TL;DR at the bottom.
I’ve always been interested in cast iron but the whole seasoning and issues washing and debates seemed too daunting. Not to mention the one time I had my own skillet it was a mess and I could never get anything to not stick in it. Well I just moved back into my family’s house and don’t have my usual pan for making eggs anymore so my dad tells me he uses this small tiny cast iron skillet. First time didn’t go so well but I used more oil the second time, let the pan heat up fully before cracking in the eggs, and it worked just as well as my old The Rock skillet. I’ve been using it almost daily since.
This morning I go down to make my breakfast and find our little skillet covered in orange, all burnt and looking abused (that’s on top of not one but two perfectly round burn marks the same size as the bottom of the pan on our kitchen table). The culprit? My brother. Oh well, at least he tried to move on from his cheap flimsy non-stick pan, but now I don’t know what to do.
Cue searching. Usually I’d go to Reddit (or recently, Lemmy) for this but I want to avoid the confusion. I’m ecstatic to find Joshua Weissman’s video on seasoning and restoring a cast iron pan. I’m excited that removing the rust wasn’t such a chore and while I have no fancy oils I assume vegetable oil would be better than nothing.
So now my little cast iron skillet is in the oven for its first seasoning and I’m actually excited to try and join the community now that I took the first step to actually understanding and appreciating this kind of cookware. I’ll make another post with the progress pictures once I’m done!
TL;DR: brother ruined my cast iron I use daily, finally learning how to care for and season it properly. Joining the community :)
Congrats! Glad your cast iron journey is going well!
Just fyi, there’s no debate about washing cast iron, just misinformation. Always use soap, it’s not going to damage the pan or your seasoning and it will prevent rancid oil from making you sick. The ol’ don’t wash your pan comes from a day when lye was in the soap.
100% agree with this comment. Soap is just fine these days!
Not sure how to mention on lemmy but thanks for your help as well, tried @'ing you in my reply to the thread OP
Thanks for the clarification (you too @[email protected])! That helps a lot, will definitely be washing it when I use it now :) makes me feel loads better.
Thanks @FeatherConstrictor! I’m not sure how comments work on Lemmy either, it’s my first day here. Good luck with the cast iron!
grapeseed oil is amazing for high-temperature cooking. It doesn’t add flavors to the food your cooking with, and it has a very high smoke point.
I usually give Steaks a quick and light coat just before hitting the grill. (the oil helps the sear and locks in moisture.)
So I’ve been using grape seed oil, something that’s available in just about every supermarket, for a while now for my yearly re-seasoning and get great results from it.
Thanks! I wasn’t about to buy something from the grocery store because I don’t have a car so it’s a bit of a mission on its own and I just used what we had on hand. However, I’ll take a look and see if grape seed oil is something I can buy in small quantities at my local store since I doubt we’d use it for much else.
