YTread Logo
YTread Logo

Cast Iron Restoration, Seasoning, Cleaning & Cooking. Cast Iron skillets, griddles and pots.

May 01, 2020
Hi Luke, here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, and I have a bunch of

cast

iron

cookware that needs repair,

restoration

, and a little

seasoning

. We'll explain how to do it, welcome to the program and let me. I present to you

cast

iron

and this is my modern Lodge Dutch oven and it is dirty and full of old oil, soot and ash and needs to be cleaned very well but other than that it works pretty well so I am going to use this to demonstrate how to clean molten iron. This is another piece of modern Lodge cookware.
cast iron restoration seasoning cleaning cooking cast iron skillets griddles and pots
It's a griddle and it's been used and abused until it ran out of

seasoning

and it's covered in rust and has a lot of damage, but it doesn't have any pits or anything too serious. I'm going to use this to demonstrate how to remove some loose rust and REE seasoning. This pan was made by Lodge a few years ago and has been used and abused. It's fine inside, I just need a little reasoning, but there's something quite heavy behind it. rust damage, so I'm going to remove the rust and then reseason everything. This is an unmarked Wagner frying pan, it is a ten and a half inch frying pan from probably around the 1950's and it is in poor condition, completely covered and rusted. with absolutely no seasoning I can tell it's a Wagner by the font and the lettering it says ten and a half inch skillet and then it has the size number or on it and it also has the size on the top of the handle.
cast iron restoration seasoning cleaning cooking cast iron skillets griddles and pots

More Interesting Facts About,

cast iron restoration seasoning cleaning cooking cast iron skillets griddles and pots...

I can tell it's post 1950's because it has a smooth bottom, but it doesn't say made in the USA. This is a very old pot, it has a door mark which is a mark left over from the manufacturing process that probably made it. placed in Sometime it is from the 1800's and is in very poor condition it has a lot of heavy rust pitting and on the inside it has an enamel coating that is badly damaged and has holes about 1/8 inch deep all over the part bottom so this thing is in serious trouble I really don't know if I can save this one but we'll try guys it's time to get the rust off this cast iron and to do that I'm going to use three different methods: the first method.
cast iron restoration seasoning cleaning cooking cast iron skillets griddles and pots
I'm going to use electrolysis, the second method is a vinegar bath, and thirdly, I'm going to use coke. This is my first time using the coke method, so I'll have a chance to compare it to vinegar. method to make electrolysis baths all you need is a plastic container filled with water and then you will want to add a good amount of baking soda in this amount of water. I'm putting in about an eighth of a cup of baking soda mixture. Give it a good look and then get yourself a piece of metal that you don't mind ruining.
cast iron restoration seasoning cleaning cooking cast iron skillets griddles and pots
In this example, I have a piece of old rebar, then I'm going to take my old pot and sink it here and I have it hanging suspended in the water I don't want it resting on the bottom and I have it tied with a piece of metal hanger in this For example, now what I'm going to do is hook it. Put a battery charger on this and I'm going to put the positive on the sacrificial anode that you want to ruin and I'm going to put the negative on the container that I want the rust to come off of the more amps you put through this.
The more aggressively it works, the more you will be able to see that things are starting to work when you will see bubbles and bubbling. The closer you place the sacrificial anode to the base metal, the stronger the reaction will be and you can determine which part you want to focus on. Depending on where you place the anode, put the anode here. These pieces will clean faster now for this pan. I'm going to use vinegar to remove the rust. I'm just going to put it on this plastic pin here and I got a gallon of distilled white vinegar that's five percent acidity, so it was three dollars at the grocery store and we're just going to pour it in, let it soak for about an hour, then rub it in. and we will soak it. again, we rub it and soak it until it is clean.
Next, we will clean these two pieces of cast iron with original Coca-Cola. I've never done this before, so I'll do it like vinegar and see. How it turns out from these three methods, without a doubt, my favorite for this type of work is the vinegar bath. Electrolysis works but it is very disturbing. You have all these things that you need to configure. You know this charger and you need to constantly move the anode so that it reaches all the cells evenly. surfaces vinegar you just pour it into a bucket of vinegar and it seems to work well coke works but not as well as vinegar and it is more expensive there are many products and chemicals on the market will remove rust very well and even better than vinegar, however, I don't know if I want to put those chemicals in my kitchen utensils and let them soak for hours at a time, vinegar, coke.
Glue, electrolysis, all it does is loosen the rust, it doesn't actually remove it, you still have to use a little bit of effort to do that, you can use a scouring pad or a wire brush, a drill, an angle grinder, it whatever helps you. Use it. I have this little wire adapter on the end of a drill. I'll use it to try to remove the rest of this rust and if I can't do that, I'll put it back in vinegar and soak it. Well, you can see the difference that's already making when it comes to cast iron.
Well, the cast iron pans have been sitting in the vinegar for another hour and we'll see if the most stubborn stains have loosened. let's rinse it with a little bit of vinegar and make sure we have everything that's a ten and a half inch pan that looks great just a few places to touch up and it'll be done so rinse it with vinegar and as you can see it's all nice and shiny, so we're ready to season this. You can see here some of the black s

pots

where the electrolysis has already started to work. The rust is really coming off right there.
Now restoring this pot is going to be a special kind of challenge, it has this broken enamel coating on the inside and I can't fix it, there's really nothing I can do about it, so the best I can do is try to remove the enamel coating. Probably the best way to get rid of the enamel coating would be to use glass beads in a sandblasting machine. I don't have that equipment, so I'm going to use this remover here on a power drill and hopefully I can remove the polish. This does not work. I'm going to upgrade to an angle grinder. and see how it works.
I'm going to do this forever at this speed. I'm going to try the angle grinder and see how well it handles, guys. I did something stupid. Hey, I was grinding and grinding and grinding on this. polish and it takes an hour and you can see how little progress I've made so I thought maybe I could speed this up if I tap it gently with a ball peen hammer. I can remove the polish and break it. and that would speed up the process and I was being extremely gentle and look at this, right there a hole opened right in the wheel and it broke all over the place.
This pot is from the 19th century and I just broke it, learn from my mistakes first. Don't try to buy old

pots

with damaged enamel coatings, they are a pain in the butt, second, don't try to remove the enamel with a hammer, this is the one that was soaked in the coke, let's remove the rust. There is some serious rust here. This one was very easy, it just took a soak in Coca-Cola and five minutes or so with the English minor and the brush to finish everything completely. It was not that bad. Well, this iron is pretty. okay so I really hope to do everything pretty quickly just with the electric drill.
Well, it looks pretty good. I removed the rust from the iron very easily and now one thing I'm going to do is smooth the surface a little. Now this is a modern Lodge cast iron griddle. Lodge deliberately lightly textures their surfaces so they can season them as best they can and season them quickly and cheaply at the factory, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this little thing here and I'm going to go hit the surface and remove a little bit of that texture and that will smooth it out nicely, this is a lot smoother and there are still some pits here and grooves. so there are places for the oil to bake in, but it will take less layers of seasoning for this to become really great nonstick once all the rust is removed, exposed iron is really susceptible to rust and corrosion, and this It can happen in a matter of minutes. of hours, so the ideal is to season the cast iron immediately after removing the rust, which is not realistic for me.
Today I ran out of time and it will be a couple of days before I get back to this project, so I'll leave this whole mold behind. iron dipped in this vinegar and I will pick it up again in a couple of days and it will have no corrosion. Look, just a couple of days ago it was solid rust, now it's bare cast iron, now we have to clean it. the wheel and remove all that dirt and metal shavings from the cast iron. Now we are going to do this using soap and water. I know some of you are thinking, oh no, they never use soap and water to clean cast iron.
Not true, you don't use soap and water to clean seasoned cast iron, so at this point we want to get it as clean as possible. Soap is most appropriate once it is seasoned. Don't use soap and you want to get the best water possible. as hot as possible here if you want to know if you did a good job, take a white paper towel, hang it up, the towel comes back looking relatively clean, you did a good job and the towel comes back black, you know you still have to do some scrubbing. Once you have it nice and clean, dry the cast iron with a towel and place it in the oven.
We will put it in the oven long enough to make sure it is completely dry. I must admit it's an impressive transformation, that thing looks good if you have a piece of cast iron that is slightly rusty, you can get rid of the rust simply with soapy water and a little elbow grease, all power drills and angle grinders, and vinegar It's not necessary for things that got a little messed up. Fairly new the rust was removed so I have clean cast iron. I have it scrubbed, washed until it is dry and a little warm. Now it's time to apply the oil to start seasoning it.
Now I'm going to use organic linseed oil. Without preservatives, these are just some of the best things you can use to season cast iron, but you can also use shortening that you've melted. You can use canola oil. Some people use coconut oil. There are many different things you can use. can be used to season one of the most popular ways to season cast iron is to take lard and rub it on a hot piece of cast iron in which it melts and after you have covered every square inch with lard you take a clean one. Towel and wipe off any excess, place the cast iron in a 400-degree oven for about an hour and then repeat the process two to four times to form a layer of seasoning.
This will make the cast iron darker than linseed oil, but I prefer linseed oil because it is stronger, so let me show you how to season it with linseed oil. Coat the warm cast iron with linseed oil just as you would with shortening and wipe off the excess with a clean towel. Now we will turn it upside down. So that the oil can drain, we're going to bake it in there for an hour at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of what type of oil you're using to season the castor and make sure you don't put too much on it afterwards. apply the oil, wipe off the excess with a clean dry towel, if you flirt with the cast iron oil in the oven, it gives off a good amount of smoke, especially you need to do three things at once, so blow on the fan and blow out the smoke and I have the hood fan on full speed, it was still smoking a little in here but after about 15 minutes it cleared up pretty well so heads up don't do this when your wife is home so you can notice the seasoning seasoning in this old frying pan.
It is a little stained, but today's large frying pan is not, that is because of how these pans are designed. Modern pans are a bit bumpy, so they can be pre-seasoned very quickly at the factory. It takes a lot less time and energy to pre-season a slightly uneven surface, the old pans are smooth, it's time for coat number two, but again we're doing it at 400 degrees for an hour, so here we go, we have two coats, It looks a little bit darker, so there's the pan that's just the second layer. and it should be very soft to the touch, it shouldn't be sticky at all if your pan is sticky that means you haven't cooked it long enough or you've added too much oil or both.
Here is the Lodge pan you can see. It's coming out really good, you can see what the griddle looks like after three coats of seasoning, well, it's hard, it's not sticky at all, it doesn't have a greasy feel, so you can see what the pan looks like after three coats. good, but it's still more brown than black, so you can see the modern large skillet, it looks very dark, catches seasoning better than older

skillets

, smoother, but bumpier, not as smooth, so here I am on my last coat of seasoning and the pots and pans are not quite black yet so I'm going to set them out for several hours until they turn black and this is just a way to finish the seasoning and make sure that thatthick layer of seasoning is cooked through.
During the process, yeah, look at that. I didn't add any more oil, but just a little more time in the oven and it turned perfectly shiny black, that's beautiful. Okay, let's troubleshoot a little bit here. I'm going to demonstrate two common mistakes and then show you how to fix them. The first is to do too many layers. Two to four coats is fine. Six to seven layers is not necessarily better, adding more oil on each layer is not better, so here I am, I'm just pouring in as much oil as I can and I'll cook it for a total of six layers on all layers. cast iron here and I'll show you what it does and how to identify it and how to fix it if the layers of seasoning come out uneven and bumpy, this is a sign that you're using too much oil and not

cleaning

Remove the excess when you turn it over, the drops of oil are hardening, you will see them especially along the edge of the pan and they will break and expose the cast iron and cause weakness in your seasoning if you add too many layers of seasoning it will start to have this bumpy surface that is so Non-stick as it should be.
You can remove these lumps and blisters with sand. Removing seasoning lumps doesn't take much effort, so you can sand by hand very easily. or use a random orbital sander, use 800 to 1000 grit sandpaper and just make a few passes until it's smooth to the touch, okay just rinse it, scrub it off without using soap, now the fun part guys I'll show you how to do it . cook with cast iron, okay, we're going to put this on medium heat for about five minutes, let the pan absorb all that ki. That's the beauty of cast iron is that it absorbs a lot of heat and distributes it very evenly. no one is a fan of catherine, you are constantly moving the food with cast iron, don't do that, stick the meat on and let it sit there until the surface caramelizes, then it will come loose and come off, you can move it, yes, caramelized, it just comes loose once you brown. outside the fillets lower the heat to low and then we'll cook it over low heat.
I'm going to put some of this Montreal Steak Seasoning in there. I like my steaks to be medium rare, but if you like to cook yours a little. a little more in depth, one of the nice things about cast iron is that you can take it and put it right in the oven and that helps cook the steaks well, and even after you've caramelized the outside and seared in those juices, beautiful steaks, beautiful, now I'm going to cook the vegetables with a little olive oil, just a splash and I'm going to roll these asparagus so that the meat juice and olive oil mix.
If you want all the asparagus to be coated, sprinkle them with a little garlic salt. Make sure you don't overcook the asparagus, they should bend but still be able to break if they are soft. You have gone too far. All I'm going to do is just put some black pepper on them and sprinkle some salt on them. see, you can see you have a little bit of black in the pepper, you're ready, you don't want to overdo it, I already have my dirty cast iron skillet from lunch here and all I'm going to do is wash it. warm water and scrub it with a scrub brush, don't think too much about it and don't use soap.
The trickiest part about

cleaning

a cast iron skillet is that it's hard to see if it has dirt or debris stuck on it because it's black, you know. iron, let's use your fingers very quickly, make sure you don't feel anything sticking, that's it, and dry it very well with the towel. It's okay, they are nice and clean. They dried, it didn't take long. I don't want to use metal tools like spatulas, tongs, and forks too aggressively. When they use cast iron, they can scrape off the seasoning and that's what you see here. These scratch marks from a pair of metal pliers.
It's time to clean this pot. You can see. here you have tons of grease and soot and all kinds of nasty stuff and even this is old oil. I think I was making some Campfire Donuts and didn't clean this up. Heating the cast iron can make cleaning it a little bit easier, you know, I still want to be able to handle it, but I want it to be pretty hot to the touch. Water is good for getting your suit and burnt food off, but if you're trying to remove grease frequently, dry paper towel does the trick. better than the scrub brush and water here we go it's all clean that's how you restore the season cook and clean cast iron so it's not the only way to do it but that's how I do it and I hope it helps you and get started. learn something new thanks for watching guys we hope you enjoyed this video if you want to see more great videos from the outdoor guys youtube channel don't forget; wait, thanks for watching, we hope you enjoyed this video if so.
I would like to see more great videos from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel. Don't forget to click subscribe. We post new videos every week and don't forget to hit the bell button so you'll be notified when we post another great video.

If you have any copyright issue, please Contact