How to Clean and Season Cast Iron

Good ole cast iron. There real­ly is no oth­er way to cook and sea­son your food the old fash­ioned way. Grow­ing up I remem­ber mom say­ing the same thing. She had a col­lec­tion of cast iron from all over, and she still has my Grannie’s from years and years ago. I remem­ber cook­ing over an open fire while camp­ing. Home­made bis­cuits, in the cast iron, sausage, bacon, you name it. 

It was­n’t until I start­ed cook­ing for my own fam­i­ly and using cast iron on the dai­ly, and crack­ing a beau­ti­ful Lodge skil­let, that I tru­ly under­stood the impor­tance of clean­ing and car­ing for my pans appro­pri­ate­ly. I was going about things the wrooooong way for a while and I had sac­ri­ficed a good pan because of it. 

Late­ly, the biggest ques­tion I have got­ten is how to clean up those ld rusty pans you find at thrift store, antique shops and yard­sales. Let’s address this shall we?

HOW DO I REMOVE RUST FROM MY PAN?

Well my friend, there is hope. For pans with mild rust­ing, a sim­ple scour­ing pad such as steele wool and water or white vine­gar should do the trick. Sim­ply scrub till clean and you’re ready to move on to sea­son­ing. For heav­ier rust removal try heat­ing the pan in your stove on the low­est set­ting for a cou­ple of hours before scrub­bing with the steele wool.

It’s impor­tant that you don’t leave water on cast iron, this is what caus­es rust and dete­rioa­t­ion over time.

Kaycee

HOW DO I SEASON MY CAST IRON?

Step One: Once your pan is clean and DRY, you are ready for the sea­son­ing process. Using lard, crisco, veg­etable oil ect. apply with a clean cloth in a cir­cu­lar motion. Coat the ENTIRE sur­face of the cast iron. Han­dle, bot­tom inside and all! You will get a lit­tle messy dur­ing this process, on the bright side your hands will be nice and moister­ized! ha! 

I per­son­al­ly keep a jar or can of drip­pings near by for sea­son­ing skil­lets and adding fla­vor to food. If you would like to start sav­ing your melt­ed fat in a cute con­tain­er, check out this one from Ama­zon CLICK HERE it’s much eas­i­er on the eyes.

Step Two. I like to allow my oven to heat to about 200 degrees F. Place my pans inside, close the oven the turn off the oven. I store my cast iron inside my oven so I often just leave them in there once cooled. 

HOW DO I SEASON A NEW PAN?

When sea­son­ing a new pan I rec­om­mend the same sea­son­ing steps and repeat them a few times before using your pan for the first time. 

That is is folks! It’s not as daunt­ing as it looks/sounds. Cast iron, when rou­tine­ly cared for can last a life­time and give your food that amaz­ing whole­some fla­vor we all love. 

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