I have had the worst time seasoning my cast iron. I follow the rules: flaxseed oil in a molecules thick layer but it never gets that “Grandma’s iron” coat o’ goodness. I think one of the issues is the layers are so thin I need many seasoning cycles to get it where it needs to be. But each cycle is hours long in the oven so as a proof of concept I took one of my irons, cleaned it and set it on the stove to heat to get rid of any water and open up the pores, plus it makes the oil less viscous. Then I immediately took it outside and blasted the oil with my mapp torch. It seemed to work great and got the seasoning cycle down to minutes not hours. I’m going to continue this with the pan after I get a new infrared thermometer (to make sure I’m letting it cool enough) and run 20 - 30 cycles in a row per pan.
Does anyone see a problem with this seasoning technique?
I’m not an expert, but I wonder if the flame was burning the oil and not allowing time for the actual seasoning chemical processes to take place. From what I understand about seasoning, the fats bind together to create a unified surface. I would think the flame would be burning up the oil before it could bind together. But I always like hearing about an experiment, so see what happens. Maybe try on a pan you don’t care about first and see how it goes.
My initial layer is a whole lot of molecules thick to make sure the pores get filled. It doesn’t need maximum heat, just time. After that I clean it out, maybe repeat, then bake it in the oven or outside. After that it’s about the use. I recommend making a lot of bacon for a while. I recommend that in general, but I think bacon grease is a good seasoner.
No need to try and get a perfect seasoning before you start cooking. Grandma’s iron looks awesome because she cooked with it all the time and never skimped on the grease.
Have YOU found a prob with this seasoning tech? Are you incinerating the flax oil, rather than giving it the opportunity to polymerize? Yes, you need to do a few long cycles, and then start cooking, with fat, in the pan. Has worked for me, but I must say, the rough finishes we see with Lodge and similar, may never become really smooth.
I’ve actually sanded the pan to get rid of that food-grabbing texture.
There’s debate on whether smooth is better than rough on cast iron pans. People claim one (usually smooth) is better than the other but the tests I’ve seen conclude that neither is superior. Food will stick less to a smooth pan but that also goes for the seasoning; a well-seasoned smooth pan will have less of a layer than a rough pan. In the end they come out to be the same. Here’s a reasonable page about it: Cast Iron Smooth vs Rough: The Ultimate Guide
Interesting note. I did the seasoning and it seems to have worked out great. One of my pans, the inspiration, was down to bare metal after someone used it for eggs and god only knows what they did to it. Now my pan still has its bald spot but get this … no oxidation whatsoever. Not a hint of rust on it. Whatever I did, it was enough to for a protective barrier between the gray metal and the air.
The other two pans were already seasoned but it seems to have made to made the seasoning more consistent and my Lodge smoother so I don’t know if this replaces seasoning but I think maintanance-wise this may be a way to perform cleaning/upkeep when not cooking.
From what I can tell, the trick isn’t to build up an awesome layer right off before you use it, but just enough so that it’s seasoned and then use it. Maybe a couple or three seasoning cycles.
Then when you’re done each time, clean it out, heat it up good and hot on the stove, and oil it with a very light coating of oil/grease. Do this each time you use it, and you’ll end up with a pretty good seasoning.
And FTR, there’s no reason not to use dishwashing liquid on your cast iron. If you’ve seasoned it properly, that seasoning is basically an inert organic polymer that won’t wash off with soap and water, unlike oil. You still want to be gentle, but you can hand wash it just like you would a non-stick pan.
This is correct. You don’t have to thoroughly pre-season cast iron before you use it; you just need enough of an initial layer such that the oil you put in the skillet or pan doesn’t immediately soak into the porous cast iron. Most of the “pre-seasoned” cookware you find only has a single seasoning layer that provides superficial coating and should really be removed and redone with more care. A proper pre-seasoning-before-cooking regime is to coat the pan with a thin layer of high temperature oil like safflower seed oil, put it in the over at 500 °F for an hour, and let all of the volatiles evaporate off (which will create a nasty cloud of grease that will coat your oven and entire kitchen if you don’t have good ventilation), and then clean and repeat two or three more times. This is a pain in the ass unless you are doing a dozen pans at a time in a commercial kitchen and generally unnecessary for regular residential use.
One of the problems people often encounter in cooking with cast iron is that they do not use high enough heat, having been conditioned by years of using non-stick cookware to keep it down to medium-high. In first seasoning cast iron via use, you need the heat to both get the higher molecular weight chains to bond into the surface and to create a layer where the oil you put in the pan creates a barrier to the food. Once a pan is throughly seasoned, you can cook at lower temperatures but cast iron is really made for searing foods and cooking with even high heat. If you are baking, you should throughly coat the interior with butter or a high heat oil to prevent sticking.
You do have to maintain the seasoning as described but it isn’t the massive chore that people make it out to be. People have gotten used to just throwing all cookware into the dishwasher but you should really wash and dry all pans and skillets (non-stick, cast iron, aluminum, or carbon/stainless steel) by hand because dishwasher detergents will damage the surfaces and can exacerbate corrosion. I have literally seen pots catastrophically fracture in a commercial dishwasher because of this, and while your residential dishwasher isn’t as aggressive as the commercial style it it still really intended for ceramics and silverware. A light use of dishwashing soap along with a non-abrasive scrubber should take everything off of cast iron cookware without abrading the seasoning. The problem comes in where people let cast iron soak, and water intrudes into the seasoning layer causing the layer to break down and surface corrosion to occur. Bare cast iron is actually relatively resistant to corrosion in neutral water because it forms a protective oxide layer, but if you cycle it in and out of water (especially ‘softened’ water) it will corrode away. Ditto for cooking tomatoes or other acidic foods; you can cook them in well-seasoned cast iron without a problem; you just can’t let it sit for hours afterward and expect that the seasoning will remain intact.
For people who have always cooked with non-stick polymer coatings, this probably sounds like a lot of work. But unlike those coatings, which once they have started to peel or scratch off cannot be renewed, you can fix basically any damage to the seasoning layer just by scrubbing off and reasoning, which is why cast iron pans are handed down over generations while even high grade non-stick has a lifetime of at most 20 years.
Heh…”scrubbing off and re-seasoning“. Short of actually fracturing a cast iron pan, you can return it to serviceable condition with some steel wool and elbow grease.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about… not soaking, using the dishwasher, etc… But it’s also light-years better than all that grody nonsense with salt, never actually washing it, etc…
And when I said “good and hot” I meant nearly as hot as you can get it. My usual approach is to get it hot, wipe on just enough oil to get it all covered, and then when it starts to smoke a tad, turn off the heat.
I don’t really want to burn it on the initial seasoning with oil. I want the machining oils and other contaminants to get out of the metal. I think 500F heating initially is going to burn some of that stuff in. I want it to stay liquid and keep the pores unclogged. If I ever have to season another pan I might even try a few heat and cooling cycles dry to open up the pores more before adding any oil.