how to prep cast iron :: step by step instructions

Posted on by Shanda

I love to go to garage sales. You never know what treasures your will find when you are rummaging through the tables and bins!

During one of my garage-saling expeditions, I stumbled across this cast iron pan. I remembered my mom telling me, “If you ever find cast iron, buy it!” So I heeded her advice and picked up this diamond in the rough… and it sure was rough! I do not even want to know what has been baked into this bad boy over the years, but I was ready to tackle this project head on!

I mentioned how much I love cast iron in THIS post, so now I want to show you how to prep a cast iron pan! This is how I turned one man’s trash into my TREASURE! 🙂

Cast Iron copy

8 thoughts on “how to prep cast iron :: step by step instructions”

  1. There is nothing better to cook in than a well seasoned cast iron skillet. The one I use almost every day was my mother’s – and before that it belonged to my grandmother – it has to be at least sixty years old! After every use, I heat it up and pour a generous amount of salt in it, and scrub with paper towels. It comes very clean that way without a drop of water!

  3. I normally pass over cast iron that looks like this, I will definitely be scooping it up from now on!! Thanks for sharing this!!

  5. Shanda – I bought a huge dutch oven at a garage sale years ago that was rusted and near-hopeless, but I bought it hoping I could restore it successfully. I’ve used your above method successfully with old cast iron that was similar in condition to yours and used your method with great results, however this oven was beyond hope (or so I thought). I ended up running it through the “self-cleaning” setting on my oven (very very high heat) and trhe thing came out like brand new! (meaning back to the original silver color it has before seasoning)

    I did have to start from scratch after I cleaned it …..and season it properly, but I wanted to add in here that the self-cleaning-oven method works miraculously for cast iron that seems beyond hopeless.

    1. Thank you for the added advice! I have heard wonders about the self cleaning oven as well, but have not had cause to test it out. So glad to hear from first hand experience that it DOES work! 🙂

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