A Tea Addict's Journal

Seasoning a tetsubin

June 2, 2008 · 3 Comments

The other thing that I discovered yesterday was by accident. We were making a red bean paste dessert for the guests, and when it boiled, it boiled over a little bit and spilled some onto the range. I didn’t think much of it, and when I went to heat up some more water as our first pot ran out, I put my tetsubin on the same range and started heating it.

It caught on fire, since there was some red bean paste on the bottom.

That, however, turned out to be a sort of blessing, for I finally found out how some of the other tetsubins I’ve seen get that old, black sheen — I think it’s from smoke and deposits on it, or some such. Maybe it’s also just the seasoning from putting some oil on it and then firing it, but it seems like good old smoke will do the trick on its own (or am I wrong?). My tetsubin, in some of the places where there was that fire, now has a bit of a black sheen to it whereas the other parts are still brown as before.

Now I am thinking…. a brazier might be in order….

Oh boy, the list of stuff to get is, indeed, endless

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3 responses so far ↓

  • Anonymous // June 3, 2008 at 12:50 am | Reply

    I believe the shiny black sheen is from a coat of lacquer applied to the inside of tetsubins.

  • djn7304 // June 3, 2008 at 1:23 am | Reply

    If I had a non-glazed tetsubin, I’d do some experimenting. My intuition tells me smoke wouldn’t be quite as permanent as classic iron seasoning techniques, but I do think a real fire is better for seasoning iron than an oven. ($0.02)

  • MarshalN // June 4, 2008 at 12:27 am | Reply

    I think the shiny black sheen is only sometimes a lacquer — some are obviously not lacquer (they look a bit different).

    I’m starting to think real fire has something to do with it…

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