How do you properly clean a seasoned Dutch oven?

Hot water and a steel wool pad to get all remains and grime out of the pot. Make sure you have no remnants in the pot. Set pot back on the burner and turn to high heat. Once water has dried, I use lodge seasoning (but you can use Pam cooking spray) to season the pot. Use a paper towel to wipe all around the inside of the pot to spread the seasoning around. Take off heat and set somewhere to cool off before storing away..

Clean after use. Use hot water and scrub with either the lodge plastic scrubbers - look on amazon or the chain mail scrubbers. Wipe down with paper towel...but keep damp. Make sure food is off of it. Put on low on the stove. Get a tablespoon or two of veg oil and rub in all over. Let it sit for 3/5 mins. Turn it off. Let it cool.

You will not hurt the seasoning on your cast iron with soap unless you soak it or have made your own soap a la Fight Club.

I clean them with a Brillo pad with Dawn.

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You will not hurt the seasoning on your cast iron with soap unless you soak it or have made your own soap a la Fight Club.

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Thanks you, dont know where that nonsense got started but hot soapy water will not hurt it one bit unless left soaking overnight.

Simply clean with hot soapy water, heat to dry, rub with oil, heat again, rub off excess oil and store.

takes about 5 min or less.

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Because soap, especially homemade soap, used to be made with lye. Lye will absolutely strip the seasoning from cast iron. That's why oven cleaner is so effective for restoring cast iron.

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Seems you are talking about pre industrial revolution homemade campfire soap that was not mixed properly, PS all soap is made from lye even today.

If there was any Sodium Hydroxide left it would eat your skin off.


Drano, easy off, the dial in your bathroom, and even J&J baby shampoo are all made with the exact same chemical whatever you choose to call it- lye, caustic soda, or (NaOH) Sodium Hydroxide.

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Saponification is a process that involves conversion of fat or oil into soap and alcohol by the action of heat in the presence of aqueous alkali (e.g. NaOH). Soaps are salts of fatty acids whereas fatty acids are saturated monocarboxylic acids that have long carbon chains (at least 10) e.g. CH3(CH2)14COOH.

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I’ve got a small cast iron pan that’s got some rust. I’ve put salt and rubbed down and then heated and scrubbed with chain mail. Any other suggestions to get rid of the rust?

Got water. Plastic scrub brush. Then put in a warm stove.

the whole dont wash ur cast iron nonsense has got like 10% truth to it.

you will not lose your seasoning unless you clean it while exposing it to heat so great that it de-polymerizes the grease you done polymerized when you got it seasoned in the first place with heat and grease. soap in the pan wont be dangerous so long as that depolymerazition level of heat is not present

now the real danger about washing you cast iron is leaving that thing out to drip dry. that will cause rust real quick. pass a cloth on dat or put it on a burner or in the oven so the moisture evaporates

I use a mixture of oil and coarse sea salt. Scrub, rinse, done.