Refurbishing a cast iron bargain

In this blog we’re going to have a look at one of my recent second-hand shop bargains and see how with a little bit of time and effort we can refurbish and bring new life to an old cast iron skillet.

Cast iron cookware has been used for centuries being found as far back as China’s Han Dynasty and it’s a staple of the bushcraft community, and with good reason. Unmatched in its versatility and able to produce everything from ice-cream to stews, to loaves of bread, very few other materials come close to what cast iron can achieve but it does require a bit of care to keep it at its best.

For restoration of lightly corroded cast iron cookware, you will need:

• a cast iron pan/skillet/Dutch oven
• fine wire wool or metal kitchen scourer
• bicarbonate of soda or baking powder
• kitchen sponge/cloth
• paper towels

Give your cast iron a good scrub with hot soapy water, generally you don’t want to use soap on cast iron but because we are removing any old seasoning and then re-seasoning later it’s not an issue just now, but more on seasoning later. Sprinkle a generous amount of your bicarb/baking powder onto your pan, the powder is going to act as a mild abrasive and help clean all the little surface pits in your cast iron.

Wet your wire wool and scrub out your pan both inside and out then rinse and repeat until any rust or old seasoning has been removed and you’re starting to see bare metal rinse again and then heat on your stove top to dry.

The next stage is re-seasoning, but what do I mean by re-seasoning and why is it important? Cast iron is what is known as a ferrous metal, meaning a metal that is high in iron, much higher in iron than most other metals we use regularly, and one of the down sides to this is oxidisation or the formation of rust.

To prevent this rusting and also to create a semi non-stick layer on the cast we need to coat it with something, in this case a layer of heat polymerised oil. Polymerisation is the process of an oil moving from a liquid state to a dry hard plastic like state and is the same principle at work when oil paint dries hard on canvas

The first thing to do is pre-heat your oven to as hot as it will go, think fires of Mordor type temperatures. Next coat your pan inside and out with a thin layer of oil using paper towel to wipe off any excess. I used veg oil and it worked but arguably the best food safe polymerising oil for the job that isn’t a nut oil is flaxseed oil so if you’ve got some use that. Then put your pan in the oven upside down to avoid the oil pooling and put a baking tray underneath to catch any oil that drips.

I bake my cast iron for an hour taking it out halfway through (carefully!) to give it another wipe with oil on a paper towel then putting it back in to finish. After the hour turn the oven off and allow the pan to cool.

You should be left with a smooth black semi-gloss finish all over your pan that’s dry and not sticky to the touch. Now that the pan is seasoned I’d recommend not cleaning it with soap, just give it a rinse out and a wipe down then dry it on your stove top and while it’s still a little bit warm give it a light rub down with oil for storage.