How I Restore and Maintain Cast Iron Skillets for Use On The Grill

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When I post pictures of my cast iron collection, I often get comments and questions about how I season and maintain them. As promised (ahem...months ago), here is what I do to keep my cast iron looking black, shiny, and beautiful. 

I'll start by saying this. Maintaining cast iron isn't about a magic product or special oil. Maintaining cast-iron skillets is a behavior. If you clean and spend 10 minutes reseasoning your skillets each time you use them, they will stay immaculate, non-stick, and last a lifetime. 

A second important point. Cast-iron is meant for use day-in, day-out. The best thing you can do to maintain your cast-iron cookware is to use it often.

Restoration

A good story starts at the beginning so let's start with the 1930's era Griswold #8 skillet that I restored earlier this year. 

When Do I Need To Restore A Skillet?

Typically, when a skillet loses its seasoning or gets a little flaky, the cast-iron just needs a thorough cleaning, reseasoning, and frequent use. But when a piece of cast-iron cookware has been abused and has built-up carbon or large sections of rust, the restoration will make it as good as new. Restoration is time-consuming, but you should never have to do it again if you maintain your cast-iron in the first place. Restoring cast-iron includes: 

• stripping/cleaning, 
• establishing a base coat, and then 
• repeated use to build up the seasoning.

This skillet definitely needed restoration. It was made over 80 years ago and had definitely seen better days. 

How To Replace A Gasket On A Big Green Egg Kamado Grill

Once upon a time, back in 2010, we bought Egg #2.  It had virgin ivory ceramics inside and the felt gasket was unblemished.

Six years later, the heavy grilling, smoking, and being hauled around to BBQ contests have taken their toll.  The gasket was toast.  Actually it was beyond toast, this gasket was....no more.   

Yeah, it's beyond time to replace this gasket.

Gaskets are the weakest point of a kamado grill.  They function as a seal between the top and bottom pieces of the ceramic grill.  They are made of things like felt, Nomex, and rubber.  Eventually, most of them fail.  Egg #1 lost his gasket within the first year and I ran it gasket-less for years.  Using a kamado without a gasket isn't the end of the world but they work a lot better with one.

My Grill Dome gasket has had over a year of very heavy use and it is surprisingly intact.  But it has gotten compacted and pretty inflexible so it doesn't provide much of a seal if I have thermometer cables running into the kamado.  I think I'll go ahead and replace it too but it has held up well.

When it comes to replacement gaskets, check with your kamado manufacturer first for their recommendations and whether or not they cover the gasket under warranty (most won't).  

So here is where I tell you don't do what I do, because technically the woven fiberglass gasket that I use is NOT approved by any kamado manufacturers that I know of and it is NOT certified as food safe. This is the thing....I'm not cooking my food on the gasket - I'm cooking it on the grill. 

Step 1 - Get your stuff!

For me, the only gasket that I will use is a Rutland stove gasket. I heard about them from a lot of people who swore by them on the kamado forums. The bottom line for me is that I have never had to replace a Rutland on a kamado once I have installed one. 

The specific model I use is a Rutland 95W-6    (3/4" x 1/4" x 7') .  This is a flat gasket, not the rope style.  You can buy them online from Amazon but I got all three of these items from Ace Hardware in Knoxville.   Note that the gasket is much thicker than the original one on the kamado.  You will only be installing it on the lower rim.  The rim of the dome lid will stay bare after this replacement.

Instead of using the cement provided with the gasket, I like to use Permatex Copper gasket maker.  It's the same stuff we used to seal around the lower vent on other kamados with good success.

The best tool for cleaning off the gasket, grease and adhesive residue left by the first gasket is a drill mounted 3M Paint and Rust Stripper. 

Step 2 - Take that kamado apart!

The first thing you have to do is secure the spring loaded hinge.  These have stored energy so be careful when handling them.  If you kept the retaining pieces (white pieces on top) you can use those.  These were my neighbor's and they didn't fit this older Egg so I used 2 heavy duty zip ties on each side like this.

Next, I loosen the 2 band bolts like this until they are completely loose.  Carefully lift the dome lid off and set aside.  Then remove the bands.

Step 3 - Lose the old gasket - or what is left of it.

Pull off the old gasket and remove as much as possible using a small putty knife.

Then I use the 3M Paint and Rust Stripper on the rims of the top and bottom.  You shouldn't have to press down too hard, let the drill do most of the work.  As always, wear safety glasses when using power tools.

I want the rim to be totally clean of dirt or debris like this so the adhesive can stick to it.

Step 4 - Apply the new gasket.

Next, I apply a zig zag bead of the Permatex all the way around the rim of the base.  Then immediately start installing the gasket.

You will see the ends are slightly frayed.  I have found the more you play with them the worse they get so I leave it alone.  I start this on top of the base rim at the back where the center of the hinge would be.  Notice that I'm wearing gloves...fiberglass makes me itchy. 

Work your way around the rim laying the gasket on top and slightly pressing down into the Permatex. The inner edge of the gasket should be just inside the inner edge of the rim, it should not protrude into the cooking area.

When I get all the way around to where it started, cut the excess gasket off with a pair of sharp scissors so that the gasket ends flush with itself.  There will be a little fluff from the two frayed ends.  I press what I can down into the Permatex and the rest has never been a problem for me.

Once I have the gasket lined up to my satisfaction, I place the dome lid on top and let the adhesive cure for at least one hour.

Step 5 - Put it back together.

Once the gasket has cured, it's time to put the the bands back on.  I line the handle back up with the bottom vent and then secure the bottom band by tightening the bolt just enough to hold it in place.

Finally it's time to put the dome lid back on and make sure it is aligned dead center.  These guides from Big Green Egg make that a little easier but I've done it without them.  Just look straight down and make sure it is centered.

Once aligned, I tighten both band bolts.  First,  I press up lightly on the upper band and tighten the bolt just enough to hold it securely in place.  Stop there and double check that your alignment is still good.  Then I finish tightening the lower bolt. I don't have a torque wrench so I just tighten it until I see the bolt start to bend.  Then I finish tightening the top band the same way.

Finally I do the "dollar bill" test to make sure that I don't have air gaps anywhere in the seal.  Just stick a dollar on the gasket and shut the lid.  Try to pull the dollar out and you should feel resistance.  Do those spot checks all around the kamado.  If it just slips out without effort, you've got an alignment issue.  Loosen the bolts, re-align the dome, retighten and try it again.

Ready to go back into the grill rotation. I'll use it a few times before its next BBQ competition in about 2 weeks.

Standard FTC Disclaimer:  I received no compensation for this post and paid full price for the supplies mentioned.

How I Smoke Bacon On A Kamado Grill (Big Green Egg, Grill Dome, Kamado Joe, etc)

Bacon.  My neighbor and teammate, John, and I have been curing and smoking a bunch of bacon this winter.  

We have done bacon using commercially available seasoning/cure packets, tried and true recipes, and a few adaptations of our own.  We have smoked them on the Big Green Egg, Grill Dome, and even in Char-Broil's Digital Electric Smoker.  The "least-good" (can't say "worst" with home cured bacon) was the pre-made seasoning packet that we bought but it was still better than store bought.  

Why does home cured taste better than commercial bacon?  

To cut costs and maximize profits, most bacon processors shrink the curing process to just a few brief hours and it's packed the same day.  Commercial bacon is often made by injecting brine with a battery of hypodermic needles or sliced and bathed in a quick brine (McGee 175).  Not all processing operations take those shortcuts.  For example, local ham and bacon producer, Allen Benton, cures his bacon for weeks and cold smokes it in a smokehouse for at least 48 hours.  Then again, that's why his bacon is world famous and found in some of the most exclusive restaurants.

So here's how we cure and smoke our bacon on a kamado grill.  Regardless of the exact recipe, our process has been pretty consistent.  

1 - Find or order Prague Powder #1 aka "Pink Salt"

This can be the most difficult part of the process.  First, pink salt is NOT the pink Himalayan salt that has become popular these days.  It is a 6.25% mix of sodium nitrite and often referred to as Prague Powder #1 or Instacure.  You might be able to find it locally at big box sporting good stores but in most cases you are over paying for a small quantity.  Usually you can buy a larger batch online for about the same price.  We paid about $10 for a kit that does 25 lbs of meat at a sporting good store (only place we could find it in town) but got enough to do 100 lbs of meat online for $7.97.

2 - Pick a recipe

You definitely want to follow a road map with curing your own bacon or you could cause food safety issues. Meathead of Amazing Ribs has some excellent bacon recipes and gives you ideas for varying them. His simple bacon is basic but simple is what Allen Benton uses - curing salt, brown sugar and pepper. We also really like Meathead's maple bacon recipe doctored up with bourbon.  One of my personal favorites is Maple and Black Pepper Bacon from Chris Lilly's 2014 book, Fire and Smoke - A Pitmaster's Secrets.  

3 - Find a pork belly

You want a pork belly with the skin off, usually about 7-9 pounds for a whole side. You won't find these at the grocery store, typically.  Start by asking a local butcher.  We've been lucky lately as Costco has been carrying them here in Knoxville.  If you can only get skin on, you could always carefully remove the skin yourself and save that for making cracklin's.  

If you get a whole side of belly, I'd recommend cutting it in half across the middle which will make it easier to store while curing and it lets you try out two different recipes at the same time.  John cuts his in thirds to fit into gallon zip bags for the cure and to fit his slicer.

As noted, John did three recipe variations with one pork belly cut into thirds.

4 - Cure the pork belly

First, we do wet cures, which makes it easier to get good coverage all over the pork belly.  If you are doing a dry cure, even distribution is more paramount.  John says the wet cures are better for us because they are more idiot proof (wait....what are you saying about us, John?).

Mix the curing salt and other dry ingredients thoroughly, the pink salt needs to be well distributed. Be sure to follow the curing salt's guidelines for amount per pound of food, the ratios are critical for food safety of bacon.  Then drizzle any wet ingredients to coat the belly.

Obviously, the pork belly must be kept refrigerated for the curing time so you need to clear room in your fridge. The cure time is affected by thickness.  For most bellies, a little over 1" in thickness,  7 days is usually enough.  But if the belly is extra thick, you should go longer, about 10 days. You also need to use non-reactive containers, so we used glass 9 x 13" baking dishes and covered them with plastic wrap.  John uses large zip top bags which makes the flipping easier and keeps the brine in contact with the whole slab.

Flip the belly every two days, scooping up any liquid and drizzling it back over both sides before recovering the dish.

You notice even though it's bagged, John keeps his in a container. Zip tops do fail occasionally and if it happens in your fridge, it makes a real mess to clean up.  Better safe than sorry.

5 - Rinse the pork belly

Most recipes call for rinsing off the cure with cold running water. I was surprised at how little of the pepper came off when rinsing but I sprinkled some fresh pepper on just in case. 

If you prefer less salty foods, you can consider soaking the belly in a cold ice water bath for an hour or so to remove more of the salt/nitrite.  I just rinsed all of mine, John soaked one of his.  Both ways turned out fantastic.  

6 - Air dry the cured pork belly under refrigeration....or not

Most recipes call for air drying the pork belly in a refrigerator for a while after rinsing.  This supposedly builds up a coating on the belly.  But as McGee points out, smoke vapors are deposited more efficiently on moist surfaces (176), my buddy Meathead endorses this technique, and it is a bit quicker, so I skip the air drying and head straight to the smoker.

If you do air dry, make sure that all surfaces of the meat is exposed by putting it on a raised rack like this.

You want your pork belly cold when it goes on the smoker if you want to create more of a smoky flavor.

The section on the left was John's molasses bourbon and the two on the right, maple bourbon.  We were slightly worried that the molasses one would come out super dark.

Here are a half pork belly of maple pepper and a half of bourbon maple.

7 - Puttin' on the spritz

Heck if a moist surface attracts more smoke [actually helps the nitrogen compounds in smoke convert from nitrogen dioxide to nitrous acid to nitric oxide which gives smoke flavor and a smoke ring to meats (McGee 149)], let's take the opportunity to add flavor too!  John and I have started spritzing with bacon with an apple juice and bourbon mixture (2:1 ratio).

John spritzing his belly sections with an apple juice/bourbon mix (2:1).

8 - Smoke That Bacon!

The short story is smoke the bacon at 200°f until it hits an internal temp of 155°f.  Here's the long version.  Smoking at 200°f can be a little tricky if you're used to cooking at dome temps of 250°f but a few tips make it easier.

As always, cleaning out your fire bowl will make your fire come up to temp quicker and easier to control at steady temps.  You are eliminating potential air flow issues.  In his A Meat Smoking Manifesto, Aaron Franklin talks frequently about how air flow and currents are the key to good smokes.  This is as true for kamado grills as it is the large metal pits he is using.

For the same reason, John and I find using a Kick Ash Basket helps too.  We have 4 of these and use them on all of our kamados at BBQ competitions.

For the ultimate in temperature control, you can use a PID controller/blower like our Flame Boss 200.  You can keep a 200°f fire using just the vents but the Flame Boss makes it soooo much easier.  You can even check on your cooker and pork belly temps via wi-fi while doing your chores watching the game and enjoying a cold one.

You'll want to fill your fire bowl up with lump and about 4 - 6 chunks of smoking wood.

For the fuel, John and I both have been using Parker's lump because it's a good hardwood coal, sold at the same store where we get our ribs, and it's a Tennessee company.  It starts quick and burns clean.

For wood, we both favor cherry.  John got a bunch from one of his clients at the gym.  John likes using pecan and cherry.  I like hickory and cherry.  (No, the USDA does not grade smoking wood but Ron's note cracks me up.)

You need to set your kamado up for indirect heat.  This can be using a spider/indirect rack, pizza stone, and drip pan like this.

Set up for doing a 4.5 pound belly section on my Grill Dome, with the indirect rack, stone, and drip pan.

Or using a plate setter like below.  John prefers the plate setter because it protects more area from the direct heat below.  

John using a Woo 2 with his plate setter and a raised grid on his Grill Dome so it can hold an entire pork belly.  The rig is from Ceramic Grill Store but now I think they sell the Woo 3.

Then, just let it smoke until it hits an internal temperature of 155°f.  The amount of time is going to depend on how thick your pork belly is, not how much it weighs.  For example, a 4 lb 2" thick piece of pork belly will take longer to cook than a 7 lb 1 1/2" thick piece.  Typically it will take anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 hours. But as with all cooks, times are just a guide, always go by the actual internal temperature.  One of John's took 4 hours.

Actually not smoking yet here, John is just getting his Grill Dome warmed up.  Notice the temperature is about 100°f and the smoke isn't close to ready yet, it's too thick and heavy.

I smoked a maple - bourbon pork belly in my Char-Broil Deluxe Digital Electric Smoker. I've abused this thing, even using it as a makeshift holding cabinet when we vended at the Christmas parade, but it has held up.   If you're the type of person who wants "set it/forget it" type smokers, electric might be the way to go.  I'm a pyro so I like playing with fire.

8 - Cool it

Once the bacon is done, I like to cool it down.  You'll be tempted to slice it but that will be a hot mess.  It will slice much easier and more cleanly once the fats harden, which takes 6-8 hours in the fridge.  If I can withstand temptation, I actually like to vacuum seal it and let it mellow out in there for a few days.  I do the same thing for smoked cheeses, it seams like it balances the smoke out evenly.

The color of your finished bacon will be determined by the recipe you use.  This maple bacon recipe was pretty light.

The Maple Pepper Bacon was much darker.  

As you can see, the two maple bourbon ones (left) darkened up but the molasses one (right) actually lightened up a little bit so it didn't come out too dark.

9 - Slicing It Up

Once it has chilled, it's ready to slice.  You can do it by hand or with an electric slicer.

I like doing it by hand so I can do whole slices the whole width of the belly and I can feel what's going on with the meat as I slice it.  I like the slightly thicker slices. I use a Victorinox 10" slicer knife, the same one I use for slicing briskets.  I keep it razor sharp and use a steel before using it each time.  

Notice that regardless of how dark the outside gets, the inside stays about the same with a dark rind around the edges of each slice.  

John uses an electric slicer because he likes the thinner slices.  Like most consumer grade electric slicers, his slicer doesn't accommodate the full width of a pork belly so he cuts his pork bellies to fit. After an overnight rest in the fridge, John also likes to stick the bellies in the freezer for 2 hours just before slicing to make it easier.

John's bourbon maple bacon on the left, molasses bacon on the right. Both were excellent tasting.

Another good argument for using an electric slicer is that this is a lot to slice by hand and carpal tunnel surgery is expensive.

The sliced molasses bacon.

10 - Eat It Up

Homemade bacon wasn't treated like commercial bacon and it doesn't cook up the same way either. First time I ever got some superior quality bacon (Benton's actually), I burned the hell out of it cooked it extra crispy because I tried to cook it like regular bacon.  You need to cook it at lower temps.  Same goes with homemade bacon.

As with all bacon, starting with cold bacon on a cold cooking surface will render the fat better.

Another noticeable difference is that the bacon grease from home cured bacon is extremely clear.  It would be an absolute crime not to save this bacon fat for cooking later.

So what to do with all of that delicious bacon?  Both of our families have been eating the heck out of it.  A few weekends ago, we made these.

Deep fried a nest of shoestring potatoes and seasoned it with some Meat Church Bacon BBQ Rub...  

Topped that with bacon, of course....

Sunny side up fried egg.... 

Then it all mixes together....oh yeah! Sorry if you're one of those people who can't have their foods touch each other.

So that's where we are with makin' bacon.  If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend giving it a shot. If you have, what are your experiences?  

[FTC Standard Disclaimer]  I received no compensation for this post.  We did receive the Grill Domes and Char-Broil Digital Electric Smoker as part of our 2015 sponsorships. We have great personal relationships with Flame Boss, Thermoworks, and Kick Ash Basket but we also buy products from them.  I paid full price for the books and knife that I mentioned.