[TheForge] Seasoning tasting spoons

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> Since you may have more experience from a cooks perspective:  how low a
> temperature can one use for seasoning cookware?  I have seen temperatures
in
> the 350 to 425 referenced.  My customer was pleased with the bronze color,
> but I am wondering if I would get effective  seasoning of the utensil at a
> low enough temperature so as not to get a temper color on the steel, i.e.
> keep the bright steel color.
>
> D-ski
> Westminster, MD

Well, you know, that's something I've never thought of. As a cook, I've
seasoned an assortment of items, both new and old, and eventually, if you
keep them seasoned properly, they all go to black. Most experienced cooks
are aware of this, and since these spoons are going to a couple of ladies
who just won the highest award in SCA for cookery, I think they'll expect
these to go to black too- these are NOT casual cooks, and I don't have to
worry about them being concerned with the color.

I always thought, though, that the golden color was a result of the oil
polymerizing, as Bruce put it in his post, and it's the repeated heatings
that eventually darken the color of the coating to black.

The coating itself goes into the pores of the cast iron (cast iron being
very porous) and on those occasions where I've had to clean up old cast iron
pans, the brightest color I got was a very dark grey, because, I thought, of
the polymerized oils being left in the pores. Mild steel pans that I've
cleaned tend to go back to a much lighter grey, and, with sufficient
scrubbing, back to nearly brand-new silver, and I always attributed that to
the fact that mild steel is much less porous than the cast iron.

Bruce? Any comments, from your chem background?

Saint Phlip,
CoD

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....