Cooking with Carbon Steel

Cooking with carbon steel

Cooking with carbon steel can feel like a challenge at first. However, with the right tips and tricks, it is no more challenging than cooking with cast aluminium cookware - and carbon steel has its advantages that make your cooking a memorable experience. Our carbon steel pans are extremely heat-resistant and, at the same time, provide unrivalled temperature control and a natural non-stick effect that gets better and better the more you use and burn in your pan. This gives you total control: with Carbon Steel, you can switch seamlessly between searing a steak and melting a piece of butter - without worrying about anything burning. However, you must first burn in your new Carbon Steel to lay the foundation for this non-stick effect. But don't worry! As long as you follow a few simple steps, it's not difficult at all. You can find detailed instructions, including a video, here. To make it easier for you to get started cooking with carbon steel, we have put together a few tips on the most popular cooking techniques.

Deep-frying

Deep-frying in a pan has a clear advantage over classic deep-frying in a pan: You need far less oil to get crispy fried food. Thanks to its high heat resistance, carbon steel is perfect for deep-frying. Here, it is particularly important to leave the food in the pan for the first few minutes so that it can fry undisturbed. Once the underside is crispy, it will release from the base of the pan by itself and can be turned easily - so there's no need to use the kitchen utensil a lot!

Frying

Pans made of carbon steel are characterised by their high thermal conductivity - they react almost immediately to changes in temperature, giving you maximum flexibility when cooking. This is particularly helpful when frying meat or other foods that need to be crispy and evenly cooked (e.g. mushrooms or similar). With Carbon Steel, you can first fry your food at a high temperature until crispy and then turn down the heat to slowly cook your food through. Even a delicate sauce by adding butter to the gravy is no problem - as long as you keep the temperature low, you don't have to worry about burning. You should be careful when cooking with acidic foods such as tomatoes, vinegar, wine or citrus fruits. As acid can significantly damage the burnt-in patina of your carbon steel and favour the formation of rust, you should avoid using it altogether. But there's no need to worry: if a little acid should get into your pan and damage the patina, you can easily clean and re-season it. See our instructions:Help - my carbon steel has rusted!

Sautéing

Sautéing is the short, hot frying of food. To ensure that sautéing with your Carbon Steel is a success, it is advisable to take your ingredients out of the fridge and allow them to warm up a little before frying - cold food tends to stick to your pan! The first step is to let your pan warm up at a low to medium temperature before adding the oil of your choice. Then, let the oil warm up a little before adding your food. Ensure you don't overcrowd the pan - so that all your fried food has enough opportunity to come into contact with the pan. Therefore, you should not stir too much when frying so that your food can develop a good brown colour.

Cleaning

After the joy comes the pleasure - once the cooking adventure is over and your creation has been eaten, it's time to clean your carbon steel. You can find out the easiest and gentlest way to do this here: Everything you need to know about daily cleaning of your carbon steel.