When most people think about honey, they think about sweetness, long shelf life, or natural medicine. But here’s a question that doesn’t come up nearly enough in survival circles: is honey flammable? The answer might surprise you — and it could change the way you think about this golden substance as a survival resource. Whether […]
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Have you wondered how to clean and restore cast-iron pans? If so, I have you covered today. This post is a few years old, but we can always use a reminder about how to care for cast-iron pans, right? I’m updating this post from 2019 because I feel strongly that people should invest in cast-iron cookware if they haven’t already, particularly if they plan to do some camping, but also to help them be better prepared.
Please remember that those beautiful enameled cast-iron Dutch Ovens are designed for cooking on the stovetop or in your oven, not for outdoor use. The enamel products are more “touchy” and could get damaged with outside use. I have a beautiful red one that I use for Sourdough Bread, soup, and chili. Red Dutch Oven
Mark and I were at a friend’s home the other day, and she said she was giving an old rusty Dutch oven to the thrift store in town. Then I said, “You’ll be sorry if you do!”
I explained to her how awesome it is if you have one Dutch oven that’s cleaned and ready to go. It’s one of the best emergency items to store for cooking or boiling water. Then we talked about storing charcoal briquettes in airtight containers for use when she puts that Dutch oven to work. Just think, when it comes to cooking, she will be set for almost any disaster. Of course, you’ll need some matches.
Here’s the deal: you can scrub them with warm or soapy hot water using dish soap, rinse, then pat them dry, and season them before “baking” them. If there is a thin layer of “crud” to get clean, a scrub brush or small scrubber may do the trick. When there are layers of residue or rust, you may need to use fine steel wool to smooth them out, or what I like to call getting down to the raw cast iron. They will look like new, I promise. Consider using rubber gloves during these steps to protect your hands and possibly that last manicure.
I bought some used units, including a rusty cast-iron skillet. They were so rusty, but with some elbow grease, they were ready to be restored to like-new condition. The ones I purchased looked like they had been left in the sink to soak. That’s not a good thing to do. Yes, they will rust if you do that, and I mean big-time rust.
Please be aware that you may find some that will need to be sand-blasted. You may want to compare the price of that to buying brand-new ones or rusty ones at a garage sale or thrift store. It was luck that I found some really bad rusty ones, but they were not flaked. I guess that’s how I would describe it. So, what I’m saying is don’t be afraid of the rust; it’s fixable in most cases.
I remember when I was a little girl, my mom always had a cast-iron pan on the stove for scrambled eggs and bacon. Oh yes, we saved that bacon grease in the refrigerator, too! I’ve been on the lookout for additional used cast-iron pans, Dutch ovens, griddles, etc., for a few years. They are getting harder and harder to find at thrift stores. I enjoy sharing them with family and friends, and cleaning them brings me joy!
We have slowly been buying a few pieces of cast iron here and there. My goal is to build a fire pit when it gets warmer, right here in northern Utah near my new home. I have a Lodge tripod to hold a cooking pot over the fire. Can you just picture that, or is it just me? I can hardly wait to build my fire pit.
Oh, I want it for roasted marshmallows, but I really want to be able to cook outside over a fire. Yes, my family will smell like we have been camping. I suppose you could call it wishful thinking on my end.
I love having some cast iron to cook with, especially outside, because I don’t want to drag my other pans outside. A few years ago, I was out in Hurricane, Utah, at one of my favorite antique stores, looking at treasures. The store has some great finds because, at one time, all those items were a treasure to someone.
They told me one lady came in and bought all the cast-iron pots and Dutch ovens in the store a few days before I came to visit them. We are talking about filling the back of her car. Then I asked the owner whether it was Lodge or another American-made cast-iron brand. He said he had some made in China, but this lady only wanted American-made cast iron pieces. That’s all I want in my cast-iron pans or pots as well.
Lightly sand the cast iron with fine steel wool, as explained above, if needed.
The second thing you will do with your cast iron is to wash it in warm, soapy water. You’ll need to dry it before we do the next step. The towel I used to dry the cast-iron pieces had some residue after wiping down the cast-iron lid. So I re-washed the lid a little more. It had some black residue that was wiped off. I washed it until it no longer left that little black stuff on the towel.
Some people like to use a white vinegar solution to help clean their cast iron. Vinegar is a safe cleaning solution and is not harmful to humans in small amounts. Others have tried to use oven cleaners like Easy Off or a lye bath. I worry about the environmental effects of these approaches on me and my family, so I haven’t taken either of those approaches.
Don’t ever put your cast iron cookware in your dishwasher. The chemicals in the dishwasher soaps and cleaners can do harm to the surface.
Next, take all the racks out of your oven but the two bottom ones. Lay a large piece of aluminum foil on the bottom rack. It will catch the drips, if any, from the vegetable oil if it happens to drip down from the seasoning step. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Now you can wipe with vegetable oil, or as in my case, I used a vegetable spray. The Lodge book showed using some type of spray product, so that’s how I seasoned mine. Make sure you spread the oil all over the pan, including the legs, lid handle, and pan handle. The next step is to place the cast iron items with the vegetable spray side down.
You can use other oil-based products for this step, like Crisco, shortening, cooking oil, or even pure butter. If you do use butter, remember it has a lower smoke point than most cooking oils. It’s suggested you use low heat to season with butter and wait until the butter has disappeared. You can use a small brush or even a sponge for this step.
Although I sprayed the inside and outside and on every crevice, I still turned the pan upside down. This is where the foil is needed on the lower shelf of the oven to catch any drips.
Bake the cast iron for 60 minutes, turn off the oven, and let them cool down overnight. Be careful when handling those hot pans as they come out of the oven. After this initial seasoning, you should be able to take these camping or use them outside and wipe out the residue from your meal while the pan is hot and it is good to go until the next time you use it. They almost act like they have a non-stick cooking surface when properly seasoned.
I did learn a few things we need to do to keep our cast iron looking good and keep it from rusting. Place a few sheets of paper towels between the lid and the pan when storing them. Add a few sheets of paper towels in the bottom of the pan as well. I bought covers for all of my Dutch ovens, or at least the ones I use most often. Those Dutch ovens I store in the garage ready to grab and take anywhere to go camping or use at parties.
They will last a lifetime if you take proper care of them. I only buy Lodge cast iron products. That may sound snotty, but they’re made in the USA! May God bless you for being better prepared. I also try to shy away from using too many acidic foods like tomatoes when cooking in my cast iron products. The acid can deteriorate the pan’s seasoning, adding to my cleanup efforts.
There is something awesome about having cast iron pans, skillets, Dutch ovens, and griddles. They will last a lifetime, if you take proper care of them. If you can restore cast iron pans back to near their original state, why not do it? You’ll have pans you can use inside and outside your home. It’s all about being prepared for the unexpected. May God bless this world, Linda
Copyright Images: Cast Iron Frying Pans Depositphotos_285747808_S, Large Black Cast Iron Pan Depositphotos_560369894_S, Cast Iron Set, Cast Iron Being Oiled AdobeStock_340763380 By Bruce Peter MorinAdobeStock_315635036 By arinahabich
Janet: I use kosher salt and a fresh potato to get mine clean. I always have salt and a potato, I don’t always have steel wool. I then season them with coconut oil and put them in the oven. I also use coconut oil, to keep my cutting boards from cracking after I wash them.
Beth: Linda, you’re apparently in love with Lodge. But don’t pass up Griswold, if you run across some in a thrift or antique shop. They are older than the Lodge brand but stopped production before or around the time of World War II. I still have and use Mother’s. It’s like the Fire King items, the original is better.
The post How To Clean And Restore Cast-Iron Pans appeared first on Food Storage Moms.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
In a long-term disaster, your food storage will only last so long. Eventually you're going to run out. But even if you don't, you'll be eating food that isn't very nutritious. That's why it's a good idea to have a survival garden. It will give you more food to eat, and it will make a great nutritional supplement to your food storage.
The problem is, if things are so bad that you're relying on a survival garden, then there are probably a lot of hungry people out there. People who wouldn't think twice about harvesting all your food while you sleep.
It's not hard to identify a garden: Plants in straight rows, usually with bare soil or mulch between them, and paths leading to it. This means you need a survival garden that either doesn't look like a garden or is completely hidden from sight. The good news is there are several methods for doing this.
Before we cover the methods, let's talk about the content of your survival garden. In a SHTF scenario, annuals will grow out. And unless you save your own seeds, the seeds will run out. If you want annuals, plant ones that will self-seed and take over open or normally grassy areas.
Orach, spinach, some lettuces, and some edible flowers will turn a grassy yard into an edible meadow in short order. Leave the dandelions in, too, and add a few small fruit-bearing plants if you want. All this is part of what's called an edible landscape.
Perennials, however, should be the mainstay of your survival garden. Thorny plants are particularly beneficial around the outside of plantings. No one's going to push past a thick barrier of hawthorn, especially if the area under the hawthorn is covered in stinging nettles.
Hawthorn is a useful herb tree, while nettles are edible when young, and you can get fiber from the older stalks. I would recommend using stinging nettles more than poison ivy or poison sumac as it's much easier to treat a nettle sting than a poison ivy rash.
All of the following methods can vary in size depending on how much land you have to work with and how well the plants do in your growing zone. Now on to the list.
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If you're in a crowded urban area or a neighborhood with very small yards, an indoor garden is probably the best way for you to keep your survival garden hidden. Cover any windows facing your garden with slightly opaque plastic to prevent prying eyes from spying your food. Paint walls white or reflective to provide adequate lighting, and use full spectrum grow lights as well as outside light.
Have fans and vents to keep a steady supply of fresh air and mimic natural wind. If you can't have vents to the outside, try growing mushrooms as well as plants because mushrooms produce a lot of carbon dioxide which the plants need. Hydroponic growing may also help you to use your space efficiently.
Most people, in cities at least, do not recognize flowers as food. So plant roses. Climbing roses left to trail over the ground can make a thorny barrier that will protect your ground growing perennials (for example, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, and herbs) from detection.
Hedge-type roses, on the other hand, can provide shade to shade-loving perennials and yummy flowers and rose hips (a great source of vitamin C) for you, too. You can also plant other edible flowers, or flowers that produce edible seeds, as part of your planting. Beans and peas can grow up sturdy bushes and flower stalks as easily as up a trellis.
You can also mix in herbs like lavender, thyme, and basil among flowers to add fragrance and further mask edible plants. Many herbs have flowers that blend in seamlessly and even repel pests or curious foragers.
People think of gardens as places where plants are laid out in nice, even rows. Let's mess that up. Instead of a row of four or six tomato plants, drop the plants throughout your growing area. One tomato over there, another in the middle of a bunch of orach or herbs, and so on.
The less your garden looks like a conventional garden, the better. Companion planting gets a bit of a different meaning here. Who would suspect strawberries of hiding among asparagus plants? Who would think this forest of random leafy stalks and thick ground cover would be hiding corn, beans, and squash?
If you have land, anywhere from half an acre and up, you can plant mini survival garden forests on different parts of your land. These mini forests should be planted in a circular pattern with a food-producing tree at the center. A nut or non-obvious fruit works best.
Around the tree you can plant shade-loving edible perennials. And around those you can plant bushes, preferably the kind with thorns. Around those bushes and outward you can plant lower growing, sun-loving perennials and herbs blended together.
On the very outside of the circle you can plant thorny vines, stinging nettles, or any other plant that would deter intruders. As long as there's no obvious path to and from these little forests, there will be no indication to passersby by that they're a source of food.
Permaculture similar to the mini forest method. Just plant perennials in thick groups or in a section of built-up organic matter (logs and branches stuffed with hay and straw, covered in manure, and buried in a thick layer of soil).
This type of bed works best with perennials, including some trees, and the organic matter within the bed helps retain water and reduce the need for numerous visits. As the planting degrades, it looks like a mound of soil and the plants on it look more like random plants than a garden bed.
Most people know, or can at least guess, what a tomato or pumpkin plant looks like. They may not, however, know what a lemon cucumber looks like, or what certain unusual looking squashes are. Obvious plants should be planted near the center of your property, out of sight of the average passerby. Less obvious plants, however, can grace areas slightly closer to the edges.
Heirloom plants, with unusual coloration or growth patterns, are good options for this. And they will also grow true to seed, so you can save your own, too. Root crops are also highly recommended. Most people would have no idea what potatoes, sweet potatoes, ginger, turmeric, peanuts, and other root crops look like when they're growing.
Consider lesser-known native edibles, too—like sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes), ground cherries, or miner’s lettuce. These blend into natural landscapes and rarely raise suspicion.
At the edge of your land, in front of the thorny or stinging barrier (a barrier that is hopefully inter-grown with your fencing), plant some obvious spreading perennials like dandelions or other local and wild edibles.
If someone can get something at the edge and the barrier is obvious and not so friendly, then hopefully they won't bother trying to see what is on the other side.
In closely packed urban areas, a tall fence, say one made out of concrete blocks and about six feet high, will make it impossible for anyone to see your garden. Add a large, sturdy gate as well.
The only downside is that some people may think that if your yard is that well hidden, there must be something very valuable inside. This could make certain people even more determined to get past your fence, so it might be better to have a less visually imposing plant barrier (but no less difficult to penetrate).
Aquatic and semi-aquatic plants can also be utilized, especially if you already have some water on your land. If you're in a city location, creating a small water retention zone and planting a few water-loving plants can increase your survival garden options substantially.
Planting wild semi-aquatic plants like wild rice, cattails, water lily, or arrowroot can provide a wilderness border to your watery hiding place and plenty of food options for you, too. A network of floating mats, either as is or covered in soil for non-water plants, can also increase the hidability of your survival food sources. And what marauder wants to get all cold and wet?
Sometimes, the best hiding spot is in plain sight—especially if it's disguised as something no one wants to look at. A strategically “messy” yard can mask a lot of things, including edible plants. You can grow in and around:
This method uses the psychology of neglect—people tend to ignore what looks abandoned or unappealing. Climbing plants like beans, cucumbers, or even tomatoes can trail over junk piles or trellises disguised as scrap. Edible ground covers and herbs blend right into weed-like surroundings. It's the ultimate stealth garden.
Hiding your survival garden isn’t about paranoia—it’s about preparedness. Whether you have a quarter-acre or just a back patio, these strategies help you grow food quietly and protect your investment from wandering eyes and empty stomachs. The less it looks like a garden, the more likely it’ll still be there when you really need it.
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Originally published on Urban Survival Site.
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