Dutch Ovens

[goyatofu]

The annual sale starts about now - February.

urghhhhhh!!! thank gawd I have a sister who lives in NYC and expects me to cook for her, now all I need to do is to make her believe that I can only cook out of LC and nothing else!

[alacarte]

Seasoning, I don't think so, LC are enameled and require no seasoning. And I generally use wood utensils and sometimes metal. 

Seasoning? What seasoning? LC doesn't require seasoning.

Oh, thank goodness!

[Dave the Cook]

To be fair, or thorough, anyway, LC indicates that the interior of their grills and griddles do require seasoning. I assume this means that these items have raw iron interiors, though the site is not clear on this point.

[bleachboy]

That is pretty wierd. I can't imagine why one would glaze just the OUTSIDE. Can you tell who made it?

Le Creuset - I got it for cheap at an outlet store, when they had one in Nashville.

[fifi]

Good catch, Dave. I just took a look at my grill pan. It has some sort of black coating on the inside but I am not sure if it is non-stick as in PTFE. I wouldn't think so because of the expected high temperatures. At the base of the raised ribs, the coating appears to be cracked and there is a very little bit of rust. I have to confess that I have only used it a couple of times. I really don't grill inside. Too much mess and smoke that my set-up can't handle. (I got it free at an outlet that was giving it away as a promotion.) At any rate, whatever is on the inside surface, it is not the porcelain glaze like in the dutch ovens.

[mjc]

The annual sale starts about now - February.

urghhhhhh!!! thank gawd I have a sister who lives in NYC and expects me to cook for her, now all I need to do is to make her believe that I can only cook out of LC and nothing else!

I don't think that broadway panhandler is going to be the prices of this site provided by formerly grueldelux upthread.

I ordered one from here last week and it arrived this morning. Can't wait to use it.

[fifi]

According to the Le Creuset site the interior of the grill pans is also porcelain enamel, just black. As noted above, mine cracked at the base of the ribs. Maybe that is why they were giving them away.

That makes me wonder if they really mean "seasoning" as for traditional uncoated cast iron, or if they mean just to facilitate grilling. Now that I reread Dave's link in his post, it is not at all clear.

bleachboy... You have a piece of LC that I have never seen. I wonder if it is a "second"?

[Dave the Cook]

fifi, I don't read that page as definitive regarding what, if anything, is inside the pan. What they say could easily apply only to the exterior (trust me, I make part of my living out of writing disingenuous and ambiguous crap like this).

This is what confuses me:

Q: How do you season the grills?

A: Coat the new grill lightly with vegetable or olive oil using a pastry brush or paper towel. Don't use butter. Place the grill in the oven for 20 minutes at 225°F. Let the grill cool and store it. Repeat this procedure for the first 10-12 uses to build up a more "Nonstick" finish.

This sounds like seasoning. Since they don't call for seasoning of the rest of their stuff, and enamel is not porous (that's sort of the point of it, isn't it?), why do this, if you're not dealing with nekkid iron?

[bleachboy]

bleachboy... You have a piece of LC that I have never seen. I wonder if it is a "second"?

I wouldn't count that out as a possibility -- I did, after all, buy it for cheap at an outlet! However, the inside of the lid is also unglazed, and it doesn't really look like a mistake.

Anyhow, it's a great bean pot!

[fifi]

fifi, I don't read that page as definitive regarding what, if anything, is inside the pan. What they say could easily apply only to the exterior (trust me, I make part of my living out of writing disingenuous and ambiguous crap like this).

Yeah... Now that I go back and reread, I am confused, too. I am looking at my grill pan right now. The inside is definitely not nekkid. You see the typical uncoated iron on the top edge just like on the ovens. The black coating is not slick like the oven interiors but more matte and textured. It is definitely a hard and somewhat brittle coating, determined by picking at the cracks. I am looking at the same pan as in my link. WTF?

[PoorLawyer]

I just saw one at williams sonoma this weekend that was enamel on the outside but just cast iron on the inside. I definitely made a "what the hell is the point in that" comment at the time.

[Dave the Cook]

Hmmm. fifi's observation, "typical uncoated iron on the top edge just like on the ovens." along with PoorLawyer's, might be a clue. According to LC, that's not uncoated iron (I thought it was, too). In the section of their site titled "Manufacturing Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron," they say:

Step 4 A "ground coat" of enamel is applied to the entire piece and fired in an oven at 1600°F. This grey color is what you see in the lip of the oven. No exposed iron is ever left on a piece of Le Creuset.

Maybe the inside of the grill is simply the ground coat without the finish coat?

[fifi]

Nope. I remembered about the "ground coat", too. But I dismiss it because that upper edge will certainly rust. My pan has that ground coated edge and a black coated interior.

I think you can see the cracks. I left some glare on the black coating so you can see its texture.

[Mottmott]

Fifi, if I had a LC pan that looked like that, I'd call them to find out how to send it back under their guarantee. In my experience they are very responsive.

[fifi]

I thought about that but I don't really use it so I never bothered. I just had an evil thought. I could clean it up and give it as a shower gift to some airheaded young thing. I have a Williams Sonoma box just the right size. BWAHAHAHAHA!

[Dave the Cook]

How old is this pan, fifi? I'm wondering if the cracking on your pan was common, and they subsequently switched to the nekkid iron PoorLawyer saw because of it.

The thing is, an enameled grill pan really doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially the way people around here use grill pans -- it's contrary to LC's "nothing higher than medium heat" philosophy.

[fifi]

The pan is about four years old. I got it at the outlet in San Marcos TX. I have only used it maybe twice.

You very well might be right about them abandoning the enamel. I would have.

[Dave the Cook]

For a grill pan, I don't think it makes sense even on the outside. Something that's heated to extremes is likely to run into differing expansion rates between the materials, isn't it? Is that what you're suggesting? It seems doomed to failure, and I think that's what happened to your pan. Then again, I'm on record elsewhere as saying that grill pans are for tourists . . .

Regardless, I think Mottmott's right, some adjustment is in order.

[fifi]

Yeah... I agree. Grill pans are, by reason of function, subject to extremes of heat. This seems to be one of those areas where LC shouldn't have ventured into. Enameling on a grill pan makes no sense.

I wonder if I can get enough credit to get something cute like this or this.

[Dave the Cook]

Yeah... I agree. Grill pans are, by reason of function, subject to extremes of heat. This seems to be one of those areas where LC shouldn't have ventured into. Enameling on a grill pan makes no sense.

I wonder if I can get enough credit to get something cute like this or this.

I love those things, especially the garlic one and the bell pepper (in green or red!)

And for looks, if not utility, I think this is the coolest-looking grill pan on the market.

LC has really had their design department in high gear the last few years.

[JAZ]

Regarding the question of the black matte finish on some Le Creuset pieces, it is indeed a "ground coat" as Dave mentioned. Older LC pans had bottoms that were coated in it as well, before they switched to the full hard enamel coating. (Staub, incidentally, uses the same sort of coat in its pans.)

It won't rust, so from that standpoint it doesn't need to be seasoned. But it is relatvely porous, so it will benefit from seasoning to develop non-stick properties. It's very durable -- I know because when I got my skillet with that coating years ago, I used to scrub it with steel wool (didn't know any better) and it still doesn't rust.

But fifi's grill pan seems to be one of the sort with what I can only describe as a finished black enamel coat. It's not non-stick, it's not the usual hard enamel, but it's different from the ground coat. That might chip with high heat. That's what the cute little "skinny" grill pans are coated with.

I just ordered LC's double burner reversible grill and griddle, which, oddly, doesn't show up on either the LC site or Sur La Table's (as far as I know, we haven't discontinued it, so I'm not sure what the story is). It's coated entirely with the ground coat and can be heated up just like plain cast iron (I've used the one in the store's kitchen for years, and it's great). If you're thinking about a Le Crueset stovetop grill, that's the one you want.

[fifi]

Uh... ALL of my LC pots with the ground coat on the edge of the pot and the lid, rust.

[Dave the Cook]

Mine haven't, though I keep expecting them to.

Maybe you just need to stay away from LC, fifi.

[fifi]

I love 'em too much. I just oil the rims.

[snowangel]

Yet another EG $ suck. I've never hankered for a LC before, but I'm drooling now. Think I'll stop at Marshall's on Thursday after yoga. They often have them at good discounts. Usually something wrong, like a little ding on the knob, or the cover and dish color's are of different dye lots.