IS MY CAST IRON SEASONED PROPERLY?

The biggest complaint we hear from folks who are new to cooking with cast iron is that
whatever they're cooking is sticking to their cast iron. If food is sticking to cast iron it's
either being cooked at too high a temperature or it's not seasoned properly. Oftentimes,
it's a combination of the two. When cooking with cast iron, you MUST cook at lower
temperatures than when using aluminum or other types of cookware. In addition, cast
iron retains its heat so well that once the iron is thoroughly heated, you'll most likely
need to lower your temperature even more. Most home cooks are not used to cooking
at such low temperatures. I know that that’s been my own biggest problem when
cooking with cast iron.

New cast iron is typically a battleship gray color and has a coating of paraffin wax. That
wax coating is to protect the cast iron from rusting during shipping. The first thing you
have to do is to either melt the wax off (in the oven or grill) or to use very hot water,
soap and a wire brush and scrub it off. If you choose to melt the wax off, you're best off
doing that outside as it is a smokey process and gives of a lot of odor, which you don't
necessary want inside the house.

The following image is of a brand new waffle iron with the wax coating still on it.



















Next is an image of a cast iron waffle iron that was returned to RVing Outpost the
because the customer had problems with the waffles sticking. As is readily apparent,
this waffle iron was not seasoned properly and there are areas of the cast that never
even saw any oil. If you have cast iron that food is sticking to and it looks like this, you
need to work on properly seasoning your cast iron.

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