I got a 10-year-old hand-me-down iron skillet for Christmas. Although my stepfather used to use it, I doubt it’s been touched in a couple of years at least. I have no clue how to season it, how to clean it, or what to cook in it. Any amateur or professional chefs out there who are willing to give me some tips and recipes for it?
She’s ALIVE !!!
by god, we were gonna send a search party soon…
Well, my Mom used iron skillets exclusively whille we were growing up. There is nothing in the world better than Mom’s cornbread baked in an iron skillet. Nummy.
Her iron cookware is forever old and well seasoned. She always told me never to saok them, don’t run them through the dishwasher, and to use hot water and a rag to clean them. Only a drop of soap was ever used on those things. (I love Southern country cooking 
)
When I bought an iron cornbread pan-the kind that makes the little corncob shaped cornbread-she told me to wash it thoroughly the first time to get all the manufacturers stuff off of it and then to wipe it down with oil and leave it in a “slow” (about 200-250 degrees) oven for the day. So far, that’s worked just peachy.
oh yeah… blush
the skillet…ask Zenster…he knows everything…lol
my skillet is 50 years old…I have the whole set…thank you gramma.
I cleaned mine with steel wool (it was rusty) then spread some oil all over the inside and ‘cooked’ it in the oven for awhile…see…I’m so vague…zenster knows this stuff…
cast iron rocks for makin eggs, homefries, lots of stuff, and best of all, when the power goes out in winter, you can use it to cook with in the fireplace… 
ps: how ya doin?..you’ve been missed.
No recipes… but my younger sis is a chef, and IIRC she advocates cleaning the hell out of it with a strong detergent, drying it completely over heat (careful not to leave it on the heat too long!), washing it again with detergent, drying over heat again, washing again, etc . for 4 or 5 cycles (to sweat out the previous spices or something… I don’t recall… this is from a conversation held several years ago), then pouring olive oil into the pan, rolling it around so that it coats the entire interior surface, and letting it sit for a day or so… after which it should be seasoned. Of course after you do this, you are never supposed to wash the pan again, but only wiped it out! I never understood this myself… I burn a lot of shit… so I always wash mine with soap after every use.
Allow me to roll my eyes for my sis (who doesn’t read this MB, and would without doubt chastize me for uncalled-for idiocy): :rolleyes:
I’m still using my grandma’s cast iron, and love it! It’s really easy to care, actually.
Dylan is right: scour it out well with steel wool to get all the rust, buildup, whatever out. Dry it well. (I usually put it on a stove burner for a few minutes.)
Then pour in some vegetable oil and smooth it around well with a paper towel. You want a film of oil all over the inside. Then just pop it in a slow oven (@300-325) for about an hour. Bingo! It’s seasoned.
You can scrub it and use detergent after use, but just need to do a quickie re-season afterwards. After it’s clean, dry it over a burner. Turn off the heat, very lightly brush the inside w/ a little vegetable oil on a paper towel then let it heat well over a hot burner for a few minutes.
Just don’t let water sit in it for long periods of time, and make sure the pan is hot before the food/oil goes in and you’re good to go.
Hope this helps!
Veb
I should mention at this point a small warning: regardless of what they show in cartoons, if you have to hit Brian over the head with it, it will not form to the shape of his head. 
Wash a cast iron skillet with soap? Are you guys nuts???
My grandma still cooks primarily with cast iron, and she rarely washes them. A simple wipe-out with a paper towel is sufficient most of the time. Washing them only encourages rust, according to her, but if absolutely necessary, get out all of the gunk you can while the pan is dry, and then pour boiling water into the pan, or boil the water in the pan on the stove. Dump it immediately, and make sure the pan is completely dry. Oil it carefully afterward.
You can cook almost anything in cast iron, by the way. Grandma swears up and down that cooking in cast iron gives you your daily-vitamin dose of iron. Just make sure there is enough oil in the pan to discourage sticking, and turn the food frequently. I dunno why, but fried chicken always seems to taste better when it comes out of a cast-iron skillet.
He’s wrong.
Try it and see.
I have several iron skillets and they are my favorite cooking utensils.
I pretty much second all that’s been said, but would like to emphasize that washing with soap is to be avoided.
If I fry eggs or potatoes or something like that, I just scape off any bits of stuck on stuff with a hard plastic scraper and rinse with plain water. I usually turn mine upside down to dry and then wipe with a little oil. If you are less fussy, don’t wash out the old grease until you are ready to use the skillet again. I was told this is really the best way to treat it but it just seems icky.
If some rusting occurs, usually after cooking acidic foods, just scrub with steel wool and re-season.
Seasoning is the act of coating with grease/oil/lard/bearfat/etc/ and placing in a low-temp oven for at least an hour, though half the day won’t hurt it if it’s not smoking too bad.
My daughter had some room mates who were ignorant of the way of the skillet and they used to put her prized 40 year old skillets in the diswasher when they cleaned up. :shudder:
Hi DB , how are ya ?
I got a new set of cast iron for Christmas. I coated them with oil, placed them in the oven @ three hundred degrees for an hour. Then turned the oven off and let them cool in there slowly.
Anytime I wash them I dry them on the stove and then pour a little oil and salt in the pan and wipe it around then out with paper towels . Then I add more oil and rub it all around with more paper towels.
If you burn something in one use water and baking soda to boil it out , then wipe the stuff out and reseason.
My wife got a tip on this off of the Epicurious website. She’s used it on all of our iron cookware ever since. First off, DO NOT USE WATER. Secondly, DO NOT USE SOAP. Sounds strange,eh? The soap will remove the seasoning from the skillet and the water will help it rust faster. Instead, pour some vegetable oil and rock salt in the pan and use a paper towel to scrub it. Wipe it dry and put on a stove burner at low heat for a couple of minutes. If you’ve got a world-class gloppy mess you can scrape it with one of those teflon pan scaper thingys that Pampered Chef sells. Whatever you use, don’t scrape it with metal. The nice thing about doing it this way, is that after about 10 or 12 times your pan turns into non-stick cookware. Hope this helps.
-LabRat
Hi there Drain. I hope that you and Brian are all right. Happy New Year and here is the recipe from the thread that deals with seasoning a cast iron pan.
[li]Southwestern Omelette[/li]Chicken, Green Chile and Jack Cheese Omelette
[sup]Submitted by Zenster[/sup]
The method is half way through the post. A well seasoned pan will not rust when exposed to water. If your pan rusts, season it again. Once the pan is seasoned, it should never be that hard to clean. If you really scorch or burn the little devil, then you will want to start over. If removing the gunk from the outside is important to you, use oven cleaner. Only in the most dire circumstances should you ever use oven cleaner on the inside of the pan. This resets the seansoning clock back to zero and you must begin all over again.
Always use as little water as possible to clean your pan. Once it is really seasoned well, you should just be able to wipe it clean with a rag and that’s that. Use very hot water when you do and dry the pan immediately afterwards.
Best wishes with using your heritage cookware. Women especially benefit from using cast iron. There is a higher concentration of hemoglobin in women who use cast iron. The slight transfer of iron from the pan into your diet is very beneficial. Women go through more frequent depletion of their blood supply than men do so it makes more of a difference for them.
Lissa is right. Or in desperate crud cases, steel wool. Keep steel wool in dixie cup under sink, it will RUST your stainless steel sink.
I’m bored.
Lissa is right, on both counts.
No, it isn’t ideal to use soap on cast iron. It does remove some of the seasoning. My grandma did the rock salt, etc. thing but I’m lazy. Most times a quick swipe will clean out a well-seasoned pan, but for those times when I manage to char something, the scrub-and-fast-reseason thing does fine.
And you do eat part of what you cook in; have you had your daily recommended allowance of aluminum? Once read a soc sci thing about poorer pioneer families suffering less from anemia because the cooked in iron.
FWIW, I use metal tools in the cast iron. (Grandma did!) Really the only trick is to keep the seasoning coat intact. That said, I don’t use the cast iron for acidic foods like long-simmered tomato sauces, etc.
Honestly, it takes so much longer to describe this than to do it! Can’t beat well cared-for cast iron for general usefulness.
Veb
If your pan is brand new. Scrub it thorougly, and bake as described above. Be sure and rub oil over the entire pan, inside and out.
Then, using a couple of tablespoons of olive oil Heat on high, and allow to smoke. Add in some diced garlic and cook. The idea of seasoning is to get a temper on the surface of the pan, and a fine layer of carbon above this. This combination is the true ultimate in non-stick. Garlic helps with the carbonizing, as does the burning olive oil.
Never use soap. You destroy everything you’ve accomplished and the taste linger in the carbon.
For a truly dirty pan, heat on high until you reduce the buildup to ash or carbon, then use olive oil in the hot pan to restore the temper and carbonization.
When finished, I always wipe my pans with the merest touch of olive oil to protect them from rust. They are now a pure black, and nothing sticks to them.
I don’t boil things in mine. I find it wreaks the seasoning layer. Things like Hamburger Helper for example.
Just fry, fry, fry!!!