Since I forgot a before of my regular skillet, here's a before of my grilling pan:
Ugh, right? It was such a delight to scrub between those ridges to get the rust off, until it looked like this, raw and unseasoned and possibly still slightly rusty, so don't look too closely:
Unseasoned grill pan on the left, regular skillet with three coats of seasoning on the right. This basically compares what the regular skillet looked like before and after the three coats, since they were in similar shape.
And here I had pulled both pans out from a round of seasoning, so the grill pan has just one coat (look at the difference already!!) and the regular skillet now has four coats:
The grill pan a little closer up:
Final photo of both pans with the full six coats of seasoning, sitting next to some granola:
And you know what's cool? My little 8oz bottle of oil, after six coats on both pans plus two thin coats on my wooden cutting boards (I have two) is still almost half full. That makes me feel a little better about the cost, because it will definitely last me for more maintenance on the cutting boards.
And my main motivation for seasoning the cast iron: scrubbing scrambled eggs out of the multi-clad stainless pan. Ugh. Eggs are like the nemesis of stainless steel, if you ask me. Or maybe the eggs team up with stainless steel to be my arch-nemesis. I might be devoting too much thought to this. Either way, how fun does this look like it would be to clean? We have scrambled eggs at least twice a week so, while I might miss the upper body workout, I would love a better way to cook them. My stainless is superb for cooking basically everything else - who even needs non-stick? - but eggs. For the love. There is no avoiding the awfulness, no matter how much butter you use.
This was obviously a major re-season of my rusted pans after they were in storage. But I'm interested to hear your tips for maintenance - what do you do between uses, if anything, to maintain the seasoning on your cast iron?
**Bonus tip because I care about you so much: Nobody ever told me about oiling wooden cutting boards and wooden spoons, but mine are starting to look dry and sad. If you look closely, I've also got some wee little cracks/splits starting to happen. All this fun with flaxseed oil prompted me to Google "oiling wooden cutting boards" and it turns out that food-grade flaxseed oil is also a good choice for oiling your wooden kitchen ware. This is a thing you should do, apparently. If you knew this already, celebrate in your head because you win this round of domesticity.
To oil a cutting board or spoon, rub your oil on with a soft cloth or paper towel and let it sit for four hours to overnight, then wipe with a clean, soft cloth to buff if it feels sticky/like there is residue. Depending on how often you use your cutting boards, and how they look to you, repeat once a month to a couple times a year. There are other formulations for this like mineral oil combined with beeswax, but this is a post about flaxseed oil, so oh well.
**Bonus tip #2 on your choice of flaxseed oil: This also goes by the name of linseed oil, apparently, and can be used in woodworking. DO NOT use woodworking linseed or flaxseed oil for cast iron or wooden kitchen items. This has some other chemicals added in or something, and can affect rancidity and put things onto your items that you wouldn't want to ingest. I bought my flaxseed oil at the grocery store with the other food oils, so it is food-grade and fine to use. Be thorough when you shop, especially if you order online, is all I'm saying. We wouldn't want to start preserving your insides with a coating of varnish, for heaven's sake.
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