How To Clean & Season Cast Iron Skillets for Food Sensitivities

Finding out that you have food sensitivities is an enlightening experience — both in good ways and bad! For one, you finally figure out why you’ve been feeling terrible for months, years, or perhaps your whole life. On the bad end, you’ve got a lifestyle change coming! When you’re extremely sensitive, it’s time to either buy new pans and kitchen tools, or do a very extensive cleaning.

Here, we take you through the steps to cleaning and re-seasoning your existing cast iron skillets to purge them of old food impurities.

• Coarse salt
• Water
• A clean, stable cooking fat that you aren’t sensitive to, like coconut oil or flax oil

• A dirty cast iron skillet
• A stove

1. Fill your skillet with a few inches of water and place on the stove to boil for about twenty minutes.

2. After your water is finished boiling, pour course salt onto problem areas and scrub. I used a paper towel to hold the little pile of salt in place. You can also use a potato or a new sponge.

3. After you are satisfied with your scrubbing, rinse the skillet with hot water and place it back on the stove.

4. Add about a tablespoon of your chosen fat (I used coconut oil, but animal fat or organic, refined flax oil would work, if you aren’t sensitive to them). Vegetable oil is suggested as a good seasoning, but most people with food sensitives will find themselves reacting to it due to it being made of seed and grain extractions like rapeseed, soybean, corn, sunflower, or safflower.

5. Heat the fat in the pan (do not allow it to smoke) for about 40 minutes to an hour. You can also bake the pan at 350° to keep the temperature stable.

6. After the heating is complete, make sure to wipe all of the oil out of the pan, and you’re all set!

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