By simple, I mean that there is nothing complicated about seasoning. Seasoning a pan is like preparing puff pastry – Everyone thinks puff is this incredible application of artistry and knowledge but in reality making puff requires little in the way of baking skills (in reality, the only prerequisite is the ability to make a piecrust). Likewise, seasoning of a cast iron pan requires no mastery of cooking (or metallurgy); the only essential aptitude needed is the willingness to perform a repetitive, unimaginative task over a period of time.
To season a pan you will need an oven, canola or soy oil (Any product vaguely labeled Vegetable Oil - is soybean oil), a sheetpan (the kind you’d bake cookies on), a pair of tongs and paper towels.Preheat the oven to 350ºƒ (180 C). While the oven is warming up, clean your pan to remove any debris. If the pan is new, odds are it has a thin layer of wax or machine oil coating it. The machine oil is probably mineral oil – food safe but an emollient, certainly not something you want to ingest. If your pan is from a thrift store or garage sale, well you just want to wash it, because you don’t know where it has been. In either case, scrub, scrub, scrub.
Take a paper towel and rub oil into the pans surface. How much oil? That depends on the size of the pan. Rub the inside and outside of the pan with a generous amount of oil. Once the oven hits 350, place the cast iron on the sheetpan, place both on the middle oven rack of the oven and shut the door. Now leave it alone for a half an hour. Set a timer for 30 minutes and walk away.
When the timer goes off, it is time to add a new coat of oil. The oven is at 350 which makes the pan HOT, hot enough for a good burn so, be careful. Pull out the oven rack, ball up some paper towels, grab the ball with the tongs – like an odd Q-tip of sorts, dip the towels in oil and coat the pan. Work both the inside and outside of the pan covering it with a layer of oil. This isn’t precision work, if this was painting instead of seasoning, it would be closer to painting the back wall of a garage than working on a fresco. Push the pan back in the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes.
Repeat the above instructions after 30 minutes. Now you are at an hour, in another 30 (Now 90) minutes, repeat. And finally, after 2 hours - repeat again. The big difference for the final time is when you push the pan back in the oven, turn the heat off and let the pan cool in the oven. This will take about a couple of hours – leave it alone until you can pick the pan up sans oven mitt.
Your pan is seasoned. Now every time you use your pan and cook with oil you will be lightly seasoning your pan. Conventional wisdom (CW) states that you shouldn’t even say “soap” in front of the pan, let alone use it. CW advice ranges from wiping clean with a paper towel or scrubbing a dirty pan with coarse salt. As far as cleaning goes, soap is not seasoning’s kryptonite, this isn’t like dropping dish soap into an greasy pan and watching all the oil retreat to the side, the oil wasn’t absorbed by the pan, it polymerized - the oil and the metal of the pan reacted with the heat of the oven forming a complex chain of molecules, similar to how plastic is hardened. The only way to remove seasoning is by using an abrasive cleaner or sticking the pan in a dishwasher.
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