Cast iron works best with ANIMAL FAT. LARD, BACON GREASE, BUTTER, (cow) GHEE. Vegetable oil is why they had to invent plastic non-stick cookware. When heated vegetable oil turns to a tar like mess. IMHO the same thing happens in your body when your cells try to break in down and assimilate nutrition from it. I live in a county full of 80 and 90 year old cigarette smoking geezers, raised on fried ham and poke sallet - 50 year old doctors in nearby Louisville cooking with canola are dropping over...
Your CLEAN skillet works fine. Bacon and sausage tend to make a skillet sticky, especially the maple flavored ones, sugar cooks out and turns into caramel... Caramel is known for being good at removing fillings... Cook your food, while the skillet is still hot swab it clean with a little soapy water, towel dry, retained heat should finish the drying... Keep vegetable oil away from it... Vegetable oil is a tool of the devil... Hamburger simply doesn't stick in a clean cast iron skillet... Acid based foods are better not cooked in cast iron as the iron tends to alter the flavor of the food (but your skillet cleans up nicely...)
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Originally Posted by tenplay
Thanks for all your responses to my earlier post. Except for a couple
of you who choose to season your skillets with salt, the rest of you
recommend use lard, Crisco, frying bacon, etc.. In other words, using
cast iron skillets is not for those who are trying to minimize the use
of fat in their cooking. Am I understanding it correctly? I thought
that I was avoiding the need to reseason the skillet by buying a Lodge
preseasoned skillet. But evidently that is not the case. It seems that
it is a constant concern and chore to keep the skillet properly seasoned
through numerous uses and cleanings. So using a cast iron skillet is
not a carefree choice but rather a high maintenance one (compared to
nonstick pans).
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