How to Season Cast Iron Cookware | Polymerize, Don’t Polymerize-Worry

Seasoning cast iron means baking on a thin oil layer that bonds to the pan and shields it from rust.

Getting a slick, naturally non-stick surface on a new skillet or a rescued flea-market find isn’t complicated. The process boils down to three moves: clean it, oil it thinly, and bake it hot enough that the oil changes form. When the pan comes out of the oven, that oil isn’t oil anymore — it’s a hard, plastic-like polymer bonded to the iron. That’s the seasoning. Lodge, the biggest name in cast iron, publishes a straightforward method for this. It works on any bare cast iron piece — skillets, Dutch ovens, griddles — whether brand new or decades old (after you’ve dealt with any rust).

The Step-by-Step Seasoning Process

Here’s the sequence Lodge’s own care guide lays out. It takes about an hour of oven time plus a few minutes of prep.

1. Wash and dry. Scrub the pan with hot, soapy water to remove residue or factory dust. Dry thoroughly with a towel, then heat on a warm burner for a few minutes to evaporate any moisture hiding in the iron’s pores.
2. Oil every surface. Rub a very thin layer of cooking oil over the entire piece — inside, outside, the handle, everything. Melted solid vegetable shortening works well too. The goal is a sheen, not a coat.
3. Wipe off the excess. This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that matters most. Take a clean cloth and wipe the pan again as if you were trying to get the oil off. If oil pools or drips, it will bake into sticky, gummy patches instead of smooth seasoning.
4. Bake it upside down. Put a sheet of foil on the lower rack of your oven to catch any drips. Set the cookware upside down on the center rack. This keeps oil from pooling in the cooking surface.
5. Heat for one hour. The smoke point of your oil matters — use an oil with a high smoke point like grapeseed, canola, or vegetable oil.
6. Cool in the oven. Turn off the heat and let the pan cool completely inside the oven before you take it out.

That’s one round of seasoning. For a brand-new pan that comes pre-seasoned (Lodge’s cookware is pre-seasoned with soy vegetable oil), you don’t need to do this right away. For a stripped-down or bare piece, a single round creates a base layer — but the best results come from repeating the oil-and-bake process three or four more times, per Lodge’s care guide.

You don’t need a specialty pan to start cooking better. If you’re in the market, our roundup of top-rated cast iron cookware for every kitchen breaks down the best skillets and Dutch ovens by price and performance.

What Oil Should You Use?

Any cooking oil with a high smoke point will polymerize into seasoning, but some are better than others. The table shows the usual choices and what they bring to the pan.

Common Seasoning Mistakes to Avoid

Most seasoning failures trace back to one cause: too much oil. If the pan comes out sticky or gummy, that’s what happened. The fix is to scrub it off and start over with a thinner coat. Lodge’s official seasoning instructions stress wiping the oil off as if you’d changed your mind about using it. Another common error is skipping the oven-cooling step—taking a hot pan out to cool on the counter can shock and weaken the fresh seasoning. Let it cool with the oven. One myth persists: that soap ruins cast iron. Lodge Europe confirms it’s fine to use soap if you plan to re-season afterward. Modern dish soaps won’t damage polymerized oil — only the abrasive scrubbing of a stripped pan will.

How to Fix a Rusty Pan Before Seasoning

If you’ve got an old pan with rust, you can’t season over it—the rust will keep the oil from bonding and can flake off into your food. Scrub the rust off with steel wool or a stiff brush and hot water until you’re back to bare gray iron, dry completely, and then proceed with the seasoning steps above. For clean, pre-seasoned cookware, this rust-stripping step isn’t needed. Just wash, dry, and cook. Seasoning builds up naturally every time you cook with fats and oils.