A community for cast iron cookware. Recipes, care, restoration, identification, etc.
Rules: Be helpful when you can, be respectful always, and keep cooking bacon.
More rules may come as the community grows, but for now, I'll remove spam or anything obviously mean-spirited, and leave it at that.
Related Communities: !forgediron@lemmy.world !sourdough@lemmy.world !cooking@lemmy.world
I was given this pan by a buddy downsizing. It hasn't been used in 5ish years and to me looks a touch rusted. Am I completely off base to just buff it out using barkeepers friend and then re-seasoning in the oven?
That's nothing. Give it a good washing, put it on the burner to heat it up and dry it, and then apply some oil and heat it up again. It'll look just like new. No need for barkeepers friend, even...
Eh a little surface rust never hurt nobody. Barkeepers friend is probably overkill in this case. I'd just dump in like 50g of kosher salt and maybe 20-30ml of a neutral oil and scrub it around real well before rinsing out the salt, drying the pan over heat and beginning the seasoning process.
Thanks! I'll give it a try and see how it goes.
this is a lodge pan, I have one of these. they rust pretty easily as they aren't a super smooth cook surface. realistically you'd be perfectly fine just to clean with some salt and cook with it, reseasoning would be nice but optional. however, you can improve the pan a lot by actually sanding it down until it's smoother and reseason completely. this will VERY slowly happen naturally over time as well.
some people will say sanding cast iron is heresay, but lodge pans are bottom of the barrel as far as cast iron goes. doesn't mean they aren't good out of the box and cant be great with proper care, but they can definitely be improved with a bit of elbow grease.
there's tons of guides online for it as well.
Meh... no need to sand. Just use it and over time it self-levels with the seasoning. I have perfectly flat bottom pans and I have lodge pans. It's never mattered - both work great.
Thanks! Ill probably try just salt first and see if I want to go the full 9 yards sanding.
That works, or iron out and a wire brush, or wipe it out and season it with the bit of surface rust there and it will go away on its own.
Now the best thing you can do though, is to use an orbital sander (or a large amount of manual elbow grease) to actually sand the casting smooth on the inside of the pan before you season it. The casting being rough actually really hinders the non sticking, even with several layers of a proper seasoning job. Sand the bottom to get rid of the roughness from the casting and it will end up being your favorite thing to cook in. It will stay cleaner and more non stick and easier to wash than any other cast iron pan you can buy that's not under $120. The ones you can buy over $120? Go check one out. The inside bottom has been machined smooth to get rid of the roughness from casting.
Did this to a Goodwill special, best cast iron pan I've ever had.
For sure. Finding old cast irons for $20 or less and restoring them to better than new is such a fun little gem to look for. I also swear that eggs taste better cooked on a cast iron.
That's, in my opinion, a skillet that just needs some dish soap and then to be cooked with.
Clean the rust off however you like, reseason well several times, done and done.
You could do that. I want to try this some day if I come across a free skillet, mine are all 2-3 generations old.
https://www.instructables.com/Sanding-and-Polishing-Cast-Iron-Skillet-Cookware/