So guess what? Traditionally cast iron cookware was/is seasoned with animal fats. In fact, vegetable oil and shortening does something kind of weird to cast iron, leaving a weird film and actually not really seasoning the pan like you need.
But there is a vegan-friendly alternative to seasoning a cast iron pan.
It’s this wonderful lovely thing called coconut oil.
Why is coconut oil better than vegetable oil? Well, it’s all about the temperature tolerance, baby. Coconut oil is much more stable at higher temperatures (which is what your cast iron cookware will most likely be reaching) and it seasons the pan with a similar coating that animal fats would.
So let’s get started.
Yes, I made another video. I like to think I’m getting better at it, but then I watch what I come up with and laugh my butt off. So, I say ‘perfectly seasoned pan’ a bajillion times and also love the word ‘basically’ far too much, as evidenced by this episode of ‘Megan talks to herself while looking at a camera’.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
First wash your brand new cast iron pan with soap and water. Who knows what kind of rats were sleeping in it at the factory, after all. This will hopefully be the very first and very last time you touch this pan with soap.
Lather up the pan sides and bottom generously with the coconut oil.
And you don’t actually rinse. Instead, bake the pan at 250°F for 2 hours.
Remove the pan from the oven and drain off the oil to reuse later. (You’ll be doing this whole process again!)
Let the pan cool.
Repeat this process of lathering up the pan after every time you use it for the first, say, four uses. Then you’ll want to keep the maintenance part of the seasoning up by re-seasoning every once in a while, or after you’ve had to give it a good ol’ salt-scrubbing. (See below.)
How do you maintain this awesome seasoning once you’ve got it?
Avoid washing with soap. The soap is naturally designed to cut through grease, and that just isn’t ideal for what you’ve just been working to achieve … a well greased up seasoned pan.
Yes, you’ll need to clean it after you cook with it. If you don’t have any baked on hard bits you can just use water and wipe out the pan with a damp cloth. Let the pan air dry.
There are times you’ll have more stubborn messes to clean out of your pan. You know what the trick is? Use salt and a gentle scrub brush to break those bits free. Then do the water-damp cloth trick.
So, now what do you cook in your cast iron pan? Well, stay tuned friends … you’ll see.
Coconut oil! This is great to know. I’m not a vegetarian, but I like to try to keep healthy. Have you ever tried seasoning at 350 degrees for an hour? I’m in the “250 for 2” school, but I’ve seen that other people use this faster style.
The only time I’ve done at the high heat wasn’t exactly intentionally seasoning it. It was more like … whoops I left the cast iron pan in the oven while it was preheating for something else. I’m never usually in that much of a rush that an extra hour won’t hurt because I usually leave it in the oven while I’m doing other stuff around the kitchen. 🙂
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Hi, I just discovered your website last night when searching for vegan ways to season a cast iron pan. Thank you for posting this video and article!
I tried to do this twice now though, and I think I’m doing something wrong. The first time, my pan came out with a puddle of coconut oil left in it. Figuring that maybe I just used too much oil, I poured out the excess, spread the remainder around to cover the pan again, and tried a second time. This time it came out feeling kind of sticky. At the start I realized I had the oven too high though, so maybe that did it?
Anyway, if I can manage to get this thing seasoned, I will have to try some of your recipes! 🙂
Hi Michael, Thanks for the comment! Sometimes there’s a bit of extra coconut oil in the pan after it comes out of the oven. Just give it a quick wipe with a towel and it should be good. It is important to keep the oven at a low and slow temp too so maybe that’s why the second time around it didn’t work quite right. I hope you have success with it. Cheers!
The stickiness comes from using too much oil. You’ll want to strip the pans and start over.
You can’t go wrong with this method, just substitute coconut oil for Crisco: http://www.castironcollector.com/seasoning.php
Amazing article, you tried Lucy Bee’s Extra Virgin Coconut Oil?
The resources here is very much valuable. I have been taught several tactics.
Hi! So I have been trying to season my pan for weeks and I think I’m still doing something wrong 🙁 I use very little coconut oil just enough to coat it thinly cause the first time I thought I used to much cause it came out sticky. I am doing it @ 350 degrees for an hour so that might be the issue. I scrubbed out to restart and now every time I rub the oil in it my paper towel is black once I’ve coated it. Is it supposed to be pulling a black color from it. I used the salt trick and my dry wipe was clean of no black but then when I went to re coat with the coco oil it was pulled off a black color again. Please help! Thanks!
Follow the instructions at the link I posted upthread and you can’t go wrong.
350 isn’t hot enough and an hour isn’t long enough. (But you don’t want high heat right away, you want to raise the temperature in increments.)
Don’t worry about the black stuff on the paper towel, that’s normal.
Once you’ve got your initial seasoning on it, just cooking will build it up nicely. You don’t need to season over and over.
Jeez, thanks very much for posting this! It is gonna help when I buy Coconut Oil at the grocery store! Super Beautiful!
Make sure your oven temp is correct. Use a candy thermometer to check the oil. I failed to season on a couple attempts and when I checked the oil temp it was 100’F to low. Set it at 450’F[350 actual] for an hour. Works fine now.
Just wanted to mention, the seasoning is POLYMERIZED fat. So if you’re the only vegetarian in the house, no worries if someone else cooks bacon in your pan. It builds up the seasoning nicely, and once you’ve washed the pan you can use it again. You won’t taste bacon, and you won’t be “eating bacon”. Likewise, if grandma gives you her old pan and it’s got years of great seasoning on it, you don’t have to strip it. If a pan is seasoned with Crisco, it won’t kill you the way that cooking with Crisco will, because the shortening is polymerized on the pan. It’s a chemical reaction at the molecular level where molecules combine to form larger molecules that contain repeating structural units.
I have tried seasoning my cast iron skillet for nearly a year using coconut oil — and it never holds up when I’m cooking for instance mushrooms. Then I have to use butter or the pan loses its nonstick quality. I’m wondering if anyone has had the same experience–and if you have any other suggestions for an oil that might work well other than animal fats, etc.?
First of all, I have stripped and re-seasoned over one-hundred cast iron skillets, dutch ovens, pots, etc.. My first attempts were abysmal failures because I didn’t use enough heat. 200, 250, and in some cases 350 degrees just isn’t hot enough to accomplish a seasoning that works and lasts. First, decide what fat/oil you are going to season with. Then, look on the internet and CORRECTLY establish that products’ smoke point. Smoke point is the key-word here. If you aren’t making smoke, you aren’t seasoning. eg: If you use extra virgin olive oil at 350 degrees, you ARE going to end up with a sticky mess that will eventually start stinking and smelling rancid. The smoke-point for extra virgin olive oil is around 400-410 degrees. When using this oil, bake the oiled cookware at 450 degrees. YOU HAVE TO REACH AND EXCEEDTHE SMOKE POINT OF THE FAT OR OIL YOU ARE USING, otherwise you are wasting your time. Getting to the point, seasoning is the result of using heat to cause the physical breakdown of your oil to is elements, AND the bonding of some of those elements to your CI cookware. You don’t have to buy the fancy pre-packaged stuff marketed for CI seasoning.
My two favorite, and most successful methods are, regular old Crisco at between 450-500 degrees for one hour WITH the pan upside down, and repeat four to five times. ONLY put on enough oil to completely coat the pan, and wipe off all excess. Leaving too much oil will cause streaks and splotches and baked on drips. This method will give you a near black finish. The other is cheap generic canola oil which I buy in gallon jugs because of the volume of re-seasoning I do. With canola, apply the same as Crisco, wiping off the excess. One hour at 450 degrees, the repeat 3-4 times. This give you a dark brown-ish finish.
There are as many different ways to season CI out there, as there are people doing it. My rationale for the high heat is simply this; How many times do you bake bread, cakes, or cornbread OR fry fish and pork chops, OR make stew at 200 degrees? YOU DON’T! Practically everything you will bake, fry, sautee, or cook in a camp-stove or dutch-oven, happens at 350 degrees or higher. Every recipe you will encounter denotes a specific temperature, as well as a specific cook time duration to achieve a suitable finished product. You cant deep-fry fish in oil that has only reached 200 or 250 degrees instead of the traditional 425-450 degrees. The end product would be a grease soaked, fishy, pile of goo. So why would anyone expect to create a lasting, non-stick surface on cast iron with lower temperatures?
In closing, regardless of the fat/oil you prefer to season with, do your homework and find that fat/oils smoke point and season at a temp somewhat higher.
Last time I left town, I returned to find that someone had washed my cast iron pan. I nearly cried. I wasn’t able to season it the old fashioned way (lard, salt and a bed of coals), so I tried coconut oil, a sprinkle of salt, and a medium hot burner. I was always taught to add a sprinkle of salt. Don’t know why. Used a silicone basting brush to frequently move oil over pan. Kept it just shy of smoking. Didn’t time it, but probably a couple of hours. After the pan cooled, I used a scrubber for non-stick pans and warm water to clean it. I use paper towels to dry cast iron. Worked very well.
One thing, nothing works if you have cheaply made cast iron. I recommend Lodge. Only cast iron cookware I will use. And it’s made in the USA. I hear they make a preseasoned pan, but haven’t tried one.
I have a large cast iron frypan and a small CI skillet both made in Taiwan as well as a Lodge dutch oven. All three of them are a joy to cook in, particularly the skillet which I use nearly daily. It’s got a hard black usually non-stick coating on it now, as I cook at reasonably high temp on a gas flame.
I wash it with dish washing liquid and a dish scrubbing brush when it needs it after I’ve created something like a gravy or sauce and don’t seem to lose the coating as I was brought up to believe would happen. Otherwise I just use hot water, the scrubbing brush and a paper towel. Occasionally I’ll dry over the element/flame if I think I’ll not be using it for a while.
If I see the sides starting to flake off after some vigorous scraping because I’ve cooked something caramally or sticky, just melt some oil in the pan and roll/run it where it’s needed, turn the heat up and burn it to a shiny hard coating again. Do this before every time you cook if needed. Only takes a few minutes and you don’t need to strip and reseason the complete pan very often, if at all.