[Sca-cooks] OOP but not OT-seeking advice on a cast-iron hibachi

Saint Phlip phlip at 99main.com
Fri Aug 29 20:01:51 PDT 2008


Well, for starters, rather than elbow grease, clean it up the easy way
;-) If you have a battery charger (for cars), place the hibachi in
salty water, with one electrode attached to the hibachi, and the other
electrode attached to another piece of steel (not stainless) or iron
(which is also in the salt water, but not touching). Turn the charger
on to trickle charge, and leave it alone for a few hours. When you
come back, there should be rust on the sacrificial piece of metal, and
less rust on the hibachi. If not, swap electrodes (I can never
remember which one is which- I think the ground goes on the hibachi,
and the positive on the metal, but don't quote me on that).

Once you have it cleaned up, treat it like any other cast iron- wipe
it down with your favorite edible oil and season it. You can season
the outside by starting a charcoal fire in it after the outside is
wiped down with oil, and you can season the inside by putting the
whole thing in/over a small campfire's coals, or, if it will fit, oil
the whole thing down and put it in the oven at 350 or so for a couple
of hours. Just remember to take any wooden or plastic pieces off of it
before you do ;-)

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Daniel & Elizabeth Phelps
<dephelps at embarqmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings, fellow cooks!
> As we stare down the throat of several more hurricanes here in Tallahassee (the panhandle of Florida, we're closer to Mobile, Alabama than we are to Miami), I am thinking about my cast iron hibachi again. We picked it up at a yard sale a while back, and the times we used it to cook with we were quite pleased with it. But, I have a maintenance question:
> I loaned the hibachi to some friends to take to Gulf Wars a while back-I believe it was the Gulf Wars that got rained out, and they returned it to me rusty. I was entirely unenthused with this, one of the many reasons those individuals are not friends any more. It's only surface rust as I recall, and it's been in storage ever since, as I really wasn't sure what to do with it. I can figure out how to clean it, steel wool/wire brush/wire brush on a drill, that's not too hard to figure out, just a lot of elbow grease and some very colorful language speculating on the ancestry and hobbies of said former friends, but then what? Do I use soap and water with the steel wool and wire brushes, or do I just use them dry? And how do I keep it from rusting again? I though of stove polish, but googling this topic seems to indicate this would just not be suitable. Would cast iron stove paint be appropriate? It's a charcoal-burning hibachi, not a wood stove, so I assume the operating tempera
>  tures would be higher. Or do I  clean it off and just  use it naked? ( The stove, not me...)
> As always, any advice the good gentles on this list could offer me would be most appreciated. And yes, I know to use it outside, and not on our wooden deck. Thank you, and everyone have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend-here in Trimaris we're crowning our next King and Queen. Take care now.
> YIS,
> Isabella de la Gryffin
> Barony of Oldenfeld, Trimaris
> Tallahassee, Florida

-- 
Saint Phlip

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Priorities:

It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools which make the smith.

.I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary
notices I have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow


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