Cast Iron Season Your Cast Iron, and Then Season It Again

Here's what I want you to do this weekend: find a cast iron skillet at a thrift store or your mother-in-law's cabinet, and start using it. Not eventually. Now. Because I'm tired of people telling me they have cast iron they're "scared to use," like it's a museum piece instead of the most forgiving pan in your kitchen.

Cast iron is not precious. It's the opposite of precious. It's a workhorse that gets better the more you actually cook in it.

The seasoning is just oil that's bonded to the metal through heat. That's it. You don't need special seasoning spray or weird rituals. You need to cook fatty foods in it. Bacon. Sausage. Chicken thighs with skin on. Cornbread made with butter. Every time you cook with fat, you're adding a microscopic layer to the seasoning. After a few months of actual use, your pan will have a naturally non-stick surface that rivals anything Teflon can do—and it'll last a hundred years instead of three.

Here's what happens if you skip actually cooking in it: you get a pan that feels sticky and weird. You convince yourself it's "not seasoned right." You put it away. This is the tragedy I see everywhere. People season their pans perfectly in the oven, then never use them because they're nervous, so the seasoning doesn't build. The pan just sits there, judging them.

Start with a 10 or 12-inch skillet—big enough to actually be useful, small enough to handle easily. Look for one that's smooth on the cooking surface (vintage Lodge or Griswold pans are ideal, though modern Lodge works fine too). Weight it in your hand. It should feel substantial but not absurd.

If it's rusty, scrub it with steel wool and soap—yes, soap is fine; that "never use soap" thing was about old lye soap that would strip seasoning, not modern dish soap. Dry it completely. Rub it with a tiny amount of oil (vegetable, canola, or avocado—nothing fancy). Wipe off almost all the oil; you want a thin sheen, not a slick coating. Bake it at 500°F for an hour, then let it cool in the oven.

Now cook in it. Fry an egg. Make a steak. Roast potatoes with rosemary. Each time, the seasoning gets better. After a month of regular use, you'll notice it cooking differently—things sliding around that used to stick. After six months, you'll have a pan that feels personal, that's adapted to your stove, your heat, your hand.

This is the part nobody talks about: seasoning isn't something you do once. It's something that happens when you actually use the thing.