thank
you

Love your blog. I have always loved cast iron cooking but never had success in seasoning it to a Non-stick. I was eager to try flax seed and your procedure. The only flax seed oil i was able to find was sold on the shelf with olive oils and clearly states “no refrigeration required”. The stuff said pure flax seed oil, and the only ingredient is “flaxseed oil”

why is my flaxseed oil different? Should I be using this?

In any case, even if char were non-stick (not so from my experience!; it sticks to pans and grills, that’s for sure), it should flake off with use and get all over your food. Graphite certainly wears away, unless you have specially prepared graphite solids.

If there were enough char or graphite to contribute significantly to the non-stick qualities of seasoning, wiping the well seasoned surface (seasoned by your flax seed oil method) with a paper towel should show lots of black stuff coming off. If the surface were washed clean, and wiping comes off clean, there shouldn’t be any char left on the surface at all.

I love this article. I did the same sort of things you mentioned, confusing oils that are good for cooking with oils that are good for seasoning, and gave up on one of my old cast iron dutch ovens. I will have to try your method.

I do have one potential enhancement to your method though. You used unrefined flax seed oil that had to be shaken because it has the lowest smoke point of any edible oil; I would contend that for seasoning, one would want to use highly filtered and non-chemically refined flax seed oil for the following reason: the coating that forms the seasoning is polymerized oil—only the oil polymerizes. Anything that settles in the bottle that needs to be re-suspended by shaking consists of non-oil components such as lignin, fiber, and other debris. These almost certainly lower the smoke point (just as most unrefined oils have lower smoke points), but they don’t contribute beneficially to seasoning; rather than polymerizing, they just char.

My hypothesis is that if you use a refined flax seed oil, or just pour the oil off the top to avoid sediment, or filter all the non-oil suspended debris out, you’ll get to the fine sheen in fewer coats. I suspect the tiny particles of non-oil components give the seasoning a matte finish since char particles have a matte texture, whereas polymerized oil is strictly glossy, as is seen from the use of refined linseed oil for varnish.

I won’t have the opportunity to test this hypothesis for a while. If you have a chance to test it, I would love to see whether this turns out to be true.

Thank you!