Does any one know how to season a cast-iron "tea kettle"? I use one on my wood stove to help provide moisture to the air in the winter. It has a strong tendency to rust in side the kettle. While this doesn't seem to harm the humidity raising qualities of the water it does give an unpleasant appearance and I would like to find a way to stop the rust.
Typically you season cast-iron with shortening, or just by cooking fatty foods in it a lot. But if you're just going to be boiling water over and over I think you're eventually going to get rust no matter what. You want something that's not just plain old cast iron - something porcelain, stainless steel or aluminum. Check llbean.com for "stovetop steamer". They're specifically made for the task at hand.
JP
Or a pot from the dollar store.
I do.
Total misapplication of a cast iron vessel.
Quit misapplying the product.
Go buy a copper bottom, stainless steel tea kettle, then throw in a few marbles, fill with water and place on stove.
Marbles will keep deposits from forming in bottom of kettle.
Lew
I don't have a clue, all my C/I stuff is strictly for cooking.
If you want to try to use it as a vaporizer, put some marbles in the pot and keep it filled with water.
The air is causing the rust.
Lew
Humidifier to keep you from zapping yourself on doorknobs and the cat on those dry cold winter days.
I use dutch ovens a lot and the way I season them is to fully coat all surfaces with cooking oil then put it in the oven at about 500 degrees until the oil has been "burned" into a patina on the metal. It is as good as teflon. If you search dutch oven seasoning on the web, you can find more detailed directions.
Roger
BTW, has this pot ever been seasoned, especially before using the first time?.
Lew
Doug Winterburn wrote in news:CzQ%i.14798$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe07.phx:
Some days, you just have to pick the cat up to avoid zapping it. Especially a long haired calico we have... ;-)
Puckdropper
"Curran Copeland" wrote in news:%iP%i.1764$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews5.bellsouth.net:
Look up electro-plating. Perhaps that's what you need to do to the inside. Since you like the look, try protecting the outside with wax. When you put it on the stove again, the wax will evaporate off.
Just an idea.
Puckdropper
I don't quite understand what you want to do. Do you want to show off your nice cast iron "teakettle"? Then I think cleaning it, seasoning it, and keeping it nice and dry is you best bet - make it a "schatzke" (spelling?). Or do you want to humidify your room? In that case, there are real honest to goodness humidifiers for sale. The alternative to a machine is to get a shallow but large pan that can sit on a source of heat (radiator, stove, what have you). Ideally it should be made of terracotta or something like a pot for a plant (but then without a drainage hole!). A glass (Pyrex) baking dish can do also. Way, way back there were terracotta (or something like it) "tubes" that hung on a radiator, between the fins, and had to be kept full of water. Worked very well, but technology has progressed , and I can't really find them by googling.
In actual usage, the kettle would have been dried between uses, not left w/ standing water, hence the rust would not have sufficient time to form. As you've noted, boiling water for sufficient time will remove the protective grease in the pores of a previously seasoned skillet or other cast iron utensil.
The only real suggestion I would have if you want to try to use it as a continuous evaporator would be to use one of the zinc-converting treatments on the inside to minimize the rusting potential. Of course, I would then no longer even consider using it for cookware.
--
Maybe I wasn't clear on where it is. It sets in my shop on my shop woodburning stove and is used to humidify the room. It is a conversation piece to some minor degree but earns its keep as a humidifer. I also do some cooking in the shop from time to time on the woodburning stove and would like to get it where I can make a cup of hot tea from the water in the kettle (just for the heck of it, I have a microwave in the shop that works well for that). The rust doesn't hurt the function of the kettle but I would like to get rid of it mainly because it shouldn't be there. I try to keep all of my tool is working condition and the rust just doesn't seem right.
"Curran Copeland" wrote in news:U0Z%i.1489$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews2.bellsouth.net:
I would use an unglazed pottery dish for humidification, or a Pyrex one if that is available (much easier to clean than poetry, but the effective evaporating area is much smaller - pottery/terracotta "sweats".
Switch to the teakettle if you want to make tea, but otherwise keep the cast iron dry.
All free advice guaranteed or triple your money back.
A cast iron tea kettle may seem like a good idea, but it's 2007 and stainless steel cookware has been around for the better part of a century. I'd say that if the rust is an issue it's time to retire it to decorative use or melting lead to make bullets or something else to which its properties are better suited.
For the purpose at hand I suspect that aluminum would be fine as well--a wood stove shouldn't get hot enough to melt it.
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