I have never done a multi-coat seasoning like Expat. I'll season a new pan one time and then start cooking with greasy/oily foods like bacon, sausage, and mushrooms. That is the beginning of the process and you just go from there.
Some just season once. I saw a guy on youtube claim he does it a minimum of 6 times. I have found i like a very thin coat several times. So to answer the other question, i may let it cool but there is nothing to wipe out of the pan or wipe it off. It's just hard seasoning. The. I do another coat. Cooking with fat in the beginning really helps it out though. Especially baking cornbread, stuff like that.
Youre putting it on too thick. It will do that. And then will chip easier and look ugly. 1. Heat up the pan for about 3 or 4 minutes. 2.Rub crisco or whatever on it. 3. Wipe it all off. It wont all come off but there will be the merest hint of oily film. 4. Bake. 5. Repeat if you want. Or just cook fatty stuff.
Gotcha, yea I was putting on a rather wet coating without wiping the excess out. Thanks for the advice
Here is a little chore, I worked on a month or so ago. I found a long forgotten dutch oven in one of the barns. It had been there for @20 years and looked horrid. I did everyone's favorite thing, I sent a PM to Expat. He offered some very good tips to cleaning it up. I started with a cordless drill and wire brush wheel. I worked on that thing for hours and got a good bit of the rust and crunchy stuff off. It still looked like crap. The pot was then submerged in a bucket containing 1 gal. of cider vinegar and @ 3.5 gal. of water. It soaked in this stinky stew for 8 hours or more. When it emerged there was still a good amount of rust and discoloration on the pot. I began working it over with some steel wool. It cleaned up pretty good. I took it upstairs and washed it with salt and water. To season, I heated it for a few minutes, coated very lightly with Crisco and baked @ 350 degrees for an hour. I repeated this a couple of times. I will tell you that it makes a mean pot of beans now. Who would have thunk it?
Magic! Its starting to turn cold so chili has been on my mind lately. I think this year, i might try a pot in the fireplace.
We've already had our first pot of chili this fall. The leftovers last night led to chili dogs. That my friends is an All-American meal.
Love it!, I have two of those, one was gifted to me from my Mom, the other was a pawnstore score . Great stew pots
Yeah, bushy's right. Too low of heat or too little time will also make it tacky. If you leave it hot enough for long enough, even the the thickest coat will eventually dry out. The problem is that it may be so thick that the top part is not really bonded to the pan, it's just sitting on top of it and you can chip it off. These are all reasons why I switched to very thin coats. Nice and even and no sticking. Of course, an improperly seasoned pan will still cook anything you want to cook, so it's not like it's the end of the world. The cleanup is just a bit more of a pain. And if not coated, it may form rust.
I tend to let the skillet cool, wipe, rinse well, then dry thoroughly. Put the skillet on a burner over medium high heat until it's nice and hot. When you pour vegetable oil in, you'll know when it's hot enough. The oil almost beads off the surface, and begins smoking. Wipe it with a towel (being careful, as the oil becomes hot pretty damn fast). I will sometimes hit it a second time, let it smoke, then remove from the heat to let it cool. I used to rinse, wipe it with vegetable oil, throw it in the oven, turn the oven on to 350-400, let it go through pre-heat, cook for about 10-15 minutes, then turn off with the skillet sitting inside. Both methods helped develop pretty good seasoning in short order. I'm also a big fan of cooking bacon and sausage in a fresh pan. And, with Expat's advice, I sanded my Lodge skillet and re-seasoned and it is performing much better. I did the same deal for a friend. I use a air-powered sander on my skillet, but moved to a drill press with adhesive backed disks for my friend's skillet. Both work. I like that I can get a little more aggressive with the drill press to knock the high spots down, then I can always come back with finer grit with the air sander.
I wish. It's my Silver Stag Deer Meat for Dinner Edition Chef Knife. I love it more than words can say.
I find myself using this skillet more and more. It's a Wagner skillet that expat dated around the 1950s. Made bacon, sausage, and eggs two nights ago. Made some country fried steak last night. They were pretty good. I've done the multiple, thin seasonings like expat explained.
These are 3 of my 4 favorite pieces of cast iron. 12" lodge frying pan, 9" square lodge and a 10" flat griddle are all in the pic. The one that isn't pictured is my 6 quart enameled lodge Dutch oven.
