This is what I do in my restaurant. I use my cast iron skillets a lot and need to burn them clean fairly often. After cleaning, I season them as follows. If you do this at home, I suggest doing it outside, as it makes a lot smoke and flame. It'll smoke up the house if you don't have a commercial hood to work under.
Lard works better than anything else for seasoning because it leaves the most residue. The goal is to leave a carbonaceous coating on the cast iron that seals it from the food to follow.
Red chicory risotto by PandoraHere is photos and recipe of a odd red chicory risotto! "Odd" because I have invented this morning and we liked it very much! I hope you will enjoy it, too! Cheers Pandora Photo...
I put a liberal amount of lard in the pan, perhaps 1-16" thick, and melt it. I swirl it up on the sides. Then I heat the pan until the lard is strongly smoking. At that point I ignite the smoke and allow it to burn while continuing to heat the pan. When the lard is almost burned off (still just a film of wet on the pan), turn the heat down. When the flames go out, turn the heat off and let the pan cool. Wipe the pan with a paper towel moistened with more melted lard or oil.
The finish should be shiny black and smooth. Depending on how well finished the pan surface is, some but not much pattern should show through. The carbon should fill the pores and smooth over the roughness.
The key is to burn off the lard but not get it hot enough to oxidize the carbon residue.
Never wash a cast iron skillet. Just wipe it out with a paper towel while still warm and put it up. Rinsing without soap is OK if you've made gravy after frying or something like that but quickly and thoroughly dry it afterward. I heat mine a little after rinsing to make sure they're dry. It MUST stay oily to preserve the seasoning. Yes, it gets stained on the outside but that's just how cast iron is. If you need display pieces to hang over your stove, buy some more pieces that you never use. Keep the seasoned ones for cooking.
The Lodge procedure is, IMO, barely adequate at best. It is designed to do SOMETHING to the iron while not smoking up the home kitchen too much. I think they hope that one will fry in the thing a few times before using it for something that requires seasoning. Frying sausage, bacon and so on will slowly build up the seasoning coating. If I had to stick with the Lodge procedure, I'd do it several times before cooking anything critical in the skillet.
BTW, the brand name of the skillet doesn't matter at all. The carbon coating insulates the food from the cast iron itself. I have some Lodge pieces (seconds, bought from the outlet store in S. Pittsburgh) which are fine. I also have several cheap ChiCom made skillets that work just as well, only they cost $5-10, depending on the size.
--- John De Armond See my website for my current email address Cleveland, Occupied TN
