With Food costing ever more it’s time to find more ways to save money. Here’s an example of what you can do if your ever have a cast iron pan that someone is targeting to get rid of. Cast Iron (and carbon steel) are great in that they use seasoned oil as their non-slip surface for cooking. This saves you from using teflon that can have negative health outcomes. They also are only cleaned with water and elbow grease, which is very environmentally friendly. (Never use dish soap on a pan, that breaks down the non-slip surface.) Below is a gif that shows my restoration of a pan that was given to me. I used a drill attachment steel brush to remove the rust. Wipe down the pan after to remove the iron dust. Then seasoned the pan with 10 layers of ‘seasoning’. To season the pan I took about 2 tbsp of vegetable oil and used a cloth to wipe on a thin layer. (All over the pan). By thin I mean let it barely glisten. You can’t over wipe the pan with the cloth, only under wipe. Place the pan on a cookie sheet with parchment paper. (Otherwise you might accidentally season your cookie sheet.) the pan in the oven for 1 hour at 400f and let it cool on its own in the oven. Yes that means I spent more than 10 hours on the project but I mainly just did this oven was already hot from cooking. If you are fixing a seasoning that isn’t working for you you likely could get away with a lot less. I was almost satisfied after 7 coats, but found that when I cooked eggs there was one sticky spot I missed. I’m now proud to say it’s completes the egg test. A general test to see if you seasoning it good. If you can’t cook an egg over easy, you need more coats of oil. This raises the question do you need to cook only low FODMAP in the seasoned pan. Although I”m not a scientist I would suggest that you do not need to be that careful. FODMAPS are not oil soluble and with reasonable cleaning you should not have to worry about it.
