It does take a lot of time.
I’ve got about 10 hours each into my pans. The smaller lodge went wrong somehow and I had to scrub a bit off and redo it. They are no stick but still not quite past the rough factory finish so somethings (like the cornbread) leave a little bit of a mess. Going by the large pan which hasn’t had a setback, I’m predicting 10 or 15 more hours for a total of 20 to 25 layers of seasoning in the oven before its smooth
What IS that factory coating? It’s insanely hard to eradicate. Lye works slowly and paint stripper did nothing. I’m thinking of getting a disk sander to flatten the inside a bit. That, or just see if anyone’s dropped off an old pan at Goodwill that won’t need this much work.
As I remember it, it is grapeseed(?) oil that they spray on and then bake at the factory to “preseason” the pans (for Lodge anyway). I’d have to check that to be certain, but thats how I remember the “how things are made” video on it.
This. I don’t understand the pebbly Lodge surface, and I don’t really want to. I have some cheap old cast iron pan with a nice shiny smooth surface. Even when I scrub the seasoning off, it works okay. And it doesn’t take a thousand rounds of greasing and cooking to reseason it, either.
I decided to give the ATK process a whirl this weekend. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture before I began.
After coming out of the self-cleaning cycle (which will set off the smoke detector).
After self-cleaning cycle.
Cleaned off the gunk from the self-cleaning cycle. Ready for the first treatment.
Ready to go.
After 5 treatments. The final result.
I haven’t cooked with them yet but they look 100% better.
It turns out that the pan on the right was finished much better than the Lodge-like pan. I’m guessing that it’s milled. To be honest, I don’t know where this pan came from and I didn’t even know we had it. I have 2 more that I can try. One is a Pioneer Woman pan that is fairly new and belongs to my wife. There’s a good chance that I don’t touch it. The other is a 14" Lodge. I’ll have to be careful with it because it’s so freaking heavy.
Overall, I’m very happy with how things turned out. Assuming of course that I can still cook with the pans.
I just reseasoned my pans after removing all of the prior seasoning and this technique worked great. There is even a thread on it that I started a few months ago.
- Using flax seed oil not Crisco (sorry Beck). The trick is act like you are trying to wipe it all of so you get a layer of oil only a few molecules thick.
- Bake for an hour at 450 degrees American upside-down
- Turn off the oven and let the pans cool in the oven
- Repeat many times. Each time you are building up thin layers of carbon
- Use, clean and add a layer of seasoning (at least for a while)
And which one is giving me the most trouble? My Lodge. I don’t know whay they are so hare to get seasoned correctly. Is it the bumps? My two old pans are milled and my 8" you can practically cook eggs on it with no oil. Is it their seasoning? I stripped it off and my new seasoning is better but not as good as the two milled ones.
Sure looks like a milled pan. Yeah, so much nicer!
I fried eggs in it the other day. They slipped and slid around just like a Teflon pan.
Heh, just made omlettes last night for dinner. Haven’t made folded over “restaurant style” omlettes in forever. Really starting to like and prefer the cast iron pans for cooking