Want to know how to season carbon steel pans or skillets?
So, you are here to know more about how to season a carbon steel pan. Truly, people often get confused even though they know or have some idea about how to season a cast iron pan or skillet.
To begin with, “seasoning” your non-stick frying pan means applying a thin layer of oil (usually vegetable oil or other fat) to fill the small pores in the surface coating and further prevent food from sticking. A properly seasoned non-stick pan surface can help reduce the need for excess fat.
Although, generally speaking, none of the non-stick frying pans require seasoning (except the carbon steel frying pans, which need a carbon steel seasoning process), it can increase the durability of the frying pan.
Yes, Seasoning is not a greasy layer left by a poorly washed pan, nor it is a flavor that has developed over the years. Rather, it is a protective layer created by burning oil onto the pan. Here’s how to do it right with a carbon steel pan.
Carbon steel stoves don’t have half the love of cast iron pans, which is a shame because carbon steel pans can be just as useful in a home kitchen. Like cast iron, carbon steel has relatively low heat conduction and good heat retention, making it a solid choice for roasting meat. Besides, as carbon steel pans are often stamped or extruded from a sheet of metal rather than cast into a mold, they have sloped sides and are thinner and lighter than cast iron. These two features make them much better suited for removing food, making them one of the best pans for roasting meats and vegetables.
Carbon steel has one more thing in common with cast iron: It’s seasoned. Contrary to popular belief, “seasoning” in the context of cookware is not a flavor that accumulates in a pan over time. Rather, seasoning is an accumulation of filmy layers of oil that have been transformed into a solid, plastic-like polymer by the heat of the liquid fat.
There are several reasons for seasoning a carbon steel pan (the same reasons and techniques apply to cast iron). First, bare carbon steel will rust if exposed to moisture; the treatment acts as a water barrier and prevents the pan from rusting in wet weather. Seasoning also increases the pan’s performance, giving it a non-stick surface that only modern Teflon-like coatings can overcome. When properly seasoned, carbon steel is ideal for eggs, pancakes and more. In fact, traditional omelet and pancake pans are made of carbon steel.
A carbon steel pan at the beginning of seasoning
Seasoning a carbon steel skillet is easy. It’s also more instructive than seasoning an iron pot. That’s because most dishes are pre-seasoned at the factory, making it difficult for the amateur cook to understand seasoning. That’s right, jet black cast iron isn’t black from the metal, it’s black from the seasoning – underneath the dark exterior is gray cast iron.
Look at a new carbon steel pan and you’ll see something that is rare in cast iron: the color of the bare metal. Most carbon steel pans are not seasoned at all, so you can see the seasoning develop before your eyes. With enough layers of seasoning, your carbon steel pans will turn as black as cast iron. Once you see this, you will have no more confusion about what is seasoning and what is not.
Step 1: Remove the protective coating and wash the pan
Most carbon steel pots and pans are untempered and unseasoned and have a protective coating that prevents bare metal from rusting. How to know if your pan is not seasoned? It will have a metallic gray color, not black like most commercial cast iron pots and pans.
The first thing to do is remove this coating. Since different manufacturers use different coatings, I won’t give you instructions on how to do this here. Just follow the instructions that come with the frying pan. After that, wash the pan thoroughly.
Step 2: Drying the pan
Once the protective coating has been removed and the pan has been washed, it needs to be dried immediately: The substance that prevented your pan from rusting is gone, and you’d be surprised how quickly a light layer of rust can form on wet, bare steel.
I usually dry the wet pan quickly with a towel and then place it on a burner on the stove to remove any remaining moisture. This also leads to the next step: heating the pan.
Step 3: Heat the pan
It is time to apply the first coat of seasoning. Just heat the pan first so that the oil can be applied as thinly as possible. I often do this on a burner, but you can also do it in the oven at 450°F as long as your carbon steel pan handle is suitable for the oven. For, you will have to remember that unlike cast iron pans, which are solid pieces of iron with a handle, carbon steel has a riveted handle; some carbon steel skillets or pans handles cannot withstand the high heat of the oven, so check the owner’s manual.
Step 4: Apply oil sparingly
Apply oil on a cloth to season a carbon steel or cast iron pan or wok.
Lightly grease a kitchen cloth that you don’t bother to dirty with neutral oil. Canola oil, vegetable oil and grape seed oil work. What you should not use: lard and vegetable shortening; butter, in which water and dairy ingredients are mixed; olive oil, which is more expensive and often contains sediment; or flaxseed oil, which provides a better quality seasoning but is more liable to flaking.
Step 5. Rub oil into a steel pan to season it
Now rub the inside and outside of the pan with the oil, being careful to remove the excess oil until the pan appears dry. I can’t stress this enough: If you apply the oil too firmly, you won’t be able to season your pan properly and you will end up with a smeared, sticky layer that is difficult to repair. If you are wondering if you have applied too much oil, I can assure you that you have.
Clean it, dry it, and remove all traces of oil from the pan. Don’t worry, there is still oil, and it’s enough for seasoning.
Step 5: Burn it on carefully
A sequence of time intervals can show exactly the formation of seasoning in a new carbon steel skillet (the skillet will change from a metallic to brown color).
Now let the oiled pan heat up, either on the burner or in the hot oven. The burner works well, but since carbon steel does not conduct heat well, you may have to move the pan a bit to make sure that the oil has formed a polymer everywhere. How do you know this? Well, with the new carbon steel, you can see it. The areas where the oil has solidified into a solid layer will be slightly brown. That’s what you call seasoning!
The sequence shows a very smoky frying pan, and gradually the smoke fades away.
The smoke passage time decreases and disappears once the oil has completely polymerized into a layer of seasoning.
Be careful, the frying pan will smoke a lot during this process, so open the windows, turn on the fans and send your children outside to play.
Eventually, the smoking will stop, a sign that the oil layer has completed its transformation. The time a burner will run depends on the burner power and the size of the skillet or pan, but it can take quite a few minutes. In the oven, about 30 minutes should be sufficient for it.
Step 6: Repeat the process
Continue to apply and heat these micro-fine layers of oil until they darken, again and again, until the pan acquires a dark brown tint. This should be enough to start cooking.
Step 7: Use the skillet and season again if it is necessary
From this point onwards, your goal is to make use of the pan. By burning, roasting or sautéing sufficiently in the pan, you get even more seasoning. Of course, you can also continue to add layers of seasoning using the heat-oil-heat method described above. In time, your pan will turn black. If my experience serves me correctly, seasoning in a carbon steel pan may flake off a little more easily than seasoning in cast iron. If this happens, don’t worry, just season the pan a few more times to touch up the problem spot.
Wrapping up
How to season a carbon steel pan
So, all that’s now left to do is take care of the pan properly. The method is the same as for cast iron pans. Hope this post on how to season a carbon steel pan will be enough for you to do the seasoning of your skillet or pan at the comfort of your home. And when you have done it all by yourself, you would definitely find great pleasure in completing your task successfully.