It’s difficult to spend any amount of time reading about cooking online and not develop a curiosity for the cast iron skillet. I began learning cooking by looking up Western recipes (since I was trying to learn something new, and I was eating Chinese at home), and videos would often show food being transferred from stovetop to oven in a pitch-black cast iron pan.

I began learning to cook in earnest during my first year in college, and began with little more than a rice cooker and a non-stick pan. I can say without exaggeration that those two things were the most valuable objects I had to my name, after my laptop and my phone. My free time was spent looking at video recipes on Youtube (at one point, religiously going through all of Chef John’s work) and trying out whatever looked feasible to me.

I was mostly looking up Western recipes, seeing as I was trying to learn something new and I was already eating Chinese at home. As you can imagine, it’s difficult to spend any amount of time reading about Western cooking and not come across a cast iron skillet shown in use.

Chicken seared in a cast iron pan before transferring to the oven (in the very same pan!) to roast. Same deal with browning prime rib roasts and thick-cut pork chops. Serving fajitas on a sizzling skillet. And steaks – there’s probably some form of directed marketing that brought a lot of steak-related content to the young male me. And oh, how often would I hear the seemingly unending praise that steak enthusiasts have for the thermal properties of cast iron, and its unparalleled ability to give a good sear to a piece of meat.

For years, my curiosity had to satisfy itself vicariously through Youtube chefs. There was never time, and later neither the space to get a cast iron skillet of my own. That was, until a few years into my career and things have begun to settle, and I moved out to live with my SO.

Fraternitas Ferri

My girlfriend saw them first, on sale at the department store. My ears must have perked up when she mentioned it, and we were at the mall the very next day. Turning them over in my hand and feeling their hefty weight, I mumbled something about apple crumble to get my SO on board about buying them. We were soon on our way home with the newest additions to our kitchen, my mind filled with the savoury delights that I can now make with them, and all thoughts of dessert tossed aside.

There was no time to waste. I’ve passively absorbed a lot about cast iron throughout the years (thanks, r/castiron!). How they need to be seasoned, how they need to be maintained. Never wash them with lye. Don’t cook anything acidic like tomatoes in them. But now that I’m not just a voyeur into the world of cast iron but a bona fide card-carrying member, I can’t go on just passive hearsay.

Having read furiously on my phone on the way back, I went to work seasoning the pans the right the moment I got home.

I begin by giving the pan a scrub with soapy water, then wiping a thin layer of oil all over with a paper towel. I went with peanut oil, because it’s what I had on hand. Which is fine according to the internet, which says that any oil with unsaturated fatty acids will work.

The oven is kind of a hassle to set up, seeing as the only place it can operate is on the floor right in front of the door. But hey, now that I’m inside the house already I won’t need to open the door, right? It’s been preheating, as hot as it will go, since before I began scrubbing the pans. In the skillet goes, upside down, at about 220C or 430F for about an hour.

The whole house smells of burnt oil by the end of the hour, despite my best intentions and the best efforts of the ventilator hood. After letting the skillet cool down in the oven slowly, here are both of the new pans side by side. One of them just came out of the oven, while the other has been scrubbed but has yet to be oiled. Does the one on the left look shinier and smoother? Or is it just a placebo effect?

Let’s see that side by side. Which one was the pan I think I freshly seasoned? I’m not sure I can tell by the look of it. It’s the picture on the left. I’m not sure if its an issue with the focus or the lighting, but it seems the bottom of the pan is even more rough than the one that hasn’t been seasoned yet.

Being the first time I’ve done this, I can only hope I’ll get better at it with time, and I hope the same for the patina. Enough doubts for now, time to cook something like a real big boy chef!

Keep browsing by categories, or by tags: