Cast iron skillets

[osteodoc08]

Not to hijack but how does everyone use a large griddle that’s useable on both sides? Every time I use it, be it on my kitchen electric eye or my Coleman stove outside, it smokes. Outside its not a big deal, but inside, no way. It’s the Lodge Pro griddle with a smooth side and a searing/ridged side.

As far as newer stuff, I just cook with it. I’ve found canola oil to not give the rancid oil smell that olive oil can sometimes give. I like to fry chicken in Crisco a few times before anything else to “season” them.

[Camper64]

osteodoc08, sounds like your leaving too much of an oil layer. I always wipe mine with olive/canola oil but remove any excess. You don't need much of an oil layer to protect it.

[William Yanda]

I will admit that I used a coffee mug to smooth a Lodge frying pan that I reseasoned. I used cocoanut oil and was happy with the smoother surface and the seasoning. As I recall, I oiled it and baked in the oven about 3 times. My wife did object to the smell. I did not have a control to compare it to.

[45workhorse]

Five pounds of taters fried in it and it will be seasoned. My opinion and $2 will get you a cup of coffee someplace.

[Remmy4477]

Cast iron is all we use, wifes been using them for over 30 years.
Best way she says to season is fry bacon in it and let it sit with the grease in it for a day or two, heating it up a time or two while its in there. Clean it out with hot water, nothing else.

She inherited most of my grandmothers cast iron, some older than dirt! Skillets, fryers, dutch oven and ect, all were and are in cooking order and used daily. She loves them!

Cannot imagine cooking on anything else!

[snowwolfe]

Trying to learn as much as possible about this as I am determined to make a non stick skillet this time around. Research is suggesting flaxseed oil is the best option for seasoning so going to try it as well.

[Ed K]

I've found the flaxseed oil and several bake cycles method that's become popular over the last decade is pretty good to get started with a stripped pan. Some go crazy with the number of cycles but after a couple I lose patience and just start using it. Cooking with animal fats as much as possible seems to promote a non-stick surface better than most vegetable-based cooking oils.

Use vintage exclusively but have a Lodge rectangular griddle set aside to face mill/polish/season whenever time permits.

[cuzinbruce]

With old Griswolds and Wagners, I have cleaned them with EZ-Off oven cleaner. Season them by cooking potato peels and a big handful of salt with a cup or so of oil. Stir it plenty, cook til the peels are overdone. Then dump it out, wipe the pan clean with paper towels and it is ready to start cooking for real. Never use soap to clean an iron pan. Just wipe it clean with a paper towel. If anything sticks, water and a scrub brush, then put it on the burner to dry it out. The outsides can take some melted Crisco after cleaning with EZ-Off. Just brush it on, then wipe off excess. It is amazing how much lighter some of the old cast iron is than the modern ones. They knew things about casting that have never made it to Taiwan and China.

[DougGuy]

If you want a nice, smooth, easy to season or already well seasoned pan, buy a vintage pan. There are PLENTY of nice old pre-war Griswolds and Wagners out there, single notch Lodge, Erie, the list goes on and on, the quality is irrefutable, and the performance in the kitchen is also top notch. You can find "users" with varying degrees of seasoning already cooked onto them by years of use. These are my favorite daily users.

I have and use vintage pans and new Lodge. I find the pebbled finish of the new Lodge easy to cook on, easy to clean, and they will season rather quickly with daily use. Don't wreck a new lodge trying to dupe the look and feel of a 100yr old pan, just go buy a 100yr old pan and enjoy them both for their differences.

Bacon will stick in ANY cast iron skillet, regardless of age, finish, or years of use. The sugars they cure bacon with will weld and carburize right to any cast iron. I suppose some brands might not stick as bad as others, some pans might cook bacon better than others but for the most part, it sticks, no way around it.

To clean a cast iron pan the RIGHT way, as soon as you finish cooking in it, wipe it out with a paper towel and add 1/4 cup of water. Turn the heat on and let it warm. After sitting a few minutes, use a plastic spatula or one of those plastic scrapers that Lodge sells (these are AWESOME for cleaning cast iron by the way!) and loosen up the burned bits. Keep working the plastic until you have a smooth surface. Pour the water out and wipe the pan with the same paper towel you wiped it out with first, leaving a thin coating on the pan.

You can also scrub them out (lightly) with water and a stainless steel scrubbee. It's perfectly okay to use soapy water if you need to, just dry the pan and oil it a bit afterwards. Soapy water damaging cast iron is a MYTH. If decades of cooking haven't loosened the seasoning, I hardly think 5mins in soapy water is going to do anything to it.

Trying to learn as much as possible about this as I am determined to make a non stick skillet this time around. Research is suggesting flaxseed oil is the best option for seasoning so going to try it as well.

Save your money and your time. Flaxseed oil flakes and comes off in chunks. Want to see the photos? Use Lard or Crisco, PAM is fine also.

You do not MAKE a non stick cast iron skillet. You go buy an old seasoned one and it is non stick when you get it. If large manufacturers cannot make a non stick cast iron skillet, what makes you think an individual can do what they have been trying to do for the last century? Read the text I posted.

[starnbar]

The big pan that was my grandfathers was used about every day and he cooked with lard I still use it for chicken and fish and yes I use lard too in it.

[Char-Gar]

Here is how I clean cast iron.

1. Wipe out everything you can with paper towels.
2. Heat the cast iron until you can't touch the edge.
3. Turn on the tap water to it's highest heat.
4. Stick the iron under the hot water and scrub it with a plastic long handled scrubber. Don't bend over it, as you will get steamed.
5. Dry the iron off with more paper towels.
6. If there is anything stuck on the iron a slight touch with a razor blade paint scrapter will take it right off.
7. Heat the iron again and apply a small bit of oil and run it around. Wipe off any excess.
8. Let is cool and you are good to go.

It takes longer to write this than it does to do it and it works.

[jonp]

Seasoned ours in our grill using coconut oil. Also tried canola and crisco. Took several times and i stopped when we were happy. Lard or bacon probably would have worked better but didnt have any on hand.

Biggest thing is to not put on the grease too thick as it gets sticky. Several light coats works much better

[waksupi]

When you DO have something stick to your cast iron, try one of these. They don't hurt the seasoning in any way.

https://www.amazon.com/JOANBETE-Stai...+cleaner&psc=1

[johnho]

I agree with DougGuy, if you want a really great CI skillet get a vintage one. For seasoning mine I spay it with EasyOff, the one with the lye, put it in a plastic bag and leave it outside. After a day I wipe it off and do it again until all the crud is off it. Then heat it up on grill, cool it some and coat with lard or Crisco. reheat and to it several times. Bottom ends up with a finish smooth as glass. For the real scoop on how to do this go here. These guys know all there is to know. http://www.wag-society.org/cleaning.php Here's another one for the EasyOff method and buying tips. https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/12/...-cookware.html

[Tom W.]

Lori has some CI pans that her grandmother had that were made in Japan. They are very smooth on the inside. I've seen her put them in the dishwasher to clean them. I had three Lodge pans, one disappeared, and one is huge, the other I got from Walmart as a chicken frying pan. It's the best of the bunch. The third is a little flat griddle that I'll use to make pancakes. I've considered taking it out to the shed and using my angle grinder with a very worn sanding disc to see if it will smooth it out some.
Maybe I won't now....

[snowwolfe]

Boy o boy, opinions run from total agreement to total disagreement. Plenty of people swear flaxseed is the best oil ever for seasoning a pan, others say not to use it. No wonder I am confused.

[jimlj]

Boy o boy, opinions run from total agreement to total disagreement. Plenty of people swear flaxseed is the best oil ever for seasoning a pan, others say not to use it. No wonder I am confused.

Hang in there, you'll get it. Tons of differing opinions and I don't think any are totally wrong. When I first started cooking in cast iron I was told the best way to clean a Dutch oven was to turn it upside down in a fire till it turned cherry red. I DON'T RECOMMEND IT. Once you get a good seasoning on the cast iron, it is fairly non stick and easy to clean. The fastest and easiest way to initially season cast iron I have found is the cast iron conditioner available from Camp Chef. I'm not sure what kind of oil they use but it seems to work good and fast. After the initial seasoning, use it to cook with your favorite oil. All of my ovens clean up easy with a bit of hot water and a plastic scraper. After cleaning I give them a spritz of olive oil cooking spray and rub most of the oil off with a paper towel.
After watching the video you posted a link to, I'm going to give it a try with one of the inexpensive fry pans from wallyworld. Worse case I'll have a pan to melt wheel weights.

[DougGuy]

Boy o boy, opinions run from total agreement to total disagreement. Plenty of people swear flaxseed is the best oil ever for seasoning a pan, others say not to use it. No wonder I am confused.

Flaxseed oil makes a beautiful finish, but it's glossy and not unlike shellac. When I first started with cast iron, I cleaned these skillets with electrolysis, then put on 4-5 coats of flaxseed oil at 450F, and the last pass I ran at 500F. The far corner of the oven got over 550F and the finish started coming off all of them. You know a pan gets hotter than that under normal use. I would not recommend flaxseed oil for this reason. I have used PAM, which is just canola oil in a can, Lard my favorite, Crisco, and also Crisbee (Crisco and beeswax) and Larbee (Lard and beeswax) and I end up just using Lard, on a blue shop towel, take the pan out of a 450F degree oven and wipe it down, use another towel to wipe off as much of the Lard as I can, it only gets a thin coating. Left too thick, it puddles up and makes a mottled finish like jaguar spots. This will eventually blend in with cooking use, but not with more coats of Lard or Crisco. This is why you want to wipe it all off and leave just a sheen each time you take it out of the oven. Once you get 4-5 coats on, you can see it is easier to wipe on and wipe off more Lard, and I usually do 6 coats and then turn the oven off and leave the pan in there to slow cool.

First pics are flaking flaxseed oil on some small skillets, last photos are of a nice old Lodge griddle, before and after stripping in a lye bath and then scrubbing with soapy water, 6 coats of Lard applied as described above.







Old Lodge griddle as I received it, and cooked on it for a good while, you can see the cooking surface has a nice coating of seasoning, and some crud around the edges.





"New" restored Lodge griddle, this is after 6 passes of Lard at 450F, you can see where the old crud shielded the iron around the edges and left it brighter when it was removed, this will all blacken and blend in with use:







This is the same griddle with only 1 week's worth of use on it, you can see it starting to get smoother, although there is a layer of butter on it that I wiped down after use this morning:



Hope this helps.. This griddle now cooks very non stick, I am sure bacon would stick to it, sausage will leave little browned bits that have to be loosened with a bit of water as I described earlier, but most other stuff it cooks non stick.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Not 100% sure but I think PAM has Lecithin in it, maybe mixed with some Canola oil? Lecithin is good anti-stick lube and food-safe.

[Shopdog]

We use Pam on big resaw bandsaw blades.

Don't care for new cast iron but we do have a cpl. Somebody mentioned frying potatoes. Try baking potato wedges @400 ... throw some olive oil on'm along with a few spices. Create your own recipe. I like,4 spices for 40 minutes at 400.... easy to remember. My go to is salt/pepper/garlic powder/onion powder.

Anyway,even with a rough as a cob lodge,after 1/2 dz batches it'll start to resemble a decent fry pan.