Cast Iron Chaos: Seasoning Your Cast Iron Pan

Seasoning (also called curing) is a process used to prepare cast iron cooking pans for use. Before it can be used for cooking, a cast iron pan must be seasoned in the oven. There are two important reasons why this needs to be done:

To develop a non-stick cooking surface. A bare metal pan will grab hot food and cause it to stick to its surface, probably burning it. Seasoning places a thin layer on the surface of the pan, and it adds additional layers of seasoning each time you cook with your pan. After only a few uses, the seasoning on your pan will be good enough to rival any pan purchased with a "non-stick" coating. The seasoning will turn your pan a dark black color, and this is exactly what is supposed to happen.
To protect against rust. The bare iron pan doesn't have any treatment to protect against rust, and it will rust if it is left untreated (or if it soaks in water for a long time). Giving your pan a coating of seasoning will prevent it from rusting.

The seasoning process for a pan isn't difficult at all. No two people seem to agree on the exact method for seasoning a pan (what oil to use, temperature, waiting time, etc.), so I'll just quickly describe how I seasoned my 12-inch skillet and made it black and non-stick.

First, put a sheet of aluminum foil or a cookie sheet on the bottom of your oven rack, to catch the drippings from your pan when you season it.
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
While the oven is heating, scrub the pan with kosher salt – not soap – under running water for a couple of minutes, and give it a quick towel dry.
From here, we do the seasoning: pour a small amount of vegetable oil into the skillet, and use a paper towel or cloth to rub it all around the inside and outside of the pan, giving it a thin coating of oil. Only enough oil is needed to give it a coating, it shouldn't be dripping or sticky with the oil. (Other folks use shortening, lard, or bacon fat for the coating; the choice is up to you. I'm happy with generic store-brand vegetable oil.)
When the oven is at 425 degrees, put the pan on the rack above the foil, facing down so that excess oil will drip out of the pan and onto the foil.
Cook it in the oven for 60 minutes at 425, then turn the oven off and let it cool with the pan still in the oven.
After about half an hour or so, your first seasoning is finished. Take the pan out of the oven and give it one more thin coating of oil. Your pan is now ready to use, or to place in your storage area for pots and pans.

One coating of seasoning is enough for you to start cooking with your pan, though if you want to give it a good non-stick seasoning, repeat this process two, three, or even four times: take the pan out of the oven, give it another thin coating of oil, put it back into the oven, heat it to 425, cook it for 60 minutes at 425, and then turn the oven off and cool it again. Give the pan another coating of oil, and repeat.

YouTube has hundreds of homemade videos that demonstrate the method for seasoning a cast iron pan. As mentioned above, no one can agree on the exact specifics of the seasoning – some use vegetable oil, some use fat or bacon grease; some cook the pan in the oven at 350 degrees, while some go as high as 500 degrees or more. Here are a few for starters:

''Good Housekeeping'' magazine: Seasoning A Cast-Iron Pan
How to Season Heavily Rusted Cast Iron
How To Season A Cast Iron Pan (NON STICK)
eHow Cooking & Culinary Tips : How to Season a Cast Iron Skillet
How to Restore,Clean and Season your Cast Iron Pans – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Seasoning My Cast Iron Skillet

Every genre has its own internal politics and topics for argument, and seasoning a cast iron pan is one of the most talked-about, debated, and argued-over topics among users of cast iron cookware. For example, these days when you talk about seasoning a cast iron pan on the Internet, you will be practically guaranteed to receive a comment like this: "Try this super method of seasoning your pan with flaxseed oil." This is a recent fad that became popular when Cook's Illustrated magazine eagerly endorsed a so-called "science-based" method of seasoning cast iron and declared it to be "the ultimate way to season cast iron." (The article itself, from the January 1, 2011 issue of the magazine, can be read here: [1]) The tone in which the article supported this method made me suspicious, and in the fall of 2011 I set out myself to apply a scientific test to this method. My conclusion was that flaxseed oil is a decent method for seasoning a cast iron pan, but it doesn't have any advantage over any other method of seasoning. So go ahead and season your cast iron with the method that works best for you, whether this involves using lard, shortening, vegetable oil, or flaxseed oil. And that is an example of the heated arguments that you will find among users of cast iron.

: Photos and commentary of this method are on Facebook's Cast Iron Cooking group: Testing Sheryl Canter's Flaxseed Oil Seasoning Method

About a month ago, I spent a Saturday morning giving my 12-inch skillet four or five coats of seasoning, and right after that I made a video of myself cooking an egg on it. It didn't stick at all, and the cooked egg fell right out of the pan when I tipped it onto the plate. If you don't want to spend a whole morning or afternoon hanging around at home and waiting for your pan to heat up and cool off, do the seasoning a bit at a time – one hour per night, for instance. Or, after you've seasoned it for the first time, start grilling the hell out of stuff! Cooking greasy meat is also a great way to season your pan, and you'll have a lot of fun doing so.

: More on non-stick cooking can be found here: Non-Stick Cast Iron Cooking

: See also Wikipedia's article on a seasoned pan.

Restoring Rusted Cast Iron to Working Condition

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