Carbon Steel pan and sauces - need your opinion

[zenex]

First, the introduction: around a month ago, I finally bought my first CS pan, after years of lurking. A 28 cm de Buyer Mineral B (the regular one, not the pancakes version). I didn't needed it, because I rarely fry something and I have another 4 non-stick coated, aluminium pans and another stainless one, practically a wok. The smaller pan lost its coating in the center, despite my style of using a plastic spatula and, no matter what I cook, very low flame (on gas stove). How low? As low as, if I try to lower more, the flame goes out.
Now, I'm not paranoid about those tiny particles that may go into my food; the thing that really bothers me is - the pan's handles are attached to the round part by screws. And these screws, in time, start to loosen and so, the handles began to move. A very unpleasant sensation, at least for me. On course, I always tried to tighten back the best I could but, also always, the handles became loose again. This is the main reason I decided to buy a CS pan, where the handle is either solidly fixed by strong rivets or welded.

As always when I order something online, I spend a good amount of time studying the matter. All types of info - official site, YT, reviews, reddit, etc. Everything. In the end, before my order, I became a world-class theoretical specialist in CS pans. Or a High Priest of The Divine Art of The Carbonsteelpanology.

OK, so my de Buyer pan arrived. I washed the best I could the wax coating with near boiling water. Then I blacked it on the stove. Then I seasoned it with sunflower oil brought to smoking point. Twice. Left to cool, lightly oiled, the put in storage. Next day - let's cook some eggs, you know, the supreme test to...test the non-stick surface of a CS pan. Two eggs from the fridge brought to room/kitchen temperature for some hours. Preheat (gently and uniformly) the pan, check the surface temp by water drops method, pour some oil, let it heat for awhile, crack the eggs. The result? The eggs were stuck like they were glued with Loctite. I assumed the oil layer was not enough, but still...

I scrapped the stuck parts with my plastic spatula, in the end I washed the pan only with water and a sponge. Dried on the flame, let it cool, light oil on the surface, storage. So I decided to continue with food that doesn't stick for a while. Finally, we're closing to my problem.

So, into the pan went julienne-cut carrots and some hard(er) cabbage stem (with oil, of course). The followed, after they started to soften, by the softer parts of cabbage leafs, cut onions and some meat (either ham or slices of sausages). Remember, all this on low gas flame. Stirred often with spatula. The above ingredients do not need longer cooking times - they need to just be "penetrated" by heat. And, finally, in the end, to make all this palatable, I pour some "healthy" amount of soy sauce AND (mandatory!) a hot sauce: be it Tabasco-type, or stir-fry Asian sauce, or sriracha, or piri-piri sauce...you get my point. And I eat directly from the pan - pieces of bread absorb all the oil-sauces mixture. Heaven! (but not so great for the waistline).

Remember when I said I get informed about cooking with CS, including the caveats? Of course I knew about how acidic foods affect my pan seasoning: no tomatoes sauce, no ketckup, no wine-based sauces or lemon drops onto that great-looking fried salmon. But...but...I noticed that hot sauces can (or may?) affect the pan seasoning. After three of the above-mentioned cooking method, I noticed a brown (irregular) layer of something that resembled a lot with rust. I don't know if it's really rust. Well, better be safe than sorry, I scrubbed that area with some abrasive paste (The Pink Stuff it's called, because Barkeeper Friend's is unobtainable in this part of the world). And I re-seasoned it.

Phew...finally the end of my story. So...gentlemen..in your opinion...can the hot sauce(s) (non-tomatoes based) be acidic and affect the pan seasoning???

 

[brucered]

I didn't use tomatoes and acid foods in my pans until they were well seasoned.

Now, everything goes in them.

I've even washed them with soap, water & brush (gasp) and they didn't disintegrate.

In my house:
Carbon steel - quick cooks
Cast Iron - long cooks

 

[mglindo]

Wash pan well. Dry on burner until all water is absolutely gone. Coat whole pan with oil sparingly inside and out. Wipe until oil is gone. Heat in oven at 450 degrees ~ 20 minutes. Cool. Pan should be brownish colored. Do as many times as you want. Done.

 

[JCinPA]

I think people are not patient enough with the seasoning process, they think heating it with a layer of high-smoke-point oil a couple time on the stove is enough.

In reality it can take a while to season a pan properly, much patience. I prefer cast iron, but my 3 are all slick as teflon, fried eggs slide around in them like my teflon egg pan.

The process of seasoning a pan is one that the oil layer polymerizes. I don't pretend to understand this stuff, but here is an article on it.

Polymerization - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Clean your pan as thoroughly as you can. Dry it thoroughly. Heat it in a 200 degree (F) oven for about 30 minutes. Remove pan and turn heat up to 400* Then put a spoonfull of high-tem oil like grapeseed or avocado in it and wipe it out with a paper towel. The best are the lintless, blue shop paper towels. If you see oil it's too thick. Think, "I'm trying to wipe all this oil off."

Put it in the oven for 2 hours. Turn oven off, but DO NOT open the door. Let it cool naturally, about 2 hours.

Put heat back up to 200, after 30 minutes, oil again, try to wipe all the oil off, heat it at 400 for two hours, turn oven off, let it cool for 2 hours, repeat this a couple more times. I do this operation 4X.

Now you have polymerized that oil coating and it is something that is hydrophobic and oliophilic (reples water, likes oil). This is important. Get a bag of onions and roughly chop them. Cook onions in the pan with plenty of oil for two cooks. Don't "clean" just wipe out with paper towels and cook another batch of onions. I don't know why onions are the thing, but they are. Bacon, believe it or not is a lousy thing to season your pan with because it, like tomatoes, contains acids. Onions seem to work.

Now this whole process is a PITA, let me tell you. But you will be rewarded with a truly non-stick surface that will amaze you. Never use soap. You can soak caked on crud with hot water, but only clean with the scrubby side of a two-sided dish sponge. Oil a bit before putting it away. NOT thick. Very thin.

People that see me cook in my cast iron pans are amazed at what it will do, but you cannot shortcut this process. You will be rewarded.

Also always use oil when you cook and always preheat the pan. Most non-pro cooks don't get the pans hot enough. Say you want to sear salmon, for instance. Heat that sucker up on medium high for like ten minutes, so when you add the oil, it starts to simmer. Add the salmon when you see it start to simmer. Then DO NOT F WITH IT. Let it sit, it will release. Most non-pros fiddle with their food too much. Turn once. You'll have steakhouse quality seared salmon.

Restaurant-Style Pan Seared Salmon - Once Upon a Chef

(TESTED & PERFECTED RECIPE) Golden-crisp on top and just barely cooked in the center, this restaurant-style pan seared salmon is easy to make and elegant.

www.onceuponachef.com

If your oil layer is sticky, unfortunately, you'll have to get it all off and start over, but this process, while a PITA and time-consuming, really works.

 

[JCinPA]

@mglindo posted while I was typing. He understands. Wipe it out like you're trying to get the oil off, ALL off. Then hot oven. Repeat. But heat it longer, and leave it in the oven to cool slowly.

If I was good with videos I'd make one of me frying eggs in my vintage 8" skillet. It's amazing.

 

[zenex]

Thanks for the replies. The seasoning of my pan it's in its first steps. Yes, it takes time and patience, I understand that. The eggs episode was mostly anecdotal, just ignore it, I never expected miracles on the first try.
I started this tread not because I can't find tons of information or opinions or reviews online about pans seasoning and the effect of acidic ingredients. I started it because I cannot find info about the effect of hot sauces and soy sauce on the seasoning. That's why I asked your opinion on this matter, not how to dry and preheat the pan and polymerize oil.

 

[JCinPA]

@zenex I understand, I screwed up a lot of seasoning from bad instructions for years. But once I understood the polymerization process and realized how thin the layer had to be and how long to leave it in the oven, I got it fixed. It's a headache, frankly, but once you do this process carefully and properly about 4 times, you will have your favorite pan!

The good news is if one of mine isn't performing well after some abuse, it's easy to redo. But most problems come from trying to bake on a layer of oil that is too thick, apparently. The molecules won't line themselves up right if it isn't really, really thin. Good luck!

 

[AndyPanda]

Dunno if this would work on CS ... but a little trick I learned (accidentally) about seasoning my cast iron:
I like to make tacos and I have found that when I brush a small amount of olive oil on a corn tortilla and spin it around on a hot cast iron skillet -- and repeat over and over again with many tortillas (because who can eat just one taco?) -- the skillet seems to get the perfect seasoning of many very thin layers of oil. I don't pour any oil on the skillet itself - I simply brush a few drops on each side of the tortilla and move it around on the skillet while it's browning each side. It's a little like doing a french polish where the amount of oil is very thin but it hardens up quickly (because it's so thin) and keeps building with each repeat.

(and IMO the tortillas browned this way are much tastier that the typical frying in enough hot oil to submerse them)

I always used to do the traditional seasoning in the oven. But now I just brown my corn tortillas ... and after enough tortillas have been browned, a fried egg will slide right off the skillet onto your plate without any spatula needed.

 

[Wombat ESQ]

2 key points

Soy ..... SALT !!!!!!!
Bacon grease .... SALT!!!!

 

[JCinPA]

@AndyPanda
That makes sense to me because you are not layering on the oil very thick. Interesting. But that is the key to the polymerization process.

 

[Old Hippie]

I started this tread not because I can't find tons of information or opinions or reviews online about pans seasoning and the effect of acidic ingredients. I started it because I cannot find info about the effect of hot sauces and soy sauce on the seasoning.

I have some experience with carbon steel but vastly more with cast iron. Seasoning iron is easy; it's like a sponge. Steel, not so much in my experience. That means any seasoning layer is going to be thinner, or at least it seems so to me.

That's important because in reality, anything you do to a pan is going to affect the seasoning. Very infrequently that's a positive effect, as in rendering a massive amount of lard in a pot. People advise a nice oily batch of fried chicken, which is going in the right direction, but there's a lot of other factors like salt, moisture and whether you're going to make gravy afterward. Mostly I find the effects of cooking mean that I need to maintain the seasoning and occasionally refinish it.

Hot sauces often are vinegar based. Vinegar being an acid, it will affect your seasoning. Soy sauce tends to have a higher salt content. Salt tends to contribute to degradation of your seasoning. On the upside, two things: you're not using much of them compared to how much food is in the pan; and you can maintain the seasoning. Once you've achieved a base layer, then cook what you want and simply make "wipe it with oil while warm" part of your cleaning routine.

Steel and iron are a bit more interactive than aluminum and Forever Chemicals. The benefit for the price is that you're not eating Spicy Chicken With Teflon Crumbles.

O.H.

 

[zenex]

Hot sauces often are vinegar based. Vinegar being an acid, it will affect your seasoning. Soy sauce tends to have a higher salt content. Salt tends to contribute to degradation of your seasoning.

Thanks, this is a logical point of view. I use soy sauce just to replace salt or powder seasoning, plus the benefit of umami. As for hot sauces, I use mostly non-vinegar based for cost/quantity ratio reason. Vinegar-based sauces (Tabasco, Frank's) come in minuscule bottles and cost twice as a big bottle of various Sriracha brands. Guess I'll use these sauces on my Stainless wok and copper+volcanic stone or whatever - clad Alu pans.

 

[Tirvine]

I have used CS for half a century and except for an omelette pan I chose to season and baby, I found they worked superbly with no seasoning, just a bit of oil and/or fat before each cook. Seasoning a very smooth pan is quite tricky. A tiny bit too much polymerized oil turns it into something like glue for food. An absolutely bare pan with a very smooth floor is a breeze for cooking. Salt it and a steak releases cleanly. Oil or butter it and eggs release cleanly. Cleanup can be with or without soap. Scrub it with a tampico brush or a chain mail scrubbing pad. Dry it over a burner.

i found that just because I could season a pan to be like Teflon, did not mean I should. This may be a variant on the "tools, not jewels" line of thinking.

 

[jkingrph]

My wife has a bit of arthritis and complains about the weight of cast iron, except for a small pan she uses for cornbread, so I got a set of CS pans, she still says they are heavy and goes for aluminum non stick most of the time, so I end up using the CS. I did the coat with oil, bake in oven and repeated a few time, then just a lot of cooking, no acidic foods, and they are finally getting a good black polymerized coating and are relatively nonstick. I do not scrub hard, if something looks stuck I will use a plastic scraper or a dobie or better yet , a bit of water, put it back on the stove and boil. That seems to remove anything stuck rather easily. I am among the no soap group, so just hot water for washing. Continued cooking and they get better like cast iron, although I do not think they are quite as good.