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.