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Is this really that hard to re-season/patina/surface it?
Yeah. You can get an initial season on it in a couple of hours. The problem with that is that the seasoning thickens, smooths and hardens through proper repeated use. You can't just "do" that. It takes dozens or even hundreds of uses to build that up. If you tried to do it all in one seasoning, you get a lumpy, wavy, brittle season.
Think of it like paint. Yes, you can get a "one coat" paint and dump a big layer on, but it will never be as smooth and durable as hundreds of whisper thin layers, wet sanded between each one.
So..... I've been reading about cast iron and your paint metaphor resonates. It sounds like you are saying it builds a non stick layer of many many many thin coats of grease, which essentially burn to the pan to create an ultra smooth surface?
Is there a good online resource like "the science of cast iron for dummies"?
I only ever hear "cast iron good" and "season it"
And without context I'm hearing that a bunch of olive oil and hundreds of uses will eventually allow me to cook fried eggs and pour them outta the pan, like my Teflon does.
I stopped washing my cast iron, I just wipe it out with a paper towel and some olive oil or bacon grease. If stuff gets stuck to the bottom it gets scraped out with a metal spatula and some more oil/grease…
This is more or less it. You can season by rubbing a thin layer of oil on it, turning it upside down in the oven and baking it in (keep foil on the rack below to catch drips), but this just gives you a base.
It's nice because it's natural fats and oils that season it instead of chemicals. Plus it can be built up and replenished vs teflon that eventually breaks down from scratches and use, becoming useless.
You've got it pretty well. Plastic is polymerized petroleum, right? When you burn the oil to the pan, you are creating polymers. (It's not plastic because plastic means malleable. Seasoning is actually pretty brittle.) They are a bunch of polymerized fatty acids tangled together, like strings in a wad. (If they were like woven strings, it would be crystalline.) A thin layer of tangled strings is smooth. A big pile of tangled strings is not.
The other wrinkle is cast iron vs carbon steel. Both need to be seasoned. Cast iron is porous. The second function of seasoning is to fill in those pores. Those pores expand when the pan is hot and contract when the pan cools. That is why cast iron needs to be hot to clean it properly. After it cools, those pores close up around the ook left on the pan. Being well seasoned means that those pores are full of polymers rather than ook, so it is easier to clean.
The other side is carbon steel. Those are the thin black pans you see all over the place in restaurants. They need to be seasoned as well, but entirely for non-stick and rust reasons. They don't have the same pores. They can get as slick or slicker than cast iron. (I do most of my cooking in carbon steel.) The season on a carbon steel pan is relatively thin (no pores to grab into) and much easier to damage. The other side is, it's much easier to replace, because it's thin. If I cook eggs, I cook them in a carbon steel skillet. The pan temp is easier to control (less inertia), the surface is slicker, and the pan is light enough to flip the eggs without a spatula (which breaks more eggs for me than flipping.) Carbon steel is really your teflon equivalent. Also, if it gets too hot it doesn't give off poison gas like teflon. (Also most authentic-ish to authentic woks are carbon steel. Treat them the same way.)
This is a decent write up:
https://devilsfoodkitchen.com/2018/04/14/the-science-of-cast-iron/
I use cast iron all the time, primarily for meat and braises. When you want a rocket hot pan to properly brown meat, one that you can then park in the oven to finish cooking your chop, cast iron all the way. Ditto for long simmering meat sauces (one I also tend to do in the oven to not have to constantly check the burner.) If it's something acidic like tomatoes, I use stainless steel or enameled cast iron. Everything else I tend to use carbon steel (including eggs and almost all vegetables.)
You slather lard on it and bake for an hour or 2 @ 350 . You can't actually ever fuck up cast iron .
Sure you can, leave it with me before I knew what seasoning was. I had that fucker shiny like new iron when I got through, used a bunch of my uncles steel wool pads and even got the handle. My good deed was thorough indeed and wrong I found out loudly later. His venison pan I was informed with much emotion.
Don't slather. Thin coat.
But yeah, unless you drop it and shatter it, you can't fuck it up so bad it can't be recovered. Even when it seems like a solid piece of rust, there's still plenty of iron under that rust. Evaporust it, electrolysis de-rust it, sandblast it, or just sand away the rust, and it's ready to reseason.
Also, instead of smoking up your kitchen, do it on your propane grill or a propane cajun burner outside.
I was a chef for a while - nice place - healthcode meant we had to run 6" diameter cast irons we used through the dish machine everytime they went to a table. We would coat them in lard , let them sit overnight and then keep them warm in a broiler until they were needed . You could fry an egg in any one of them . Dish pit wasnt scrubbing them with wool but do with that what you want .
Yes. Takes many rounds of seasoning for the pan to get perfect. I'd be pissed.
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