Thank You, Flourine!
I figured out that, since I can’t seem to get the carbon-black off my steel roasting pans, the easiest way to season a new pan is to forget it’s a frying pan for a while, and use it as a roasting pan instead - after a couple of weeks of roasting chickens, pork chops, potatoes and other stuff in the pan, it’s seasoned, without any unpleasant process that fills the house with smoke.
Teflon is definitely slicker than most other things - its low coefficient of friction is one of the key properties of the material, but as you imply, a well-seasoned pan is as nonstick as needs be, so it doesn’t really matter much.
And yes, Teflon is really not very good on durability - a new Teflon pan is remarkably, impressively nonstick, but it only takes a bit of overheating, and a bit of wear and it’s mediocre.
I tried out some ceramic nonstick pans and they were similar - incredibly impressive on day 1 (the food came out of the pan as if it was floating above the surface - it was that slippery) - but a couple of weeks in and the performance was pretty ordinary.
Thank you for the care and time in this post.
The vast majority of cast iron cookware comes “preseasoned”, with the black coating, for lazy people who don’t want to go through the rather labor-intensive process of seasoning a “white” pan properly. But modern stuff is kinda rough-cast, so the last cast-iron pan I got, I decided to do it right – polish the inside working surface smooth and season it myself. I can confirm that the cast iron underneath is indeed the same sort of grey you associate with iron-based alloys, though a bit darker and less shiny than freshly-cut mild steel. And like the machinist said, the dust when I ground on it was black, not … steel-colored.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I figured out that, since I can’t seem to get the carbon-black off my steel roasting pans, the easiest way to season a new pan is to forget it’s a frying pan for a while, and use it as a roasting pan instead - after a couple of weeks of roasting chickens, pork chops, potatoes and other stuff in the pan, it’s seasoned, without any unpleasant process that fills the house with smoke.
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And/or cook a lot of bacon/burgers/other fatty meats, or use it for deep-frying.
The traditional way to “reset” a cast-iron pan that’s become overly crusty with seasoning, or if something defeated the seasoning and got REALLY stuck is to just throw it in a fire and burn all the crap off, then remove the rust and reaseason as normal as soon as it cools.
Fun fact: Teflon was a failed attempt at a new type of Freon/refrigerant. It’s the same sort of fluorine-based molecule as the stuff in your fridge or air conditioner, but that particular one had the downside of polymerizing when it condensed, which is a bad thing for a/c, since the concept depends on boiling and condensing a working fluid.
The modern stuff advertises they are “pre-seasoned”, but … As far as I can tell they have some sort of a coating to prevent rust, but it’s nothing at all like a well seasoned cast iron pan. When it’s done correctly it’s sort of like “spit shined” leather for lack of a better term, or a high gloss paint job, at least on the cooking surface. It isn’t simply for appearance, it keeps the iron away from contact with the food. In a dutch oven this is especially important or the baked foods will take on a strong flavor of iron or rust.
Modern castings have a rough, pebbly surface. Not good at all. The smoother the initial surface the better the end product will be.
I did several pans at once outside on my BBQ (Weber Spirit that goes up to around 700 degrees). Don’t remember but several rounds and really burned it in at maximum temperature. Did that probably 18 months ago and haven’t had a reason to redo the process. To be fair, I don’t use the cast iron all that much.
This method works at least as well as La Crueset cast iron for a heckuva lot less money.
Plus there is something inherently satisfying about coating cast iron and letting it fire away in the BBQ.
I seasoned my carbon steel wok on my grill, over charcoal. The few guides I saw said to heat it until the metal started turning blue, then after moving it off of the grill (very important step!) rub it down with oil. Tons of smoke.
I sort of disagree a bit here - I don’t think the inside surface should be exactly smooth before seasoning - a fine sandblasted texture is better, IMO, for the seasoning layer to key into - the seasoned surface might well be smooth once it builds up on top.
We might be talking about the same thing though - I don’t have any very recent experience of new iron pans, so not sure what kind of roughness (and smoothness) you’re actually talking about.
The other trick for reseasoning a pan from scratch (that is, you want to get all the old seasoning off it) is to put it in your oven while running a self-cleaning cycle (assuming your oven has one). I’ve done this with two pans with great success. Comes out looking gray.
I always figured a brand-new seasoned cast-iron pan came out of the forge red-hot an immediately quenched in oil instead of water.
Heat Treat Oil Quenching - YouTube
- YouTubeI don’t think oil quenching is related to seasoning. To season a pan you need it to stay at a high temperature while the oil sits in contact with it, so the oil will polymerize, but not a high enough temperature that the oil burns off. In quenching, the oil bath rapidly cools the object and the oil (hopefully) doesn’t have time to polymerize.
Wait, I’m supposed to burn the surface off my cast iron pan to season it?
If you have a poor seasoning, an old cast iron pan, or otherwise a pan in less-than-great shape, yes. But a cast iron pan that looks fine, like a new one, no.
Yeah, when I said “polish” I meant more “go at it with 120 grit until it’s reasonably flat”. The way they come is just the gritty sandcast texture, they’re not ground/blasted at all.
This page has some info on surface finishing of cast iron skillets - i.e. what’s done to the surface after it comes out of the sand mold. It says Lodge uses “shot-blasting and a cleaning bath with steel scrubbing media.” The end product is still very rough. The page also explains that in the old days, most cast-iron skillets were ground (or sometimes milled), making them much smoother than the modern-day Lodge skillets. It’s not a glossy mirror polish, but a very fine machined texture.
I actually backed the Field Skillet on Kickstarter and just received it last week. It’s a premium cast-iron skillet with a milled surface. It is definitely smoother than my old Lodge skillet. I’ve only cooked with it so far (after seasoning it myself once), but the food did not stick, and it was noticeably easier to clean than the Lodge. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could achieve the same result on a Lodge with a grinder or coarse sandpaper & lots of elbow grease.
You could grind down a rough surface pan yourself. You don’t need it perfectly flat, building up the carbon layer will take care of that in the end, but a smoother surface speeds up the process. A palm sander with some increasingly fine aluminum oxide paper shouldn’t take too long, or you can just get abrasive grit and a piece of metal to grind out by hand. I assume the manufacturers don’t detect any hit to their profits with rough surfaces because like most everything low price is the objective and the higher quality pans at a higher price don’t move as well. Which is a sad comment considering the minor cost of grinding a decently smooth surface that will season well quickly.