You really shouldn't buy a special oil just got seasoning your cast iron and carbon steel. It's not necessary. Pick an oil with a high smoke point, a neutral taste, and plenty of easy availability. That's often peanut. Avocado is great if you're fancy.
Keep a squirt bottle of oil on hand and make sure you're using enough. Using soap to clean your pans will make maintaining your seasoning easier, as you use less effort to clean them. See this if you're skeptical: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iro...
I had friends dedicate years to flax seed oil. They're not happy about it, as they've got flaking to deal with. I also had friends disbelieve me that soap was okay, and they've mostly come around after hearing me swear by it for years.
As someone who owns more cast iron than is reasonable, I just wanted to go a step beyond upvoting this and acknowledge in writing that this is the correct view of things.
You want oil soaked into the metal. This idea that you are trying to build a non-stick surface on top of the metal is just adding extra work that isn't needed.
Wash with soap, dry of the stove top, put in some oil (I use peanut), then take a paper towel and rub the oil around over everything and at the end the metal should look shiny but there shouldn't be any pooled oil left anywhere.
If you are cooking something that doesn't leave a residue or strong flavor, you can skip the washing all together and just leave it there to cook with next time.
If you try to go the whole "never wash this" route, you end up with unhappy results going from cooking something with onions and garlic to cooking something more neutral flavored. No one wants onion flavored pancakes.
The main thing I’ve learned that most advice about seasoning pans doesn’t tell you is that how you use the pan to cook matters more than how well seasoned it is. Cast iron is really forgiving of seasoning, you don’t need the perfect job to cook with it.
However, cast iron will never be as non-stick as a good non-stick pan, and if you treat it as one, you’re going to have a bad time.
Put bacon in a dry, hot pan, and it’ll leave crispy fond stuck to the pan. (Nothing you do will ever create fond in a non-stick pan.) Cook bacon starting with a cold pan, and enough fat will render by the time it heats to keep it from sticking.
Eggs will stick to cold, dry cast iron. Fry eggs in a moderately hot pan with plenty of grease. I had the devil of a time with fried eggs until I realized I wasn’t letting the pan heat enough. Also, it’s very easy to burn butter in a cast iron pan; use a more forgiving fat like bacon grease or a neutral oil.
Cast iron behaves differently than non-stick or stainless steel. Different heat density, different emissivity. Just like any other cookware, you need to learn how to work with it; it’s not just a matter of getting the magical perfect seasoning and pretending it’s Teflon.
Also, without washing, you end up with rough spots of non-sticky partially-polymerized bits. Wash it with soap and a scrub brush. Nothing short of steel wool is going to affect the patina.
For proof of this, check out your aluminum baking sheets. If they’ve been used, they’re almost certainly covered in a shiny black substance that’s a complete pain in the ass to remove, even with abrasives. That’s essentially what’s on your cast iron.
Is there solid evidence that this is actually possible, as opposed to creating a layer on top of it? The only people I've ever heard suggest that it's possible were talking about cast iron pans, and it's always struck me as the sort of thing that would have major implications for a lot of other fields.
I tried some web searches before posting this, still not finding anything suggesting it's possible other than cast iron pan aficionados.
I agree on 95% of this post. I think that's part of the allure of Cast Iron. It's a personal thing where people develop their own methods through experience.
However I try to avoid using soapy chemicals on my cast iron. If I do use soap it's literally one drop onto the scrub brush instead of the pan. Although I'm sure that if you went heavier on the soap nothing would come of it anyway. Most of the time I use water and a scrub brush. I scrub with good speed and not a lot of pressure to break off lingering debris.
And if I'm going to be using it the next day I'll leave it shiny, but if it's going to sit for a couple days I'll leave it on a little longer until it's a little more matte looking. Not 100% matte, but not "shiny" either. Just a sheen. That way it won't be sticky during storage where it will collect dust and contaminants.
So I understand correctly, do you mean to wash it after every (most) uses, and apply a little oil after washing? No need to bake in the oven or anything like that?
I use only cast iron, always cook on a wood-burning stove. The way I season pans is simple, I just put the thing on a medium fire, dab some canola oil on it, rub it in, wipe it off, repeat this once or twice after which I just use it with enough oil (canola or olive). I clean them by rinsing them while hot with cold water which starts boiling immediately, wipe them with some paper and put them away. As long as they're kept dry they don't need reseasoning. No fancy oils needed, no special rituals, just use them regularly and that's it.
Although Kenji: "Whenever someone asks me why their cast iron seasoning is weak or flaky, I ask if they followed that popular (but wrong!) flaxseed seasoning guide [i.e. the linked article]. The answer has been yes 100% of the time."
It’s a ton of fun to cook on, and useful for way more than just the wok. When I go diving and get crabs for example, this thing gets a huge pot of water boiling in no time and makes prepping a lot of crabs really easy.
And yeah, it’ll season any pan like nothing else. I was terrible at seasoning pans until I started throwing them on this thing.
> You really shouldn't buy a special oil just [for] seasoning your cast iron and carbon steel. It's not necessary. Pick an oil with a high smoke point, a neutral taste, and plenty of easy availability. That's often peanut. Avocado is great if you're fancy.
Keep a squirt bottle of oil on hand and make sure you're using enough.
> I had friends dedicate years to flax seed oil. They're not happy about it, as they've got flaking to deal with.
I happen to have bought some flax oil specifically for seasoning my cast iron - you’re saying it’s contraindicated though? (So “you don’t need special oil, but _especially_ not these” (leaving only peanut and avocado))?
For the amount of times the word “science” is dropped there’s still a good amount of myth and legend associated with owning cast iron. Short of having my own double blind statically significant study and perhaps a microscope to observe the polymerization effects, I’m still flopping back/forth a bit about what “the best” or at least not leaving a simple improvement on the table, is. What a journey.
Still worth the trouble, though. Cooking is fun, and cast iron is a good cooking tool.
I interpreted what he said as you don't need a special oil, but here are some good options that do not have a strong flavor and will work well. But you could just as well use any other oil. I avoid nut based oils so I generally have olive and avacado around.
The instructions for seasoning my carbon steel pan that I bought ages ago have worked better for me than any other method, fit both carbon steel and cast iron.
Just fry up a full pan of very heavily salted potato peels. Use more oil and a lot more salt than you would normally use for pan frying. Make sure to move them around, don't be afraid to scrub them around, they will feel gritty due to all the salt. Fry the peels until they're very dark, they should be far too dark and salty to be edible.
Wash out the pan with hot water and dry it. Done.
It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It's the method used in professional kitchens, as far as I know.
As someone relatively new to cast iron (around a year of cooking with it), I am inclined to believe the parts of this article that I cannot validate through my own experience, because the other parts match what I have learned through experimentation. However, I must point out that a year ago, I would have no way to recognize this. Whether or not this article is correct, it is at the same level of heresay as every other article, reddit comment, or youtube video out there (like the carbon steel video linked in the replies, which says never to use soap).
Despite the flax oil article being bad science, it is still the most science of any of the cast iron information out there, which is why it continues to enjoy such popularity. Even if it is bad science, it at least provides some hypotheses to test!
Here's my hypotheses on soap (edit: rephrased to better reflect my meaning):
1) Soap is fine to use; it will not damage the seasoning.
2) Seasoning is often damaged (at least a little) while cooking and it is important to re-season regularly to keep the pan in good shape.
3) If you do not use soap, the amount of oil left on the surface is similar to the amount you would want to wipe on when re-seasoning.
Basically, I think no soap + dry on stove is a shortcut to avoid the process/effort of reseasoning the pan (especially if you do the oil-and-salt-as-an-abrasive trick). Perhaps you'll get better results using soap and then wiping on oil, but it's more work and many people don't do the second part. Thus, they see better results when they don't use soap.
This would explain why some people tell you you need to reseason after every use, while others say that's bubkis, and why the same is true of soap avoidance.
To test: try all 4 combinations of soap/no-soap and reseasoning/just-drying (always dry the same way, on the stovetop).
As a data point, I use a little soap when it feels needed (every few times, usually) and add seasoning when it feels needed (less often). Seasoning remains great (fry eggs without sticking).
These are my most often used pans, and have remained that way for many years.
Fwiw I rarely need or use a scraper or salt while cleaning , I’ll “deglaze” if there is fond in the pan, even in the rare case that I’m not using the result for anything.
You asked if I could look at this in a different part of this comment thread.
What you say seems more or less correct to me. I think if you approach cast iron that way, you will have good results.
Basically, you don't want the pan to look "not-oiled", and how much effort you need to put into that depends on how much you are removing the existing oil during the cooking process.
I think the "looks oily" test is the proper determinant for if the cast iron is in good shape. Trying to develop a "seasoning" layer is likely to just cause frustration.
Past the initial seasoning, I've found that just using the pan helps a lot. My problem has been that I've a lot of rough (and very hard) cruft built up on the outside and the upper part of inside of the pan.
+1 on the squirt bottle of oil, I started doing that a few years ago and it was game-changing. Previously I'd just pour a little out of the original bottle when I was cooking, which was a lot less convenient than having something appropriately sized and within arms reach.
Yes, I didn't say it above, but the best thing you can do, maintenance-wise, is just use the pan. Anything that makes that harder (requiring unusual ingredients, making cleaning harder) is a net negative. Anything that makes it easier (having oil at hand, soap and sponge to clean it) makes it better.
Agree with everything except the oil. I use Avocado a lot for cooking but not on a brand new pan. I've certainly tried to season with it specifically when I was new, but find it flaky and cumbersome.
I find fatty meats(bacon, sausage) or just canned lard to work absolutely best for seasoning. It's also what our ancestors used before they probably even knew what an avocado was. For a vegan, I'd assume shortening is ok as well, but I've never actually tested that.
Rather than soap, I use a pampered chef plastic scraper (It’s for stone ware; don’t know any other name for it), and a stainless steel scouring pad (not steel wool; instead it’s coils of flat stainless steel tape or something). The scraper removes the bulk of stuff, keeping the scouring pad clean.
This is less effort than using soap, and more effective. The stainless smooths out any imperfections that form in the seasoning over time, and cooking with oil continuously reseasons it.
I found that I had to re-season my pans every 5-10 years if I used soap, and that the seasoning was an inferior cooking surface (more food stuck to it). With the technique I described above, I can cook eggs and they don’t stick. (be sure to preheat, use plenty of oil, and then don’t touch for a minute or two at the beginning of cooking)
What I use is one of these pieces of chain mail (I don't know what this kitchen tool is actually called, "Ringer" is probably a brand name), but it's perfect for cleaning cast iron:
1. Rinse dirty pan out with some warm water
2. Clean the chunks and stuff that sticks to the pan with the chainmail
3. Rinse again under some warm water
That’s it. The oil from whatever you were cooking should still be on there; no need to put peanut or avocado oil on there unless you burnt it all off or cooked something acidic (use a different pan for that; you’ll learn).
This doesnt sound easier. My process is I wash my pan with soap and water, with a sponge. I don't need special equipment. I don't need to oil it afterwards. There's enough seasoning, it's fine. I'm using oil next time I cook.
Other people seem to have a bigger problem with burnt-on bits than I do. I don't know why that is, but I'm inclined to trust my process.
Also I like washing all the cooking oil off so I don't have used oil sitting around going rancid. Surfactants are good for that.
Acidic stuff is also fine. If my pan looks thirsty afterwards, I've got the squirt bottle and paper towels, it's easy. Cast iron is the least sensitive, most versatile tool in my kitchen. I'm not babying it.
I use cast iron and carbon steel for high-temperature cooking. If I really care about the non-stick-ness I'll usually use nonstick. But nonstick doesn't char well (and isn't safe). So when I want a serious sear or browning, I use iron & stell.
Problem is, if something burns on, it burns on hard. Soap doesn't really help. Water and scrubbing mostly do, but they don't completely get it off. I can't even tell when the remaining patina is seasoning and when it's just gunk -- until it becomes rough to the touch, in which case it's obvious, and I scrub hard.
This doesn't seem to agree with either experience or the scientific understanding of the polymerization process that needs to occur in a well seasoned cast iron pan.
The best oil for seasoning is flaxseed oil, which has very low smoke point. I mean you can use high smoke points oils, but you want your oil to start smoking.
I used avocado, coconut and flaxseed oils for seasoning - flaxseed is the easiest and delivered best results IMO. Plus it's nice oil for salads and some smoothies. It's not a "special" oil.
As for soap, I used it from time to time. However, why my pans are at the peak of seasoning - there is just no need to use soap.
Great article, just one thing I don't quite understand: vintage vs modern cast iron pans.
I get his point about the older ones having smooth(er) finish due to production methods change, but what stops SOME modern manufacturers to do the same? Surely for a community that is essentially a cult, there should be enough people buying it to worth the additional manufacturing cost?
There are, as others pointed out, but they are a lot more expensive. I used an angle grinder with a sanding disc on my cheap Lodge to get a similar effect.
On the soap thing, I think a dishwasher is not OK since the soap is harsher. Can anyone confirm? I know there's also a risk of letting it sit and dry (i.e. rust) but that can be managed.
You probably want a neutral oil for salad dressings, or mayonnaise. You want a high smoke point for any frying(deep, shallow, or stir) you'll do. Every grocery store I've been in has peanut, canola, or avocado, which will all do.
I read somewhere a year or two ago that basically compared cast iron to wood, which has helped my intuition of things a lot.
Here is a blog post [0] I read a few months ago about wood finishes. I think the following applies just as much to cast iron as to the wood he is talking about:
So, when I choose a finish, I ignore the industry-standard scratch and adhesion tests. Instead, I separate finishes into two buckets:
1. Finishes that look incredible immediately but look like crap in 20 years (the short-run finishes) vs. finishes that look incredible when worn/abused (the long-run finishes).
2. Finishes that want me dead vs. finishes that I can apply while buck naked.
Basically I would equate Polyurethane with Teflon, and furniture oil with cooking oil.
Teflon will be great to cook on initially. As soon as it gets damaged, it will be hard to fix without stripping and redoing everything.
Oil will take more maintenance over time, but if it starts looking bad, you just put a bit more on. That's exactly how you should treat cast iron as well.
The trouble people run into is they try to use oil to create a teflon surface. That's not what it's for.
Mentioning a couple hypotheses (drying oils make for better seasonings) with a couple hypothesized mechanisms does not make this a science based approach. A science based approach (in this particular chemical context) would involve controlled experiments (off the top of my head, what about the roughness of the cast iron? Carbon content? Time to warm up the oven? Why six layers and not twelve? Etc etc). Claims like "youbneed to use 100% pure oil, I think that's why it might not be working for you" would not be present - science based involves testing that hypothesis and seeing if the purity or brand or whatever of the oil matters There! There would be some key metrics to measure, such as some molecular analysis of the residue, some test for non-stick ability, and perhaps a longevity test.
It might seem like a bit much, but this is an article presenting the conclusions of "science" as recommendations to pursue in your every day life, and a lack of scientific rigor can create false confidence in false solutions. For something as complex as polymerization in the varied environment of home cast iron seasoning, there's an enormous amount of work and confounding factors you would need to sift through (seasoning on the stove vs oven?). Without that rigor, you might have stumbled into the best way of doing things, but as other comments suggest, its more likely your lack of rigor has led to missing things like the seasonings tendency to flake.
Most popular "food science" falls into this trap, as far as I've seen. Even my preferred resources such as seriouseats or America's Test Kitchen.
A teaspoon of vodka in the dough makes the pie crust flakier? At the very least it seems like one could say "we cooked 5 pies each way, and a blind taste test found that 4/5 tasters rated the batter with vodka as flakier".
That seems like the minimum amount of effort to call something scientific. It doesn't require any specialized equipment or training. We're not even getting into detailed methodology, or significance testing. Yet still, even the best sources I see make completely opaque claims such as "we found reverse creaming makes the cake more dense and buttery, while traditional creaming results in a traditional fluffy cake".
An aside: America’s Test Kitchen “Best Recipes” book taught me how to cook in my early twenties. Having a page or two of “we tried this, hated this, liked this tweak, so that’s why we do...” helped tremendously in learning how/why recipe design and cooking technique matter.
Honestly the only works that I have seen that comes close is the Modernist Cuisine, a lot of effort went into the why and how of cooking and the culinary arts.
As I mentioned in my other comment in this thread, the linked article goes in the step in the right direction by having hypotheses at all. That's why this article remains so influential despite its hypothesis (flax oil makes for better seasoning) having been disproved.
If someone wants to dethrone this article, they need to do it with more/better science to support an alternative hypothesis (e.g. a recommendation for a different oil). Without this, it is impossible to establish the credibility of different recommendations.
It then takes a step in the wrong direction by presenting the hypothesis as a scientific conclusion. Everyone has a hypothesis. Having a hypothesis doesn't make it special or science based. Every anecdote driven article is presenting a hypothesis, and an awful lot of them Couch their anecdotes in potential scientific explanations to sound more credible. Theres not a need to do "more" science - there's a need to do basically any science. I'll grant that the societal context means that someone has to do more work and then present their findings in an equally engaging way (with the necessary anecdotes etc), but science based?
I think there is a habit in popular literature to equate "science" with "facts obtained by reading scientific and/or engineering literature." Hence all the talk about polymerization or drying oils etc. They did not mean to imply "scientific-method-based."
Honestly, cast iron is about the most forgiving cooking surface you will find. People love to make it more difficult than it is.
Edit:
Some additional tips on cast iron:
Setting 4 / 10 (slightly below medium) is the default heat setting, and you have to really have something specific in mind to ever go above 5. I find that people who are used to teflon pans like to go up into the medium-high range. Things don't end well up there with cast iron.
Also buy a metal spatula. You aren't going to hurt anything, and it will be a more satisfying cooking experience. Plastic + cast iron is just going to leave you with a melted spatula. There used to be a ubiquitous metal spatula design, but I can never find them anymore. I've found it is much better to use something small like a cake / bar server than something big like a grilling spatula.
Don't cook on cold cast iron. The trick my mom showed me is you always wait until a splash of water (get your fingers wet and flick it on the pan) will start boiling on contact. If it boils into nothing immediately, you are too hot. If it just sits there and does nothing, you aren't hot enough yet.
Exactly. No reason at all for all of these crazy rituals involving 42 different kinds of oil (2 or 3 of which are made of Unobtanium anyway), ovens, salt, baking soda, owl urine, black cats, graveyard dirt, the Necronomicon, or whatever other weird shit people are throwing out there. Just cook with the darn thing. I don't know why people feel the need to overcomplicate this.
Without sharp corners. You will cut the polymerization layer otherwise, if not careful.
> Don't cook on cold cast iron.
You literally can't cook on cold metal. :)
Dancing water is too hot for some things, IMHO, like eggs. Once it is that hot I'm past the point of good eggs.
I put the oil in and bring it up slowly until the oil runs faster than cold oil, but way, way, way before the smoke point. I like my eggs to have zero brown crisp, so I use low temps and a good olive oil. Also have to use fresh eggs so that the white doesn't spread more the 4-5". On a good day with good eggs if I'm paying attention, I get a perfecty-set white with no brown crisp, and a slow-run yolk with no cooked bits, and after one quick flip to the top to sear the yolk. Perfection.
A drop of water affected by the Leidenfrost effect looks different from one in a too cold pan.
If I'm doing something that requires a ripping hot pan, one that's actually hot enough for the Leidenfrost effect is where I am for. This usually requires that I use a high smoke point oil, like refined peanut oil.
This is what I think too. I bought my cast iron pan for $15. I use the heck out of it, and I don't think about seasoning one second. If I need to cook something that will stick, I put oil or butter on it, and I wash the pan afterwards. Even my stainless steel pans, I use them as I like without worrying about anything. I use oil/butter when I need to, and then wash. What I love most about both is that I scrub it with SOS pad if something gets caked on. I don't know why people are so concerned about "seasoning" the pan. My All-clad frying pan was $100, I've had it for a few years now, lots of scratch and dents but who cares? I'll probably use it for a long time and not think about replacing them. They are indestructible and even if I had to replace them, it wasn't an arm and a leg.
> Setting 4 / 10 (slightly below medium) is the default heat setting, and you have to really have something specific in mind to ever go above 5
Do you do any chinese cooking with a carbon steel wok?
For stir frying you generally want things as hot as you can get them. I only have a Teflon wok, and my biggest problem with it is that it just doesn't get hot enough. The other problem is that Teflon really doesn't like very high temperatures, so I'm lucky if a wok lasts a year before bits are peeling off. I've always been put off a carbon steel wok though, because of all the faffing about with seasoning, but reading some of the comments here it might be simpler just to wash and oil it after every use.
I recently bought my first carbon steel wok and just today I put in the time to properly season it. Naturally, this evening I did my first stir fry with it and it was a blast! Cleaning was pretty simple. After I had finished eating I put some water into it, got it boiling, and used the spatula to scrape of the crusty bits. Then I cleaned and rinsed it under running hot water with some support of a brush. After a bit of drying off back onto the stove set to high to dry - and to polymerise the remaining traces of cooking oil to reinforce the seasoning. Cool off a bit and then apply a very thin layer of oil for protection.
That might sound a lot, but it really only takes a few minutes!
I'll do this every time after using the wok. I expect it to be good for a very long time. There might be easier ways to achieve this, but that's what extensive research has taught me to do.
That said, I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone as we rarely use it.
I read somewhere that unless you have a commercial-grade gas range, you are unlikely to hit the temperatures needed to really properly cook with a thinner metal wok. Cast iron is supposed to be a bit of a compromise because it can hold the heat better, but you can't toss it around the way you would with a normal wok.
As to carbon steel, I'd say go for it. I think you'll find it a lot less fussy than you have been told.
Also, I'd say stir fry definitely qualifies under the "something specific" where you would want to use the high heat settings on the stove.
The advantage of cast iron is that you just cook on it and over time (if it isn't already seasoned) it seasons itself. That's all there has to be to it... fussing over how you season it and then throwing whatever food in there seems a little silly.
I cook a great deal and once in a while it's time to scrape down (often because I made a big mess in the pan) the cast iron pan and 'start over'.
My starting over just means ... I clean it thoroughly, oil it a bit when I cook on it the next time. That's it. Pretty quickly it will be plenty seasoned.
If folks want to take a deep dive into seasoning their cast iron pan in a complicated fashion, awesome, but it's really not necessarily.
My cast iron set is 20 years old now and used almost every day. One thing cast iron isn't good for is when you have to change temps mid cooking. If doing something that needs mid heat then going to low heat cast iron will fail you as it won't go to the lower heat easily.
When oiling the pans take the time to try to wipe out all the oil you applied. This leaves just a tiny layer of oil and your pans won't get sticky. I clean with diluted Dawn and a sponge - dry on burner - then oil / wipe out each use.
Carbon steel gang here, I just cook with it, if the coat flakes then I just keep cooking with it. Run under hot water when I'm done, scraping with a dish brush.
I don't see the point to the perfect coating; occasionally using it in the oven already gets you to the perfect slick season.
My dish brush gets really yucky with this method (not using dish soap). Greasy and soot:y. Do you just not care about this issue or do you spend some time cleaning it afterwards?
I find that my skillet comes out really nice when I make a batch of cornbread. You grease it real good and get it hot before pouring in the batter, and during cooking the right amount is absorbed by the cornbread. This leaves behind a hard slick surface.
The youtube algorithm decided it needed to recommend a whole hose of cast iron videos to me over Christmas and they kept repeating this.
So I went and washed my skillet down to a matte surface, rubbed oil into it, and cooked an egg. Worked perfectly fine.
You won't ever get the "slippery" coating like with a teflon pan, but I also find cooking on that type of surface to be absolutely maddening since any time you try to chop or scoop in such a pan, the food just slides out from under you and you have to chase it about.
I want my food to "not stick" in the same way that a book doesn't stick to a table. I don't want an ice rink.
There's basically no science in this "science-based how-to".
This was the article which started the flaxseed oil cast-iron fad. I think that has now faded: apparently flaxseed oil has a tendency to deteriorate and flake off over time.
There's basically no science -- in the broad sense of hypothesis testing -- around cast iron at all. It's all tribal knowledge. "I do it this way because that's how my grandma did it and it works for me." That's fine enough, but it makes for a frustrating experience as a newcomer with no way to evaluate the credibility of different sources; it's just everyone's word against everyone else.
This is especially confusing given how long cast iron has been around; you'd think that someone would have taken an interest in cataloguing what actually works, by now.
So while this post may not be good science, or very much of it, I still appreciate that it exists.
I think the confounder is that cast iron is just rather resilient and cooking is dominated by other choices and technologies. Such that much of what folks think were needed just didn't matter.
The page linked in another top comment is worth reading in full.
I can confirm, I’ve tried flaxseed (based on this article and other ancedata) and while the seasoning came out really nice after 6 months or so it has started to flake and after a year it looks really bad.
Agreed. This article started a fad when it came out 10 years ago, and now everybody agrees flaxseed oil is a bad choice, "science-based" as this may claim to be.
This seasoning fad is some post-teflon madness IMO, after weeks of trying a dozen odd formulas there was always someone with another oil or temperature setting. Might as well be working on inertial confinement.
Agreed, please don’t season with flaxseed oil — it doesn’t last. Obsession over the smoke point is unfounded, you just want polymerization and carbonization, which any unsaturated fat coated in a thin layer will do for your cast iron.
I did the flaxseed thing when this blog post came out some years back and ended up having to redo my seasoning on the couple pans I tried it on. The seasoning easily flaked off. Just use canola oil and call it a day.
Yes it seems like a very flawed assumption to assume that the other uses of linseed oil would make flaxseed oil a perfect candidate. I've never tried it. Personally I just use canola oil but it can leave a sticky residue as the author says. It lessens if I heat it for a longer time, but I just store it wrapped in a cloth anyway.
I find these how-tos boggling. It's not that difficult to season cast iron cookware. Just cook on it. Same thing with soldering - there are countless videos of people teaching others on how to solder. If you can wear clothes that morning, you can solder.
Also, what if I told you its ok to use soap on cast iron pans? The hardened coating isn't prone to soap interaction. It removes all the grime and gives you a clean non-stick surface if you use soap.
I blame all this on hipster culture which is based on nothing but making things more complicated than it should be, getting viewership and generally misleading people into thinking something is more difficult that it really is. In turn, making people spend more money on useless shit that they don't need.
The no-soap rule came from back when soap contained lye, which does indeed strip the seasoning from cast iron. This knowledge was passed down, and became false as soap changed formulas. Not because of "hipster culture", by which I think you mean consumerism. Try to have an open mind.
2020 taught me a lot more about cooking than I ever would have gone out of my way to learn on my own.
I've never cooked with what I imagine to be a perfect seasoning on my skillet. I just cook with it.
I sorta wonder if there's a kind of placebo effect. When you really think about your tools, you notice lots of little things to do better (or I did anyway).
Getting the pan hot enough, and being aware of what parts are hotter, like the ring where the burner heats the skillet, had a huge impact on stuff "sticking" I don't know if the heat helps seal up little micro holes and cracks, so food doesn't grab onto those edges. Or perhaps The moisture turns to steam and creates a little gap, letting food sort of float above the pan, never really making contact. Maybe both.
Just a tiny bit of lubrication helps so much as well. A spray of pam or a few drops of oil work wonders.
With a good understanding of heat and lubrication, I feel sorta like I could cook eggs on a pie pan over a burner, and they won't stick.
I wonder how much is seasoning, and how much is understanding how the tools work, inside and out, to get desired outcomes.
the thing about cooking is there are often many different ways to achieve the same outcome. a cast iron skillet with an even layer of seasoning has noticeably better (to me, at least) nonstick properties than the same skillet with a half-assed seasoning on it. but the former takes a lot more time/effort and it really doesn't matter if you just add an extra pad of butter. with enough cooking fat, eggs will slide around any skillet as if it were an ice rink.
This is a great example of a topic that has been taken over by “internet experts”
Talk about over-complicating the treatment of cookware that has been around for hundreds of years.
I have about 8 pieces of cast iron cookware, but I really only use one: my grandmothers pan. It’s not a fancy brand, it’s 65 years old, and it just works.
My mother never used it because “it was hard to clean and heavy”.
Use a little oil with it and stuff doesn’t really stick. I can cook lbs of bacon, make steaks, bake a whole chicken, sliced potatoes, make gravy, put an apple cobbler in the oven...
I use a metal spatula to scrape anything off (after boiling some water in it to loosen it up), or a lodge plastic scraper, and scrub it lightly with a sponge and a bit of dish soap. Don’t put it away wet. It’s simple.
> I use a metal spatula to scrape anything off (after boiling some water in it to loosen it up), or a lodge plastic scraper, and scrub it lightly with a sponge and a bit of dish soap. Don’t put it away wet. It’s simple.
This is pretty much what I do, except I use a nylon brush instead of the scraper – same deal. I think the boiling water and brush are perfect because they leave just the right amount of oil still on the pan.
Contra to what most are saying here, I went through this laborious and stinky process of taking my pans down to bare metal and building them back up with flax oil a couple of years ago and got great results.
I did get poor performance after a few months and felt heartbroken over it, but fixed it with another approach that differs from received wisdom: use soap and a nylon scouring pad from time to time. That’s never damaged the seasoning, but removes any caked on burned bits of food that dull the pan. I read on /r/castiron that the idea of soap being damaging is a hold over from when lye based soap was commonly used for dishes. Modern dish detergent isn’t going to cause the same damage. The other thing that helped was getting a straight metal spatula to really scrape the pan which has resulted in a smoother surface over time.
Nobody is saying you’ll definitely get bad results from this, but it is a large waste of time. I say this as someone who did the same thing, always struggled to figure out why I had problems, and had better results when I simply stopped babying it.
IMO your problem was likely the lack of washing. Soap and scrubbing will not damage your patina in any meaningful way. What washing does do is removes the caked on, half-polymerized bits that causes food to stick (and which creates a negative feedback loop of problems).
Your cast iron is not a precious flower. Your grandmother did not fret over the decision of which oil to use for optimal seasoning. Use it, abuse it, and clean it out like anything else when you’re done (if there’s visible residue). If you want, dry it out on the stove top afterward and wipe a thin layer of oil on to it.
I agree, things improved when I liberally used soap, scrubbers, and sharp flat metal spatulas to scrape things clean.
But I also haven’t seen any flaking of the flax base seasoning like others have. With previous pans I have accidentally scrubbed down to bare metal. Maybe I was just starting with thrift store pans that had been too heavily babied, and the process of cooking off the layers of carbonized food and old seasoning and starting over helped regardless of which oil I used.
Readit News
Keep a squirt bottle of oil on hand and make sure you're using enough. Using soap to clean your pans will make maintaining your seasoning easier, as you use less effort to clean them. See this if you're skeptical: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iro...
I had friends dedicate years to flax seed oil. They're not happy about it, as they've got flaking to deal with. I also had friends disbelieve me that soap was okay, and they've mostly come around after hearing me swear by it for years.
You want oil soaked into the metal. This idea that you are trying to build a non-stick surface on top of the metal is just adding extra work that isn't needed.
Wash with soap, dry of the stove top, put in some oil (I use peanut), then take a paper towel and rub the oil around over everything and at the end the metal should look shiny but there shouldn't be any pooled oil left anywhere.
If you are cooking something that doesn't leave a residue or strong flavor, you can skip the washing all together and just leave it there to cook with next time.
If you try to go the whole "never wash this" route, you end up with unhappy results going from cooking something with onions and garlic to cooking something more neutral flavored. No one wants onion flavored pancakes.
However, cast iron will never be as non-stick as a good non-stick pan, and if you treat it as one, you’re going to have a bad time.
Put bacon in a dry, hot pan, and it’ll leave crispy fond stuck to the pan. (Nothing you do will ever create fond in a non-stick pan.) Cook bacon starting with a cold pan, and enough fat will render by the time it heats to keep it from sticking.
Eggs will stick to cold, dry cast iron. Fry eggs in a moderately hot pan with plenty of grease. I had the devil of a time with fried eggs until I realized I wasn’t letting the pan heat enough. Also, it’s very easy to burn butter in a cast iron pan; use a more forgiving fat like bacon grease or a neutral oil.
Cast iron behaves differently than non-stick or stainless steel. Different heat density, different emissivity. Just like any other cookware, you need to learn how to work with it; it’s not just a matter of getting the magical perfect seasoning and pretending it’s Teflon.
For proof of this, check out your aluminum baking sheets. If they’ve been used, they’re almost certainly covered in a shiny black substance that’s a complete pain in the ass to remove, even with abrasives. That’s essentially what’s on your cast iron.
Scallion pancake with pork belly is one of my favorite combos :-)
Is there solid evidence that this is actually possible, as opposed to creating a layer on top of it? The only people I've ever heard suggest that it's possible were talking about cast iron pans, and it's always struck me as the sort of thing that would have major implications for a lot of other fields.
I tried some web searches before posting this, still not finding anything suggesting it's possible other than cast iron pan aficionados.
However I try to avoid using soapy chemicals on my cast iron. If I do use soap it's literally one drop onto the scrub brush instead of the pan. Although I'm sure that if you went heavier on the soap nothing would come of it anyway. Most of the time I use water and a scrub brush. I scrub with good speed and not a lot of pressure to break off lingering debris.
And if I'm going to be using it the next day I'll leave it shiny, but if it's going to sit for a couple days I'll leave it on a little longer until it's a little more matte looking. Not 100% matte, but not "shiny" either. Just a sheen. That way it won't be sticky during storage where it will collect dust and contaminants.
Somebody's never had latkes before.
:/
Another good method is outlined in this America's Test Kitchen video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suTmUX4Vbk
If you have a friend who runs a Chinese restaurant, you could always try this, too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGXGJD2xTzQ
I do this regularly and always clean my pan with soap after use.
The wok burner I have is this one: https://www.amazon.ca/Eastman-Outdoors-37212-Gourmet-Carbon/...
It’s a ton of fun to cook on, and useful for way more than just the wok. When I go diving and get crabs for example, this thing gets a huge pot of water boiling in no time and makes prepping a lot of crabs really easy.
And yeah, it’ll season any pan like nothing else. I was terrible at seasoning pans until I started throwing them on this thing.
> I had friends dedicate years to flax seed oil. They're not happy about it, as they've got flaking to deal with.
I happen to have bought some flax oil specifically for seasoning my cast iron - you’re saying it’s contraindicated though? (So “you don’t need special oil, but _especially_ not these” (leaving only peanut and avocado))?
For the amount of times the word “science” is dropped there’s still a good amount of myth and legend associated with owning cast iron. Short of having my own double blind statically significant study and perhaps a microscope to observe the polymerization effects, I’m still flopping back/forth a bit about what “the best” or at least not leaving a simple improvement on the table, is. What a journey.
Still worth the trouble, though. Cooking is fun, and cast iron is a good cooking tool.
Just fry up a full pan of very heavily salted potato peels. Use more oil and a lot more salt than you would normally use for pan frying. Make sure to move them around, don't be afraid to scrub them around, they will feel gritty due to all the salt. Fry the peels until they're very dark, they should be far too dark and salty to be edible.
Wash out the pan with hot water and dry it. Done.
It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It's the method used in professional kitchens, as far as I know.
Despite the flax oil article being bad science, it is still the most science of any of the cast iron information out there, which is why it continues to enjoy such popularity. Even if it is bad science, it at least provides some hypotheses to test!
Here's my hypotheses on soap (edit: rephrased to better reflect my meaning):
1) Soap is fine to use; it will not damage the seasoning.
2) Seasoning is often damaged (at least a little) while cooking and it is important to re-season regularly to keep the pan in good shape.
3) If you do not use soap, the amount of oil left on the surface is similar to the amount you would want to wipe on when re-seasoning.
Basically, I think no soap + dry on stove is a shortcut to avoid the process/effort of reseasoning the pan (especially if you do the oil-and-salt-as-an-abrasive trick). Perhaps you'll get better results using soap and then wiping on oil, but it's more work and many people don't do the second part. Thus, they see better results when they don't use soap.
This would explain why some people tell you you need to reseason after every use, while others say that's bubkis, and why the same is true of soap avoidance.
To test: try all 4 combinations of soap/no-soap and reseasoning/just-drying (always dry the same way, on the stovetop).
These are my most often used pans, and have remained that way for many years.
Fwiw I rarely need or use a scraper or salt while cleaning , I’ll “deglaze” if there is fond in the pan, even in the rare case that I’m not using the result for anything.
What you say seems more or less correct to me. I think if you approach cast iron that way, you will have good results.
Basically, you don't want the pan to look "not-oiled", and how much effort you need to put into that depends on how much you are removing the existing oil during the cooking process.
I think the "looks oily" test is the proper determinant for if the cast iron is in good shape. Trying to develop a "seasoning" layer is likely to just cause frustration.
+1 on the squirt bottle of oil, I started doing that a few years ago and it was game-changing. Previously I'd just pour a little out of the original bottle when I was cooking, which was a lot less convenient than having something appropriately sized and within arms reach.
Source: lack of historic availability of avocado oil in the South
I find fatty meats(bacon, sausage) or just canned lard to work absolutely best for seasoning. It's also what our ancestors used before they probably even knew what an avocado was. For a vegan, I'd assume shortening is ok as well, but I've never actually tested that.
This is less effort than using soap, and more effective. The stainless smooths out any imperfections that form in the seasoning over time, and cooking with oil continuously reseasons it.
I found that I had to re-season my pans every 5-10 years if I used soap, and that the seasoning was an inferior cooking surface (more food stuck to it). With the technique I described above, I can cook eggs and they don’t stick. (be sure to preheat, use plenty of oil, and then don’t touch for a minute or two at the beginning of cooking)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FKBR1ZG/
Cleaning gets much easier:
1. Rinse dirty pan out with some warm water 2. Clean the chunks and stuff that sticks to the pan with the chainmail 3. Rinse again under some warm water
That’s it. The oil from whatever you were cooking should still be on there; no need to put peanut or avocado oil on there unless you burnt it all off or cooked something acidic (use a different pan for that; you’ll learn).
Other people seem to have a bigger problem with burnt-on bits than I do. I don't know why that is, but I'm inclined to trust my process.
Also I like washing all the cooking oil off so I don't have used oil sitting around going rancid. Surfactants are good for that.
Acidic stuff is also fine. If my pan looks thirsty afterwards, I've got the squirt bottle and paper towels, it's easy. Cast iron is the least sensitive, most versatile tool in my kitchen. I'm not babying it.
I use cast iron and carbon steel for high-temperature cooking. If I really care about the non-stick-ness I'll usually use nonstick. But nonstick doesn't char well (and isn't safe). So when I want a serious sear or browning, I use iron & stell.
Problem is, if something burns on, it burns on hard. Soap doesn't really help. Water and scrubbing mostly do, but they don't completely get it off. I can't even tell when the remaining patina is seasoning and when it's just gunk -- until it becomes rough to the touch, in which case it's obvious, and I scrub hard.
This doesn't seem to agree with either experience or the scientific understanding of the polymerization process that needs to occur in a well seasoned cast iron pan.
The best oil for seasoning is flaxseed oil, which has very low smoke point. I mean you can use high smoke points oils, but you want your oil to start smoking.
I used avocado, coconut and flaxseed oils for seasoning - flaxseed is the easiest and delivered best results IMO. Plus it's nice oil for salads and some smoothies. It's not a "special" oil.
As for soap, I used it from time to time. However, why my pans are at the peak of seasoning - there is just no need to use soap.
I get his point about the older ones having smooth(er) finish due to production methods change, but what stops SOME modern manufacturers to do the same? Surely for a community that is essentially a cult, there should be enough people buying it to worth the additional manufacturing cost?
I believe there are manufacturers filling that niche now. Field [0] is one that I'm aware of. I think there are four or five others.
[0] https://fieldcompany.com/
Been using safflower for over 20 years on my day-use skillet.
This sounds somewhat like "special" to me.
Here is a blog post [0] I read a few months ago about wood finishes. I think the following applies just as much to cast iron as to the wood he is talking about:
Basically I would equate Polyurethane with Teflon, and furniture oil with cooking oil.Teflon will be great to cook on initially. As soon as it gets damaged, it will be hard to fix without stripping and redoing everything.
Oil will take more maintenance over time, but if it starts looking bad, you just put a bit more on. That's exactly how you should treat cast iron as well.
The trouble people run into is they try to use oil to create a teflon surface. That's not what it's for.
[0] https://blog.lostartpress.com/2020/11/30/rip-the-anarchists-...
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It might seem like a bit much, but this is an article presenting the conclusions of "science" as recommendations to pursue in your every day life, and a lack of scientific rigor can create false confidence in false solutions. For something as complex as polymerization in the varied environment of home cast iron seasoning, there's an enormous amount of work and confounding factors you would need to sift through (seasoning on the stove vs oven?). Without that rigor, you might have stumbled into the best way of doing things, but as other comments suggest, its more likely your lack of rigor has led to missing things like the seasonings tendency to flake.
A teaspoon of vodka in the dough makes the pie crust flakier? At the very least it seems like one could say "we cooked 5 pies each way, and a blind taste test found that 4/5 tasters rated the batter with vodka as flakier".
That seems like the minimum amount of effort to call something scientific. It doesn't require any specialized equipment or training. We're not even getting into detailed methodology, or significance testing. Yet still, even the best sources I see make completely opaque claims such as "we found reverse creaming makes the cake more dense and buttery, while traditional creaming results in a traditional fluffy cake".
If someone wants to dethrone this article, they need to do it with more/better science to support an alternative hypothesis (e.g. a recommendation for a different oil). Without this, it is impossible to establish the credibility of different recommendations.
Cook with it. Use oil / fat.
Honestly, cast iron is about the most forgiving cooking surface you will find. People love to make it more difficult than it is.
Edit:
Some additional tips on cast iron:
Setting 4 / 10 (slightly below medium) is the default heat setting, and you have to really have something specific in mind to ever go above 5. I find that people who are used to teflon pans like to go up into the medium-high range. Things don't end well up there with cast iron.
Also buy a metal spatula. You aren't going to hurt anything, and it will be a more satisfying cooking experience. Plastic + cast iron is just going to leave you with a melted spatula. There used to be a ubiquitous metal spatula design, but I can never find them anymore. I've found it is much better to use something small like a cake / bar server than something big like a grilling spatula.
Don't cook on cold cast iron. The trick my mom showed me is you always wait until a splash of water (get your fingers wet and flick it on the pan) will start boiling on contact. If it boils into nothing immediately, you are too hot. If it just sits there and does nothing, you aren't hot enough yet.
Exactly. No reason at all for all of these crazy rituals involving 42 different kinds of oil (2 or 3 of which are made of Unobtanium anyway), ovens, salt, baking soda, owl urine, black cats, graveyard dirt, the Necronomicon, or whatever other weird shit people are throwing out there. Just cook with the darn thing. I don't know why people feel the need to overcomplicate this.
Without sharp corners. You will cut the polymerization layer otherwise, if not careful.
> Don't cook on cold cast iron.
You literally can't cook on cold metal. :)
Dancing water is too hot for some things, IMHO, like eggs. Once it is that hot I'm past the point of good eggs.
I put the oil in and bring it up slowly until the oil runs faster than cold oil, but way, way, way before the smoke point. I like my eggs to have zero brown crisp, so I use low temps and a good olive oil. Also have to use fresh eggs so that the white doesn't spread more the 4-5". On a good day with good eggs if I'm paying attention, I get a perfecty-set white with no brown crisp, and a slow-run yolk with no cooked bits, and after one quick flip to the top to sear the yolk. Perfection.
That is actually slightly misleading due to the Leidenfrost effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect
If I'm doing something that requires a ripping hot pan, one that's actually hot enough for the Leidenfrost effect is where I am for. This usually requires that I use a high smoke point oil, like refined peanut oil.
Do you do any chinese cooking with a carbon steel wok?
For stir frying you generally want things as hot as you can get them. I only have a Teflon wok, and my biggest problem with it is that it just doesn't get hot enough. The other problem is that Teflon really doesn't like very high temperatures, so I'm lucky if a wok lasts a year before bits are peeling off. I've always been put off a carbon steel wok though, because of all the faffing about with seasoning, but reading some of the comments here it might be simpler just to wash and oil it after every use.
That might sound a lot, but it really only takes a few minutes!
I'll do this every time after using the wok. I expect it to be good for a very long time. There might be easier ways to achieve this, but that's what extensive research has taught me to do.
That said, I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone as we rarely use it.
I read somewhere that unless you have a commercial-grade gas range, you are unlikely to hit the temperatures needed to really properly cook with a thinner metal wok. Cast iron is supposed to be a bit of a compromise because it can hold the heat better, but you can't toss it around the way you would with a normal wok.
As to carbon steel, I'd say go for it. I think you'll find it a lot less fussy than you have been told.
Also, I'd say stir fry definitely qualifies under the "something specific" where you would want to use the high heat settings on the stove.
[0] https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/cast-iron-wok?sku=P14W...
The advantage of cast iron is that you just cook on it and over time (if it isn't already seasoned) it seasons itself. That's all there has to be to it... fussing over how you season it and then throwing whatever food in there seems a little silly.
I cook a great deal and once in a while it's time to scrape down (often because I made a big mess in the pan) the cast iron pan and 'start over'.
My starting over just means ... I clean it thoroughly, oil it a bit when I cook on it the next time. That's it. Pretty quickly it will be plenty seasoned.
If folks want to take a deep dive into seasoning their cast iron pan in a complicated fashion, awesome, but it's really not necessarily.
When oiling the pans take the time to try to wipe out all the oil you applied. This leaves just a tiny layer of oil and your pans won't get sticky. I clean with diluted Dawn and a sponge - dry on burner - then oil / wipe out each use.
I don't see the point to the perfect coating; occasionally using it in the oven already gets you to the perfect slick season.
Ill try the water test next time
So I went and washed my skillet down to a matte surface, rubbed oil into it, and cooked an egg. Worked perfectly fine.
You won't ever get the "slippery" coating like with a teflon pan, but I also find cooking on that type of surface to be absolutely maddening since any time you try to chop or scoop in such a pan, the food just slides out from under you and you have to chase it about.
I want my food to "not stick" in the same way that a book doesn't stick to a table. I don't want an ice rink.
Granted, if you still use soap that warrants the use of heavy plastic gloves, probably a bit easier.
This was the article which started the flaxseed oil cast-iron fad. I think that has now faded: apparently flaxseed oil has a tendency to deteriorate and flake off over time.
This is especially confusing given how long cast iron has been around; you'd think that someone would have taken an interest in cataloguing what actually works, by now.
So while this post may not be good science, or very much of it, I still appreciate that it exists.
The page linked in another top comment is worth reading in full.
Deleted Comment
I did the flaxseed thing when this blog post came out some years back and ended up having to redo my seasoning on the couple pans I tried it on. The seasoning easily flaked off. Just use canola oil and call it a day.
Also, what if I told you its ok to use soap on cast iron pans? The hardened coating isn't prone to soap interaction. It removes all the grime and gives you a clean non-stick surface if you use soap.
I blame all this on hipster culture which is based on nothing but making things more complicated than it should be, getting viewership and generally misleading people into thinking something is more difficult that it really is. In turn, making people spend more money on useless shit that they don't need.
I got a good kick out of this.
I've never cooked with what I imagine to be a perfect seasoning on my skillet. I just cook with it.
I sorta wonder if there's a kind of placebo effect. When you really think about your tools, you notice lots of little things to do better (or I did anyway).
Getting the pan hot enough, and being aware of what parts are hotter, like the ring where the burner heats the skillet, had a huge impact on stuff "sticking" I don't know if the heat helps seal up little micro holes and cracks, so food doesn't grab onto those edges. Or perhaps The moisture turns to steam and creates a little gap, letting food sort of float above the pan, never really making contact. Maybe both.
Just a tiny bit of lubrication helps so much as well. A spray of pam or a few drops of oil work wonders.
With a good understanding of heat and lubrication, I feel sorta like I could cook eggs on a pie pan over a burner, and they won't stick.
I wonder how much is seasoning, and how much is understanding how the tools work, inside and out, to get desired outcomes.
Talk about over-complicating the treatment of cookware that has been around for hundreds of years.
I have about 8 pieces of cast iron cookware, but I really only use one: my grandmothers pan. It’s not a fancy brand, it’s 65 years old, and it just works.
My mother never used it because “it was hard to clean and heavy”.
Use a little oil with it and stuff doesn’t really stick. I can cook lbs of bacon, make steaks, bake a whole chicken, sliced potatoes, make gravy, put an apple cobbler in the oven...
I use a metal spatula to scrape anything off (after boiling some water in it to loosen it up), or a lodge plastic scraper, and scrub it lightly with a sponge and a bit of dish soap. Don’t put it away wet. It’s simple.
This is pretty much what I do, except I use a nylon brush instead of the scraper – same deal. I think the boiling water and brush are perfect because they leave just the right amount of oil still on the pan.
I did get poor performance after a few months and felt heartbroken over it, but fixed it with another approach that differs from received wisdom: use soap and a nylon scouring pad from time to time. That’s never damaged the seasoning, but removes any caked on burned bits of food that dull the pan. I read on /r/castiron that the idea of soap being damaging is a hold over from when lye based soap was commonly used for dishes. Modern dish detergent isn’t going to cause the same damage. The other thing that helped was getting a straight metal spatula to really scrape the pan which has resulted in a smoother surface over time.
IMO your problem was likely the lack of washing. Soap and scrubbing will not damage your patina in any meaningful way. What washing does do is removes the caked on, half-polymerized bits that causes food to stick (and which creates a negative feedback loop of problems).
Your cast iron is not a precious flower. Your grandmother did not fret over the decision of which oil to use for optimal seasoning. Use it, abuse it, and clean it out like anything else when you’re done (if there’s visible residue). If you want, dry it out on the stove top afterward and wipe a thin layer of oil on to it.
But I also haven’t seen any flaking of the flax base seasoning like others have. With previous pans I have accidentally scrubbed down to bare metal. Maybe I was just starting with thrift store pans that had been too heavily babied, and the process of cooking off the layers of carbonized food and old seasoning and starting over helped regardless of which oil I used.