iron was not sanitary, to better sell their products.
Well no one has shown me anything from that era and to be honest I never had either one way or the other so I figured if it was bad, a lot of old time cookbooks would have warned us, makes sense based on a lot of tips they cover.
My favorite is when they use that popular term "old school" to justify not using soap/detergent even though Lodge says it's fine and the old Griswold company did too.
Well while doing some unrelated research, I ran across this, about as "Old School" as you can get, notice the 1884 Copyright date in the following scan of the title page.
For those who don't know, The Boston Cooking School was the leading culinary school in the United States at that time, Mrs. Lincoln was one of the instructors and the principal, one of her students Fanny Farmer, later became the principal and wrote the well known Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, better known as the Fanny Farmer Cookbook.
"Ironware should be washed, outside as well as inside, in hot soapy water, rinsed in clean hot water, and wiped dry, not with the dishcloth, but with a dry towel."
That just confirms what my experience/ experiments say.
The part in the scan that says soda means Sodium carbonate not Sodium bicarbonate, Sodium carbonate aka Washing Soda will soften water and make your soap work better. It can be bought in the laundry detergent section of most grocery stores. I keep a box in my supplies because a lot of the well water in my area is very hard.
Scan of title page and information mentioned above to follow.
Attachments:
