Thread: Cast Iron Seasoning

Cook bacon in it, lots of bacon. Bacon fat with the brine residue does a good job, a couple of kg over breakfast should do it. Once you've finished the bacon, plonk the thing in the oven and let it season or if you have a chimera or outside fire that works too. Vege oil is a little hard to correctly polymerise into the carbon coating that while it isn't 'non-stick' requires you to get the stuff you want cooked quite a bit over normal cooking temperatures to make it fuse to the carbon in the steel. There is already a lot of carbon in the cast iron, so provided it's clean and you don't have a lot of the 'grey' areas you can just keep cooking on it until it self seasons. You just have a few 'stickier' areas. It's a similar sort of thing to the stainless steel frypan polished finish, if you've used one of those where you put olive oil in the frypan and it just seems to make the food stick more!

It's still too clean.keep cooking and it will come right.fatty sausages,bacon,eggs and you be away laughing

Acidic foods like tomato based sauces will strip the black ‘seasoning’. Don’t get hung up on the seasoning though either as there is a learning curve, just use and abuse it.
You can’t really mess it up. Grape, and I think flax seed are popular oils to use. There are almost as many YouTube tutorials seasoning cast iron as there are are on barrel cleaning.
Not to recommend it, but even chucked our pan in the log burner over red hot coals once. Burnt off all the crusty crap off that builds up the base and sides, came out like brand new ready to start from scratch again.

Get one of these, they are magic:

https://thermomix.co.nz/products/cast-iron-scrubber

Originally Posted by Moutere

Acidic foods like tomato based sauces will strip the black ‘seasoning’. Don’t get hung up on the seasoning though either as there is a learning curve, just use and abuse it.
You can’t really mess it up. Grape, and I think flax seed are popular oils to use. There are almost as many YouTube tutorials seasoning cast iron as there are are on barrel cleaning.
Not to recommend it, but even chucked our pan in the log burner over red hot coals once. Burnt off all the crusty crap off that builds up the base and sides, came out like brand new ready to start from scratch again.

Get one of these, they are magic:

https://thermomix.co.nz/products/cast-iron-scrubber

Would a copper scouring steel wool type pad do the same job?

Oils with high burning temps, animal fats, sunflower, peanut oils. I always put salt in the oil when seasoning. Only because I was told to, not sure of the logic behind it.

Once seasoned was with dish detergents seems fine. I wipe with a bit of oil before storing.


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Originally Posted by Three O'Three

Would a copper scouring steel wool type pad do the same job?

Pass?
That linked one is awesome for the occasional stubborn cooking residues. Abrasive, but doesn’t harm the seasoning like a scouring pad. I think the it’s the chain link rather than the metal it’s made of. Less surface contact than a scourer, but far more purchase because of the rubber block inside it if that makes sense.
I find oiling the pan between use the most important maintenance thing and to echo the others, dish soap won’t harm it.

Also, the smoother the cooking surface the better. Break out the wet and dry if need be.
Took a few years of metal utensils to smooth our cheap one out. I would hit it with some emery paper next time.

Use an oil with a high smoke point, rice bran oil works for me. When you coat it with oil, try and wipe it all off. Then the oven at 400 for an hour, let it cool, repeat.
Essentially you are trying to turn the oil into a hardened residue (polymerisation?) that is bonded to the metal. Too much and it will clump into spotty lumps as it bonds to itself, not the pan. Thats also why the heat is important, you dont want it to still be oily.

Having said that I have also had good results from deep frying stuff in cast iron and getting some sort of seasoning from that - it just doesn't last as long. Be wary of the "just leave the grease in the pan" approach, that can go bad sometimes and give you plenty of time on the bog to reflect on your learnings.

All the fats and oils mentioned work but olive oil doesn’t. It a reaction between iron oxide (rust) and burnt oil that forms the black layer we’re looking for so don’t scrub it just use it. Mine gets scrubbed by someone in my house and I can get it back to useful in 15min. Get it hot and wipe oil or fat on the surface and let it smoke off, repeat as required.
Always get it hot before putting food in it.
I have decided it’s better to reseason it than do all the cooking.

Originally Posted by 2post

All the fats and oils mentioned work but olive oil doesn’t. It a reaction between iron oxide (rust) and burnt oil that forms the black layer we’re looking for so don’t scrub it just use it. Mine gets scrubbed by someone in my house and I can get it back to useful in 15min. Get it hot and wipe oil or fat on the surface and let it smoke off, repeat as required.
Always get it hot before putting food in it.
I have decided it’s better to reseason it than do all the cooking.

yup thats all good advice reseason again and again - leaving oil fat in okay as long as its fresh and one has a good nose - but again I am aghast people use bloody dish washing liquid in cast iron camp ovens heathens

There is a hilarious fb group on cast iron frypans and seasoning them. Total waste of time for advice but amusing in small doses

Found the fix.....

I use beef fat for seasoning, you may just need to season the pan again or spend a bit of time cooking in it. In between cooking, I find hot water and a scrubber works great, no need for dishwashing liquid to clean. A quick dry off with a paper towel or similar and a thin layer of beef fat before heating the skillet and then it's ready. I have heard of using rock salt to scrub it clean, maybe give that a try?