How I do it, Cast iron

[minnesotascott]

This might not be your way of doing it.
First picture is a 6" pan after boiling in hot soapy water.

After boiling for 10 to 15 minutes this is my next step.

I scrub it good and hard for I would say another 5 minutes.

I then boiled the pan another 10 minutes in soapy water, then washed in the hottest water I can stand. I make sure the pan is dry by putting it in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Then i let it cool to the touch.

I use raw pork fat trimmings not lard, for 1 reason, the reason is after the seasoning is done I now have some lard.

This is a picture of cast iron pans and one hammered steel wok ready for the oven.

Putting a couple pans in the oven. I put the pans in right away when I have the temp set to what I want.


I "Cook" 3 times, 10 minutes after the oven has reached the temp i shut it down and let everything cool till the fat as re solidified then turn the oven on again.

After all the oven time is done I clean the pans with hot, hot , hot water and scrub them with coarse salt (canning salt), then rinse with hot hot hot water. My last step is to cook bacon, very very slowly maybe 1 hour to cook the bacon, in each pan, pot or dutchoven.

The same 6" pan after everything has been done to make it cook like a charm.


Might not be how everybody seasons cast iron, but it works great for me. Every year when camping season is done I do this. Why, while camping I cook over an open fire an dits hard to control the heat.

[Admin]

Excellent post Scott ;D Thank you for taking the time to put this together. This will get stickied at the top of the Homestead cooking board. Here's a bunch of karma for this great tidbit of information.

[cam]

Great find and great thread scott!

The 2 skillets you got (Middle two on the left in the pic that shows them all) look very old. Are there any stamps on them or or anything?

Thanks for the process. My process is a bit diffrent, but the end result is what matters!

Karma...
Cam

[minnesotascott]

The second pan on the2nd pan from the bottom is the same 6" in the last picture of the post, 3 B on the bottom, the 3rd from the bottom of the left, to tell the truth is just a sizzel pan I picked out of the garbage! But both are made in the U.S.A. and heavily made.

[maritimer]

That's a great tutorial Scott!! More Karma buddy ;D

[keeper172]

Great job Scott Very informative ;D

Karma for your post!

[patricimo54]

Jun 11, 2010 17:54:45 GMT -5 cam said:

Thanks for the process. My process is a bit diffrent, but the end result is what matters!

Ditto. Karma for taking the time to put it all together for the swamp

[jacktheknife]

Scott,

Very interesting, I never knew this.
I'll get my old cast iron pans and clean them up.
Yes, a very good post.


Thank you...♪


Jack the Knife
Sandymay & von Dukedog

[yankee]

;D

One question, what do you do to clean after each time you cook?

[minnesotascott]

For clean I scrub with a paste mixture of coarse salt (canning salt) and vegatable oil. You can scrub as hard as you want the salt wont hurt the pan, then rince with the hottest water I can put my hand in. I then wipe dry and finish the drying with heat, such as the oven of over the fire, on takes a couple of minutes of the heat to make em totally dry.

[patricimo54]

Jun 13, 2010 7:27:37 GMT -5 yankee said:

;D
One question, what do you do to clean after each time you cook?

Back in the spring and early summer of 73 I spent some time with some back wood folks that lived a pretty meager life style. They would clean their cast iron with water and wood ash. It got the job done with out contaminating the porous metal.

[fishleclair]

Love the post....One thing I miss is my Cast Iron cook ware, Wife does not use it and tossed out my collection, I will one day recover my losses..

One thing I used to get upset about was when she would was it with the other dishes and then put it away to dry...Need to greese em up good!!

[TRAPnHUNT]

Tonight my wife & I had taken my cast iron pie makers and made jerked chicken with pineapple and coconut sandwiches over a fire for dinner. I gotta say it was a simple sandwich but there is something about cooking over a hardwood fire that makes food taste great! ;D

[stomper]

Sad to see that the pics have all disapeared thanks to Photobucket.

[minktracks]

Very educational post.

[watershedman25]

Thank Photojunk for no pics, anyway, it is interesting to "almost" see how other folks do thier seasoning. We used to put them in the wood stove and take them out the next morning, as far as the re-season, we just cooked bacon and rubbed it in when the grease cooled. Saw a little trick on a show once where they cooked fish on the bank and when done the cook left the pan on the fire and eventually caught fire, when it did the cook took it carefully by the handle and stuck it in the creek and drew it out instantly in which it was spotless and dry before he got back to set down. I thought it was pretty neat. ;D

[sudsy duck]

I LOVE my cast iron! Great info ;D. I should try it with the pork fat...

[thedeerfarm]

I have a iron addiction as well....as cast iron one...lol

just bought a old straight wall bean pot the other day....for $2 !!!

it was one of the greasiest I have ever done...threw it in the fire( camp fire coals) for a little while ...burned it off....washed it good /dryed it good and oiled it back up....it will be handy at camp.

[whistler]

And OTT question an then right back on.
As mentioned the photos are gone, when that happens i always thought that was because the poster taking them down from the host site and not the hosting site doing something. Just asking?

Back on topic , I know it's going to make a lot of people gasp but my mom is in her 80's and has used cast iron till it's just too heavy for her. When she had a skillet that had lots of buildup on the outside and needed attention she tossed them in our stove. We used a coal stove and she just opened the door and tossed it in. Then allowed the fire to go out and retrieved the skillet.

[rendezvous]

Aug 18, 2015 7:18:47 GMT -5 whistler said:

And OTT question an then right back on.
As mentioned the photos are gone, when that happens i always thought that was because the poster taking them down from the host site and not the hosting site doing something. Just asking?

Back on topic , I know it's going to make a lot of people gasp but my mom is in her 80's and has used cast iron till it's just too heavy for her. When she had a skillet that had lots of buildup on the outside and needed attention she tossed them in our stove. We used a coal stove and she just opened the door and tossed it in. Then allowed the fire to go out and retrieved the skillet.

The photos gone? I have learned when you reorganize your pictures on photobucket they come up, removed or not found. I started out with one album, when I moved pictures to different albums(eg. fishing, hunting, trapping, family...) their addresses has change and needed to be re-posted with new address.

[whistler]

Aug 18, 2015 16:22:03 GMT -5 rendezvous said:

.............................................

The photos gone? I have learned when you reorganize your pictures on photobucket they come up, removed or not found. I started out with one album, when I moved pictures to different albums(eg. fishing, hunting, trapping, family...) their addresses has change and needed to be re-posted with new address.

I'd say you hit the nail on the head!

Not that I'm any computer guru at all but remember DOS when every little . / \ { [ had to be exactly as intended or you'd get an error message. Man if you didn't get it exactly right you were looking at a blue screen with white error message on it..............They didn't crash as much then but it sure is easier to click a icon and leave it up to IBM to put the right code in.

[Brad H.]

25 karma to any swamper who makes a new post to replace this one with pictures included.

[whistler]

Aug 21, 2015 21:52:03 GMT -5 Brad H. said:

25 karma to any swamper who makes a new post to replace this one with pictures included.

No help to you now timestamp but my son in law just done some and my brother in law done one. We live on Hwy 127 which is supposed to be the home of the Worlds Longest Yard Sale. (Sorry couldn't get the link to work) My son in law and brother in law went looking for cast iron and found some samples worth the money but needed attention. All turned out very good. I wish I had found this thread earlier I could have took a few pics and got that Karma. .............................Day late and dollar short again!