Restart a Cast Iron Skillet - food.straw.restart PEP BB

Hooray!  This BB is up.  I self-cleaned the oven the other day, and tried out restarting a cast iron skillet at the same time.  Picked up one at a garage sale that was in bad shape, but it was only a couple of dollars and it was a size I didn't have.

Thanks, Mike, for the tip about flax seed oil.  I should've used that first!  The pan looks much better after it.

Julie Harris wrote:Thanks, Mike, for the tip about flax seed oil.  I should've used that first!  The pan looks much better after it.

I love flax seed oil for cast iron.  

BB

I've talked to my dad a few times about getting some cast iron cookware. He never really seemed interested because he didn't know how to maintain it, but he slowly warmed up to the idea. We were going to buy one, but he mentioned remembering that we had one around somewhere...

So two days ago when we were searching for pucks to use at the outdoor rink, I stumbled upon the skillet in the camping 'section' of the garage. It was a little grimy but solid like I expected. My mom was understandably worried about the bottom scratching the glass stovetop, so I said I could clean it somehow. I read Paul's post on cast iron and saw the self-cleaning oven idea, and I decided not to follow it. Nothing against the idea, I just like my angle grinder and and my wire wheel brush. It worked very well as the brush is much harder than the caked on stuff but far softer than the iron itself. So long story short, I cleaned up the bottom of the skillet, and would you look at that, it's a Wagner! Woo! Tonight my mom cooked some ground beef in it, and I cleaned it up afterwards. It is looking pretty sharp and is ready for years or decades of use.