My neighbor told me I was stripping my cast iron wrong and she was right

I been seasoning my cast iron skillet for years with canola oil and thought I had it down. Then my neighbor Sarah came over while I was scrubbing it with soap and said I was ruining the seasoning. She showed me her method with flaxseed oil and a chainmail scrubber, no soap at all. Tried it on my 12 inch Lodge pan and after three rounds in the oven at 450, that thing is slicker than teflon now. Anybody else get schooled by a neighbor on something they thought they knew?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_faith15d ago

Everybody's talking about oil types and soap but nobody's bringing up how hard your water is... I moved from a place with soft water to hard water and my cast iron routine completely fell apart. The minerals in hard water leave a weird film that ruins the seasoning way faster than soap ever could. Switched to distilled water for the final rinse and it made a bigger difference than changing oils ever did.

gavin6921mo ago

Soap is actually fine for cast iron, flaxseed oil flakes off after a few months.

jackson.matthew1mo ago

@gavin692 you're not wrong at all. Flaxseed gave me a headache with how fast it started looking rough. Glad someone else gets that soap isn't the enemy.