Spent years scrubbing my cast iron with steel wool before a buddy at the station pointed out I was stripping the seasoning every time

He handed me a chainmail scrubber and told me to use coarse salt and oil instead, and after one deep clean my eggs slid around like they were on ice, anyone else have a tool they were using wrong for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

singh.blair27d agoMost Upvoted

And the thing that got me thinking about this whole topic is how @anna_craig mentioned hand washing knives with cold water, because I had the same exact problem but with my whetstones. I was soaking them in warm water for years before I found out you're only supposed to use cold water on the stone itself, otherwise the binder can start breaking down unevenly and you end up with a wavy surface that screws up your edge geometry. It's one of those small details nobody tells you until you've already been messing it up for a decade.

anna_craig28d ago

My sous chef back at the bistro finally broke me of the habit of rinsing my knives with hot water and tossing them in the drying rack. He sat me down and showed me how that was slowly warping the blades and dulling the edge way faster than I thought. Now I hand wash each one with cold water, dry it immediately with a towel, then hit it with a honing rod before I put it away. Took about a week to feel normal but now it's just part of the rhythm.