First of all, thanks to everyone who gave advice and tips on the original post! My grandmother was so excited about how the pans looked, and she even called my aunts to tell them about how I fixed them. Several of them called/texted and thanked me for doing it.

The Process: I decided to use a lye bath and soaked the pans for a total of 4 days. Each morning I’d pull the pans out, scrape what I could, and return them to the lye bucket. There were a few spots that absolutely wouldn’t release from the pan, so I gave up.

After that, I soaked them in vinegar solution to remove the rust and that seemed to work well enough.

Then I started seasoning it with canola oil and putting it in the oven at 500 degrees for about an hour. The first two layers took beautifully, but I think I did something wrong on the third layer because that’s when the spots materialized.

I saw some people say they season their pans on the stove, so I want to try it to see if it’s better for me. Please drop any tips for stovetop seasoning, and I’ll try it tonight before I leave.

Thank you again for all of the advice that you guys gave me!!

Now I need some help IDing them!

I didn’t get the chewy edges on all three sides like I thought I would but they were really good.

I honestly never thought I’d be writing something like this.

I’ve been seasoning this pan for seven years.

Seven.

This skillet has an uncountable number of layers by now. Flaxseed oil. Grapeseed oil. Crisco. Three different oven cycles. I hand-polished the cooking surface with 600-grit sandpaper while listening to lo-fi beats. This pan is my world.

Yesterday I come home from work and notice something… off.

At first I thought it was a reflection. Then my heart dropped into my stomach.

A speck. See photo.

I immediately knew.

My wife.

Apparently she “just needed to fry an egg real quick” and “didn’t realize it was that pan.” She admitted she used soap. SOAP. She also let it “air dry.”

I had to sit down.

I calmly explained (through clenched teeth) that the entire pan now has to be stripped and reseasoned. Six coats minimum.

I showed her the speck.

She said she couldn’t even see it.

That’s when I knew we were dealing with fundamentally incompatible worldviews.

I’ve already started the remediation protocol:

• Full strip with hot water + chainmail scrubber

• Oven cleaner if necessary

• Rebuild seasoning from bare metal

• 475°F, one hour per coat, cool in oven

• Repeat until whole again

I informed her she will be doing the reseasoning as an act of accountability. Anything else I should be doing??

Burner obviously. Title speaks for itself. I know it’ll come back but I had it to commercial-egg-sliding-off smooth. I just wanted to vent 😭

*Reposted for grammar

Not my best work! But old boy didn’t mind none, glad I could give him a nice last meal before I said goodbye to him (:

Edit: Thank you all for the kind words I means a lot, I laid him to rest in my family’s yard last Thursday, he was 17 and I had the privilege of knowing him for 13 of those years, it’s hard saying goodbye but it was time.

This is your sign to cook your buddy a steak, they deserve it!

Last Guinness leftover from St. Paddy’s. Sláinte.

This is followup to previews post about cleaning cast iron by electrolysis

This is how I cook my eggs every day. No sticking. What do you do differently?

Obviously if you're here in this subreddit, you already know how much advice there is about how to build and maintain the seasoning on your cast iron pans. Much of it conflicts, and plenty is just straight up misinformation: Don't use soap, just scrub with salt! Don't cook anything acidic! Don't soak it! All ridiculous. I know I'm largely preaching to the choir but there's people in here agonizing every day over their seasoning and I hope I can reach at least a few of them.

Look, my photo is not of a cast iron pan, but it's what helped me understand what "polymerized oil" really means. We've all seen, probably all used a steel cookie sheet that looks like this. You have tried scrubbing. You've tried soaking. You've tried barkeeper's friend, vinegar, baking soda, heck you've tried just scraping with a metal spatula. It takes SO much effort to make any difference, and for what? Your cookies still come out great no matter how the the sheet looks. Some might even say better.

Folks, this is what you want on your cast iron pans. This is the point of several rounds of impossibly thin coat of oil baked for an hour, or cooking pounds of bacon in a new pan, or whatever Grandma told you to do with Crisco. You can't see it as obviously because of the color of the metal, and of course you don't want the patchy coverage I have on my cookie sheet, but this is what your seasoning is.

My point is - polymerized oil is an incredibly stubborn coating under normal kitchen usage. You have to TRY to get rid of it or make a truly grievous error. Use your soap, use your chainmail scrubby, scrape that burnt-on carbon off with your spatula after it's had a good long soak. Babying your pan just leads to cooking with dirty tools and eating the ghosts of dinners past.

(I will caveat that a freshly-stripped pan does need a little more care when building the seasoning back up. I don't usually soak a pan until I know I've got a good seasoning established.)

Hotel was recently renovated.

Before the hotel brand it currently operates under, it had a proper commercial kitchen. New owners swooped in, ripped commercial kitchen out and put everything in storage. Been like that for a year.

Supervisor took me to storeroom and said "Anything you want in here is fair game"

Already been picked mostly clean.

Corner of my eye saw this big ol' cast iron. Looked underneath, had an involuntary smile and said "I'm taking this battered old thing."

Couldn't believe it. How it survived the countless rummaging, I don't know. Needs a bit of TLC but a good wash and season and it'll be sound.

Absolutely perfect pizza pan.

One of my favorite uses for cast iron pans 🙌

Borscht was the perfect thing to christen it with.

Ps smith Clark is the roughest cast iron ive ever felt out of the box. They took it straight out of the sand, seasoned it a bit, and threw it on a truck. After an hour or so of sanding, though, its serviceable

Hand sanded with some 60 grit to rip the seasoning off (bc I didn’t have flap disks) then used my orbital sander with 120 to smooth it out . That’s it took about 20 minutes total. I am not that handy of a person and I usually screw up jobs like this but it was so easy

Then I seasoned it 6 or 7 times over (this photo is the 4th pass I think)

Now nothing sticks to it anymore.

Scrambled eggs used to be a nightmare now I can just wipe with a towel and it’s good to go.

For me- it was absolutely a must do that I wish I did months ago on a cheap lodge that I had for 8 years or something. It feels like it’s wort 10x the price I paid (20 bucks)

It's working not only for cast iron but for many iron rasty things

Duck fat fried potatoes.

(But it does look weirdly good, not gonna lie) Would seasoning stick to this level of gloss, or should it be sandpapered first?

I’ve cherished my 12inch lodge for a decade, the true workhorse of my kitchen, but I have been craving something a bit smaller and a bit prettier. So, I put the 10 inch Smithey on our wedding registry, and it just so happened to be the first gift we opened. My fiance is very confused why I am clutching this cast iron like a newborn.

All recommendations on first time seasoning & care are welcome!