I have finally figured out how to properly season a cast iron pan.
I inherited my son’s nasty pan about a week ago when he left town for a new job and it wasn’t well-seasoned, but kind of getting there.
I’ve fought with cast iron for decades and finally decided to try something different for my husband. A lard seasoned pan.
I’m Jewish. He’s not. He has his pork product pan and the rest is mine.
Over the years I’ve tried to season cast iron. I’ve used crisco, vegetable oil, peanut oil, coconut oil, olive oil... none of it worked.
This time I did two things different. I used lard and I didn’t wash it out with salt. After hubs was done with his breakfast, I’d heat up some lard in the pan, then wipe out whatever remained of his meal.
Within a week I *finally* had a non-stick, properly seasoned pan. It’s better than anything that my mother ever had.
So, the secret is pig fat. NOTHING works as well. Now that the pan has been used with bratwurst, sausage, bacon, and hash it’s finally good for eggs. No lie. The eggs slip right off.
Hubs is loving it. He’s finally got a good cast iron skillet and I’m happy because his pork is kept in one place.
I always was getting it where it worked good and then I’d make milk gravy and have to wash it. Now I try to avoid gravy but one thing that really helped was I bought a cheapie gasquet scraper. On of those ones with a replaceable razor blade. Now when I fry something and it sticks some I just scrape it and wipe it out with a paper towel.
Thanks for posting this! We just inherited two nice old frying pans, but they need work. The husband is in charge of cast-iron care, and I don’t think he’s ever tried lard.
-JT
I bought a cast iron pan in ‘58 right after we married. I seasoned the pan again and again but almost every time I used it it needed to be seasoned again.
I finally figured out that if I only fried or roasted meat in it never needed seasoning again. If you cook something like beans or anything with water or tomato sauce in it the seasoning will come off and you will have a metallic taste in your food.
Great! I have some nicely unseasoned pans (that were OLD and grungy) - so I put them in my oven on the self-cleaning cycle. They came out like brand-new.
But needed seasoning, badly. Using Crisco and baking in the oven for the numerous times I’ve seen instructed hasn’t worked all that well. They were pretty....but not as nonstick as I would’ve liked.
Did you need to heat the pan with lard in the oven to a high temp to get whatever the reaction is that creates the nonstick black surface to happen - or just cooked with the pan? I never could figure out why cooking with the pan wouldn’t get hot enough - when the pan surface is in direct contact with the heat source!