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PSA: That 'season it in the oven for an hour' advice ruined my grandma's pan, and I'm done pretending it's the only way
I was at the Portland antique show last Saturday and watched a vendor pull a beautiful 1930s Griswold out of a lye bath, then tell a young couple they had to bake it at 500 degrees for a full hour with flaxseed oil or it was junk. I've been cooking on cast iron for 22 years and I've never once put a pan in the oven to season it. My grandma's pan, which I still use daily, was seasoned on a wood stove in Kentucky with bacon grease and a rag, and the slick black surface puts any oven-baked pan to shame. The real trick is thin layers of any fat over medium heat on the stovetop, not a 500 degree blast that just makes smoke and flaky patches. Does anyone else here still season on the burner, or am I the last one holding out?
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jade_hunt483d ago
The "thin layers of any fat over medium heat" part is the whole ballgame and people skip right over it. Every layer you put on the stove is a layer you actually watched bond to the metal, so you know it took. Toss it in a 500 degree oven and you have no idea what's happening in there, you just hope and pull out a pan with sticky brown patches that flake into your eggs. My grandma did the same thing on a wood stove, bacon grease and an old rag, and that pan is glass after 60 years. Slow and thin beats hot and fast every single time.
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