Cast-Iron Cookware
HouseChai possesses cast-iron skillets in both the meat and dairy sets. The cast-iron cookware is great to cook with; it heats evenly, retains heat well, and gives your wrists and forearms a workout. however, it does need a certain degree of special treatment, which has nothing to do with kashrut and everything to do with rust.
Wikipedia, as usual, has a good basic article on the care of cast-iron cookware.
As such, leaving the dairy skillet soaking alone on the stove or sitting with grease and bits of food in the bottom is not so good. Leaving cast iron in a situation where it's cold and it's in contact with water is the classic recipe for deseasoning it and giving rust a foothold. Instead, once the skillet has cooled (which should be no more than 5-10 minutes, probably on the order of as long as it took you to eat the food in question), please grab a handful of paper towels, swab the skillet out thoroughly, then place it upside-down in the cupboard.
Soaking and Re-oiling
If you've cooked something in the cast-iron and you're having a tough time cleaning it (either because the pan is still hot or because something is stuck/burned to the pan), a technique that can work well is to put some hot water in the pan (just hot water, *NOT* soap) and let it soak while you eat your food, then dump the water out and scrub with a nylon pad (i.e. the dish sponges we use, *NOT* a Brillo pad or other copper/steel wool). soaking for as long as it takes to eat a meal is not likely to be a problem; soaking indefinitely is.
once the pan is clean, dry it with paper towels, then put a dollop of vegetable shortening (which lives in the pantry in the baking area; failing that, use olive oil) in the pan, use paper towels to spread it evenly over the cooking surface, wipe off the excess, and store upside down.
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