Silicone basting brush - is it a no-no?

SpurgeonH

Active member
Hey guys, this might be a noobie "live and learn" moment. When I was seasoning the cornstick pan I bought last week, I thought I had come up with a brilliant solution for getting the Crisco into the small spaces ... I "painted" the corn cobs with a silicone basting brush. When I went to do the second round of seasoning, I noticed a couple of spots where the oil seemed to almost bead up like rain on a freshly waxed car. My only conclusion is the silicone must have put a film on the iron. I thought the brush was rated to 500 degrees, but when I checked on it online it appears they are only rated to 450 ... which is the temperature the pan was when I pulled it from the oven.

Has anybody else used silicone brushes? If so, did you experience this problem as well?
 
Spurgeon,
I use cotton swabs (Q Tips) to apply oil to my cornbread pans when seasoning them. It just never occurred to me to use a silicon brush. I would expect the brush to melt.

Jack
 
This same phenomenon may be observed if one uses Pam spray to season their pans, as I can attest. Pam also contains small amounts of silicone, and a pan seasoned this way will display the "pooling" effect you noticed. I think the consensus is this is ok (the government has deemed Pam food safe, anyway), but if the thought of silicone mixed in with your carbon bothers you just strip and try again.
 
And onto something else. :covri: Bear in mind that the more you spray with one of those duster cans, the agitation of the propellant makes the air stream become extremely frigid. Potentially not good if spraying in a concentrated area of a blazing hot cast iron pan.
 
This same phenomenon may be observed if one uses Pam spray to season their pans, as I can attest. Pam also contains small amounts of silicone, and a pan seasoned this way will display the "pooling" effect you noticed. I think the consensus is this is ok (the government has deemed Pam food safe, anyway), but if the thought of silicone mixed in with your carbon bothers you just strip and try again.

Where does the information come from that PAM contains "small amounts of silicone?" Silicone is not listed in the ingredients of the PAM MSDS.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...zZHNmaWxlY2FiaW5ldHxneDoyMDJmNzM0ZGJmZmVkZjNj

I would suggest that any pooling effect is the result of too much oil whether it be PAM, lard, Crisco, bacon grease, sunflower, flaxseed, etc. and has nothing to do with "small amounts of silicone."
 
Kevin, "pooling" is probably a poor description of what is happening. In my case, the oil actually pulls back from a spot, like the spot was freshly waxed.

As for PAM, I searched for their label and found several. Some list dimethyl silicone in the product and some don't. Probably depends on the particular formula (I.e one might be "all natural", one might be a stronger formula for grills or whatever). The silicone is in there as an anti-foam. In some cases, "process aids" do not have to listed.

Also, as an antifoam, the amount in there would be very small.
 
Kevin, "pooling" is probably a poor description of what is happening. In my case, the oil actually pulls back from a spot, like the spot was freshly waxed.

As for PAM, I searched for their label and found several. Some list dimethyl silicone in the product and some don't. Probably depends on the particular formula (I.e one might be "all natural", one might be a stronger formula for grills or whatever). The silicone is in there as an anti-foam. In some cases, "process aids" do not have to listed.

Also, as an antifoam, the amount in there would be very small.

I think the appropriate terminology would be "beading", like rain drops on a freshly waxed car.
 
Ingredient list on can of original PAM states "dimethyl silicone" as an anti-foaming agent.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pam...3q_PAhXH7D4KHaSHDIIQ_AUICCgB&biw=1240&bih=863

DING DING DING DING.

I would guess that we have an isotropic distribution of silanols (silicone based alcohols) incorporated into the seasoning and bonded directly to the metal. Silicone is often used to modify electrode surfaces (either graphite or metal) as well as other surfaces and oxidation of the silicone at high temperatures could likely give silanols. These very polar functional groups, even at a very low concentration, would repel the oils in something like Crisco and cause the pooling or beading effect.

KevinE, the beading is not a function of "too much lard, etc." It happens quite clearly at low or high temperatures and is independent of amount of fat used. Furthermore, surface tension decreases with increasing temperature, so at higher temperature the oil would tend to spread out more easily. The opposite effect is seen here. This is definitely a surface modification of the metal or the seasoning and not the consequence of getting carried away with oil volumes.
 
All this helps explain my experience where I could not build good seasoning in my goto skillet for years - until I stopped using Pam.

Hilditch
 
And yet there are those who use original PAM exclusively as a manual seasoning product with great success. I'd suggest that a prudent course of action at this point, rather than trying to apply a bunch of pseudo-science to the problem, is just to strip the thing again with lye and re-season using a cheap natural bristle paint brush instead of the silicone brush, and see what happens.
 
Speaking of silicone in cooking sprays, it's not just seasoning to worry about, it's using it in actual cooking...

That BSR chef skillet I picked up recently, it was one of those that only darkened to a golden color after manual seasoning. So I started doing a couple slices of bacon on it every day or two to mature it up.

I was doing that yesterday and I noticed a couple spots were acting oleophobic as I pushed the bacon around. Didn't think too much of it until after cleaning, while oiling it the same thing happened.

I was at a loss as to why until I remembered - on Saturday I cooked a quick brunch on it, toasted some sourdough and topped it with scrambled eggs and bacon. The sourdough was toasted on the pan under a press, and instead of butter I took a shortcut and used... butter-flavored cooking spray, generic store brand.

It must have silicone in it and some must have transferred during cooking. So there's the warning - don't just avoid silicone-containing cooking sprays for seasoning, avoid them with CI altogether.

I'd rather not start over with this one so I tried some stuff last night, will see how well it worked this evening.
 
OK, the skillet's good now. What I did was throw it in the oven while I was seasoning another piece. The idea was silicone utensils, hot pads, etc are usually rated to 450 degrees so perhaps the 500 degree seasoning temp would burn it off. Whether that's what happened or some other mechanism was in effect, either way both cooking bacon and a post-cleaning oiling went normally, no oleophobic spots. Whew!
 
I wonder if that (burning it off) is what happened recently to a skillet I was working on. When I was wiping the oil out of a hot skillet and grabbed the wrong towel. Instead of wiping it with a terry cloth cotton, I wiped it with a towel the New Balance guy gave me. That towel is probably some kind of poly blend. Anyway, when I went to do a second round of seasoning, the oil ended up all over the surface of the pan. I wiped it out with the cotton towel and put it in the oven. When I finished that round of seasoning, I did another round. That time the seasoning did not bead up. I'm guessing you are right and the high temp burned off whatever the poly blend towel put on the surface.
 
Back
Top