Seasoning & Restoring Cast Iron Cookware

A. Hi Wesley. It certainly doesn't sound safe to me. The zinc and/or manganese in your Parkerizing solution could theoretically leach into your food. Further, I don't think Parkerizing will be stable at stove-top temperatures.

Any time you use something for food service that was not intended for food service you run into the practical problem that no studies have been done, no epidemiologists are undertaking research on the subject, and it's just a big unknown you're imposing on your health. Don't do it.

Luck & Regards,

A. Michael Burrow's is the best of above recommendations. If you do not have a place to build a fire, use 00 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon] to clean the pan. This will take some time and elbow grease. You can use dish detergent, but avoid scouring powder and other chemical cleaners, as it can and will absorb into the metal, affecting taste.

After metal is bare grey, coat with a solid fat (Crisco or animal fat - not oil) and place in oven upside down at 250 degrees for about an hour. Place a cookie sheet below to catch melting fat. Cook fatty foods (bacon, etc)in it the first couple uses after cleaning. This coats and "seasons" the pan. Under normal use, it should be fairly non-stick. The pan will not be as slick as a Teflon coat, but has a Teflon- coated pan ever lasted 50 years?

A. I just cleaned all my cast iron a week ago. Put it in a self cleaning oven and set oven to clean for 3 hours. When oven is clean, so are your fry pans and pots. You will have to give them a good scrub with some hot soap and steel wool, then a good coat of vegetable oil and in the oven at about 250 for 1-2 hours. But worked really great and all my cast iron looks and cooks great. Pat

A. Hi Warren. I'm not familiar with that product and don't know exactly what's in it -- presumably waxes and black pigments --but I find it hard to believe that there would be any toxic ingredients in a consumer product if it's made for applying to griddles and grills. But if it's only intended for non-food surfaces (like grates, as opposed to grills), it might be a different story. Does the label contain any cautions? Ideally I think it should be sandblasted off, but I might just scrub it with detergent and hot water, and immediately oil or grease it up to prevent the rust from returning, then season it as above. But that's me, and some people are more chemophobic than I am.

A. I have been collecting old cast iron cookware for use in our Boy Scout Troop. This requires much cleaning. I have read some people are using 1 Tablespoon washing soda [on eBay or Amazon] to a gallon of water and using a car battery charger [on eBay or Amazon] , steel rebar anodes, and battery cables to electrochemically reduce the rust to iron. The frying pan must be the positively charged item and the rebar is the negatively charged electrode. After the pan is done, remove it, wash it in soapy water and scrub with a stainless steel scrubby if needed, dry well with towel, dry in an oven at 250 F for at least 30 minutes, coat with a very very light coating of oil inside and out, place upside down in the 250 F oven and wipe out any pooled oil after a half hour or so with a dry paper towel, heat further hour and let cool in oven. Repeat a few times at the 250 F. One site says to heat to 550 F and coat the pan with oil very carefully after a few 250 F cycles. I have not gotten to this step yet. I have used the Crisco, 350 F method Lodge publishes, and it works. But I got pooling and didn't know to wipe it out before it got tacky. I am now using Olive Oil on four pans for use by Soy allergy scouts.

Link to a few step by step Electrolysis articles www.wag-society.org/Electrolysis/electros.php

Here is a good blog site on cast iron: blackirondude.blogspot.com/2008/05/seasoning-cast-iron-cookware.html ⇩

[Ed. note: The above link has broken; thankfully, Archive.org's wonderful Wayback Machine saved a copy ]

A. Hi Vicki. I suspect they'll be just fine after sandblasting and seasoning as you describe.

Regards,

A. Vicki, after sandblasting your pans to remove the rust, or you can use a rotary wire brush in a drill press or hand drill. So after you get all of the rust off you will have to clean the CI to remove the dust. You also need to coat the surface quickly to exclude air/humidity. Wipe the CI pan with Avocado Oil till the grey dirt no longer comes off. Avocado Oil has a smoke point of 551 °F and works great for seasoning. I go through a two step heating process: wipe the pan with a very thin sheen of Avocado Oil. Place in your oven upside down. Heat to 350 °F for an hour or more. The raise the temp to 475 °F for another hour. The oil will no longer be sticky and you can do multiple coats.

Note regarding using Natural gas ovens. There is a lot of moisture in Natural gas. When I put a bare CI pan in a cold oven and heated, the entire pan flash rusted due to the moisture condensing on the pan as it was heating up. I now turn my oven on to about 250 °F and wipe the condensation off of the door and then boost the temp to 350 °F. I put the pans into preheated ovens.

A. Hi Lima. For a number of reasons we don't discuss specific brands ( huh? why?), only types and technologies. But there are some good reviews of black steel pans available:

Regards,

A. Hi Arun. We'll need to clearly define exactly what 'kalhai' means to you before we can make much progress. The favored definition on Google seems to be 'copper vessels wiped with tin coatings', and tin coating definitely doesn't involve poisonous gasses, although you probably could pick a toxic flux.

Other possibilities for cast iron include uncoated and ceramic coating. Good luck.

Regards,