Well, I'll be damned.

So Cathy's sister sent me this... thing around Christmastime. It is a roughly three inch square of, I shit you not, CHAIN MAIL. As a D&D nerd who's spent time around SCA as well, I'm very familiar with chain mail. So why did I get a square of it in the mail?

Apparently, to clean my cast-iron pans.

I'd been using just hot water and a stainless steel scrub on my main cast iron pans for years. It worked well for the most part, but some particularly vigorous scrubbing and/or a long soak would occasionally strip the seasoning off of chunks of the pan, requiring careful use and washing to re-establish a decent, but somewhat fragile, level of seasoning.

After a half dozen scrubs with this hunk of chain mail? Specifically, the Knappmade CM Scrubber? Holy shit. My pan has never been this well seasoned. Free yourself from your skepticism - I have tried this thing, and it has proven itself very worthy.

I have even inadvertently tested it in extremis. Last Thursday, I made cheeseburgers. I melted big deli slices of cheddar over slightly smaller than that patties. The corners of the cheese cooked in the pan, then dried overnight.

The scrubber got that shit right off. Took some elbow grease and some water, but very little soaking, and the seasoning stayed totally intact. I am convinced.

Is there a drawback? Yes. One. See, it's chain mail. It's rings and rings of heavy gauge stainless steel, overlapping each other. What this means is that it is not soft to the touch. There is no handle. There is no Oxo padded rubber grip. There is just a sheet of steel rings that you grab and press with your flesh-hands into cast iron. So it is not the most comfortable thing I have ever used in my life.

But it works so damn well that I'm more than willing to trade off the discomfort. We all have, or should have, that workhorse cast iron pan. One of these brought mine to unheard of levels of glossy, black and slick in about a month. Consider it Forkbastard-approved.