How to season a cast iron pan

A good cast iron skillet or pan can be one of the best pans in your kitchen. They're reliable, durable, and effective. You can sear, fry, braise, stew, simmer and darn near anything else you want to do. They're as precise as they are reliable. Same reason I bought a Toyota Tacoma.

I got mine brand new for $7 from Craigslist last year, and since then I rarely use anything else. Mine was gun-metal gray when I bought it, and had a rough texture to it. Food stuck to it like ugly on warthog. Now it's jet black and smooth and dull, just like Teflon. Here's how I put a smooth flat finish on my skillet to keep it working day in and day out.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• cast iron pan
• vegetable oil or shortening (Crisco, or what they now call trans fats!)
• oven

1. Heat oven to 450-500 degrees.

2. Clean your skillet. Hot water and a *little* bit of soap is OK.

3. Coat the inside of the skillet with your oil. You can use your fingers, you can use a paper towel, you can use a paintbrush, it doesn't matter. I like to heat the pan just a little to help the oil spread all over. Coat the whole thing, top, bottom, sides, everything.

4. How much oil should you use? Use just cover the surface of the pan. No more. If your oil is thick enough to run along the surface of the pan, that's too much.
   
   Using too much is no big deal, any excess will just form a slightly thicker coating on the surface of the pan.

5. Put pan in oven and cook it for 20-30 minutes.

6. When your oven cools, remove your pan. Notice how the oil has turned a rich nutty brown? If I ever find out how the chemistry works, I'll post it here, but for the time being know this: the oil has bonded to the pan and formed a kind of slippery crust. It's filled in the cracks in the cast iron's surface and made it a little smoother, so that food has less to stick to.

7. Repeat steps 3-6 about five or ten times. The more often you do this, the better your pan will be for it.

8. The first few times you cook in this pan, food is going to stick like crazy to the bottom. Expect this and plan for it. You can use metal tools to scrape burnt-on food, but be as gentle as you can.

Tips & Warnings

• The more you use your skillet for oily things, the faster you'll season it.
• I've read that using a trans fat like Crisco is better than vegetable oil because they don't tend to spoil. I haven't experimented with many oils, but I haven't had any problems with Crisco and/or regular veggie oil.
• Once your pan has a nice finish on it, it's easy to maintain.
• I've heard people say to never ever use soap when cleaning, but my experience has been that a little soap does no damage at all.
• This last tip comes from Alton Brown: to clean burnt-on crap in a skillet, take some kosher salt and scrub the bottom with a paper towel. I've also used sand but it tends to damage the seasoning.
• Be gentle with the seasoning in its early stages. Its easy to remove with metal cooking utensils.

[eepchic]

on 7/3/2007 i seasoned mine with vegetable oil and the surface came out sort of sticky. kind of a "tacky" feel. is that normal? i don't like the sticky feel, especially on the outside of the pan that might get stuck to things and make a mess.

[u2beal999]

on 2/27/2007 Also, you NEVER clean a seasoned cast iron pan with soap. Use hot water to clean out any excess oil. Scrape off any food that is stuck to the pan. Dry it off with a towel.

[u2beal999]

on 2/27/2007 In my culinary school training, I was told that cast iron skillets should be seasoned in a cooler oven, such as 250 degrees, for a long period of time. Not a hot oven for a short period of time.

When you cook oils at high temperatures, the oil will burn and lend a burnt taste to foods. By cooking the pan at a cooler temperature, the oil cooks onto the pan without burning.