Lodge Skillet Needs a Little Help

[Karl Quist]

I have a Lodge skillet that needs a little help. The cooking surface has become pretty rough, and for lack of a better description, 'chunky'. See attached photo.

I'm thinking of just stripping it down and re-seasoning. Is there something else I might try first?

 

[Mitch]

I have been lucky to find several old Griswold and Wagner cast iron skillets and assorted cookware at garage sales and have developed a system to recondition them. They are very different than the more modern Lodge skillets. They are light and smooth surfaced. I would recommend you hunt for them.

if you want to recondition the skillet you have buy yourself a can of yellow Easy Off oven cleaner. Must be the yellow can. Spray the entire skillet heavily put it in a plastic garbage bag and leave it on top of your Boiler or in a warm place for several days. Then wearing gloves bring it to your sink and carefully wash it off. Then I use steel wool to 0000 to work off the debris on the skillet. You may have to spray an repeat. When you get it all off and wash it down fully put it in an oven at 250 for one hour. Take it out and while hot wipe it lightly with solid Crisco on a paper towel entirely in an out. Put it back in the oven for another hour and then rub it down with dry paper towels. Make sure you remove all the Crisco with no residual. Let it cool an it should be good to go. I usually then cook bacon in mine as a first cook to reseason. I have converted totally caked on 100 year old cast iron back to well seasoned like new pieces. I hope this helps. If you can find the old stuff you will probably throw out the Lodge.

 

[Dustin Dorsey]

I've got a few modern Lodge skillets and they cook fine. I'd just reseason it at this point. Mitch is pretty much spot on with the Easy Off. It's nasty stuff so wear gloves. I had an old skillet that was my grandmothers that was caked up really bad and I had to do this method 4 or 5 times to get everything off of it. It's one of my best skillets now. Don't fall for the flax seed oil hype. I liked it at first and then after a while it started flaking off on me. If you season it in the oven you want to go 25 degrees over the oil's smoke point for an hour and put the oil on very thinly you'll have a sticky mess.

 

[Karl Quist]

I have been lucky to find several old Griswold and Wagner cast iron skillets and assorted cookware at garage sales and have developed a system to recondition them. They are very different than the more modern Lodge skillets. They are light and smooth surfaced. I would recommend you hunt for them.

if you want to recondition the skillet you have buy yourself a can of yellow Easy Off oven cleaner. Must be the yellow can. Spray the entire skillet heavily put it in a plastic garbage bag and leave it on top of your Boiler or in a warm place for several days. Then wearing gloves bring it to your sink and carefully wash it off. Then I use steel wool to 0000 to work off the debris on the skillet. You may have to spray an repeat. When you get it all off and wash it down fully put it in an oven at 250 for one hour. Take it out and while hot wipe it lightly with solid Crisco on a paper towel entirely in an out. Put it back in the oven for another hour and then rub it down with dry paper towels. Make sure you remove all the Crisco with no residual. Let it cool an it should be good to go. I usually then cook bacon in mine as a first cook to reseason. I have converted totally caked on 100 year old cast iron back to well seasoned like new pieces. I hope this helps. If you can find the old stuff you will probably throw out the Lodge.

Thank you sir. This particular skillet is about 10 years old, so just a baby as CI skillets go. I think I'm just going to recondition it and get on with it. I have had my eye on a few 'vintage' CI skillets in my area. Unfortunately, my chief boss has declined my requests for discretionary funds at this point.

 

[Karl Quist]

I've got a few modern Lodge skillets and they cook fine. I'd just reseason it at this point. Mitch is pretty much spot on with the Easy Off. It's nasty stuff so wear gloves. I had an old skillet that was my grandmothers that was caked up really bad and I had to do this method 4 or 5 times to get everything off of it. It's one of my best skillets now. Don't fall for the flax seed oil hype. I liked it at first and then after a while it started flaking off on me. If you season it in the oven you want to go 25 degrees over the oil's smoke point for an hour and put the oil on very thinly you'll have a sticky mess.

Thank you, I agree about the reseason. I'm just going to get after it and get it done.

 

[Mitch]

KE, FYI I have bought Griswolds in what people have perceived as ”poor condition“ for as low as $2 at garage sales and reconditioned them to seasoned as new for total cost of less than $10. These have become favorite every day cookware for my family.

 

[Karl Quist]

Mitch, that's encouraging! I've never had the chance to come across one at a garage sale yet. Granted, I'm not exactly a frequent attendee of garage sales either.

 

[K Kruger]

Yes, oven cleaner. Repeat if necessary. Get some 100% flaxseed oil (the food grade version of linseed oil) and use that for seasoning. It's the only one that will actually polymerize and that's what you want. The best article about why this is can be found here.

 

[Karl Quist]

I'm going to try baking it off as much as I can, then wire wheel the rest, then oven cleaner if needed. Once cleaned up, then I will reseason with the flaxseed oil.

I think most of the that rough stuff is just built up carbon from too much oil before storage, and baked on 'stuff' that I never cleaned off very well.

EDIT: I found a nice video by Kent Rollins that kind of describes the same issues I am having:

 

[Doug D]

I would advise not bothering with flaxseed oil. Many find that blog post and think they've found the holy grail, but the CI collecting community has not embraced it. Its supposed strengths often make it too brittle to stand up to regular use and it tends to flake off. Also note that flaxseed oil is not used as a cooking fat, so it seems counter-intuitive for use in this scenario. Commonly used oils include canola, refined grapeseed and Crisco shortening. All do a fine job and all do polymerize as desired, baked on hot enough and long enough, and in the recommended very thin layers. Remember that this is just a basic initial seasoning, to rustproof and act as a base for the long term seasoning you're going to be building through use.

If you want to polish the surface, I'd recommend not taking it too far. Those super smooth mirror-like finishes you see on youtube can be hard to get seasoning to stick to. If you've ever seen NOS vintage cast iron, the factory polish ground surfaces are a spiral of very fine scratches made by a spinning grindstone head moved across the pan affixed to a spinning mechanism.

 

[Rich Dahl]

I've got a few modern Lodge skillets and they cook fine. I'd just reseason it at this point. Mitch is pretty much spot on with the Easy Off. It's nasty stuff so wear gloves. I had an old skillet that was my grandmothers that was caked up really bad and I had to do this method 4 or 5 times to get everything off of it. It's one of my best skillets now. Don't fall for the flax seed oil hype. I liked it at first and then after a while it started flaking off on me. If you season it in the oven you want to go 25 degrees over the oil's smoke point for an hour and put the oil on very thinly you'll have a sticky mess.

I have to agree with Dustin the flax oil (food grade) works for awhile and now I have a older Dutch oven that I hadn't used in awhile so I reseasoned it with the flax seed oil and it's flaking badly.
I'll give the easy off yellow can a try and see if I can bring it back to a usable condition.
We have 2 12" 1 10" 2 8" and 2 Dutch ovens for bread making that are the inside ones the skillets get used almost daily. Then we have 1 12" 1 10" and a Dutch oven dedicated to the grills. They all are stored inside the house and with Arizona's dry climate we've had no problems with rust.

 

[J Grotz]

Yes, oven cleaner. Repeat if necessary. Get some 100% flaxseed oil (the food grade version of linseed oil) and use that for seasoning. It's the only one that will actually polymerize and that's what you want. The best article about why this is can be found here.

Another vote for Sheryl Canter. Her methods work for me.

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/02/black-rust-and-cast-iron-seasoning/

 

[Karl Quist]

You all certainly present good arguments both pro and con for flaxseed oil. After thinking about it, I will probably just use canola oil, since that is what I have readily available. As for stripping off the current finish, I'm not going to go for a smooth-as-glass base, just as good as I can with a wire brush, some elbow grease, and maybe some oven cleaner if I get around to buying some. This is a Lodge cast iron pan after all, and not even one of my better ones at that.

All of the advice, and I mean all of it, is certainly appreciated though.

I will post some pictures here as I work on that pan.