Everything you need to know about CAST IRON cookware, seasoning and restoration

we all know what something costs but do we know the true value i wouldn't take anything for my cast iron cookware that i use i simply love it and i can pass it on to my children hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome to the farm kitchen here on the stoney ridge farm today we're going to have a little bit of fun in the kitchen and we're going to be working with cast iron so if this kind of stuff bores you you just ain't country i'll tell you that so what we have here i do all of my cooking on cast iron this is a beautiful cast iron skillet i don't even know how old this thing is but it's old okay i found this in a barn laying in the mud buried up in the mud and i've been cooking with it for the last four years today i'm gonna slip on my glove here and we're gonna show you some before and after here is what our goal is this is a before look at this crusty thing right here so we have that large pot which we're going to be using in a future video to make lard and we'll show you guys how we take leaf fat from a hog and we make lard to cook with we're gonna season that pot and we're gonna season three more small pans that are used for like making cornbread or scrambled eggs or something like that so come along today is we show you how to take a cast iron skillet like this crusty rusty nasty old thing and turn it into something beautiful and wonderful that you can cook with and this is a lodge brand and this is just an old cast iron skillet so come along let's have some fun we'll learn a little bit we'll talk a little bit about the benefits of cooking with cast iron all right [Music] all right guys this is a real kitchen this is real life welcome to the stoney ridge farm if this is your first time to the channel please jump in subscribe i'd love to have you back here we have a first generation farm that we're building here along with cooking along with working on machinery along with everything it's just a dream that i'm enjoying sharing with you guys here on youtube so what we're going to do is take an old crusty pot right here and this pot is going to be used for making lard so i have some leaf fat and if you watch the lard video in the next video in the series here you'll know what leaf fat is but i have some leaf fat in the refrigerator right here and i wanted to do it kind of the old timey way so in other words i wanted to do it in cast iron i've got big pots that i can cook in but i really don't want to do it that way i want to do it the old fashioned way so we're going to use cast iron this pan again is a cast iron skillet that i found in a barn full of screws and nails and rusted all to pieces it's a great skillet guys i got it for free what we're doing we live in such a throwaway society right now that you know you go out and you buy one of these non-stick pans and it has that coating on the surface and the non-stick wears off and you end up eating it eventually so do you want to eat the teflon i don't want to eat teflon i would rather put iron in my bloodstream and consume a little bit of iron iron is good for you now you want to consult your doctor if you're on any type of blood thinner or something like that if you have health problems and you need to consult them and make sure that cooking on cast iron won't hurt you okay so we're gonna take rags to riches guys this i've got several pairs of these gloves right here this is my kitchen glove dude and it's awesome i'm going to reach over here and i'm going to grab some of the cast iron that we're going to be working with today there are three pans and there's this big pot this big pot right here kind of a crock pot looking deal um probably had a lid with it at one point but it doesn't have a lid with it anymore and this is what we're going to be using to cook our lard you see that it's kind of gross it's got nastiness all over it it's pitted it's rusty it's crusty there's look down in there there's all kinds of nastiness down in there what we're gonna do is cure it out and we're gonna cure it out there's two ways that i like to cure a pot out or a pan out either put it in the wood stove and get it hot but you run a risk of busting the pan because it gets hot too fast so either do it that way put it out in the campfire or whatever and cook it all off and then reseason it or you can do what we're gonna do and what we're gonna do is we're gonna put it in our oven on the cleaning cycle now we get over a thousand no not a thousand over 800 degrees here in the oven and what that's gonna do is take this is the crustiest one uh it's probably the best one too but it's gonna take all that nasty crust and crud off of there okay this is like flaky i've already pre-warmed these pans so what you want to do i preheated my oven to about 170 degrees and these pans have been sitting in there that's why i have to hold them with a glove right here but we've got three of these pans this one looks like grandma's old cornbread pan and it's been used a lot this one and all these are it looks like they're american made there are a few makers marks on here i think there's a five back there on the back and you can see a little more this is probably the one that's in the best condition it's got the most rust on it and this one is just plumb nasty and it's probably a well-seasoned pan already you can't even see the makers mark on the bottom so we're going to give you guys the before and after on all three of these little pans the thing about cast iron cookware is you can go out and you can buy this is a lodge brand lodge right there you can go buy new cast iron cookware but it takes quite some time to get the surface inside the pan slick okay so when you buy a brand new cast iron piece of cookware the bottom is rough and it takes years to season that pan okay what we're gonna do is buy old stuff for way way cheaper so i paid basically 40 bucks for this pot and all three of those little skillets and those little skillets are perfect for cooking a pound of cornbread i'm gonna keep one for myself i'm giving one to my mom and one to my sister so let's get busy we'll show you exactly what we're gonna do to bake off all the old crust and then we're going to season them so you've gone to the flea market or you've gone to the antique shop and you've picked yourself up three cast iron skillets you can get all sorts of different sizes you can probably pick them up for 5 to 10 bucks versus 20 to 30 bucks in the store for a brand new one these are better in my opinion although there aren't a lot of businesses still making cast iron cookware so what we're going to do we do not want to do this this is one big no no we don't want to stack all three of them on top of each other and stick them in there we want to separate them evenly inside the oven i've got the oven right now preheated to 550. i'm going to slide these guys back in the bag another piece of advice if you've got small pans put those in the back put your bigger one up front because you don't want to be wrestling with that big boy all the way back there in the back okay you're in a risk of touching the eye and burning yourself and here's big stinky big stinky has a maker's mark on there it says 78 i don't know if that's 78 pints or what we're gonna set big stinky in here and what we're gonna do i hope we're gonna set them in there there we go yeah okay it doesn't matter if it sets even or level or whatever just matters that your oven door will close so we're closed up we're preheating to 550. so you're going to see some of the other cast iron cookware that i have this is a lodge brand i think you call that a dutch oven right there love cooking with that you're gonna cook you a pot of beans or cookie a chicken just take a whole chicken and put it in there with uh some potatoes and some carrots and some onions oh man it makes that tummy growl if you guys haven't had lunch yet i bet your tummy's growling so what we're going to do if you don't have a self-cleaning oven it takes longer so you can set your oven to the highest temperature and leave it in there for about six hours we have a self-cleaning oven here so we're going to set the clean on here we're actually going to turn the fan on above the microwave here so that we're drawing some of that smell out because this is going to smell funky okay the house is going to smell like you're cleaning the oven so you're going to want to do this on a day that it's nice maybe a 70 degree day where it's a little breezy so you're getting a breeze through the house because you don't want that smoke to radiate inside your house we're going to leave these guys in here for the full clean cycle if you don't have a self-cleaning oven put it at the highest temperature you can possibly go and leave it in there for four to six hours okay we'll see you guys in just a few minutes we're going to show you what type of oil we use to season our pans and it takes years often to season a pan good but getting a good start is very very important so let me set the oven when you set your oven for self clean if you got an older oven you probably have a lock on the front of it this one just said lot so this thing is locked and it takes three hours to run through the self-cleaning cycle i'm gonna open a couple doors in the house let the house breathe let's talk about if you guys don't know if you don't follow the farm channel so i'm full time here on the farm now but i am a registered nurse so i've got some friends that are pharmacists and i was talking to a pharmacy buddy of mine and we were talking about the benefits the health benefits of cooking with cast iron and he said you know what i learned in pharmacy school there was never a documented case of iron deficiency anemia prior to the 1920s when commercial cookware started coming out with the non-stick and aluminum and and stainless steel type pans so cast iron can be very good for you very good to cook with there aren't a whole lot of companies again lodge makes a great cast iron cookware pan but you can go to like little antique stores little mom and pop shops flea markets whatever and you can pick these things up for a song save yourself some money and have something that has true value to it we all know what something cost but do we know the true value i wouldn't take anything for my cast iron cookware that i use i simply love it and i can pass it on to my children my great-grandmother passed on her cornbread cooking pan to my mother and it's a cherished item these are cherished items we don't have that anymore guys and our country is slipping away our world is slipping away we're just a throwaway society and these are not throwaway items let's give them three hours we'll see you guys once all the crust is baked off all right the long-awaited reveal so behind the scenes it's been about five hours here okay we're into the next day and here is the result of all of that baking you see how it turned everything white down inside there's a bunch of crusty stuff so we'll take this guy outside you don't want to do this inside we'll take it outside and put a wire brush to it now you're going to see some cool differences in the different grades or the different grade of cleanliness these pans were these uh small pans so this guy was virtually brand new and you can see it still looks virtually brand new that's the one that we're gonna be carrying out today and then we'll talk about the rest of it this i'm saving the crustiest one for last so inside here is all of the stuff that baked out of there okay so we'll dump it out into here real quick that's the bottom of that pan that pan that we couldn't see any numbers on or anything it's clean as a whistle i'm gonna put it down in the other cast iron skillet and the nasty nasty one is right here so this is just a cleaning cycle look at that you can see right there the five is on there everything's on there okay it did a little bit of damage to the rack here so i got to take the rack out and bend it back into position but let's talk about where we go from here so where we take the crustiness and you can see i would just call it ashy it's just covered in ash we're going to take them out we'll clean them with a wire brush okay guys you can do it with a wire brush you can do it with a brush on the end of a drill which makes it a lot faster what we're going to do you can also just use a kitchen scouring sponge too you can do it right in your kitchen sink it will not hurt these to get wet however i do suggest before you get them wet that you get some oil on them now let's take the cleanest one and we'll show you guys how it looks when it's done we're going to finish it out and it's going to look very similar to that so we're going to go from this to this and it's very very simple guys again it's about saving money it's about passing on something from generation to generation these things can be passed on from generation they're not a throwaway item and we live in such a throwaway world so let's show you what we do and we'll talk about the different kinds of oils that you can use to cure out and season your cast iron skillet or pan or pot so let's take our baked off uh skillets and pots and what we're gonna do this pot is gonna be seasoned by lard inside my refrigerator i've got a box of leaf fat for making lard so tune in to the next video in the series or you can look there's a cooking canning and kitchen video series i'll post to the end of this video so you guys can follow along as we show you how to make lard from fat and it's cheap and it's easy and it's healthy it's good for you okay it's all about eating good and treating your body well so i'm gonna set the crustiest ones over here and i'm gonna grab the one that came out the best this thing is virtually brand new guys virtually brand new if you're a cast iron skillet person let me know there's a maker's mark on here that says five and another maker's mark i really can't tell what it says this one's virtually brand new okay so it's probably been used like four times something like that uh and then somebody cast it aside take those things that people cast aside and make them into treasures for you and your family for a long time so what we're gonna do here i'm gonna take the pan i'm going to put the camera down here on the pan i'm going to show you the oil that we use and how we do this there are three options right here coconut oil okay the option that i like the best walnut oil i'm going to post links to this stuff down the video description for you guys you're going to need a roll of paper towels also another option would be to use bacon fat or lard to do this to cure this thing out okay so the first thing we're going to do and i'm going to use my walnut oil the walnut oil leaves an awesome residue and it's not very expensive one of these cans will last you nearly a year for taking care of your cast iron cookware right so we're going to take some paper towels i'm going to roll off about three paper towels here and first thing we're gonna do is wipe it out just to show you guys okay they start rusting immediately so after i wipe it out you're gonna see some rust it's normal it's okay it's cool it's not gonna hurt you so see that rust see what i got off with the rag okay we're going to take our paper towel and we're going to fold it back on itself we're again saving being frugal being smart i'm going to fold it back on itself we're going to pour probably a quarter sized dollop of walnut oil over here in the pan okay maybe a little bigger yeah that's a little bigger it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you can't put too much on here this is secure baby this is what it's all about right here okay i get excited when i do this kind of stuff and you're going to see some nastiness come off you want to also not only look at that look how beautiful you not only want to wipe in the inside you want to wipe the rim the edge of the rim and look at this oiled versus this not oiled so you want to oil all of it look at that like brand spanking new guys this thing probably cost me four bucks at the second hand store and you can find these old cast iron skillets all over the place second hand stores you can find them at flea markets i imagine right now one of your neighbors or one of your friends has an old cast iron skillet sitting out in the shed nobody can throw them away it's just your conscience you can't keep a clear conscience and put that in the trash can there's just no way you can do it so look okay we got some crusty nasty stuff on here right that's the first one the first treatment okay that's all good that's what we're looking for we want to get the handle you want to get everything if you don't like grease on your hands or oil on your hands uh then wear gloves okay so we're gonna go ahead and discard this wad and we're gonna start with some new paper towels once again i'm gonna put about a quarter sized dollop in there we'll put a smaller dollop for the second time here gonna use probably three of these little paper towels and we're greasing this thing up now now we're hooking it up so we want it to be heavily greased all right okay you want to almost have a you want to have it just about to where it'll try to run out of the pan you can see that right there it's trying to run just a little bit that's cool that's what you want man you want to get that dude greased up when you take care of these i'm going to show you what to do to take care of them also okay for longevity and you'll be cooking scrambled eggs in that thing right there and you'd think it it would never cook scrambled eggs without sticking but it sure will so for longevity purposes we have and i'll post links again this is the lodge brand cleaner okay i got the coffee shakes so that's a lodge brand cleaner this is a brand new one they wear out this is the one that i use so when you buy them and you're gonna do this you're gonna commit to cast iron go ahead and buy a couple two or three of these okay i'll post links again i keep them in an old coffee cup right beside the kitchen sink and this is a used one that's what it looks like after several months of use but it's still really really good we are going to show you with the new one exactly what we do to clean it so once you get done cooking whatever it is you cook you run a little bit of water in here okay carefully run some water in there don't burn yourself don't let the pan be too hot and then you take this brush and you just simply get in the edges brush it off wipe all the way around the rim right there and wipe it out again with a paper towel and then do the oil treatment one more time so drop a little bit probably once you get it good and seasoned you only need about a dime sized dollop of oil and then you'll rub that oil in just like so and set it back over on the stove let it stay warm and it'll absorb that oil now to finish out our cure let's talk about that so finishing out our cure we're not done we're not totally done here this takes work again it's a commitment on your part we're going to take all of our pans that we've greased up and made look wonderful nice and wonderful we actually could just take this one and wipe it out uh also i'll you know what i'm gonna do it real quick and i'm gonna show you this is the before the crusty nasty before and inside here is just a puddle of nastiness that's the back this is the before and that is the after isn't that beautiful isn't that wonderful so we're gonna take these guys right here and i have my oven preheating again to 285 we're gonna take all of these skillets and we're gonna put them all look at that man from gosh it's just so impressive from that to this unbelievable guys it's just absolutely unbelievable we're going to take this and we're going to put it in the oven and i'm not here to sell you anything this is all about education we're going to take that we're going to put it in the oven for…