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

Both these skillets underwent a deseasoning incident recently, so they needed reseasoning. They don’t look bad, no rust to clean off, but the inside surface was down to bare iron and everything was sticking like mad.

Alas my pan accidentally ended up in the dishwasher so need some love.

I don’t have a self cleaning oven and it just needed reseaoning.



Before seasoning


After seasoning

Frying an egg video

I didn’t take a middle step photo last time. It didn’t make sense to go through the process with a cast iron pan that’s now seasoned, so I’m resubmitting with a cast iron griddle, applying the same principles.

I used my pellet BBQ to burn off the junk at 600+ degrees. I then used a bbq scrubber and wire wool to strip back to the metal. I finished off on the hob with oil.

Hi all! Maybe strange to start a PEP unit with a straw BB but this had to happen before I had any hope of frying an egg in my skillet so there it is!

Photos:
1 and 2. Starting skillet, a little rusty and a lot bumpy
3. Scrubbing with steel wool and hot water
4. Hot soak 1:1 vinegar to water (with tons more scrubbing)
5. Clean at last!
6 and 7. Reseasoning. 4 total rounds pf oil and bake, alternating sunflower seed oil and lard.
8 and 9. Finished!
10. Put to work

I was given a cast iron pan because it "didn't work" for the original person. When I received it, it was sticky and looked uneven with very little seasoning in some spots.
I scrubbed it with salt and chain mail, washed it, and dried it in the oven. I applied a thin layer of flaxseed oil and baked it, repeating for a total of 4 coats of oil. Then I accidentally dropped the flaxseed oil, shattering the bottle. Now I need a thread for how to fully remove oil from a laminate floor, as it's still a little slippery even after cleaning...

This was the first time I reseasoned cast iron.
I almost gave up in the middle of the process because of what went wrong. But I didn't give up and the skillet turned out just fine in the end, so I am still submitting this for BB certification. I share the story.

Cleaning
- Soaked and scrubbed with hot water.
- Then soaked an scrubbed with hot water and apple vinegar (4:1) untill completely grey. Found out it is a Taiwan one.

Seasoning
I have no oven, and I used lard to reseason the skillet. I wanted to avoid the freshly greased downside of the skillet touching the woodstove directly, so I put the skillet on small stones.

- Round 1: on stones on woodstove top -> there is no smoke, hardly a change in color. I watched and waited for hours and hours, not knowing how long it would take for the skillet to turn black. It stayed grey and didn't smoke!

- Round 2: on stones on woodstove top -> there is no smoke, hardly a change in color (same as round 1). Repeating round 1 is not doing the trick either. Maybe the skillet is not getting hot enough!

- Round 3: on gasstove top -> now there was smoke, and the skillet turned black almost instantly! Left it on the gas for about 20 minutes.

- Round 4: back on woodstove top, without stones this time -> smoked nicely, but the seasoning layer became a bit uneven. I cleaned the skillet, but a patch of grey skillet appeared. Maybe it hadn't cooled down enough before cleaning? Maybe this is what happens if there's too much fat?

I had two options: continuing, or go back to scrubbing! I decided to not (yet) start all over again, but to gently scrape away the parts that were not entirely black, felt a bit sticky, and/or made the seasoning layer uneven. I used a straight spatula with round corners for the scraping. I figured that after scraping, I could continue the seasoning to see whether the patches would fill up. Doing it was the only way to find out whether it'd work. I didn't care about the smoke in my house anymore :-D

- Round 5, 6 and 7: on woodstove top (no stones), using less lard than round 4 -> nice smoke, the gray patches turned black again and hardened beautifully.


When I messed up in round 4, I was afraid I'd had to start all over again, for the sake of this BB as well as for the sake of the skillet itself. But in the end, it turned out fine. I put the skillet to the test immediately and fried an egg to see if it would slide. And it did! Frying an egg is another BB, will be uploaded soon, with this very skillet sliding its second egg for me.


I never watched a pan for such a long time, let alone an empty one.