How to Clean A Cast Iron Skillet And Care for It (Or How I Learned To Love Cast Iron)

Have you ever wondered how to clean a cast iron skillet? Or maybe you’ve been curious about how this versatile kitchen tool can replace your nonstick pans. In this guide on cast iron care and cleaning I share my journey and #1 tip from stuck-on food to throwing away my non-stick pans – and how to keep cast iron well-seasoned, too. If you’ve had a love-hate relationship with your cast iron, join me in saying goodbye to rust and stickiness and hello to delicious, evenly cooked dishes!

I cannot tell you how excited I am to write about my success with using a cast iron skillet because for many years I was not successful. How many? Twenty years – and I wish I were joking.

I acquired a cast iron pan shortly after I was married- I think it came from Brian’s grandma, or maybe a thrift store, but it had definitely been used. I didn’t grow up using cast iron, but I had heard people tell me all the reasons they loved their pans: they were naturally non-stick, last more than a lifetime, heat evenly, and so on. So I was was looking forward to trying it in my new household.

And try I did. But everything stuck- eggs, meat, you name it. Then I’d shove it to the back of the cupboard, eventually bring it out to try again with the same results, until it got permanently relegated to our little vintage trailer. Perfect for vintage cast iron, right? Plus, that meant there were only a few days each summer that I had to use it- and invariably curse it.

(I know now that when we scrubbed the dickens out of it to get all the stuck things off we were just perpetrating the cycle – hindsight is 20/20, right?)

However, after a number of years of marriage when my third set of non-stick skillets started peeling, I realized I didn’t want to keep buying new pans every few years so I needed to figure this cast iron pan thing out.

How to Clean a Rusty Cast Iron Skillet

By this time my sad, neglected skillet was rusty, but thanks to the internet (not around during my first attempts), I found out how to clean the rust and re-season the pan fairly easily. I basically followed steps similar to this technique:

1. Gently scrub off any rust with a steel wool pad (plain, not the kind with cleaners in it).
2. Wash and thoroughly dry the skillet – I set it on the stove for a few minutes on medium heat.
3. Coat the inside and outside of the pan with your choice of oil/grease (see below!).
4. Place the pan upside down in a 350 degree oven for one hour and then let cool in the oven.
5. Repeat as needed (I did two rounds of oiling and heating on my rusty pan).

My #1 Tip To Finally Loving Cast Iron

There was one major thing I did differently, though, when it came to coating the pan from what I read online and had done in my previous attempts. I did a lot of research and what I read over and over again was to use this to season the pan:

Not canola or a vegetable oil as I had always used, but bacon grease!

You can also use lard or coconut oil (but NOT olive oil as some sites state, since olive oil has a low smoke point and shouldn’t be used in applications like this). I prefer bacon grease for a simple reason – it’s free after cooking bacon, unlike coconut oil, and lard isn’t easy to come by.

(Oh, and side note that has to be mentioned: the fact that I am using something we regularly used to throw away? You know I love that!)

Why is what you coat cast iron with so important?

The short answer? Industrial oils.

You know that sticky coating that you can feel on old pans, cookie sheets, muffins pans, and other baking pans? This comes from using the industrial vegetable oils (corn, vegetable, canola) that have only been consumed regularly since the 1950’s (and we know cast iron has been around a lot longer than that).

They are called industrial oils because they cannot be made without a factory and machines – think about how you would get oil out of corn in your kitchen. It can’t be done, unlike rendering lard, collecting bacon grease, or even cooking coconut meat to extract the oil.

Thinking about how unnatural these oils are led our family to give up all industrial oils as a part of eating real, healthy foods.

The other thing I discovered was that awful “old oil” smell I had notice was also a direct result of using industrial oils. I have found that I don’t get that smell at all when I use a bit of bacon grease to season our pans.

But won’t food cooked in the pan have a bacon flavor? Does it smell like bacon when heating the pan?

I wondered this too! While it did smell like bacon a bit during the re-seasoning process, I’ve learned it doesn’t smell much like bacon in normal usage and has never made our food taste like bacon.

I think it’s because you use very little grease on the pan to maintain the seasoning – less than 1/8 of a teaspoon. It may also be because it’s best to use only the clear part of the grease (which is, in fact, like rendered lard). Whatever the reason, there’s no noticeable smell or flavor.

The ultimate test for me? Scrambled Eggs.

For the first few months after re-seasoning, I cooked only things that were greasy like bacon, or things that don’t stick like sautéed mushrooms in order to build up more of the seasoning to be more “non stick.”

The ultimate test in my book was scrambled eggs – it’s where I had the most trouble before. Finally the weekend came to make scrambled eggs with cheese.

And all I can say is I’m glad there wasn’t a video camera around as I was jumping up and down in front of the stove saying “they’re not sticking!” over and over again. As if I was the first one to discover this, ha!

There were still bits of egg and cheese stuck to the pan in places (see an example below), but it wasn’t much and there wasn’t that full layer of stuck on egg I used to get. (Update: after years of proper use and seasoning, I don’t even have this much egg/cheese stick to the pan anymore – it really is almost non-stick!)

Of course I couldn’t keep this to myself. If you’re like me and have had trouble with cast iron – or think it’s too much work – I want to show you how simple it can be to clean and care for cast iron – and encourage you that it really can become your favorite pans with just a bit of your time and attention!

How to Clean A Cast Iron Skillet: Step-by-Step

TIP: Some people regularly use coarse salt, but that would be wasting something in my frugal world, ha! However, if you have really stuck-on food, it is a good option- I’ve used it successfully for the residue left after browning meat.

That’s it! Yes, it takes a few minutes more than a regular skillet to dry, add the grease, and then let cool, but it’s small potatoes in the big scheme of things, right? Especially it means you won’t have to be replacing skillets in the future!

Tips to Maintain Cast Iron

• Do these same cleaning steps every time you use your skillet and you will keep a nice gleam on the pan that tells you it’s seasoned enough to meet all your non-stick needs.
• It’s also a good idea to regularly cook things in it with more fat, like bacon, browning ground beef, or cooking vegetable fritters or zucchini feta fritters in avocado oil.
• If it seems like the seasoning is wearing off, simply go through the steps to re-season the pan again.
• Remember that acid foods like tomatoes and lemons can remove some of the seasoning, so long cooking of these things (like sauces) should be reserved for a stainless steel pan.

While the steps to clean and care for cast iron may have a few more than non-stick coated pans, it’s well worth it and becomes second nature after awhile. And then you may be like me in saying goodbye to non-stick pans forever!

Have you ever had issues with cast iron (tell me I’m not alone!)? Do you use it or want to use it? Leave a comment and let me know!

More Reader Tips

Note: This article was originally published in March of 2011 and became one of my first viral posts. For me, it was simply a matter of sharing my excitement over finally figuring out how to use my cast iron pans so I could throw out the non-stick pans for good. I just had to overlook the fact that thousands of people were seeing my dirty egg pan, lol!

Here are just a few other tips readers have shared in the 100+ comments:

1. To renew an old, rusted cast iron pan:
   Option 1. “Just spray the piece all over, inside, outside and handle with oven cleaner. I usually do this outside. Close it up in a trash bag, place it outside in the sun, let it sit for 24 hrs. Rinse with the hose. Repeat if necessary. Bring it inside, wash with hot water, rinse with straight white vinegar, (to neutralize the oven cleaner) rinse with hot water, season. Voila. Like new. Every single time.”
   Option 2. “You can also just leave it in a self cleaning oven. That will turn everything to ash! Then, re-season.”
2. Using only oil to clean:
   “Once pan is seasoned, you do not have to use water to clean it in many instances. I use olive oil for my cooking, don’t let it burn. After cooking scrambled eggs, put a bit of olive oil (Jami here: please don’t use olive oil – it has a low smoke point!) in pan to wet the surfaces, use little spatula or paper towel – I use spatula to rub paper towel around not my fingers. After that, if anything still sticks, I may put a bit of hot water, but never leave it soaking with water.”
3. Not using oil each time:
   “I don’t find that I need to oil my pan every time though, maybe because I use plenty of butter to cook my eggs, and it’s so well seasoned the surface shines. I have a small ancient cast iron pan and nothing sticks to it.”
4. Tip for more non-stick:
   “…one thing you should ALL be doing is PREHEAT THOSE PANS!!!! This gets the old seasoning in shape for new oil to be added and fill in all those micro grooves that are what makes food stick! There are few things–other than maybe warming a tortilla or such–that don’t need SOME oil to cook (even in a non-stick!!!) and cast iron has more little grooves and spots than other material by it’s nature. Don’t put it on HIGH and wander off; just use a low or medium flame to get to temp and THEN add your oil.”

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