tell me how you season your cast iron cookware

[topaz]

With oil?  Lard?  Any particular kind?
A lot or a little fat?  How much?  A thin coating?  A quarter-inch deep?
On high heat or low?  In the oven?  On the stove?
For how long?  A half-hour?  Two hours?

Every guide to seasoning cast iron I've ever read has been infuriatingly vague about how much, how hot and how long, and don't give me guidance on how to tell if I've done it correctly.  I have both a cast-iron griddle and a lovely cast iron cookpot that I think have never been properly seasoned and I really want to do it right.

Comments

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

I do 1/2C oil and 1/2C kosher salt,stick in the oven for an hour on medium-high temp,let cool and then wipe out oil and salt with a paper towel

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

I take a stick or spoon of criso and coat the entire surface, including the bottom and handle(s). Then I leave it in the hot oven for 2-4 hours. the key part is getting lard/shortening on every surface and leaving it there in the heat for a while.

Other tips: Put the pan upside down in the oven so the excess oil can drip off. Also, put a half-sheet under the pan to catch the dripping oil.

tamidon's method sounds a lot closer to my cleaning method than seasoning.

(If you have a copy of _The Best Recipe_, there should be instructions in there in a sidebar)

[nacht_musik]

upside down

agreed. My experience in seasoning a popover pan was that too much oil pooled in the bottom of each tin, and vulcanized into a 1/8" layer of hard translucent rubbery stuff, almost like hard candy or epoxy. You don't want that.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

There! See, this is why I needed to ask the question! I did this once and just didn't know if that was part of the process of *successfully* seasoning a cast iron pan!

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I knew an old Vermonter who insisted that the only proper way to season any cast-iron cookware was with bear fat. You might be able to get some at Savenors.

I once bought a heavy cast-iron frying pan at a garage sale for a nickel (yes, $0.05), spent a good couple of hours scouring the rust out of it, and then seasoned it on the range with bacon grease. That worked like a charm.

But you should ignore everything I just said, especially if you spent more than a nickel on your griddle and cookpot, and do what tamidon said.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

coated in porcelain?

[mizarchivist]

What Tamar said I trust entirely to be so, but also your seasoning will continue as you use it.
I've found a great way to avoid scrubbing the good surface that you're working towards is to clean the pan while it's still pretty warm, or reheat it. Adding liquid to deglaze, very helpful. I was reminded by this option recently and was eyeing the chicken remains that'd been there for 3 days. Ew.
Good luck and have fun! Cast iron is AWESOME!

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Oh, we've been using cast iron for years; my skillet is probably 25 years old. :-) But we seem never to have properly seasoned the iron Dutch oven or griddle we acquired at Lodge a few years back.

[mizarchivist]

Dur. I shoulda' known.

[points.livejournal.com]

I use oil and a towel, wipe all surfaces and then heat on medium until just starting to outgas, then reduce to low for an hour and a half. When done, I let cool and wipe down. To clean, I'll reheat with water, maybe soap lightly, and wipe again. Occasionally, will reseason as needed. Usually, you'll find it will season quite well just by use. :)

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

What he said. I usually use corn oil, but have used peanut oil as well.

[primal-pastry.livejournal.com]

Thoroughly scrub the entire thing with steel wool until there's not a speck of rust. Then, do what fengshui does noting that "hot oven" means, for me, "heat to 400 F and turn off". Do use crisco so that it doesn't smoke evilly. Once it's cool, wipe the excess off and then cook your heart out!

The trick, as mizarchivist said, is to never again wash it with soap or water. Just wipe it out while it's warm. If you must wash it, just re-do the seasoning dance and you'll be fine.

[trom.livejournal.com]

I wipe them down with a thin coat of oil and then put it in the oven on self clean mode. Also just cook with it a lot :)

[harimad.livejournal.com]

To season?!? Putting it through self-cleaning will *clean* the pot. Thoroughly. No seasoning left.

(Or maybe your self-cleaning cycle isn't the usual three hours at 600F?)

[trom.livejournal.com]

Nope, it seasons it just fine for a new pot. Even at 3 hours at 800F. I've done it any number of times. Hint, don't leave the pot/pan on the racks though. They will bend....

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Weird. Maybe I'll buy a 5 cent pan and try it, just to see. But seriously, how could it do both??

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I think the moral of this is that a lot of things work :) I coated my pan with canola oil and baked it upside down in an oven at 350 or so for an hourish (put tinfoil on the rack underneath!), then turned off the oven and let it cool in there. My experience is that if you do it right side up, the extra oil pools in the pan and makes sticky spots.

Note: do not just season once and then cook! I tried this, and had to scrub it off and reseason. Go through this coat-bake-cool process three or four times before cooking in it, and hold off on sticky stuff until it's really well seasoned..

And, as everyone has said, never again the soap! Kosher salt is great, eventually hot water will be ok. After cooking, I dry mine with a towel and then put it upside-down on a burner on low for 10 minutes or so to make sure it's reeeeeally dry so it doesn't rust.

This should be sufficient detail

[harimad.livejournal.com]

For cast iron I like the stovetop method. It's more work but more thorough. For woks I use the oven but woks are steel, not iron, and seem to absorb less fat.

I use tasteless oil (generic, safflower, canola, etc) or crisco to season cast iron. Oil makes thinner layers so you need to do more rounds; reasonable people differ on whether this is an advantage, a disadvantage, or irrelevant. Peanut oil, olive oil, butter and lard all have strong flavors that might creep into your food.

Most sites or books that instruct how to season a wok go into great detail. It's the same theory: get the metal pores to open up, absorb a lot of fat, and then retain the fat when the pan cools.

Short version: heat pot, wipe with fat, heat still smoking, cool; repeat 5-20 times. You don't need to do it all at one go.

Clean Your Pan
Scrub the pan thoroughly with soap, water and abrasives, then dry thoroughly. Don't air dry it, it'll get rusty and you'll have to scrub again. Either wipe well or heat till all - and I mean every last bit - the water evaporates. You can also use your oven's cleaning cycle - in fact, if you need to clean your oven this is a way to kill three birds (one oven, two pots) with one stone. Nicely energy and time efficient. Wipe out all the dried powdery crud.

Why scrub? If it's a new pan this will remove the machine oil that protects it during mfg and shipping. If it's an old pan this removes the no-doubt ruined/rusty former seasoning plus any crud that's accumulated over the years.

A Round of Seasoning
Put your clean, dry pan on the stove. Heat till really hot - a drop of water should skitter. Have ready several paper towels wadded together and some long-handled tongs to hold the wad. Pour some oil into the pan or add a clump of crisco to the pan. Still over heat, use the paper towel - held by tongs so you don't burn yourself - to spread the fat on every bit of inside surface and the pan's lip. Still over heat, keep rubbing it in till the surfaces are shiny. Turn off the heat, warn your kids the pan will be hot for at least half an hour, and wait for it to cool. Then use clean paper towel to wipe away any grease that didn't get/stay absorbed. (You can reuse the spread-fat wad of towel (a few times, at least) but not the wipe-away-fit wad of towel.)

Repeat
Lather rinse repeat till you like the shine. The more repetitions, the more thorough the initial seasoning.

Subsequent Care
Don't ruin your nicely seasoned pan with bad care. Here's how to do it
right: while the pan is still hot, dump out all the stuff left inside.
Rinse the pan with hot water and a soft bristle pot scrubber (but not an abrasive pad), then get rid of the water: wipe with paper towel, heat till evaporated, whatever. Then, while the pan is still hot, wipe a little oil over the inside to refresh the seasoning. Best, best, best to do this before you eat - the detritus won't have had time to cook and stick in place. If it gets stuck you may have to scrub, which will remove the seasoning. Never soak a seasoned pan.

I used these steps for my first cast iron pan. It's about 20 years old now and so shiny it could be a mirror.


[1] You'll figure out how much fat to use by the time you finish reading the instructions.

[opadit.livejournal.com]

This is what I do at home:

1) Make French fries. (Then eat them.)

2) When the oil has cooled, empty the pan but don't wash it. Wipe it down with a cloth or paper towel.

3) If the pan is still not seasoned, repeat as needed.

4) Now that it's seasoned, when you wash the pan, use as little detergent as possible. Use a plastic mesh scrubber to dislodge the food particles and rinse under hot water. (I use a piece of the plastic mesh bag that onions or garlic were packaged in.) If the pan is well seasoned, let it air dry. If the pan needs a little seasoning treatment, dry it with a cloth and brush a little vegetable oil in it before putting it away.

5) Avoid cooking starchy foods, which soak up the seasoning. Note that I don't follow this advice, because I make fried rice a couple of times per month in my large skillet.

For what it's worth, I use a cast-iron skillet to cook my breakfast, a fried egg, every morning. The egg does not stick; I can slide it around and flip it without needing a turner to pick it up.

[arcticelf.livejournal.com]

I use regular salted butter. Rub a thin coating on and bake on 500 for an hour or two. Repeat a couple times, mixed with cooking bacon in the pan.

A word of warning though: new cast iron is typically not finish ground on the cooking surface, its left as a rough casting. This crap will not take or hold a seasoning (In my experience) the old stuff, which is smooth ground on the inside, works better then teflon. If the inside is slightly bumpy, like the outside, its no good.

If any one knows how to fix this I'd love to hear it.

AE

[nacht_musik]

buy vintage cast-iron on ebay? =)

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Dremmel tool?

[ctseawa.livejournal.com]

I happen to agree completely with fengshui but thought it might be interesting to see one professional's opinion. Alton Brown has the following to say at Alton Brown Chat Transcript, July 17, 2000 (http://www1.foodtv.com/forums/transcriptaltonbrown/0,3855,,00.html).

"Billabong56-guest: How would you properly season a pan?

AltonBrown: I'm going to guess that you mean seasoning a cast-iron pan. I use Crisco shortening. It is very highly refined, and I drop a small spoonful of it into said skillet. I stick it in a 350-degree oven until the shortening melts. I then extract said vessel, and implement a paper towel to smear the fat all over the pan, handle and everything. I then pick up the pan and return it to the 350-degree oven for an hour. Do not drop it at any point during this process! Turn the oven off, let the pan cool down, wipe off the excess oil, and put it away."

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Clean it, then coat with neutral (edible) oil like corn oil with your hands.

Put in oven for 30 minutes at 300 degrees.

Wipe excess off with paper towels.

Mr. Privacy's easy method: bacon. Then more bacon.

[mr-privacy.livejournal.com]

No really, just cook bacon in your new cast iron. How much? A few strips a day (or more) over a few days does the trick.

Re: Mr. Privacy's easy method: bacon. Then more bacon.

[opadit.livejournal.com]

I agree with this comment.

Not helpful, perhaps insightful but unlikely

[powerfrau.livejournal.com]

Good question! My boyfriend followed the instructions--which really didn't work. I have a pan that I never properly seasoned--works great.
There may be qualitative differences in the metal.

I also don't use my cast iron for any acidic stuff- tomato based dishes--they seem to eat the seasoning.