hey this is jeff rogers and i am holding
in my hand a brand new chef skillet that
i got from the lodge factory outlet
store in commerce georgia one of the
questions that i get asked a lot is what
do you do with a brand new piece of
lodge cast iron do you strip it and
re-season it and the answer for me is
yes i always strip and re-season because
i have a very specific method on what i
do with my cast iron so what i'm going
to talk about today is
what do i do with a brand new piece of
lodge cast iron the first thing i do
with a piece of lodge cast iron is strip
the seasoning layer off there's several
ways to do this and you might want to do
some research on the internet on how you
do it but i either use the electrolysis
method or i use my self-clean oven
with this skillet i will put it in my
electrolysis tank in the garage
with this skillet i will put it in my
self-clean oven and probably about an
hour or so is good enough to strip a
layer like this so i'm going to strip
both of these skillets show you what
they look like after stripping and then
show you what to do next okay i'm
downstairs in the garage and this is my
electrolysis tank that i built you can
see that the water is kind of funky
because i've cleaned a number of pieces
in here
but i'm going to submerge the skillet in
the electrolysis tank get the battery
hooked up to it and
we'll have some action
all right and then with this skillet i'm
going to put it in my self-clean oven i
think because the seasoning layer isn't
that thick i think one hour the
self-clean oven is going to be fine for
a large cast iron skillet so into the
oven always upside down
close
that lock it
and put it on self clean and we'll let
it go for an hour this is what a
stripped lodge skillet looks like
one of these i was going to clean in my
electrolysis tank but the plates were so
corroded and i need to replace them so
the process just wasn't working well
enough so both of these got put into a
self-clean oven and stripped them nicely
so what i'm going to do next is i'm
going to
go ahead and hit these with my wire
wheel a little bit as you know lodge
skillets are a little bit rougher
than some of us would prefer so i am
going to get some of the roughness out
of it
with my wire wheel the skillet has been
wire wheeled and when i wire will
skillet it's not to try to get the
skillet perfectly smooth it's just to
take the roughest parts off of it so
this has been wire wheeled and this is
ready to be scrubbed once again
wash with soap and water and then we
will begin the seasoning process
after going over these with my wire cut
brush it's really important to give them
a good scrub before i season them so to
do that i'm going to use some gray
double zero steel wool
and just some regular old dish soap
normally i use ivory liquid but this is
all i have today so this is what i'm
going to use
so just give these a good scrub
a little bit of soap and water inside
now
it doesn't take much because when they
come out of the self-clean oven
um they're really clean so
don't take a whole lot at all you can
see how clean that already is
okay for my last rinse
i'm gonna rinse it with ice cold water
as cold as i can get the water
and that helps keep the flash rust off
for some reason
so your last wrench you always want to
use cold water
i can't remember who i learned that from
but it works
let's go it's nice and clean
went over with my wire cut brush it's a
little bit smoother than it was when i
bought it
and i've got a oven
that is preheated to 200 degrees
and i'm going to dry this as good as i
can
and then get it in the oven
i'm going to let the skillet preheat to
200 degrees and then i'm going to start
the seasoning process and i'll show you
that in a minute
okay this skillet should be just about
to 200 degrees now
helps to kind of open up the pores of
the iron
we're gonna be seasoning with crisco
vegetable shortening uh it's what i've
always used and it works really well
i've had good results so we're gonna
wipe a liberal amount of crisco on the
skillet
you can be kind of generous here
make sure you get the handle really well
you can see that with the skillet being
warm
the crisco melts right onto the skillet
that's great
all right then we're going to get the
other side
and with a freshly stripped skillet
the oil just kind of soaks right into it
but you don't have to be shy
with how much you put on
skill is at 200 degrees so it's not
incredibly hot
okay
once you wipe your crisco on you want to
wipe it all off i use this really
absorbent paper towel i'm going to kind
of wipe it lightly here
and you think it's all gone but it's not
there's still a fine layer there
but this will ensure that you get a
really nice even seasoning
on your skillet
and i do this with every not only every
large skillet that i get with every
skillet that i buy whether it's a new
skillet or whether it's an antique
skillet
we're going to wipe it all off i'm not
wiping really hard just kind of light on
this
and then i'm going to put the skillet
back in the oven
and once it's back in the oven i'm going
to raise my oven temperature to 300
degrees
and set my timer for 15 minutes
okay these skillets
have been in here for 15 minutes
and so what we're going to do is we're
going to come and we're going to wipe
this down again
because like i said we don't want that
oil to pool
because we want a nice
even surface
with our seasoning
so i'm just going to wipe that really
lightly again
you don't have to press really hard just
kind of get it light
and like i said before there's still a
thin layer of oil on there
okay
that's good enough and we're going to go
back in the oven
and we're going to raise the temperature
of the oven up to 400 degrees
and we're going to let that go for two
hours so now you've seen what i do with
a brand new large skillet in the
seasoning phase of this i usually do
that one to four times i like my skillet
to be really lustrous so i'll do that
you can usually do it one time and then
begin cooking in your skillet but it's
not going to hurt if you want to do it
more so i hope this video helps and i'll
see you next time
you