Try the cookware forum--many threads there and it's slow so they don't drop off.

Thanks Fori, I didn't know that forum existed. Looks like the wisdom there is similar to the usual methods. Wish I could remember the different suggestion someone had! No matter now since the pans are half done with their hour. I went with 350° since I found several places that suggested 350° was hot enough, including the engraved directions on the bottom of one of the skillets. Smoke detector temporarily lowered to table level, kitchen door opened to the length of the chain with a fan blowing toward it from the far side of the oven. Looks like the bare pans are starting to turn brown.

Melissa

I have had good luck with a slightly different method that uses a lower temp.

First preheat the oven to 125. This removes any possible moisture that might leave rust spots on the cast iron. Then put the cast iron piece in and heat it without adding anything to the pan. 15 minutes is good. Once the piece is hot, remove it and use a pad or heavy rag to apply shortening. Return to oven. Raise temp to 225 and leave 30 minutes. Remove and wipe up any pooled shortening. Return to oven another 30 minutes. Remove, let cool a bit and rub to a dull shine.

This is more troublesome but I used it on an old gem pan and it left the most beautiful oiled glaze.

This is an alternative method suggested by the Griswold collectors group.

Carol

THAT'S IT! (as Charlie Brown said when Lucy suggested he had pantophobia)

The new pieces have a definite brownish cast from the first seasoning but I think I will use this method to augment it later this week. Thanks Carol! I was thinking you might have provided the unusual method but I wasn't sure. Thanks very much for providing a late-night answer.

Melissa

If your pieces are brown, they haven't been 'cooked' long enough. Brownish shortening will still be sticky and won't give you a good cooking finish.

I've got probably close to 3 dozen pieces of cast iron. Best way I've found to season them is to do it out back on the grill. (I've used both gas and charcoal, with equally good results). That keeps the heat, smell and smoke out of the house. Just keep an eye on the pieces so that you can remove them from the heat once they're properly seasoned (black), because it is possible to go past 'perfectly seasoned' to the point where you burn off all your seasoning and have to start over.

I've also seasoned smaller pans on top of the range in a pinch (only takes 15-30 minutes that way), but then you do have to deal with the smoke and smell in your house, and sometimes some mess on your range.

Melissa: I have forgotten my cast iron Skillet on the range,
A few times and had to cure them all over again.

You will know when you forget, when you go back into the kitchen
and it's filled with smoke.

I put them in the oven at about 325 Deg. for about 3 hours.
Coat them with veg. oil first and again after an hour.
I baked the Pizza Pans, when they are new for 6 hours.
Then I test a couple. If the dough sticks, I'll bake them
a couple more hours. At 500 Deg.
I never washed them with soap and water. Just warm water.
My wife and Sister in Law did me a favor one day and
cleaned the pans til they looked like new.Thanks Girls !!!
I had to start all over again.

My normal method is fry some fish, then pour out the oil and sock the pan in the over at 250 deg. F to bake for a couple of hours.

The great think about a well seasoned cast iron pan is that the seasoning can actually stand up to gentle rubbing with a sponge and dish detergent.

If you start scrubbing at it, though, you'll strip the seasoning. I do my cast iron like that all the time and have never lost the seasoning.

What about when the pan has a wooden handle? Is it still safe to bake it? I have been trying to cure my new pan on the stove and it isn't working too well.

Wrap the handle in a couple of layers of heavy-duty foil and use lower heat in the oven, 250F to 300F.

IMO, solid shortening does a better job of seasoning than oil. And a thinner layer is better than globbing it on. It is better to repeat the seasoning with thinner rubs of shortening than to bake only one time with globs of it. And I always heard the best way to season was to cook some french fries in deep oil/shortening on top of the stove to start the seasoning process.

I always dry my pans in a low oven to get them completely dry and only use hot water to clean them.

Teresa

Have to add--the experts say to never ever use oil to season cast iron. Actually, I made that mistake once, with my first piece of cast iron. I guarantee, it's a mistake you'll only make once, though. Oil gives a very sticky, nasty coating--nothing like the wonderful hard sheen you'll get with solid shortening. Besides not giving as good a non-stick cooking surface, I believe oil is more likely to go rancid than solid shortening--another reason for using shortening. I don't ever use shortening in food I'm serving my family, but I always have a small can of Crisco on hand for my cast iron.

I will take a different approach from the perspective of re-seasoning an existing cast iron. You have to clean it first and the best way I know of is to place it in a self cleaning oven, and run the cleaning cycle.

This will turn all the crud and existing seasoning to ash. Simple then clean it off with warm soapy water, towel dry, then place in a warm oven to finish drying. It will also expose any rust, remove it with sand paper, clean again after sand paper, and then re-season. Good as new.

FWIW grandma showed me this trick using the ole fashion way before self cleaning ovens. She would place her cast iron buried in the red-hot coals of the fireplace over night.

Azzalea: That's not true about oil. I've been seasoning pans and
griddles since the 50's and never had a nasty sticky coating.
Maybe, you did something wrong ???

Netla: try at a lower heat,for a longer time, on the range top.

Lou

I disagree about the oil also. I used spray oil when I seasoned my 2 skillets and my dutch oven, about 3 years ago. I cleaned them, sprayed them with Pam, wiped out the excess, cooked them at 350 for an hour, rubbed them to a shine, then repeated on the outside.

My best girl recently left a skillet on the burner and scorched the seasoning. I got it as hot as it my stove can get it, then shocked it in hot soapy water to clean the rest of the burnt seasoning off of it, dried it in the oven, and reseasoned.

I should mention that I used a sander on my pieces when they were new to take down the high spots before I seasoned them. They were VERY inexpensive, therefore very rough.

aug

I haven't had problems using soapy hot water to wash my seasoned cast iron, but alas tonight I'm reseasoning. I've had good luck with oil too.

(In a plumbing emergency, you WILL use that big pot you have right there on the stove, even though you know liquid drain cleaner might be in that nasty water... =)

Azzalea, I've had the same experience you have had when using oil.

Also, never throw them on hot coals or a fire. The EX cracked my grandmother's by doing that and it was cracked nearly half way across.

I use oil and shortening interchangeably when seasoning cast iron and have never had a problem.

The heating process converts the oil/shortening into a linked polymer chain that is very stable. The only way that will go rancid is if it's left for a long period of time or if it's incompletely seasoned.

Azzalea, after the first round they were brown but not at all sticky. The ones that were partly seasoned when I got them looked like the coating stuck well, but the two pieces that were unseasoned had only a brown sheen, maybe because the coating was thin?

I seasoned them again tonight, at 350ð for almost 4 hours. The two pieces that started bare still aren't black but since they're for me I'll just start using them. Two of the others are for giving away but they look pretty good.

One of the formerly bare pans seems to be for making some kind of donuts...it came with a recipe called "aebleskiver/munk" and you're supposed to add cooked apples or jam before turning them. While turning it over (with an oven mitt) to look at the coating on the hemispherical indents for the donuts, a finger on my bare hand grazed the hot metal, ow! Luckily it's just a 1/4-inch-square burn but after that I just turned the oven off because I'm tired of seasoning these pans. Do you all really get a good black coating with the 1-hour methods?

Thanks for the advice all. I will probably shell out for Lodge pre-seasoned next time I need a skillet to own or give, but thanks to your help at least my corn sticks will stop sticking.

Melissa

Melissa: Why don't you try one pan at 450 deg.,
with a light coat of oil, for 3 hours.
You may be surprised.

Aebleskiver! Yum! I have a friend whose family makes those at Christmas!

I haven't heard many good things about the Lodge pre-seasoned. Consider it time well spent. :)

Hawk, are you just suggesting a third round, or is there something specific I did that you think wouldn't work--too many pans in the oven, temperature too low, shouldn't have used shortening? I am not going to season these again until it's warm enough to open all the windows, but I will keep your method in mind for the spring.

Beanthere, are they donuts?
I have a pre-seasoned Lodge dutch oven and while it wasn't ready to cook baked beans right away, it was certainly better off than the pans that had only my first round of seasoning. As long as one is going to use it for frying at the beginning, I would recommend the Lodge pre-seasoned for convenience.

Melissa

To those new to seasoning cast iron pans, if you think about a new unseasoned cast iron pan as having "open pores" that need to be filled in then you might understand the process a little better. You might get a better seasoned finish on a new pan if you rub in a small amount of unflavored shortening, bake it in an slow oven or one that has been on and turn it off, wipe it out when cool, then repeat the process several times. This can be done over several days or whenever you have the oven on for baking. It does not have to be done overnight.

If you are using oil, then the same method would apply, but I do not belong to that camp.

I love my old cast iron, with 30+ years of seasoning. I just bought an old Griswold, though, at a yard sale and I've been seasoning it.

It's spent lots of time on my stovetop full of oil for french fries, and some substantial time in the oven rubbed with shortening. It's nearly ready, I think.....

I've had to reseason a couple of pans because I cooked tomato based sauces in them. The acid from the tomatoes will leach the iron out of the pan and add to the iron content of your food, so it's good for anyone with low iron but your pans won't thank you!

Annie

Melissa, the traditional way to turn Aebleskivar is with a pair of knitting needles (really).

Mellisa: I don't care what you do. I'm just suggesting
that you try something else.
If you Google you will find a lot of different opinions
from " Experts ".
If you still have a brownish tint, i don't think it's seasoned enough.
A lot of them use Oil and bake at a higher heat to Carbonize the oil.
That's what I did for 50 years . It worked fine .
No goeey , gummy mess. I baked 100 Pizza pans at 500 deg. for 6 hours.
Maybe curing at a low heat is what makes them gummy.
I suggested you try 1 pan , to see if it better.
Another thing; maybe you already know,when cooking, heat the pan first,
before you put the oil in for frying.
or else the food may stick.
Good Luck.
LOU

Lou, thanks for explaining. Now that they're cool I think it actually worked. They have a thin coating of black with some thicker black spots on the insides (which were facing the bottom of the oven). I think I can finish the job by cooking carefully and heating on the stovetop after each use to cook on a little more oil. The corn stick pan looks black inside the molds and I'll melt the shortening in there each time.

Dave, thanks for the tip. I don't own any knitting needles but I'll buy some for the inaugural use of the pan. Do you hold the knitting needles like chopsticks? And do you use a little pool of oil or just enough to coat the indents?

Melissa

Turning the Aebleskiver -- One needle is sufficient. You kind of catch the dough on the needle point and just turn it over in the pan. A speedy cook might turn them two at a time with both hands and maybe beginners need both needles for one. Usually only turned once. I think a little oil with each dollop of dough is advised. Skewers could be used as well but I imagine the competent Danish housewife certainly had knitting needles close at hand. You can use the needle/skewer to test for doneness as well.