How To Clean and Season Old, Rusty Cast Iron Skillets

[Catbird]

As it happens, I just went through this about a week ago. I have a nicely seasoned 10" fry pan which shares a lid with a nicely seasoned dutch oven, both acquired at garage sales. My girlfriend asked me to keep an eye out for one for her.

Across the street, there is a house which has been vacant for a year or so. When the previous tenants left, someone moved their remaining stuff out to the lawn to rot. I noticed a 12" pan in the weeds and decided to rescue it:

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It's rough, but not pitted. First, I took off the layer of rust with a cup brush followed by a wire wheel to get the corners and crevices. Be sure to wear leather gloves, eye protection, and a dust mask or respirator:

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continued...

[Catbird]

Part 2

Looks good!

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Next, I rubbed the pan with Crisco and heated it on the stove. I rubbed it with paper towels until no more black oxide came off:

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Now outside to the propane grill. Oil liberally and bake on high heat:

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I found that rubbing the hot pan with a grease soaked paper towel gave a nice even coat:

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continued...

[Catbird]

Part 3

When the pan cooled, I realized that the bottom needed a coat of oil as well.

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So I went back to the grill and repeated the process.

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Done!

The brown color is from the oil, not rust. The pan is now good enough to season with use. I used Crisco because I had it. I would have used bacon grease or some other animal fat if it had been easily available.

For cleaning, I use warm water and a couple drops of detergent, scrubbed lightly with a worn Scotchbrite pad, dried and oiled. Cast iron pans are ideal for frying and baking, not so good for things with high acidic content, (such as tomato sauces).

[308Mike]

I would have used bacon grease or some other animal fat if it had been easily available.

You mean to tell me you had NO bacon readily available for frying up???? Just kidding!!

I understand what you mean. I know that not EVERYONE had access to bacon during those times, but since we owned and worked 1/2 of a farm, I thought most folks had it better than we did. Little did I know that we were the LUCKY ONES to be able to do so in the latter 1960's, when other's weren't doing so well and I would have LOVED to have been able to share my meager farm scraps with others who were less fortunate.

Our farm partner rescued a hurt Redtail Hawk one day. He ("Bob") built an enclosure for the bird and fed it regularly, and one day while we were visiting, he asked us to watch while he fed the hawk. The rodent (I think it was a rat, but it could have been a gerbil) got only a few feet into the enclosure before the hawk pounced on it, killing it with its talons, then started eating it. We (my brother and I, along with my dad) thought it was a GREAT learning experience while my mom recoiled from the natural act. As the hawk grew stronger, it started waiting at the entrance where we shoved it's rodents through. Eventually, its wing mended and "Bob" released it back into the wild, however us kids had memories which could NEVER be replaced by school presentations.

My parents actually pulled us out of school when we butchered our hogs, also when we butchered our steers (Black Angus - one which my brother and I named "Curly" and the other named "Slick", which we slaughtered and my brother and I used to tell our parents that "Slick tasted really good tonight", and usually made our mom upset and tried to hit us while our dad just laughed).

My mom kept an old grease/fat trap near the sink into which we poured our bacon grease when we got done cooking our bacon in the morning. It was a simple trap which filtered out the larger particles, leaving them on the top and all the grease/fat went into the lower portion of the container. On the front of the container, it actually said something like 'Bacon Grease' or something similar.

THAT'S what we used to use to grease our frying pans (and we also used to fry our chicken in, after we scooped it out of the grease container). We didn't use PAM or anything else, we simply opened the top of the bacon-grease container and swiped a paper-towel through all that bacon grease/fat and smeared it across our frying pans. THAT'S how we did business back in the 1960's and early 1970's - wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, back when you could get a Milk-Man to DELIVER TO YOUR HOME, and he delivered milk, eggs, cream, and other dairy products, and once in a while we got Buttermilk (which I loved and my brothers HATED), but ALL of used LOVED the FRESH Chocolate Milk (which came DIRECTLY from the CHOCOLATE COW)!!!! And at Christmas time we could order FRESH Eggnog - WHAT A TREAT!!!

I STILL remember those days and miss them, but even if someone was to bring them back, it wouldn't be the same without making me view everything through the same lenses I viewed then!!!!

Time stands still for NO ONE!!!

[Rich Jordan]

A few years ago I started microwaving bacon wrapped in paper towels; turned out great but there was little grease to recover. Recent apparent changes to paper towels have killed that procedure (don't know why but every brand I try sticks to the bacon now; never used to). So now we cook it on racks in baking sheets. Cooking 24 oz thick bacon from Aldi usually gets us about 2/3 cup of clean wonderful bacon fat.

Other than keeping it in the fridge (and using flax seed oil for initial pan seasoning), we do as you described; bacon fat is our default cooking fat. And everything tastes better for it.

[Windy Wilson]

Sorry to get all zombie-thread here, but does the salt in the bacon fat tend to make the cast iron rust easier after it's seasoned?

I have a steel flat-bottomed wok which was sort of neglected after my mom died, so it was rusty. I wrote to the naval jelly people who said that if I rinsed it thoroughly, naval jelly was safe to use to remove rust from cast iron.

Oh, and naval jelly is no better on crackers than Swiss Waffenfett or Automatenfett.

[Bullspit]

I have successfully used a lye/water solution to remove that crusty black mess that accumulates on neglected cast iron. It is safer for the item than putting it in the fire which is what my Grandmother used to do.

After soaking rinse and repeat until no more crust remains. The cast iron will be stripped bare and must be seasoned.

[Yogimus]

I just sex the carbon off

[Weetabix]

Everything I've ever read about seasoning cast iron recommended frying lots of salty stuff (bacon!) in it for a while before you cook less fatty, salty things. Don't know why, but I'd assume that means it's helpful rather than hurtful.

[Windy Wilson]

Everything I've ever read about seasoning cast iron recommended frying lots of salty stuff (bacon!) in it for a while before you cook less fatty, salty things. Don't know why, but I'd assume that means it's helpful rather than hurtful.

Curious! And yet the salt from primers corrodes the metal.
There is a certain perversity to chemistry.

And I recommend that Catbird NEVER mention to his girlfriend where that skillet came from, as it will take on a more immediate and less abstract instrument of cranial modification. She may be the neatest, cleanest person around, but for examples like this, suddenly soap, water, detergent, high heat, any of the things that are known to kill germs, are not considered effective.