Serious Eats has a very comprehensive guide [1]. The short version is rub lightly with canola oil, put in hot oven for about 30 minutes. Take it out and oil again. Repeat 3-5 times.

The only thing you need to avoid while cooking is overly acidic foods. If you try to make a tomato sauce in it you will see the seasoning flake off. That's not good, but is very easily fixed by repeating the above steps.

To clean it, scour the plan with kosher salt and a paper towel. Once clean, coat lightly in canola oil.

[1]: http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/how-to-buy-season-clean-m...

For acidic things, buy an enameled cast iron. Those things are also great. They need no seasoning, but are a bit more delicate (you don't want the enamel to chip or crack).

I grew up with traditional CI cookware. I know how to season it and how to wash it.

The roommate recently purchased an enameled cast iron skillet. The use and care guide was pretty poorly written. So, a couple of stupid questions on the topic follow:

* The coating inside the pan is enamel, and doesn't need maintenance?

* One needs to not use metal utensils (or steel wool) in order to not damage the coating?

* One can wash the damn thing with soap and water without harming the coating?

Thanks in advance. :D

As I understand it,

* no maintenance for inside

* don't use steel wool. With a stubborn stain I use a little baking soda, which some folks say is ok and others forbid. I use metal utensils despite being told not to. I use them gently and accept a few scratches; I try to avoid cutting things in the pan. I also wear contacts while swimming because I'm that kind of rebel. Meh.

* Soap + water = great :)

In addition, a lot of enamel will just stain after some time, which is normal; This is why some of the vendors are just going with black enamel these days, instead of the long-used white. I haven't tried baking soda to clear up the stains on mine, I'll have to give it a shot.

Also, if the enamel cracks inside the cooking area of the pan, you may want to throw out the pan; it may expose your food to contact with toxins used in adhering the enamel.

I'd be more worried about eating chips of (sharp, hard) enamel than any toxins - the firing process is not going to leave much other than the ceramic behind.

Once it's seasoned well, it doesn't seem to flake. I've done tomato based sauces in my cast iron a few times and the seasoning hasn't flaked.

Tomato sauces weaken the non-stick seasoning on my main cast-iron skillet, but frying bacon in it once a week repairs any damage.

My best-seasoned skillet is the one I only use for cornbread, fried eggs, and grilled cheese, since I only cook with oil there.

A good seasoning is something you build up over time: when you first season a grey skillet, it looks unusable for a time, but keep cooking oily foods in it and it will blacken up.

The nice thing is that since it's metal, you can use metal utensils. And if something is badly burned on enough that normal soaking and scouring won't remove it, you can scrape it out with metal tools.

I'd recommend the following:

1. Scrub thoroughly using only hot water and a stainless steel pot cleaner -- this should give you a clean start

2. Make fried potatoes using lots of oil, fry potatos until black (throw them away, obviously) -- this should help soak the somewhat porous surface with oil

3. Apply a thin coating of oil and bring to immense heat -- this will create a solid surface

4. After every use, clean gently using only and old towel (or hot water and pot cleaner, if needed) and always rub some oil on it when dry -- this will give you a good start for the next heat-up

Please note that 3. will result in quite a bit of smoke from the burning oil, so you may want to do this on the grill outside your house.

Yikes. What makes you think this results in fewer carcinogens on your pan's surface than teflon?

The cleaning step.

Steps one through three are what is called "seasoning" the pan. It's a process that often makes a bunch of smoke. Ideally, you only ever have to do that once. Cooking on cast iron doesn't produce a smoky mess.

If "seasoning" the pan achieves anything at all, doesn't it necessarily have to result in some sort of coating of the pan's surface?

Yes. Seasoning leaves a baked-on coating of oil/fat. That doesn't mean that the coating is carcinogenic.

IIRC (and I might not RC, I'm no food chemist) the coating is polymerized oil/fat and completely harmless.

At smoking point, carcinogens are created both in the gas and what's left behind.

How sure are you that the non-stick coating left on the pan is more carcinogenic than browned hash browns?

What makes you think the pan's surface is more carcinogenic than the steak crust?

I don't, but I'm not sure that's relevant to the hypothesis that cast iron pans are less toxic than teflon pans.

It's been a while, I'll follow up anyway...

I don't use cast iron pans because I believe they're less toxic, but because they make a damn fine crusty steak or fried potatoes.

And I use teflon pans to stir-fry or steam veggies and chicken, or to make fried eggs, just because they're more convenient.

To be honest, I don't really care all that much about potential toxiticity in cooking equipment. That wasn't really my hypothesis to begin with, I was just sharing my love for cast iron pans :-)

Yes this is a good read. After reading that last year I bought a griswold #8 from ebay for $50. Stripped it with lye oven cleaner over a few days, and then seasoned it like above. I stopped 'washing' the pan with soap as I found chiseling any stuck on stuff with a metal spatula, followed by using "The Ringer" under hot water to be quickest and easiest. After that, I dry with a paper towel and spray with Pam (read somewhere that the oil in pam (canola?) was a good 'drying' oil). It is also good to bake stuff in the pan, pizza, pies, cornbread,ect. The extra heat will also help re-season. I have been super impressed by the pan after a year.

I love my Griswold.

Indeed, I might get another one for my grandma since the ones she has are super heavy. I think the lightweight griswolds might put less strain on her wrists. (not sure why newer CI is so dang thick/heavy)

Cook with oil and real fats. Avoid soap.

If you're having issues consider getting the pre-seasoned from Lodge. It's a few buck more and they've already got a dang fine seasoning backed on.

Here's a decent article on seasoning: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5820-the-ultimate-wa...

Buy a chainmail cleaner: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ringer-Cleaner-Stainless-Chainmail...

For $18 it will change your cast iron life.

The idea is that after you cook, you scrub all the stuff that gets stuck to the bottom with the chainmail and some water, then wipe it off with a paper towel. You'll never have to use soap again.

Is this that much different from a brillo pad (aka metal sponge)? That's what I use on my steel and iron cookware. They're like 2 EUR for a 4-pack; each sponge lasts for a very long time.

Yep! Very different. Chainmail is stainless steel, so it doesn't rust. Its also much more coarse than steel wool.

Brillo pads have soap, which you don't want because it takes the grease (read: seasoning) off the pan. They also rust quickly when you leave them out, which can discolor things.

I was (am) new to CI, I bought the ringer because it seemed like steel wool would scratch the season off (vs 'the ringer'), but then again, I never tried steel wool, so don't know.

Well, yes. It's chain mail. Really. Brillo's are just steel wool. You could wear that and safely expect it to stop a stab wound from a knife.

Just use it. I only use saturated fats in mine (mostly lard and butter) and I use metal utensiles which helps to keep it smooth. I avoid vegetable oils because I find that they go sticky (they're also not as good for you to cook with as animal fat).

Why do metal utensils not scratch it?

It's not that metal can't scratch it; it's that NON-stick surfaces are highly vulnerable to being scratched by metal, whereas cast iron is much, much less so, and scratches can heal as long as you cook with more oil.

I think what was meant (and that I can anecdotally confirm) is that metal utensils do a much better job of stopping what I will call "gunk film overgrowth" during cooking.

Iron is a harder metal than 'steel'.

Not true.

Steel is about 5.5 - 6.3 and Iron is around 4.5 on Moh's Hardness Scale. Higher numbers are harder.

They do scratch it, that's why they keep it smooth, but the iron is not a coating and is non-toxic, so it doesn't matter about wear.

We use bacon fat or avocado oil. For cleaning, we use a Lodge plastic scraper if needed. And we never use soap. We wash our cast iron with about 2TBSP of kosher salt. Just dry on the pan, maybe a few drops of water, rub with a paper towel. Removes all the food debris while protecting the seasoning. Rinse the salt out with some water then dry or deglaze immediately.

> And we never use soap.

In theory, soap shouldn't be a problem. The non-stick coating is polymerized oil bonded to the metal. It's not soluble by soap.

But there are conflicting opinions.

I went back to visit my mother once and discovered that for convenience she had started regularly running her cast iron skillets in the dishwasher.

It certainly damaged the seasoning IMO, but not as much as you might expect.

Not that I would ever do that.

The dishwasher might be more damaging because it uses detergent rather than soap and the water is typically very hot.

I doubt that. I do more or less as you do but, after that process, if I take a clean towel and rub it against the "clean" surface, it invariably comes back with a distinct brown color. That brown color doesn't look like "clean" to me, it's more like burnt oil... I'd expect my towel to be 100% clean if that "seasoning" was working as advertised...

You can think of the brown color as a feature, not a bug.

Yes, it is effectively burnt oil and you probably shouldn't eat too much of it, but it will give steaks for instance a great crust and I think it adds a bit of flavor as well.