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Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

  However, cast iron will never be as non-stick as a good non-stick pan

a NEW non-stick pan. The advantage of cast iron is it gets better with age where a non-stick pan gets worse. Not to mention I have never gotten good self release of stuck food from a non-stick pan where as cast iron works a treat.

Also I always put bacon in my pan dry and hot, never have an issue

While you can eventually develop a very non-stick surface with cast iron or carbon steel, there's also the option to make a "spanish egg" with a medium amount of hot oil; e.g. https://youtu.be/mL-w_OegewU?t=215

Keeping an IR thermometer by the stovetop is handy if you're cooking with cast iron. It removes the guess work around things like "Am I going to burn this butter if I drop it in the pan?"

Putting a drop of water on the pan is a good indicator of temperature. It will either sit there in a small puddle, wander around a bit, or zoom around in a frenzy.

for most medium/high, when an oiled pan, you can see the super faint smoke. for some oiled, even based on the viscosity from shaking the pan. water test is good for learning this point. but water in an oily pan can hurt later so good to learn to do without :)

some startups have been experimenting with built-in thermometers, so I can imagine this classic design being different 10yr from now :)

> some startups have been experimenting with built-in thermometers, so I can imagine this classic design being different 10yr from now

T-fal has had the thermo spot in their regular nonstick pans for at least a decade, if not two or three.

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.

Nothing short of steel wool is going to affect the patina.

Actually, if you throw it in the oven and set it to self-clean it'll strip the seasoning right off. I've done it with my cast iron pan before. Washes completely clean and ends up gun-metal grey; a non-oxidized pure iron surface. This is a great way to start over with the seasoning process if you're unhappy with it.

Yes, if you happen to own an oven that has this feature. It's not exactly common.

Edit: because of course I triggered a storm. Maybe it's common elsewhere. I've lived in few EU countries, rented then owned a few houses, exactly only one of them had an oven with the self cleaning(by heating up to like 500C) feature, I don't think we ever used it. When we bought our current oven none of the ones we looked at had that function. A fancy Candy we looked at had a function where it cleans itself with steam(where you fill up a provided container with water and then it heats it up to fill the oven with steam and in theory that softens the gunk. No idea if that actually works).

If it's common where you live, then my apologies for this comment.

Not sure where you're writing from, but it's very common in the US. This article (https://www.thekitchn.com/why-you-should-almost-never-use-th...) quotes someone who works for an appliance store in Cincinnati who says it's difficult to sell an oven without that feature. And as others have said, every oven I have every owned (or that my parents owned when I was around and capable of forming memories) has been self-cleaning.

Maybe it sounds fancier than it is? Is not like it has a little robot that cleans the oven. It's just a mode where the oven can get the internal temperature very high (up to 1000 degrees F according to that article) that just incinerates any organic material stuck to the oven walls.

Its not fancy, but I guess it requires a bit more resilient engineering/materials than 250C ovens. Its definitely not a norm in budget/medium priced ovens in Europe, even for new. I mean brands like Bosch mostly don't have it here, I never had one (house, 2 apartments, couple of rental apartments all with full kitchen, kitchen < 10 years old).

Do you guys use electric ovens?

Most ovens in the U.S. burn natural gas, which burns at 1000 degrees F (which is the self-cleaning temperature).

In my experience it was fairly uncommon 30+ years ago, but common today.

Mine doesn't, but that's because it's too fancy, and has a special coating on the inside that's supposed to make stuff just come off. Freaking Whirlpool. It doesn't work.

Really? I figured most ovens had a self-cleaning option... I did this trick to recondition several cast iron pans and it works great, but be prepared for massive amounts of greasy smoke.

Afaik it's just not a thing in europe. Only high end models have it, and even then it's an optional feature that costs extra. Even in a kitchen I rented where just the sink faucet did cost 1000€ the self-cleaning module of the oven was not installed.

We tend to have pretty different ovens in Europe vs the US.

Just a random thought (lived both in the US and in the EU): could it be that US ovens are more often gas ovens while in the EU it's mostly electric? (might be easier to get higher temperatures with gas).

Couldn't find statistics on this with a quick search...

It's the opposite... my oven in the US doesn't have the cleaning thing, turns out it's because it's gas only. The gas stovetop + electric oven version of this model has it. Seems to be a thing even with other manufacturers and models.

I’ve lived in the US and EU too. My experience was we have fan assisted ovens in the EU whereas ones I saw in the US had a top and bottom element with no fan assist.

Fan assisted ovens are also called "convection ovens." They certainly exist in the US, but I think they are more high end? I personally have one, it also has a self-clean function. The stove part is gas but I think (?) the oven is electric.

Ovens are smaller here typically and you’ll more often than not find the oven and hob (stove) as separate appliances.

I'm in Canada, but I don't think I've ever seen a gas oven. All my ovens have been electric, and nearly all of them had a self-clean option.

Yes it is, it's marketed as 'pyrolytic', it's the norm above roughly £350 and unusual roughly below.

But yes, it is just an element that can go hotter and a shell that can withstand it. Ovens are incredibly overpriced for how rudimentary they are IMO. Ripe for 'disruption' if you had something non-bullshit to compete on but price - sizing is already standardised.

`pyrolytic` does not exist as a keyword for ovens in my country. I just checked at the biggest retailer for such stuff.

The cleaning module of the one oven I'm aware of that had that option was more than just a heating thing. The manual talked about foam and how to refill it. Different countries, different mechanisms I assume.

Never seen it in Australia either but maybe I'm sheltered.

interesting - both electrolux ovens i have had in the last 10y do have self cleaning. that just - heat as much as possible mode.

You can do it with a propane grill as the temperatures are hot enthused to carbonize any polymers.

Or just use easy off which is a spray on acid.

Easy Off is a spray on with a pH well above 7, thus a base. Not an acid.

http://www.rbnainfo.com/product.php?productLineId=2704

I lived in some of the crappiest places, never had a fancy oven. Every single one had a self cleaning option.

Some wackos disable the safety latch and then cook pizza in their ovens on the self clean cycle:

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=268.0

Thank you for the most informative post on this HN discussion!

I’ve never had a non-self-cleaning oven.

I've tried this a few times and none of the ovens I've had over the years have been successful in removing seasoning with their self-cleaning, so at this point I'm trying to find a machine shop that will be happy to bead blast it and mill the surface flat again. So far, most shops have given me quotes in the hundreds of dollars so I've been waiting until I meet someone that has the capability to just do it in their garage.

Most new cast iron cookware now has a raw surface with lots of pits and bumps from the casting process as well, which doesn't seem to get nearly as smooth and non-stick as "vintage" cookware.

Since quarantine life, I've been cooking multiple times a day. My oven's self-clean makes my pans look exactly like new. Takes all of the black off leaving them with a shiny, silvery shine. I then have to season them to regain a nonstick coating as good as any Ceramic/Teflon pan that I've used.

As far soap. My experience is that it definitely damages the nonstick coating, depending on how much you use. You can get by with a soapy sponge, but putting detergent directly on it and the nonstick coating will be lost.

The best way to avoid need to avoid soap or scrubbing and re-seasoning is to put hot water in the pan while it's still hot and scrape. Meat is the worst for leaving a coating and this technique removes 99% of it.(If not blackened use that water for a delicious sauce with all the best flavors of your cooking). This routine allows me to use the same pan for months without a deep cleaning.

I have tried to put cold oil on after heaving soaping, but I'm not happy with the pan until I season it with high heat. The only reason I'd do it for rust and still would pan on seasoning it properly later.

The biggest difference I've found (moreso on stainless steel than cast iron) is food weight: which is to say, time food is left without moving.

Which makes sense. Essentially burnt-to-pan bits are food-pan interface, as opposed to food-oil-pan interface.

Give enough time, heavy food displaces oil and comes in direct contact with pan. Given enough movement, oil is able to reimpose itself between the two.

I used a propane grill and it was very, very effective. I removed the grates and (if I recall correctly) rested the pan on the heat deflection sheets. I left all burners on for about 2 1/2 hours. After cooling, the previous coating was reduced to a thin dust. After blowing it off, the pan was gun metal grey.

I then used a cheap corded drill and inexpensive flap wheels and similar attachments from the hardware store to make it smooth, wearing an N95 mask to protect my lungs.

Self cleaning should reach a high enough temp for it, because most of what you use the self-cleaning to take off is effectively seasoning. If it's not getting hot enough, use something else to get it hot enough (blowtorch, maybe).

For smoothing out the surface, you could just use a flapwheel. You can get them for angle grinders. This will also take off seasoning if necessary (but it's a bit worse for the pan if you're not also trying to smooth it out). Be sure to wear a respirator and googles if you're doing this.

Our dog's food bowl is about the most mirror polished metal in the house. Free labor.

Just wait until you diamond-grit-coat Fluffy's tongue...

You can stick the pan in a bag, spray on some easy off and let it soak overnight.

If you're planning to re-season an old pan, easily the best way of stripping off old crud is caustic soda. Leave the pan in a bath of caustic for 24 hours, then scrub with wire wool.

Voila - a clean iron surface. Use rubber gloves, and wash off any splash with lots of water - caustic soda is nasty stuff.

I use flaxseed oil. It works. Unless you have an awful lot of pans, your small bottle of flaxseed oil will only be 10% used by the time it goes rancid; swallow the cost.

I've tried this on a goood carbon-steel omelette pan. The result was mixed; a grubby-looking polymer layer that comes off in the wash, but a pan that still works well, and has reasonable non-stick properties. I suspect that with carbon steel, the oil only needs to get into the pores in the metal, and doesn't need to form a layer on the surface at all.

But my best experience has been with cast iron: a mexican comal, to be specfic. I stripped and seasoned my comal about 8 years ago, and the finish is still flawless.

Apparently there is some controversy over whether the self-cleaning cycle is bad for ovens. [1] [2]

1: https://www.thekitchn.com/why-you-should-almost-never-use-th...

2: https://lifehacker.com/dont-use-your-ovens-self-cleaning-fun...

How does this work?

Self cleaning ovens bake as hot as they can to vaporize material. After the cycle is complete, you take a brush and sweep out the ash.

Incidentally, if your want your aluminum or stainless steel clean again with almost no effort, use Barkeeper's Friend. It's an oxalic acid product, and it wipes away stains with a sponge that you'd work hard to sand out.

Obviously, do not use on cast iron or carbon steel.

I don’t know about your experience, but even with BKF, the scrubby side of the sponge, and a lot of elbow grease, it takes ages to get it off an aluminum pan. I did it once and it took two full hours, and gave me blisters on my hands from the sheer amount of scrubbing.

I had similar issues with the AllClad pans I bought, so I called them out of frustration. They recommend Dobie sponges in addition to the Barkeeper's Friend. It seems to help.

What also helps is simmering something acidic in the pan for about 10-15 minutes (wine, watered-down vinegar, etc). The base then cleans pretty easily. It's the burnt bits of fat that splatter up the walls of the pan that are murder to get out.

Sponges come in all levels of abrasiveness.

Here in the US at least, there tend to be scratch (yellow/green) and non-scratch (blue/darker-blue). Along with straight scratch pad (pure green) and steel wool (silver metal).

You can grind all day with a non-scratch pad, and all you're really polishing with is the harder bits of gunk you've managed to take off.

Same way you can sand with 220 grit all day and barely make a dent, but hit something with 60 grit and make progress in 5 minutes.

Afaik, Barkeeper's Friend is essentially microgrit in some sort of liquid carrier. If you had the right shaped sand, you could probably add that to something and get a similar effect.

Burnt bits of fat don't come off with acid, they need base. My wife pours ammonia into a baggie and leaves things in it.

There's two versions of barkeeper's friend, a powder one and a liquid one. The powder one is the one to use to remove caked on residue.

Try oven cleaner! I leave it on sheet pans for about 15 minutes; it’s amazing what wipes away.

Seconding this. Barkeeper’s friend is like magic on aluminum. If you use it regularly you can keep your aluminum pots and pans looking like they’re factory new.

BKF is great on stainless steel, like All-Clad sets. Highly recommended.

> Obviously, do not use on cast iron or carbon steel.

Unless your seasoning is flaking off because you followed OP's instructions and you need to start again.

Cooking anything acidic will strip all of the seasoning right off. I can easily keep a seasoning on my carbon steel woks, but it’ll vanish if I cook one Pad Thai. For my cast iron I can keep it there until I want to cook anything with tomatoes.

> 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.

I'd never made this link before, thanks for pointing it out! We have plenty of baking sheets like this and I thought it was a form of black rust or something but your explanation makes so much more sense.

I wash it with water and scrub with scotch brite. Will try homemade soap.

Do not use homemade soap. Homemade soap is made with lye, which is the entire reason why people said not to use soap, once upon a time. An unreacted lye will start to strip seasoning.

Use dish detergent (commercial dish soap). It's made in a different way, so you can't get un-reacted lye.

If you have unreacted lye in your soap you're going to have more problems than just stripping the seasoning off your pan.

I mean, if you have a bunch, yeah, you're going to have more issue than just stripping seasoning off. But most of the problem is just the slightest hint excess from making sure the entire volume of oil is saponified.

It's part of why you had the rubber dishwashing gloves get invented: soap used to be harsher, and one of the reasons why is the fact that soaps were made with lye.

Homemade X is made with whatever you made it with...

Homemade soap is soap. The only way to make soap is the saponification process. Which involves lye. The oil used can vary, but a strong alkali is required, and any strong alkali you use is going to do the saponification process on your seasoning.

Commercial dish soap can be soap, or it could be detergent. Detergent is made differently, and doesn't necessarily involve lye.

From Wikipedia:

> The production of toilet soaps usually entails saponification of triglycerides, which are vegetable or animal oils and fats. An alkaline solution (often lye or sodium hydroxide) induces saponification [...]

i.e. that's the usual process, and it often involves lye. (It elsewhere mentions potassium hydroxide too.)

Anyway my point really wasn't too disagree about how to make soap, I've never done it, it just seemed weird to me to tell someone how they made something and that it's a problem, vs. 'Did you use lye? If so...' or even 'Assuming you used lye, ...'

For example, I think what you call 'commercial dish soap' I would call 'washing up liquid' (never soap, not would it cross my mind if someone else said 'soap') so a slightly different conversation could easily have been based on a wrong assumption about what the created thing was or was used for.

Totally agree except that onion flavored pancakes can be delicious.

Scallion pancake with pork belly is one of my favorite combos :-)

Absolutely correct. There are many usually sweet recipes that are actually great when done savoury instead. I personally like it when the last thing I made in the pan was something that had onion and then I gotta make pancakes, precisely because the first pancake will have that flavor. Then I put chorizo and cheese on it too and call it a day. Next pancake will be 'normal' again anyway. Win-Win!

I'm a huge fan of savory fried any-cake (e.g. hoecakes, [0]). Just because something is normally made one way is no reason to limit ourselves.

You can make sweet or savory crepes, so why not pancakes?

But then, I'm not a big fan of actual-cake and don't have much of a sweet tooth.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnycake

> You want oil soaked into the metal.

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.

Yuan, Z., Xiao, J., Wang, C. et al. Preparation of a superamphiphobic surface on a common cast iron substrate. J Coat Technol Res 8, 773 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11998-011-9365-7

I don't have a subscription or SciHub link to pull up the underlying, but it looks like there have been folks who did electron microscopy on seasoned cast iron. (Note: more relevant and profitable to study in the context of machinery / engine design)

> Is there solid evidence that this is actually possible, as opposed to creating a layer on top of it?

I doubt that's actually what happens, but if you think of it that way, you'll end up with the right result.

"Soak into" is probably an engineering approximation converted to lay language.

What we're really talking about is surface-gap-filling.

So yes, "into" at some level of magnification. "Onto" at another.

Indeed! I was avoiding describing the surfaces at high detail .

Yes, this isn’t a mystery. There are lots of coated steel products that use the crudest of coatings that need grinder off. Unless the material is polished to a high shine it will absorb oil.

Tangential but related: Oilite:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oilite

yeah oilite is a great bearing material, but it‘s not exactly „normal“ metal, but sintered bronze. In essence, you clump together bronze powder with a binder and then heat it up until the binder is gone and the powder has stuck together. What‘s left behind is kind of like a sponge, which enables impregnation with oil. Very special process and nothing to do with metal always having „pores“ or anything where oil can seep in

Wow that Wikipedia page reads like an ad.

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.

Huh. That's not it at all for me. I like cast iron because: (1) It is extremely durable and can be repaired rather than replaced. (2) It is general purpose, reducing the number of pans I need to own. (3) It is well suited to cooking at low temperatures, which are much more forgiving (I can walk away and write a comment like this and come back to something other than a charred mess).

edit: I discovered cast iron about a year ago and now I do roughly 90% of my cooking on it. If there were reliable, science-based information about how to care for the pan best, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. As an example, a lot of people caution against seasoning with too much oil. They say that when you season your pan (e.g. initially, in the oven), you should wipe the oil off until the pan looks dry. I took this literally, and wiped until it looked the same as before I put on the oil. As a result, my seasoning had approximately no effect. After experimenting, I've decided that the "looks dry" advice isn't wrong exactly, but "dry" needs clarification. It should look more like how you would like it to look when it comes out of the oven — dry, but darker and with more sheen.

> If there were reliable, science-based information about how to care for the pan best, it would have saved me a lot of trouble

I think the trouble here is that the people who best understand cast iron are probably also the least likely to care about the science of it.

The main reason not to leave too much oil in the pan is that it will go rancid and get sticky and generally gross. That's not something you run up against if you use the pan several times a week, but if you have something like a dutch oven that you use maybe once or twice a month, you will come back to a mess that you have to deal with before you can cook in it.

The whole "you're making a polymer coating that mimics a teflon pan" idea is something that sounds fancy, but is impractical and unnecessary in practice.

> I think the trouble here is that the people who best understand cast iron are probably also the least likely to care about the science of it.

Hmm. Perhaps. I said science-based information because while I find the science (chemistry, polymerization, etc) of cast iron interesting, I primarily care about the results. For example, knowing that flax oil gives the non-stickiest finish but is prone to flaking and thus high maintenance. Perhaps empirical would have been a better word than science-based. I suspect there are a fair number of people like me, who would like to know more about the trade-offs involved in different oils and maintenance procedures. But perhaps these aren't the people who best understand cast iron, as you say.

Two things of note:

- The best answer in the FAQ in the top comment of this thread, by FAR, is #2, about heat spreading. It gives numbers and additional information (about radiating the heat) that I didn't know before.

- Flax is the only oil that I understand even some of the trade-offs of using. That is a direct result of the post linked in this thread publicly making a hypothesis and providing detailed-enough steps for (some people) to reproduce its results.

Speaking of, as a cast iron enthusiast, would you be willing to share your experiences and/or do some experiments to help test my hypothesis on cleaning methods, here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25716850

Have you tried carbon steel? In my opinion it is superior to cast iron in every way, especially durability.

as materials, carbon steel and cast iron are extremely similar, except that carbon steel can be stamped rather than cast. in practice, this means that carbon steel skillets tend to be much thinner than cast iron ones. durability would not be an advantage I would attribute to the typical carbon steel skillet. a cast iron skillet is pretty much indestructible; if you drop it from stove-height, it would be more likely to damage your floor than to shatter. a carbon steel skillet can easily warp if you heat it up too quickly, which is not nearly as great a concern with a heavy cast iron skillet.

I have a cast iron and a carbon steel skillet. I will always reach for the cast iron to sear a steak, but the carbon steel skillet gets used for pretty much everything else.

I have a Blackstone carbon steel griddle and it is very nice. A little uneven but it gives me areas to keep stuff warm around the outside.

I also like both, I have a hand-me-down Cast Iron that I love for skillet baking and nostalgia but I also have a few pieces of Made In Carbon Steel that I use more often as they're lighter and less of a pain to season and maintain.

I like bith. Carboon steel for the pancake and omlet pan and cast iron for the steak pan. Cast iron has more thermal mass. I should probably also get a cast iron pot for cooking stew.

Not yet. I plan to at some point.

> No one wants onion flavored pancakes.

Somebody's never had latkes before.

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?

If you're trying to add a little more seasoning you will need to bake. You'd do this after a rough cleaning or cooking something watery or acidic. If you're just protecting it from ambient moisture just a teensy coat.

> No need to bake in the oven or anything like that?

Correct.

I will sometimes do the oil and bake thing for our Dutch oven if it has been neglected a while and has bits of rust or other questionable-ness to it.

Just wash it like normal, stuff that comes off is charred food etc. aka 'dirt'. The actual polymerised seasoning isn't going to come off with a bit of water and washing up liquid.

Forgot to ask in my other comment, does all this apply for carbon steel too?

Pretty much, yes: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/06/how-to-season-carbon-ste...

general consensus on reddit (and my personal experience) seems to be that seasoning on carbon steel is a bit more delicate than on cast iron, possibly because carbon steel skillets tend to have a much smoother surface.

chemically, carbon steel is very similar to cast iron, so all the info regarding cleaning is still applicable. you should probably expect to do a little more work to maintain the seasoning on a carbon steel pan though.

> no one wants onion-flavoured pancakes

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.

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