I got this cast iron pan from a thrift store. It was a little rusty and completely unseasoned, so I lightly sanded off the rust, oiled it, and then seasoned it. Here’s what I did: I coated the inside with Crisco, put it oiled surface down in a 350 degree oven for an hour, then let it cool. I did that three times.
It looked pretty nice, so I tried to fry an egg on it today. I put in a little oil, then the egg. The egg stuck like a mofo.
So, what did I do wrong? Do I need to season it more times? Did I make a mistake in the process? Please help me figure out how to do this correctly. Thanks.
How much is “coated”? What did you do after you seasoned it? Did you wash it before you used it? Or did you fry the egg on a tarry layer of “seasoned” oil?
I made an even, but thin, layer of Crisco, per the instructions I read, then baked in the oven. I did nothing to it after I seasoned it. It was sitting on the stove and I just put a bit of oil in it and cooked the egg.
You need only the thinnest layer of oil. You don’t drizzle it on and swivel the pan around till it’s all evenly wetted; you dribble a bit into the pan and then wipe it around the rest of the surface with a paper towel. On a seasoned pan, you should see a mostly-matte shine, like a dull satin; not a varnished gleam. Even then, it will continue to season over time; your first egg will stick more than your fiftieth.
When you clean it, use hot water and a scrubber, no soap. Then dry it on the stove: put it on a high flame until about 90% of the water has sizzled away, then turn the flame off and let the pan cool. (My cast iron pans live on top of the stove; I never “put them away.”)
What tar? The seasoning? Or the crap the egg left on the pan?
I only used a little bit of oil, in the middle, and the put the egg onto it. It did not prevent stickage at all.
It had a nice matte shine to it when I tried it, but it was still sticky. If the first egg was supposed to stick, then OK. Or do you think I should coat it with Crisco again and put it in the oven for another hour?
I knew about the “don’t use soap” rule. I didn’t know about drying it out on the stove top after scraping. Thanks.
By “tar,” I meant the tacky residue of oil that it sounds like you have. The layer of oil should be microscopically thin; if it’s sticky to the touch, there’s too much. Put some oil on it, but then wipe it pretty clean with a paper towel. That’s all the oil you need at a time to season.
To clean it, scrape the egg off with a spatula or something, and then scrub it clean with anything from sand (seriously) to steel wool. Then flame dry. Over time your stickage will grow less.
If find that the non-stick aspect of a cast iron pan takes time to build up. My roommate once scrubbed one of my pans down to bare metal and it actually took a few years to get it back where it was.
There was no tar on it or oil residue. It wasn’t tacky or sticky. It had a coating on it that had a matte shine, like you described. It looked like the picture on the website. Maybe it was as “non-stick” as a first time use gets.
Yeah, cast-iron isn’t very nonstick even after seasoning. It takes a while to get a really good surface. Even at best, it’s not going to perform as well as a teflon pan, however it will be close.
Most cast-iron manufacturers advise to cook some oily dishes such as bacon for your first dozen uses. You’ll see it continue to increase in quality during this time.
After you clean it after each use, heat the pot until hot and dry, and wipe it down with an oil that won’t get rancid. That all helps build up the seasoning.
Frying an egg in a cast iron pan is probably the most difficult challenge to the pan’s seasoning, and I wouldn’t try it until it’s really, really well seasoned over time. Even then, I doubt it wouldn’t stick without tons of oil.
Anyway, from what I know, you didn’t season the pan at a high enough temperature. 350 will make the oil nice & hot and sorta soak in, but it’s not hot enough to more or less carbonize the oil and let whatever magical bonding transformation occur, that needs to occur.
The way I learned it, after doing it your way, was to coat the pan in oil, let it sit overnight, wipe off the excess, then open the windows and crank the oven to max (say, 500+), or, if your oven has a self-cleaning feature, set the oven to that. If not using the self-cleaning feature, then it still needs a really high temp and probably for more like 2-3 hours. Your house will get smoky as the oil burns, so open those windows!
You still might not be able to fry an egg and have it slide around like teflon. People brag about the seasoning on their cast iron, but I’ve yet to see one that non-stick.
As for what type of oil, I’ve heard lots of opinions but I don’t know it makes a huge difference. It’s the really high heat that does it. I’ve heard tropical oils like coconut or palm are sometimes preferred, but that might just be oil snobbism. I’ve only used plain old vegetable oil.
Everyone’s going to have their preference but the way I do it is to heat the oven to about 150 and warm the pan for half an hour. Then I coat it thinly with Crisco and put it back in at 350 for an hour or so. I’ve never had a problem but I agree that an egg is tough to keep from sticking at the best of times. BTW, I agree with levdrakon, everyone uses this and that oil and all seem to get the same result, I only use Crisco because I always have it on hand.
It just sounds to me like it’s going to take a bit of time, given the shape of the pan you got (rusty, unseasoned.) I would first throw it into the oven on a self-clean cycle to get all the gunk off it, and then cure it. After that, it will still take about a few dozen cookings to get the seasoning in. Don’t cook acidic stuff (like tomatoes) in the pan during these first sessions. (Some people recommend always avoiding any acidic foods in cast iron–I find it’s fine after the seasoning is really good.) After cooking anything and washing in water (no soap), I wipe it dry with a paper towel, apply a light coating of oil, lard, or Pam, and wipe that down with a paper towel to leave a very light coating on the top of the pan.
The pan won’t get as nonstick as Teflon, but you should be able to cook eggs in it without having to scrape them from the pan. I fried eggs this morning in mine, and had no problems with egg sticking at all. I just cleaned with a paper towel (no water), as everything came out of the pan with no effort. Mind you, I’ve had this pan for about five years now, and it wasn’t this easy the first few months.
Reading this thread reminded me I wanted to try my hand at seared ahi. My cast-iron skillet (one of them, anyway) still had some grease in it so I popped took it out of the oven and put it on the stove on high heat. When the grease melted I scraped it a bit with a spatula to get the crusty bits off, then washed under hot water with a scrub brush. Back on the stove to dry the water, then a thin coating of Crisco. When the Crisco started smoking I thought I’d let it cook for a few minutes and then let it cool down.
But who can wait? There’s tuna in the fridge! So I just turned down the heat. I put a little veg oil on the fish and popped it into the pan. No stick!
After cooking I put in some water to deglaze it a little. I’ll scrub it with the brush again and hit it with another coating of Crisco and heat it to smoking, and then it will be ready for the next time I want to use it.
Regarding eggs: I don’t eat them often, so when I do I like to have bacon with them. I cook the bacon and remove it, then drain off most of the grease. I fry the eggs in the remaining grease. I’ve never had any worries about them sticking since the pan was first seasoned, when cooking them this way.
How deep is the pan? Deep frying is good too. Some tempura veggies/tofu or something. I just googled “vegetarian tempura tofu” and got lots of interesting hits.
My ex-husband had a cast-iron skillet that had been his grandmother’s, so you can imagine what it was like after 60 or 70 years of daily use! Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about cast-iron at the time, so I put it in the dishwasher. :smack:
I had a great cast iron skillet I got at a garage sale (estate sale, really). My brother came to live with me soon thereafter, and it was one of the pans he really liked to cook with. But he also didn’t know anything about seasoning, and I came home one day to find it in the dishwasher.
When he moved out, I gave him the pan as a gift. He says he still uses it, but he claims to be more careful about the seasoning.
