Okay, I washed it and dried it really good. I want to make sure it’s dry. I’m going to turn on my stove and turn my stove on medium. Now for little pan, just medium. I want it to get hot. What happens is—can you all see that there’s little debits and imperfections in the pan there. We’re going to eventually, when it’s nonstick, all of these little debits will be filled in with seasoning, with oil. The fat will adhere to the metal and it will stay there until you use a heavy soap on it and scrub it real hard, it will stay there. That’s what we want to happen.
The first time we’ll ever see on this pan, we’re not going to be using vegetable oil, we want to use a high saturated fat. The reason why saturated fat has a longer shelf life and will last longer and will keep your pan season longer and it’s just better and with better tasting.
You don’t want to worry about saturated fat getting into your food, you can see I have this pan. It’s saturated fat that’s why it’s nonstick and that’s why I cook an egg in it and although it’s seasoned and must going to give me some flavor, it’s not going to add any fat to my food.
So, I will have it on medium, I’m waiting for it to get warm. And if I had some bacon, and I should have bought some bacon when I bought this pan, I would just cook some bacon in here right now. But I don’t have any bacon but I do have some ham fat. You know, use whatever kind—you can use Crisco or whatever kind of lard you want to use. Now, I’m just going to cook this ham fat in this pan until I can get it to become oiled and I’m going to use that ham fat to put on my pan before I put my pan in the oven.
You don’t have to go through all of this if you don’t want to. If you want to, you can just wipe it down with some olive oil or some vegetable oil, canola oil or whatever you want to use, stick it in the oven for about two hours on 250 degrees and then you can call it seasoned but it’s not going to become nonstick until you use it and use it and use it some more. You’ve got to be pan seasoned over a period of time. To call this pan seasoned isn’t right but it probably took this pan, silver, it’s grey, it’s not that silver. An unseasoned pan will be very silver and this is a little bit seasoned because it’s grey, it’s starting to turn black. So that means that it has been seasoned a little bit, they probably sprayed it with some kind of cooking oil, stocked it in some kind of an oven for a couple of hours and then they shipped it to the grocery store for sale.
So you know, we call it seasoned or whatever but it’s not really going to be seasoned until I get this palm oil running my pan and then I start frying in it, start using it for days and the more I use it, the more seasoned it will get and the better it will be.
But the great thing about the cast iron is it’s going to heat evenly, it’s going to do its job and that’s its job is to heat evenly, to cook our food evenly and make everybody happy. All right, we’re just going to cook that fat until it starts getting enough oil to kind of spread around my pan. Like I said, if you want to cook yourself some bacon in your pan, but if you’ve already—here’s the fat out of that that bacon, out of that ham to go into our pan. And what happens when we heat this pan up is its pores open up and that iron expands as it heats and then when we cook the fat in there, that fat goes into those crevice as it starts all those little holes, and that’s what makes it nonstick.
All right, cook yourself some bacon, whatever you want, saturated fat, you could use Crisco oil, just make sure it’s high saturated fat when it’s the first time you’ll ever do this. You want your pan to have the good flavor, you want it to be seasoned, use yourself the first time ever—use yourself a high saturated fat to season your pan.
I’m going to turn my heat off and I will take this ham out. Remember, the best thing about saturated fat is it has a long shelf life. It will not turn rancid. The nearest quick is vegetable oil and all of that stuff there.
So after, let the pan cool off a little bit. I’m just going to wipe it down, try to get—make sure that all parts of the pan have a little oil going on all over those ham crumbs are out. And then my pan, see, it has already turned black so I cooked with it. And there has a saturated fat on there and now I can throw it to the oven and cook it for a couple of hours, 350 degrees, and then start using it. And as I use it, like I said, the more I use it, the more nonstick it will become.
Okay, here’s our pan, I put it in the oven for about two hours, 350 degrees with the ham fat that I had cooked down in there and let the pan cool off, wash it out with warm water and now I’m going to add just a drop of this bowl, I put too much but it’s all right. This jug of vegetable oil, I put a little too much so I’ll wipe it out. As I do, I will spread around my vegetable oil on my pan, everywhere, on the handle, on the backside and everywhere. We want to put a little bit of vegetable oil just to wipe it around. Let’s keep it from not rusting. And while we’re doing that, the better the pan will be the more that I use it, the more nonstick it will become and eventually it will be smooth and I will be able to fry egg in that bad boy. All right, and the more you use it, the better it will get.
All right, I hope you enjoyed the cast iron. You all have a great day. Thanks.
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