Chemistry of Cast Iron Seasoning (2010)
This time of year, articles about cast iron cookware pop up all over the Internet. It's Holiday Season, time to get your sister-in-law a cast iron skillet that she will attempt to use a handful of times to her great dismay and frustration and then put up into the attic so that her grandkids can reproduce the experiment twenty years later.<p>"Cast iron seasoning" is a scam. There, I've said it. I've got a full set of cast-iron cookware and have made repeated furtive and unsuccessful attempts to use it it over a period of 30 years. It just doesn't work. You _will_ inadvertently put tomatoes or lemon juice into your skillet, it _will_ lose it's "seasoning", and you _will_ attempt to "re-season" it with only 25% success rate but a guaranteed 100% stinky and smoked-out household (complete with 9 smoke-alarms beeping) rate.<p>Instead of giving someone cast iron cookware (akin to giving someone herpes, but slightly less intimate and curable), give them a  teflon skillet - it will work immediately and unfailingly. It will lose it's charm slowly and gracefully (instead of the first time it is cleaned, as with a cast iron skillet). They will know when to replace it.<p>Let the posts from the alleged hundreds of blissfully contented cast-iron skillet users now commence.