How Do You Clean Your Kettles?

[pierre girard]

When Wing and I used to guide, Wing had quite a regimen for cleaning kettles. Before use, the outside was smeared with dish soap - so the soot would come off easily when washing. We always brought brillow, or some kind of soapy steel wool pad to help remove the hardened soot or food, a wash cloth, and a towel. I would wonder why we always had to carry all that stuff.

I was camping with some Ojibwe relations, about ten years ago, and one of the old family matriarchs was doing the dishes. She boiled up a kettle of water, put in ash from the campfire, and washed everything in the lye water. To take off crusted or burnt food, she ripped a little corner off her shirt tail, and used dirt as an abraisive to get it off.

For soot on the kettles, she used sand - which removed only as much as might come off on your hand if you touched it. After she'd scrubbed everthing, she started the kettle boiling again with clean water and rinsed everything in the boiling water.

Seemed like a lot less to carry, and it is my kettle and dish cleaning method -while camping - to this day. Of course - if Wing is along - we bring the brillow, towel, and dish soap.

PG

 

[Wayland]

If you have a fire add some ash and water to your pan.

Ash + water = alkali + gritty silica

alkali + fat = soap

soap + gritty silica + slight scrub = clean pan.

when you have washed the pan pour the water into the fireplace, this area has already been affected by the alkali.

Rinse with water and again pour it into the fireplace.

On the next rinse you can pour the water away elsewhere but not into the water source.

All too often I have seen people washing pans directly in streams or lakes only to pour the dirty water back into the clean source.

Always throw the water well back onto the land, this way the ground can filter out the organic materials, reducing contamination of your source water.

For a final rinse use clean drinking water or boil the water in the pan.

 

[Graham_S]

waylands method works really well, i've tried it and can reccomend it.

 

[Ogri the trog]

My father got me into cleaning with whatever is available.
His story came from serving in the desert during his National Service. Mess tins etc would be scrubbed with sand, tipped out and repeated until it shone - and if many folk kept to the same area, any heavy contamination can be burried. Similarly, a wipe with fresh grass, leaves, stream gravel etc and then repeated with the contaminated clumps burnt in the fire, keeps both mess-tin and land clean and needing only a rinse with water as a final stage.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[running bare]

when i was in the forces and on exercise we used the same method and never had any side effects

 

[JonnyP]

That reminds me.........I must go and put all my cooking / eating stuff from Waynes meet in the dishwasher................Jon

 

[Razorstrop]

erm you have to clean them???

 

[bushwacker bob]

erm you have to clean them???

apparently :umbrella:

 

[Ketchup]

erm you have to clean them???

Excellent remark. From a food safety point of view, there's no point in cleaning the outside of a kettle, unless of course you regularily feel an urge to lick it

If you are using a proper cast iron kettle, you shouldn't clean the inside too often either. You can prepare your kettle "non stick" by coating the inside with food grade oil and heating it above a fire until blazing hot.

Rub the hot inside with a piece of (news)paper. Watch your fingers!. The paper will turn brown/black with burned oil. Reapply with a new light oil coat (using more newspaper) and heat again, rub again. Repeat this operation until you obtain a laquerlike layer on the inside of your kettle and no more burned fat comes off. In Chinese kitchens this process is known as 'seasoning' and is applied to woks and other bare steel and iron kitchenware. But in old Europe it was also the rule never to remove the fat layer from cast iron kitchenware. When baking meat, it won't stick and the iron is protected from rust.

After cooking, scrub with hot water and a brush. Dry by heating the kettle over the fire and store away losely wrapped in waxed paper. Respect the greasy seasoned layer and never use an abrasive nor dish washing liquid ever again until the 'seasoned layer' comes off through overheating or long idle storage and rusting. In that case scrub off untill you meet bare metal again and start 'seasoning' the kettle as before.

This is perfectly healthy (within reasonable limits) as the coating layer is hostile to bacterial growth (due to low water activity: Aw) and will not normally come off during cooking.

 

[sam_acw]

If you are cleaning something with vegetation just be careful what you use. Back in my reenacting days a friend cleaned out a canteen half (used as frying pan) using poison ivy!

 

[Razorstrop]

Most amusing

Mr Strop