When my father-in-law passed away unexpectedly five years ago, one of the things we inherited from the estate was my late mother-in-law’s set of cast iron cookware: two small 8″ and 9″ skillets, one large 12″ skillet, and a dutch oven (wire handle, no lid). They had clearly not been used in some time, and each had varying degrees of rust and general grime collected on them.
I was afraid to clean and reseason them for the longest time, mainly because my one experience with seasoning cast iron involved a friend from college smoking up her apartment by using an excessive amount of shortening while seasoning her own cast iron. I also didn’t want to ruin them by doing it wrong.
As it turns out, it’s really hard to ruin cast iron cookware.
