So my grandmother always said that tallow (rendered beef fat) was the best oil to season cast iron. Also once seasoned, never ever wash the pan with soap. I wipe them off and then boil a little water in them to disinfect.
Iâm good with any objective temperature scale. Cast iron may have something like pores, but heating is not going to open them in any way.
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I would read the âopen the poresâ as a poetic or metaphoric way of explaining that the oil seems to absorb better. I assume what is actually happening is that the slightly pre-heated pan warms the oil and makes it spread thinner.
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I donât think theyâre machined at all, that texture is from the casting. And I think itâs intentional; I have one found-on-the-street pan that I ground smooth and two with the original texture, and something â maybe having all those microscopic pockets of air or grease between the metal and the food â makes the textured ones much more non-stick than the smooth one.
Unless youâre cooking things at < 100°C, isnât the pan already as disinfected as (or even more than) itâs going to get with boiling water?
Yeah but sometimes the pan doesnât get cleaned immediately after use.
speaking of science, i would like peer reviewed papers describing those harmful chemicals supposedly not found in organic flax seed oil and saying that they are in amounts large enough to cause harm, pretty please?
I think his point is that the next time you try to cook with it, any lingering bacteria would be quickly killed off. So unless youâre using the pan for serving uncooked food, etc; boiling water in it after a clean is a little pointless.
I made my own organic no toxic chemical oil from pure almonds, harvested from nature.
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The people arguing with his article and kibbitzing about which oil to use who clearly didnât even read the entire article just crack me up. This lady did a lot of work identifying the best oil to use and figuring out the science behind it, whatever you think of some particular phrase you didnât like in the beginning of the article.
Yes, other oils can be used as she pointed out, but they give a softer, less long-lasting finish. Your granny was a wonderful woman and her biscuits beat all â but lard or bacon grease are not the best oils to use. Thatâs science. Not emotional reasoning. 
Yes, perfectly. You want to use peanut oil for the wok, since it has the highest burn temp and woks are usually heated to higher temps than other stove-top pans.
Honestly, the âno soapâ thing is an exaggeration. I pretty much only cook on cast iron, and I regularly will use a little bit of soap if the pan is particularly greasy (e.g. after deep frying). Itâs never affected the beautiful black patina on my pans. I sometimes see other peopleâs cast iron that still has a sticky oily sheen on it, and know that theyâre too worried about the âno soapâ myth.
Much more important is drying it well. Leaving it damp even just overnight will cause it to develop a little bit of rust. But even thatâs not actually too much of a problem. Itâs impossible to permanently damage a cast iron pan, unless you subject a very cheap one to sudden temperature changes and it shatters.
As for âdisinfecting,â I recently got a new pan (I needed a larger dutch oven) and noticed the little tag says âif youâre worried about germs, donât be! An empty cast iron pan on the stove heats up to 400ÂșF in one minute.â
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I used to be a kosher-salt-only guy, to clean the pans. I now use soap after every use. I have been doing this for years. It does nothing detrimental to the pans, much like the other commenter noted.
Iâve also rescued a few pans in my day. From rust bucket to non stick sheen in 2 oven cycles. This also works on pans that have a bad seasoning job:
Run a cast iron pan through the ovenâs cleaning cycle, clean it off completely then spray with canola oil (any high temp oil) put it in a cold oven, bring it up to highest setting, leave for an hour & cool.
These things are huge chunks of metal you cook food in. Not really much science is needed to achieve this.
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In this particular instance, this is good advice. If you try to pick up flaxseed oil any other way than the cold pressed stuff from a health food store (because who else would carry the stuff?), youâre probably going to end up with linseed oil, which usually means âboiledâ linseed oil, which is solvent-extracted flax oil mixed with petroleum distillates and drying agents. Great for putting on wood, maybe for mixing with oil paints, but not for anything thatâs going to be touching food.
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This procedure is total overkill. Donât mistake laboratory theory with practical usage in the kitchen. The âhardestâ coating is not necessarily what you want. The flax method has been tested by experts and the hard seasoning has a tendency to flake off. I use PAM at 225 and then I just use the pan and the seasoning builds like Grannies. Old fashioned Crisco works well also. I suggest you consult the experts that have used cast iron for decades. See http://www.wag-society.org/Electrolysis/seasoning.php Seasoning is not rocket science.
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i agree most modern pans including lodge arenât machined minimally, if at all.
but vintage pans from griswold, et al are most certainly machined very smooth from the factory and perform MUCH better in my relatively decent experience with cast iron.
iâm about to perform some experiments on sanding some cheap modern pans. i may not have an opportunity to let you all know how it goes 
i guess you could follow my youtube channel 
I just put mine on the heat & pour cold water on there. Lifts off all the guck & leaves my skillet smooth & nonstick.
Not according to Alton:
http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/collectedinfo/oilsmokepoints.htm
I believe Chinese cooks do use peanut oil, but if that chart is accurate, refined peanut oil smokes at 450°F, grapeseed at 485, soy 495, safflower 510, and avocado oil (which I have never seen anywhere) 520. (All in their refined versions.) I donât know how their various drying factors stack up though.
Oh, interesting! I havenât looked at the numbers for many years (like, probably 15-20 at this point), back when there wasnât this new âhigh heatâ alternative. I donât know what they do differently to make vegetable oils able to withstand higher temperatures, but youâre right: a lot of them can surpass plain old peanut oil at this point. I even use them, so thereâs no excuse for me not realizing I could cut my shelf of oil options down by one, since peanut oil is a strong enough taste that it generally isnât used for anything other than sauteing in a wok.
Thatâs my TIL for todayâŠthanks.
As for avocado oil, I have some. It says 500Âș, not 520Âș, FWIW. Canât remember where I bought it, but Costco is likely, considering the size of the bottle.
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