July 29, 2018 - 4:11pm
Smoking Romertopf (Clay Pot)
I have 3 clay vessels. 2 of them are romertopfs. The small romertopf works fine, but the large romertopf smokes... a lot of smoke and the smoke smells a bit like plastic. Google has yielded zero explanations. Does anyone know what is going on? How to fix it?
I received the Romertopf used as a gift, but, the previous owner states it never smoked for him.
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They are made of clay which is fired at temperatures that are much higher than home ovens. Is possible it was soaked in something that the clay absorbed and is now being released when it is heated?
This might be extreme but if you have a self-cleaning oven, you might want to place it in there during a self-clean cycle to burn off whatever the clay might have absorbed. Disclaimer: I don’t offer any guarantee that it won’t break your romertof!
I'm gus=essing the clay absorbed the chicken fat at 350 F. Now you are baking at 450 F and the smoke point of the fat is reached and now will smoke till it is gone. I have the same problem with my toaster oven. For half a year I bake all kinds of stuff in it at 350 F abd then, in the summer, bake bread in it at 500 F. It smokes like crazy if I forget to clean it really god first adn them it still smokes some:-) No worries. It should just clean itself up eventually in the 450 F heat.
I rescued a rometopf from a friend who was going to toss it out.She used it for chicken and the first few times I used it it smoked. It does not now. I think the chicken fat burned off.
I bought a Romertopf 109 at a garage sale for $4. It had obviously be used to cook chicken. I put it into the oven and let it bake at 475 degrees until the smoking ceased. Works great with my sourdough batards.