Hello all,

As I'm getting older, I rely more and more on the cast iron in my kitchen - a comal, an old Lodge skillet, a mystery dutch oven and a medium size skillet that is either vintage or was very expensive because the finish is baby bottom smooth. Oh yeah, and some decorative Pioneer woman pan that I use for cornbread because it makes my wife happy.  I like the carbon steel and what not, but the cast iron is my go to. The big Lodge skillet and the Dutch oven are old scarred warriors , sentimental favorites from the beginning of Marriage Number 1 (I'm on 3 if you're wondering, hooray for military tradition) and I've finally gotten tired of fixing the seasoning and to strip and start over from scratch. Too much flaking, too often, and it's got fissures around the corners.

Yeah, you can kind of scrub or sand em down and reapply til it's more or less even again, but it just ain't the useful, smooth surface it used to be. It's not just overseasoning, although it might have been some of that too at some point - it's the damage caused by a few thousand meals and the abuses of various family members through three marriages. Yeah, I know everyone fights about everything on cast iron, but at any rate I already started, so here's the problem - I've gone my usual route for stripping it - spray with oven cleaner, throw in a plastic bag on the porch, knotted off, let it sit for a couple of days, rinse, scrub, repeat until bare.

And that works usually. But I guess in this case the detritus of 30 years of seasoning ain't coming off easy. I've been repeating this for a week and it gets a bit more every time, but I'm at the point where I have to put a fourth application on or go another route. Never had a piece quite this tough., but usually I'm just cleaning up something found at a thrift store or antique barn on the cheap. I'm thinking about putting it in a lye soak, and the words "carburetor cleaner" have crossed my mind a few times. Or maybe the electrolysis route. Ain't got a self-cleaning oven and wouldn't want to risk the warp if I did. Thoughts?

Spray oven cleaners are okay IF the oven is only mussed up. If you'd used the good old standby paste, Easy Off in a can oven cleaner we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I just did a websearch and if you want the old effective paste easyoff you'd have to order it from another country. Evidently it's not available here. That or I just couldn't find it on Ebay with a couple searches. You might have better luck. The terms I used were "Easy Off Paste, oven cleaner".

I don't know about the new stuff but the old stuff WAS lye paste and you didn't want to stay in the same room.

Frosty The Lucky.

Every time I cook a blackened ribeye steak, I strip my cast iron skillet.  Turn on my range hood, slather that well-marbled ribeye with melted butter, liberally season with Paul Prudhomme's Blackened Steak Magic, put the skillet on my biggest gas burner, let it heat to white hot, slap it down, turn in about 3 minutes...but I digress.

Try putting the pan in a lye bath while it is still warm and leave overnight to a few days is my go to.

Electrolysis is pretty easy, but I haven't ever used it on cast iron pans. Electrolytically might be the way to go thou.

The really smooth one wasn't  necessary a really expensive pan.

Most of the older pans had  smooth finishes. It was more labor but a standard. I believe it was Lodge that started the trend of preseasoned pans with a bumpy texture and rape seed oil. 

I love the old pan (ones that aren't warped of course). 

Not only do they have a better finish, but they weigh less than the same size pan today.

On general they weigh a pound less than the newer ones.

The easiest way to date them is to see what country they are made in.

If for instance, the pan has a size on it in English like a 6 or something and doesn't say made in the U.S.A. then I can tell you it was made prior to 1960.

Or if it has a gate mark it is much much older.

The U.S. passed laws in the 1960's about country of origin being marked on items.

3 hours ago, Frosty said:

Spray oven cleaners are okay IF the oven is only mussed up. 

Regular easy off spray in the yellow can. Funny part is I rarely use it on the oven anymore. Unless it's absolutely filthy I can get it clean by heating water with a little vinegar for an hr or so, or preferably lemon juice in water. It doesn't always get everything one go, but everything comes off super easy.

I agree about it not being expensive - I provided vintage or expensive. The new ones with a good finish tend to be high dollar, the old ones were just made that way. No clue what this is. No marking unless it's under the seasoning, but it cooks and cleans like a dream. Just not as big as the workhorse. I'm leaning lye bath, I just don't want to dispose of lye bath on septic and no great place to dump and dilute.

I forgot I've got a bunch of enameled cast iron too, but that stuff is low maintenance, just don't drop it on your toes.

Neutralize the lye with a mild acid like vinegar in water, lemon juice, etc. HOWEVER before you do look it up online you do NOT want to make a toxic gas!!!

I don't know for sure so I urge you to be careful, look up what's safe to use and dilute it a LOT first.

Frosty The Lucky.

Knotted wire cup brush. It leaves a smooth finish, and anything that survives that doesn't need to come off.

Tried the knotted cup brush - worked great on the Lodge pan - reseasoning on Coat 2 now (alternating flaxseed and grapeseed), and eventually it got the inside of the dutch oven, with a lot more work. The outside of the dutch oven laughed at it though, especially the lid. I think the seasoning will go eventually, but it was taking a lot more work and I ran out of daylight, plus I've caught cold from my wife.

Going to hit it up again tomorrow, and it's still giving me fits, I'll give it another go with the oven cleaner. I'm not sure why it's so much harder to strip, except the finish of the iron is a lot smoother on the dutch oven. No clue what brand it is, bought it 30 years and two marriages ago in Hot Springs, AR, and cast iron brands are worse than post vises to identify if they're not stamped with it.

Also, I found your Easy Off lye paste on eBay, Frosty - it's in Spanish, "Limpiador de Hornos". Looks like individuals are bringing it across the border into south Texas and reselling it. I may look in the carnicerias and Mexican groceries near here. I go periodically for ingredients and I also like some of the Mexican household brands that you can't get at Wallie-world better for some stuff. The Caldo soup bouillon is better for one, and there's a laundry detergent that I can't think of the name of that smells a thousand times better than Tide.

You might find the easy off paste in Canada, I stopped looking at pages when found the Mexican site.

Is the Caldo soup bullion as salty as the stuff we get here? I tried a jar of "Better Than Bullion" once and it was like greasy salt paste. I couldn't put enough in a pot to taste the beef without making it pucker your lips salty.

In the past I really misused my cast iron, didn't know how to season it properly and when the oil started going rancid I'd just put it over a camp fire and burn it off or boil water and dish soap in it. Acetone does a pretty good job of de-seasoning cast iron but anymore I don't trust what you buy to be JUST acetone. I'm pretty leery of additives in my solvents, the last acetone I bought wouldn't clean or thin polyester resin and I haven't seen a can of toluene in years. Lots of stuff with similar names but. . . ?

Deb hates cast iron, it's too hard on her wrists to lift it so my old cast iron is in the basement. <sigh>

If we could find some of Thomas Powers posts about caring for and seasoning cast iron we all might have better luck. I do know for a fact that you do NOT put a scoop of embers on the lid of your dutch oven to bake biscuits. 

Dang, now I want to set up and do some down hearth cooking. Oh well, first snow yesterday and I'm getting too old and beat up to kneel by a fire in the snow.

Frosty The Lucky.

So true about all the similar products and hidden harm.

I often wonder if the original companies patents ran out.

Corian (3M) had a patent for 30 years and when that expired dozens of companies started making the product.

Or on the other hand did those companies take the money for years selling you an unsafe product and dodging legal responsibility by selling or renaming their product like Monsanto who sold to Bayer because of the law suits.

I have been doing a lot of casting lately and I needed some new parting powder for my molds. Simple right, The next time I'm at a store I will grab some baby powder or so I thought.

I use talc or talcum powder.

None of the baby powders use talc anymore. There was a class action law suit or something I remember hearing about a few years back alleging the company knowingly used talc in baby powder even thou they knew talcum forms with lead oxides or asbestos in nature and can cause cancer.

Now every single brand uses cornstarch instead of talc because of the litigation cost associated with using real talcum.

 

 

Since talking about talc and acetone, has anyone else noticed that turpentine has become quite hard to find?  

1 hour ago, BillyBones said:

anyone else noticed that turpentine has become quite hard to find?  

Yes, yes I have. ACE or ACE affiliated stores still usually have it. Sometimes Home Depot and Wallie World have it, but it's a lot harder to find, and usually only one brand, the Klean Strip stuff. Some of the marine places near me have different brands, but I ain't paying boat people prices.

The talc story is a lot worse than that - not sure I can tell it here; read about the lawsuits that followed. I've been using line chalk purchased in the big jugs for parting powder - I like the blue - you can see everything.

Caldo is salty, but not nearly as salty as Better than Bouillon. I like salty, but that one was too much. I use the Caldo for a quick chicken "stock" a lot, and it's used straight as a salty ingredient in some recipes - salsas in particular. It's not bad in meatloaf topping in place of onion salt and garlic salt.

I used to make about 5 gallons of stock at a time and freeze it into pint or quart blocks but I never seem to have the time anymore. The pan is at Coat 5. From scratch I like to go about 8-10. Lodge claims they use one factory coat of vegetable oil that's "equivalent to 6 coats in your home oven". I'm not sure I buy it, and I haven't had a fresh Lodge in years that didn't stick without at least a couple of coats more seasoning.

At Quad-State, I picked up a little bottle of “Cast Iron Oil” from Blacksmiths Supply. Made by a company called Walrus Oil (which also makes finishes for forged work), it’s basically low-viscosity, high-smoke point safflower oil and some vitamin E (a fat-soluble vitamin). Seems to be working well so far. 

I know they had a lot of really bad problems with baby powder and what it did to people. So did the company, what 50, 60 years ago and choose not to do anything about it? Money?

Since you mentioned Lodge says "it uses one factory coat of vegetable oil"

What is vegetable oil?

Olive oil? Grape seed? Prune kernel oil? Walnut oil? Pumkin seed oil? 

How many dozens of oil could be classified as "Vegetable Oil"

Are they being intentional vaque to protect their proprietary blend of "vegetable oils coating"

Or is it that they are using a cheap or un healty oil that no one would want to eat off of if people knew. All in the name of profits.

You can't  make an informed choice if everything is a trade secret or marketing campaign.

Yeah, talc HO BOY is that a story. Like so many things you'd never suspect the only difference between talc, chalk, jade and many others from asbestos is the molecular water content. The real danger from asbestos relating to mesotheleoma is molecule shape. Asbestos crystalizes in long thin sharp particles just like the cloth. Fibers break off and float around in your breathable, just like ceramic blanket fibers, when you breath them the spear your alveoli and stay there. Asbestos is not soluble by your body and every breath moves them in the wound so the scar tissue grows and increases the chances of developing into cancer. Mesotheloma being it's "special" name.

Suddenly asbestos was the plague of the moment and anything like it was too by association and there goes talc and similar. Once the politicos had something to stump on AND manufacturers had something new to market talc became sudden death. 

It was too easy to ignore the basic crystallography and chemistry of the stuff. Not all asbestos is hard so broken fibers don't poke holes, not all is insoluble and some just isn't a carcinogen. Same for talc, what you get and the hazard depends on the formation though the refining and processing can in many cases remove the carcinogenic types. Including some types of "chalk".

Chalk is predominantly calcium carbonate laid down on ancient ocean floors when little sea critters died and the "meat" rotted away. Some had asbestos compounds in their skeletons and so some chalks do to.

Read the label, some snap line or art chalk makes good parting compound, not as good as talc but. . . 

Corn starch is a non starter, might as well use flour.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

That is interesting about molecular water content.

I don't know how many videos I've seen, predominantly Asia/Korea of jewelers using untreated ceramic fiber blanket as a crucible.

They jut set down a piece of ceramic blanket kind of push down a little indention and set their scraps there to melt and  form a button.

They are definitely going to have lung problems down the road.

The short version is Johnson and Johnson knew about the cancer and asbestos contamination since the 50s. They were investigated by the FDA in the 70s and cut a deal to improve their self-monitoring of the issue if the FDA would keep quiet, then kept on doing the same thing for another 50 years. When they started losing lawsuits over it a few years ago, they split off the part of the company making baby powder into a separate company, Kenvue, which immediately declared bankruptcy and argued that the main company wasn't liable anymore. They lost in most of their lawsuits, and keep losing, and keep trying to do it anyways.

Yeah, it's such a huge multi national corporation it tends to start believing they aren't liable for doing bad. Power corrupts, especially when it was founded when it wasn't fashionable for the monied class to care about the peons let alone let profit slip!

Just being exposed, busted and convicted isn't any reason to stop. It seems to be a human thing.

Frosty The Lucky.

Got the rest off the last piece, the big dutch oven - took another hard lye soak and two go rounds with the knotted wire brush. Three coats in and more after I get back from drill Sunday. I could cheerfully murder the person who designed the "self-basting" nubbies on the bottom of the lid. There's 69 of them and they plus the surrounding area each have to be wiped down individually, twice per coat (once applying, and once removing excess).

MAN I like my solution a LOT better, heat it to about 700-800f, let it cool slowly, hand brush and season. I've heard of guys having them bead blasted but I suspect they were making them pretty for estate sale / auctions. 

Why don't you just take a disk grinder and clean the self basting nubbles off? I'm betting they're a device to avoid patent infringement while copying someone else's Dutch Oven. I don't know about the majority of the Dutch Oven using world but I lift the lid and baste with a spoon if necessary, WHEN I check what's roasting.

Alton Brown had an excellent "Good Eats" episode about using a Dutch Oven. Has one about seasoning cast iron too, I think he had a series of episodes about cast iron. Thomas Powers was very experienced seasoning and cooking in cast iron too. 

Might be worth a search, cross your fingers!

Frosty The Lucky.

On 11/8/2025 at 12:03 PM, JHCC said:

“Cast Iron Oil” from Blacksmiths Supply. Made by a company called Walrus Oil

Update: I'm having trouble with the oil beading up inside the pan before it polymerizes, but the resulting seasoning itself is quite satisfactory. I think I should try giving it a redistributive wipe halfway through the process.

I put very little oil on my rag so i can apply coats as thin as possible and then wipe  down with a clean rag. You have to do more layers, but I don't have any problems with big raised beads of oil. And of course turn the pan upside down in the oven when you are heating.

I think about grinding them off periodically. I'm not against the function, just a pain to season. A lot of them went the other route and did divots, which would be insanely easier, but Lodge will Lodge. If I ever do it, it will be when I decide to sand all my cast iron down to an old pan style finish. Since I seem to be stripping my cast iron on average about every 15 or 20 years....

That said, I do have a comal that I melted [art of a brush onto the other day. I've seasoned over it and it works; I doubt it's contaminating anything but it irritates me. Think I might try sanding it after stripping it with an electrolysis bucket once I find my battery charger.

I used to pop corn in mine using bacon grease, first I fried some bacon, fished it out and tossed in popcorn and let it pop while I ate the bacon. Then dump the popcorn and crank up the burner. It did a good job of coating it all evenly but Thomas convinced me I wasn't getting it hot enough for a proper season. Maybe someday I'll dig it out, clean and season it again. If I can convince Deb.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the popcorn oil distribution technique would coat every nook and nubble.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

I love the taste from bacon grease, but I haven't had great results seasoning with it more than once in awhile. Tends to be softer and gets sort of sticky and waxy if I use it on multiple layers, probably not enough polysaturated fats in it. My go to anymore is alternating flaxseed and grapeseed. Bacon grease popcorn sounds wonderful though. It's decadent too, but I'm kind of fond of bacon-flavored bourbon.