Made some cast iron deep dish pizza Sunday, and then proceeded to royally foul up the pan. Rinsed it out with water after cooling off, so that I could get all the loose flour out before touching up the seasoning.
Put the pan on the burner, and then got sidetracked by toddler bathtime. Smelled the burning oil, returned to the kitchen to see it rolling smoke. Grabbed the pan off the burner and put on what I thought was a wool knit hotpad. Oh crap, NOW it's smoking. Started melting/burning the hot pad (one knit by my wife, thought it was wool, but maybe had synthetic material too?). Took both those items outside and placed on concrete patio to cool off (10 degrees here in Neb).
Two issues/concerns with the pan now: 1) destroyed the seasoning on the inside/bottom of the pan. It's flat black with greyish/whitish swirls. Sides look a little splotchy, but not terrible. 2) melted stuff on bottom (outside) of pan from hotpad.
Once the pan was cool enough to manage, I scrubbed the bottom/outside with a scrubber sponge to remove the visible burned on hotpad material. Appears that it all came off, although I can still see the knit pattern, and smell the acrid burnt smell.
Thoughts on process to rescue the pan? I am thinking as a step 1 I am going to put a fair amount of oil in it and heat it up on my grill side burner to make sure I burn off any remaining hotpad material before heating it up in the house again? Any extra steps I need to take before re-oiling/re-establishing the seasoning on the inside of the pan (to address the grey/white swirly-stuff in the pan)? Thanks in advance.