Vollrath 58900 Carbon Steel Fry Pan 8 1/2" - French Style

For a carbon steel pan, start by washing, rinsing, and drying the pan. Heat the pan on your range on medium to high heat, then add shortening to the pan. Use a clean dry towel to spread the shortening around the interior of the pan, creating an even coat. Remove the pan from the heat, wipe out the excess shortening and let it cool. You can repeat this process up to 3 more times. For a cast iron skillet, preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and set aside. Wash, rinse, and dry your skillet. Place the skillet in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove and coat the entire skillet with shortening, inside and out. Place the skillet in the oven for 45 minutes with the baking pan on a rack below it to catch any mess. You can repeat this process up to three more times.

Welcome to Vollrath University. I'm Chef Rich and today we're going to talk about how to season a cast iron or a carbon steel fry pan. Raw iron pans, when you first receive them, they don't cook very well. Food will stick and they'll also rust, so that's why you want to season these pans. There's many different types of seasonings and methods that people have used throughout the years, talking about the differences in oils and techniques. Lately I've been reading a lot about flax seed oil and today I'm going to show you how to use flax seed oil on a stove top to season a carbon steel fry pan. Raw steel pans, which is carbon steel and cast iron, are typically shipped like this, in a bag with light oil on them. So, the first thing you want to do when you receive your new pan is thoroughly clean the pan of all the manufacturing oils that were used and put it on the stove and begin to heat the pan. While we're waiting for our pan to warm, let's talk about flax seed oil. The reason I'm going to use flax seed oil is because it's very omega-3 fatty acids and these acids, when it reaches its smoke point, change and polymerize and further cross link and bind to the surface of the pan, the iron surface, and that's what begins to form our season coating. Now we want to turn off the heat and apply a little flax seed oil. Next, we want to take a clean cloth, paper towel, and rub that flax seed oil over the surface of the pan. We really want a nice, very, very thin layer of the oil in the pan. We don't want to see any drips or runs. So, just a nice, thin layer of the flax seed oil in the pan. Now, we return the pan to the stove and turn it to high heat. We want to heat this pan on high heat until it all reaches its smoke point and it'll begin to bond to the surface of the pan. Okay, now, after several minutes your pan will look like this. The oil has reached its smoke point and began to adhere to the pan. Now what we want to do is let that pan cool. Okay, now the pan has fully cooled, so we want to repeat the process. Warm the pan. Now, I can't emphasize enough that we don't want to rush this process. We want to take it very slow and use multiple coats of very thin oil. Now, the pan is warm. Let's go ahead and give it another coat. Again, being very careful not to have any drips or runs and let that pan have another process. You can see now that the oil has reached its smoke point and is beginning to evaporate and form that cross link to the previous layer. Okay, now you want to repeat that process of these thin layers, back to the heat, and so forth and now this pan we've done that 11 times. You can see our surface now is a very hard, smooth, very durable surface. I can't emphasize enough to use very thin coats of oil, back and forth to the heat, and then this pan we've done 11 times. Very nice surface. If you try to rush this process, what you're going to have is this. Now, you can see how splotchy it is and also it's very thick and gummy. This is because I put too much oil in to show what will happen if you try to rush this. This pan isn't going to be very durable and it's actually sticky because that oil is very gummy. Okay, now let's talk about cleaning and maintaining your seasoned pan. After using these pans, you're going to want to wash them out in the pot and pan sink with some water, a little soap, nothing too abrasive and certainly not any scouring pads. You want to keep that surface very smooth. If you should find that you need to season this pan again if you've gouged it, you can go back to the natural state by using a little oven cleaner, scouring it clean, and repeating this process again with the light coats of oil. And that's it! A nice, easy way to season your cast iron or carbon steel pans.

The next time you order off a menu or visit a buffet, think about this: there's a good chance your food was prepared, cooked or served with Vollrath small wares and food service equipment. In addition to their traditional gas and electric equipment options, Vollrath's expanding line of induction products are heating up the food industry. With more precise and energy efficient cooking, that's safer and faster. Today we're in Sheboygan, Wisconsin to find out what makes Vollrath so hot. For Almost 145 years, the Vollrath company has been manufacturing high quality small wares and food service equipment right here in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Today we continue to be family owned and we continue to grow through new product acquisitions and innovations of our own. So with 9 manufacturing facilities across North American, Europe and Asia, we continue to supply a wide variety of products to many international food service markets. The Mirage series is durable by design and able to withstand the daily use and abuse of a professional kitchen, ensuring their equipment is built to last. Our industrial design team gets involved in the very beginning stages of product development all the way to the team process to the end. It's a very integrated process. A good example of this is our Mirage induction buffet warmer, which is a terrific collaboration of industrial design and engineering. So what we ended up with is a very sophisticated looking product but it's very robust, very efficient, using induction heat, so really we've improved on the customer serving experience. What's really nice about this product is that you can connect three of them together and just have one cord going to the wall. Simple, smart, safe. The team at Vollrath works diligently to evolve induction technology inside and out. As far as R and D we work closely with our customers to understand the rigors of their kitchens, because a commercial kitchen can be very difficult on equipment. We then work on advanced development here as well and we marry the two to design something that works the best for them with aesthetics, reliability, and fine control in mind the whole way through. Our expansive product selection makes us a one stop shop for our customers in induction. Products themselves started in this flat state; they were primary cooking and people loved them for the efficiency of the units and the control. If I can dial something in here and get an exact power setting each and every time and we can control it by time as well, we have very repeatable results that anyone can achieve. I think one of the biggest innovations though has come when we have taken the coil now and brought it up the sides of the unit. So this now provides very even heating around the soup pot. Typically when you see on the inside of the pot, if you ever go to a soup bar and you see all the soup around the top edge, that's just waste. Operators really love how even this heats. We have a chain that has reported to us over a 30% increase in their food yields. I mean that's real money and people just love the waterless design. Here at Vollrath they've built an entire training facility for food service professionals to provide a more hands on experience. As our business evolved we recognized the need to have an industry leading training facility. We wanted a space that customers could actually come in and touch and feel the products. We try to be like the ivy league of the food service university industry, if there is such a thing. In the university we have three areas: the first area is our classroom area and this is where the details really come out, we train on the features and benefits of the products. Then we have our showroom area. This is a space where the customers or guests can go into and touch the products and feel what we talked about in the training. Then the test area, coming in here and using the product is a critical step for a lot of our customers, it really brings everything together. These best in class products definitely take the cake. Making a product look engaging and safe and intuitive but at the same time robust and commercial can be a challenge, but we like the challenge and we're really pretty good at it. Vollrath's induction technology line continues to outperform every day. Proving that the only fire a chef really needs is inside. Bon Appétit!