Humans love cast iron. I’m no exception. I learned to cook in my dad’s inherited skillets, their weight challenging my child strength. He taught me how to clean them, to never use soap, and to fully dry the pans, lest they rust. I used a knife on one, scratching up the bottom without realizing, but cast-iron pans are resilient, and it healed itself with some more cooking. When I was given ten cast iron pans from my Grandma’s house, the process of restoring a pan from greasy mess to bare iron to seasoned cookware taught me that cast iron is a part of my history, tradition, and connection with my family. I also got a pretty cool pan out of it.
I’m lucky that my Dad’s pans, those of my childhood, were Griswolds. If you’re not in the cast iron world, Griswold is king. The difference between the Griswolds, the Bentley of pans, and today’s Lodge pans is stark. Griswold produced cast iron from the later 1800s to 1957, in the days when materials were expensive, and labor was cheap. The pans were poured into sand molds, removed, and polished by hand. It’s an incredibly labor-intensive process, and was done by workers in Erie, Pennsylvania. Vintage cast iron has a quality that’s not found on the Lodge pans of today. Lodge is the last big cast iron company still producing in the US, and is sold at many stores like Walmart and Target for around $20-$40. They also produce big cast iron. To get a comparable quality of production and polishing to vintage pans, niche companies charge hundreds of dollars1. A typical affordable, modern cast iron pan like a Lodge feels heavy and bumpy. The insides are covered in tiny marks left behind by the casting process. A Griswold pan isn’t. It’s satin-smooth and feels like the inside of a nonstick skillet. As such, the pans are beautiful to work with, and because of how much iron has been polished off, they’re lighter than their modern counterparts. The beauty and grace that the old manufacturing system enabled has, for the most part, been lost.
Casting
Humanity’s love affair with cast iron began long before Griswold, Lodge, or any other company. People began working with iron around about 3000-6000 BCE. Back then, we weren’t yet able to extract iron from ore, but instead used what we could find in meteorites, creating tools from the stars. Professor Doru M. Stefanescu, emeritus professor at The Ohio State University and University of Alabama (quite a commute), describes the history of cast iron in his seminal work, “A History of Cast Iron.” The Sumerian word “AN.BAR”, the oldest word we know of that means iron, is a combination of the pictograms of ‘sky’ and ‘fire’, and ancient Egyptians knew it as ‘metal from heaven.’2 Ancient people had deep feelings of connection between the stars, the divine, iron, and the metallurgist. Iron became a symbol of power, useful in an incredibly diverse array of applications, often cooking, weapons of war, and art. Genghis Khan was an ironsmith, and in Ireland, ironworkers ranked with nobility since time immemorial. 3Metal casting was innovated upon in China, and became popular for home implements, art, religious objects, and even pagodas.4 Iron comes from the sky, and we use it to reach for the stars. My high school had an enormous sign in the weight room reading “IRON SHARPENS IRON.” I cannot explain what this means, but I presume it’s a reference to the history of iron as an important tool within metal casting. In more recent times, foundries systematically studied adding new elements to strengthen iron. which allowed iron to build the industrial world’s bridges, trains, and cooking utensils.
This past Christmas, I received ten vintage cast iron pans. My grandma has been a hoarder her whole life, and as my parents were cleaning out her house, they found ten beautiful, grease-crusted cast iron pans. It was, quite possibly, the greatest gift I’d ever been given. My brother was offered some pans by my parents, and decided he didn’t want any; he likes his ceramic nonstick pan. His loss. I took ten and resolved to figure out what to do with them. I knew I wanted to restore the pans, but I had no ideas where to begin.
Naturally, I did what anyone would do, and looked it up. The landscape of cast iron resources online is wild. There are collectors, restorers, and crazies, all of whom have a different opinion. There are thousands of people on the Cast Iron subreddit, and endless numbers of blogs, magazines, fan clubs, and associations. And the wisdom. Dear God, the wisdom. Everyone has their own secret, mysterious way of cleaning and seasoning cast iron. To strip the pans, some people use their oven’s self-cleaning feature. Others think that not only damages your oven, but can destroy the pan. Others use complicated electrolysis tanks involving water with metal in it, connected to a car battery. For me, that’d be a one-way trip to the ER. Seasoning is even worse. Everyone has a different method of seasoning and knows for certain that everyone else’s method, on the whole of the planet, is entirely wrong. Canola oil, linseed oil, mineral oil. Everybody’s got an idea. I’d need to do some research and thinking on my own before I’d begin the process.
Griswold’s history is a bit fuzzy. Through many non-academic blogs and enthusiast clubs, I’ve managed to compile some. Seldon and Griswold Manufacturing company, later Griswold Manufacturing Company, produced cast iron in their Erie, Pennsylvania foundry from 1865 to 1957. A family company until its sale in 1946 and the closure of the Erie plant in 1957, the Griswold brothers began producing cookware in the 1870s.5 The name on the cookware changed somewhat over the years, known as “ERIE” from c. 1880 – c. 1907. 6 The trademark from then on was “Griswold’, embossed on the skillets’ bottoms.
The most valuable skillets, sometimes selling for thousands of dollars, are the so-called ‘spider’ series, with a protruding trademark of a spider with the body of a skillet and the word ERIE embossed across its body. The trademark was a favorite with Griswold management, who used it in their letterhead years after it was no longer used on their skillets and kettles. Roy Meadows of the Wagner and Griswold Society writes:
The spider trademark is believed to have originated from the story about Robert Bruce (1274- 1329), a gallant Scottish king who spent most of his life trying to free his country from English rule. The legend is told about Bruce lying in a bed in a wretched hut hiding from his enemies. On the roof above him, Bruce saw a spider swinging by one of its threads. It was trying to swing itself from one beam to another. It tried six times and failed. Bruce realized that he had fought the same number of battles in vain against the English. He decided that if the spider tried a seventh time and succeeded, he also would try again. The spider’s seventh attempt was successful. Bruce took heart and went forth to victory.
Griswold’s 1904 Bulletin A, which shows the spider trademark, includes the following quote: “As the little spider brought success to Robert Bruce, so cooking utensils bearing this trade mark brings success to all who use them.”
Roy G. Meadows. “‘Erie’ Skillets.” Wagner and Griswold Society. 2009. https://wag-society.org/guest/ERIESkilletArticle.pdf. 6-7.
There are six versions of the Erie series, each with their own varying identifiers. Obsessive enthusiasts with too much free time to spend on forums and websites have figured out the comprehensive differences between the series, which aids in dating the pans and understanding the ways that Griswold revised their pans over time. For example, the location of a heat ring, an identifying ridge on the bottom of the pan, is a feature that differentiates series, with earlier series having heat rings on the outside edge, and later pans having them slightly more toward the center. There were also different shaped handles, with the underneath of some of the earliest series having a ‘scooped handle’ – that is, looking like someone scooped a little bit out of the handle – and the size of the rib underneath the handle varying between series.7 These differences are slight but show important identifying features. I struggled to understand the variations until I had looked at enough pictures to figure out what a made a rib, blended rib, and partial rib distinct. This useless skill would only come in handy if, say, I had an Erie pan.
Bare Iron
As soon as I picked up the pans gifted to me for Christmas, one stood out. It was thinner and lighter, and didn’t say Griswold on the bottom, only one word: Erie. The bottom is pitted with tiny craters from natural gas, and the sides were much straighter and thinner than the other Griswold pans; it was filthy, but underneath the grease, I could see a slight shine on the outside. Why? Nickel plating. When manufacturing the pans, some pans would be plated with nickel for a shiny, premium finish. This pan, according to Roy Meadows’ information and my now-useful skill, is from the second series of Erie, manufactured from about 1886 – 1892. I know this from the rib on the handle, the reinforced lip, the wording, and the lack of a pattern number on the center of the bottom of the skillet.
The top, side, and underside of the skillet, pre-restoration. Inside the skillet is disgusting, and slightly tacky to the touch. Notice the faded word ‘ERIE’ along the top, the barely-visible ‘7’ seen opposite the words. The pitting comes from sulfur on wood stoves. The nickel-plating is visible, and has worn off in many places. The underside of the handle with its rib is a telltale way to date the skillet.
Nickel-plating, which used electricity, was a relatively new technology and only started in about 1891.8 That means that my oldest skillet, with its beat-up but still visible nickel and satin-smooth cooking surface is from about 1891 or 1892. It’s an era that feels so far away yet is something my grandmother’s grandmother would have remembered. In a catalog from about 1900, my number 8 pattern skillet (though a later series) would cost $0.50, and the nickel-plated version cost $1.00. Adjusting for inflation puts these numbers at about $16 and $32.9 Today, this is about the cost of a new Lodge skillet which has a much rougher texture because it isn’t polished like a Griswold was. Buying a skillet of similar quality today would run about ten times as much because of the increased cost of labor and much lower demand. This makes me sad. No wonder so few nickel-plated skillets are in circulation, the cost is double the price of a normal pan and means that my skillet might have been owned by a wealthier family or was perhaps a splurge purchase. The price and nickel plating could also explain why this is the only skillet from before the World Wars that I own, as this might have been an heirloom. I don’t have much information on the skillet, as the people who bought it are long gone. I do know, though, that it’s perhaps the most beautiful cooking utensil I’ve ever used.
Now that I’d dated the skillet, it was time to begin the task of restoration. After much struggling on blogs, forums, and Reddit I found my method: lye-based oven cleaner. A quick trip down to the store to pick up Easy-Off oven cleaner (the one with the yellow cap, not the other ones because people online say to avoid the one that looks nearly identical but has a different colored cap), and I began my restoration. Based on information I found on the internet, my process was:
- Spray the piece in Easy-off
- Wrap it in a plastic bag for a day or so
- Open the bag, spray more
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 a few times
- Wash it off
This was, of course, easier blogged than done. Lye strips the thin coating of seasoning on the pan. Seasoning is a tiny layer of oil that, through heating, forms a natural non-stick coating. Over time, though, the seasoning can get gross. And for an old pan, who knows what they cooked on it or how long the polymerized hydrocarbons had been sitting in the basement. Restoring cast iron begins by stripping the coating away and remaking the coating with a new layer of oil.
I began by taking the nickel piece (picking the nicest skillet was a stupid idea, and looking back, I’m relieved I didn’t destroy it), spraying it with Easy-off, wrapping it in a trash bag, placing that on a disposable tray, and leaving it for a day in my garage.
When I returned the next day, I realized my first mistake: using a perforated trash bag sitting on an aluminum tray. The bag leaked and the aluminum had completely dissolved from the lye in the oven cleaner. That was a learning experience. Lye melts aluminum, and sometimes trash bags leak. So, I put more oven cleaner in the bag, wrapped it in two more trash bags, and set the whole messy assembly in a plastic bucket. Two days later, I unwrapped it, a mess of black gunk, oven cleaner, and grease. If I was successful in stripping the piece, I’d end up with cast iron that’s not shiny from seasoning but was instead matte iron. If not, I’d have to apply more oven cleaner or try a harsher solution like the lye baths many collectors favor.
After rinsing the piece off with some hose water, I was relieved to see that it was a major success. The pan was completely clean, and I could see that underneath the seasoning and gunk was the beautiful, if somewhat flaked off, nickel plating. The nickel was bright and silver, and I was astounded how clean it looked. This pan could have been ten years old. I disposed of the oven cleaner and water gunk by pouring it bit by bit down the toilet, careful not to spill. Lye, when diluted, is drain cleaner, so it’s reasonably safe for me to pour down the drain. At least safe enough that my dad let me do it, which is all that I worried about. With the waste disposed of and the pan cleaned of the oven cleaner, the process of seasoning began.
Seasoning
Among all the topics that are contentious in the community of cast iron aficionados, seasoning must be the most divisive. Every enthusiast has their own method, and websites with excellent search engine optimization are quick to recommend ideas. There’s very little scientific study or trials floating around the community, aside from a person who posted their adventure with seasoning the skillet 100 times in a row, practically achieving a mirror finish.10
Seasoning is built up of very thin layers of oil. Heating that oil up beyond its ‘smoke point’ will cause it to break down and turn into polymers. That seasoning will, over time, thicken up slightly and fill in the nooks of the pan so that the seasoning is hard and nonstick, also preventing the bare iron from rusting.11
The seasoning process, at its simplest, is putting a little bit of oil on the pan, wiping it around to coat it, and getting the pan hot enough that the oil polymerizes and creates a slick, hard surface. Lodge, one of the last foundries in the United States, describes seasoning as:
When oils or fats are heated in cast iron at a high enough temperature, they change from a wet liquid into a slick, hardened surface through a process called polymerization. This reaction creates a layer of seasoning that is molecularly bonded to the iron. Without this layer of carbonized oil, iron cookware would corrode and rust due to the oxygen and moisture in the air.
On a microscopic level, cast iron has a jagged, uneven surface. This texture provides more surface area for the seasoning to bond and adhere to the iron. As the layers build up, the oils and fats will fill in the texture, creating a smooth, naturally nonstick cooking surface that will last for generations.
How Does Cast Iron Seasoning Work?” Lodge Cast Iron. https://www.lodgecastiron.com/cleaning-and-care/cast-iron/science-cast-iron-seasoning
Of course, every detail of that process is debated online. Seasoning, like many other approaches in the kitchen, seems to have so many different techniques because nearly any method of putting oil on a pan and getting it hot enough will work. On the cast iron forums, newer collectors will make frenzied posts about how their seasoning is spotty (caused by using too much oil), uneven, or ugly. People who’ve been there longer typically say the same thing: just cook on it. Manufacturers also recommend just cooking in cast iron, since the blotchy ugly seasoning will, over time, lock together like a puzzle and create a well-made finish.12 For my part, I decided to stick with the Cast Iron Collector blog’s instructions for use, purely because their understanding of vintage cast iron seemed to be incredibly in-depth and thorough, so I thought their seasoning process would be as well.
I grabbed my pan, turned the oven on to 200 °F, and let the pan completely dry. I then closed the oven and turned it up to 350 °F, as the blog instructed.13 My pan was sitting on a cooling rack on top of a baking sheet so that, when I seasoned the pan, nothing would drip. Once the pan reached the temperature, I pulled it out of the oven and very carefully put a small drop of canola oil on the iron. Here again I made a very contentious choice. People use all sorts of fat for seasoning, some preferring ones with high smoke points like flaxseed oil, some people use Crisco or canola oil, and some people even use bacon fat or lard, as would have been used in the past. Canola oil seems to be a more convenient alternative to these, and none of the arguments presented for other oils convinced me of the advantages of the alternatives. Oil is oil. I rubbed the oil onto the pan with a thick wad of paper towel, taking care not to cook my skin. Then, I wiped it all off.
Removing the oil with a paper towel is the key step. I’d never be able to entirely clean the pan of oil, but I just left a miniscule layer on the surface that would turn into the seasoning. Too much oil can cause blotches or unwanted sticky gunk. The pan went back in the oven for 15 minutes upside down to let any oil drip off and prevent pooling. After this, I wiped the pan down again just to make sure there was no extra oil. I baked it in the oven for an hour, turned the oven off, and let the pan cool overnight.
The first layer of seasoning is the foundation for the rest of the seasoning and usually is a lot closer to brown or bronze than a well-loved pan’s deep black hue. So, I did it again. I baked the pan, wiped on the oil, wiped off the oil, and let it dry. And then, I did it again. I set off the fire alarm twice while doing it, so perhaps my method needs some work After this whole process, though, the results were incredible. The nickel had started to turn slightly bronze in color, tinged by oil. The inside of the pan was now a deep brownish black and was smooth as silk. I couldn’t wait to cook with it.
Just Cook On It!
I fried eggs first, of course discovering that my three layers of seasoning weren’t enough to stop the eggs from sticking. I scrubbed the stuck egg white off with chain mail – another item that cast iron aficionados adore for its ability to pull off stuck pieces without ruining the seasoning, and, according to a manufacturer, gently scuffing the seasoning gives new seasoning somewhere to attach.14 I cooked oily breakfasts and deep dish pizzas, each meal building up that seasoning just a little more. It’s served late-night cookie cravings and early morning popover desires. I use the pan almost every day, for nearly every meal I cook. It’s begun to take on a deep black hue inside, and the heat and oil has discolored the nickel into a beautiful brass. I’m well on my way to creating the perfect pan.
Ian Watson is a senior at Oberlin College, graduating with an individual major in Science, Technology, and Society. When he isn’t cooking, he’s often eating in OSCA, losing at Mario Kart, and performing aerial silks with OCircus. You can find him at LinkedIn or contact him at iwatson [at] oberlin [dot] edu
Footnotes
- Field Company Store. 2024. Field Company. https://fieldcompany.com/collections/cast-iron ↩︎
- Doru M. Stefanescu. “A History of Cast Iron.” 2018. ASM Handbook, Volume 1A, Cast Iron Science and Technology. ↩︎
- Stefanescu ↩︎
- Stefanescu ↩︎
- “The History of American-Made Heirloom Cast Iron Skillets.” Southern Kitchen. 2024. Southernkitchen.com. https://www.southernkitchen.com/story/entertain/2021/07/22/history-american-made-heirloom-cast-iron-skillets/8055449002/ ↩︎
- Roy G. Meadows. “‘Erie’ Skillets.” Wagner and Griswold Society. 2009. https://wag-society.org/guest/ERIESkilletArticle.pdf. ↩︎
- Meadows ↩︎
- Meadows ↩︎
- Data only starts in 1913, so the actual value is likely somewhat higher, perhaps around $20-$30, but I’m neither an economist nor a historian. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator, https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. ↩︎
- u/fatmummy222. “100 coats. Thank you everyone. It’s been fun.” 2023. Reddit.com/r/castiron. https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/10zprtu/100_coats_thank_you_everyone_its_been_fun/ ↩︎
- “Cast Iron Seasoning.” The Cast Iron Collector. https://www.castironcollector.com/seasoning.php ↩︎
- Cleaning Cast Iron with a Chain Mail Scrubber.” Field Company. https://fieldcompany.com/pages/cleaning-cast-iron-chain-mail-scrubber ↩︎
- “Cast Iron Seasoning.” The Cast Iron Collector. https://www.castironcollector.com/seasoning.php. ↩︎
- “Cleaning Cast Iron with a Chain Mail Scrubber.” Field Company. https://fieldcompany.com/pages/cleaning-cast-iron-chain-mail-scrubber ↩︎
