How I Season Cast Iron | I do what?? | Cast Iron Care

Hi everyone and thanks so much for stopping back by the farmhouse. Today we're going to be talking about cast iron care. Now is a great time to hit subscribe and hang out with us at the farmhouse more often and see all the things that we do around here from a lot of DIYs, renovations, and just living the good country life. Well when I first started using cast iron I actually grew up using cast iron. My mom used it all the time and god bless her she had a way with her cast iron. As I moved out and moved on and got married and started coping for my family I loved my cast iron and I loved all the health benefits but every once in a while it would start sticking again and I would just get so upset and I would just quit using it for a while and go back to the Teflon and the ones that are all poisonous and we shouldn't be using at all. I was using those. So finally I sat down and did some research and figured out how my mom kept her cast iron in such great shape all those years and this is what I discovered. You have to really care for your cast iron but it's not a lot of work. It really isn't and your food tastes so much better, it cooks so much easier, and there's so many health benefits to using your cast iron. I'll let you research all those on your own so we're going to jump into this video and start talking about the cast iron. Rather you're starting out with a brand new piece of cast iron and it has a scratchy texture to it or maybe you found a piece like that looks like this it's a little a little worn and rusty and you're wondering can you use it? Absolutely. You will not be disappointed. Just a few steps and you can clean this up and use it but we'll talk about that later but right now you're wanting to know how are we going to go from this pan to one like this. Well stay with me friends I'll walk you through it. So as you rub your fingernails across that sure doesn't sound smooth and shiny does it? It's more like that nails on a chalkboard kind of sound. So let's figure out how we're going to get this closer to smooth and shiny before we season it. So I've got my palm sander out and I have this 60 grit sandpaper. You want something pretty coarse to be able to get in there and affect cast iron. Now this technique of course is for new pans and rusty pans like the one that we talked about earlier that I had found. Absolutely if you're wanting to work with one that you found then you can use this technique to get that extra rust off and you can just feel as you go along and check out the difference that you can feel when you've gone across that a few times. You want to go slow and get into the corners of course because you want to work on every area of the pan because the entire pan is a surface that you're going to be using. Now you can hear that is definitely a change from the beginning so we're just going to keep working and all the area of the top the sides especially in that joint and you can hear and feel that is just so much better at this point. Now I'm going to continue working. I'm going to do my entire set of pans and get them all ready. Now when I'm all done with them what we're going to do is we're going to wash them and I'm just going to give them a good rinse and I'm not going to use the towel to dry them. I don't want the lint in the pan so I'm going to just turn on the heat and let that dampness evaporate. Now I can use the towel on the bottom of the sides and you can watch that water evaporate and leave the pan. As this is heating up I'm touching it. Now be careful don't leave your hand too long. You don't want to burn it and you want this at a low heat. You're not in a big hurry here. You just want to kind of let that water evaporate and as that water is evaporating and the pan is drying it's opening up the cells in the cast iron to get ready to accept the oil because that is how you season the pan. You put oil on it. So once our pans are all dry I'm going to go ahead and use some oil. I'm going to use virgin flaxseed oil. Now a lot of people have their own ideas of oil. I don't use olive oil because it doesn't have a high cook point and I don't use coconut oil. I do the first seasoning with this. Now I use these black silicone brushes because I think they just spread the oil so much better. You want to coat every surface, the top, the sides, all of it because food can get on the sides and the top and all of it. So you really want to get the oil everywhere where the food may go or splatter when you're using it. So I cook with other oils. I just don't season with other oils. So you're going to want to get this all over your pan. Make sure your burners are off especially if you're using gas or a regular electric stove or a wood stove. However you're doing it you don't want oil on your burners. You notice I didn't do the bottom here. I just did the sides and I've turned off the other skillet and let it cool while I'm working on the others and I'll do the bottom after I take them off the stove so I'm not getting oil on the top of my stove. Now I get lots of questions about using cast iron on a glass top stove and I've never had a problem. Of course if you put it down really hard you could risk cracking the top of your stove so I wouldn't suggest doing that but otherwise it's like cooking with any other pan. Now I've got them all seasoned and I'm wiping off the extra oil from the outside. This is just from the stove top. Now they're going to go in the oven and I'm going to line it but I'm also using this bottom liner. I really like them. I'll link them down below also. Put this in to catch any drips. Now some people will put their pans in upside down. I'm going to put mine in the correct way right side up because I don't want any of that oil to drip out. I want it to really bake in there. So they're all in and now we're just going to set our timer for one hour. We have our temperature at 350 degrees. Now we're going to go for an hour and the magic of video we're done. So it has ended and you can take them out. You can let them cool in the oven until they're completely cool and you can repeat the process if you want to. I did not. I feel like they really did great getting done the way I did them in an hour. Now for the biggest benefit go ahead and fry a high fat food in there. That's just going to help really season that pan a whole lot more. Now I want to introduce you to these silicone handles covers. They are great because that handle is hot. This allows you to move your pan when you're cooking and hold on to the handle. Now the pan is seasoned so well these eggs will not stick no matter what. And for the cleanup all you need to do is take the oil out of your pan and give your pan a good rinse. Now the more it gets seasoned you'll be able just to wipe it out with a towel or a paper towel. Never use soap on your pan once it's been through the oven process. That is what makes it stick. It takes all that oil out of the pan and then even though you're putting oil in when you cook it doesn't really help. Now if you do have something stuck on you can use a little scraper. I get these from Grove Collaborative. They're a walnut scrubber. Now it's been washed. I'm going to dry it the same way I did earlier. I'm just going to let that heat come through and once it's dry I'm going to put in a little more oil. And at this point you can use any oil you want. I'm just going to put a little oil spread it around with my silicone brush and I'll link these down below also. Now remember this little fellow from earlier? Look at how great he seasoned up and he is ready to cook with. So friends, I hope I've answered some questions and really encouraged you to get in there and use your cast iron. Thanks so much for stopping by the farmhouse guys. I look so forward to seeing you soon. Take care. Be blessed. And friends, feel free to stick around and watch a few more videos.