Should You Season Cast Iron With Linseed Oil?
Seasoning cast iron with linseed oil isn’t new – Cheryl Kanter first wrote about it on her blog seven years ago – but it has a serious fan base. Both Cook’s Illustrated and The Kitchn believe , with the former claiming to have created “a transparent, sticky veneer that, even after passing our commercial dishwasher with a little degreaser, left them completely unscathed.”
But Helen Rennie doesn’t care so much about cleaning as about cooking , so she seasoned two pans – one made of cast iron and one made of carbon steel – and ran several tests to see if they could handle sticky scrambled eggs and sour red wine. (She also, luckily, filmed it.)
As Helen explains above, the process is quite long – three days! – and you have to buy a rather expensive bottle of organic flaxseed oil. After 21 hours of using the oven alone, Helen was ready to cook. To make sure that this super-flavor is truly superior to traditional methods, Helen fried a couple of eggs and boiled some wine. Watch the full video to see the results, but personally, I was a little unimpressed.
Cast Iron Seasoning (Flaxseed vs. Old Methods) | Helen Rennie