· Flat Street
Rust after a wet week on Flat Street
A carbon skillet does not care that you meant to dry it. Leave it damp from Friday to Monday in this valley and Monday’s steel has an orange breath on it.
Brattleboro holds water. The Connecticut is on one side of downtown. The Whetstone runs along Flat Street, under the lower end of town. A ground-floor kitchen near the brook rarely dries the way a kitchen up on Elliot Street does. In January the windows stay shut. Coats drip on the mat by the stove. Someone sets a just-washed pan on a cold burner “to finish drying” and then leaves for the weekend. The burner is off. The pan is not hot. By the time you are back, the orange is a film. It is not pits yet. It will be, if you oil over it and hope.
What we say at the bench, and what we do on our own pans: wash if you need to. Soap is not the enemy. A wet pan left cold is the enemy. Put the skillet back on a low burner until the water is gone and the steel is uncomfortable to hover a hand over. Then wipe a coat of oil thinner than you think is useful. If the oil sits in a puddle, you used too much, and that puddle turns sticky and tastes like a shop rag.
A blush of orange comes off with heat, oil, and a pinch of coarse salt worked with a spoon. Rinse. Heat dry. Oil again. If your fingernail catches a pit, stop digging a hole. Bring the pan to 48 Flat Street on an open day. We will tell you if the steel is finished or if it still has years. We would rather say so at the counter than sell you a new one you do not need. We will also sell you a new one if you want it. Both things are true. The sizes we keep are on the carbon pans page.
Do not stack a wet lid in the skillet. Do not slide the pan into a cloth bag while it is damp and call that storage. Hang it, or set it on the grate. Drying it hot does not tame the handle. The handle is bare steel. It stays hot after the pan looks quiet. I keep a towel on the bench for that reason, and I still miss. The mark is on my left wrist.
If the orange is already a crust, a re-season will not hide pits. The oven cycle is for a pan that is sticky or bare, not for a pan that is rotting through. We will say which one you have before we turn the oven on. Hours are on the door and on the hours page. The room where this happens is the bench.