When reading the the original post from
@HumbleHomeCook , it hit a little too close to home... I feel your pain. Been there a lot.
I love the way my carbon cookware handles in terms of temp response, and the flavor it seems to bring out in food versus non-reactive cookware. However, I've been doing battle with seasoning and things sticking for years, now. Just like you... I really try to use logic to solve problems, but sometimes, my carbon pans make me believe in pan-gremlins. There are days that carbon is 'happy', and days that it is not. Some carbon pans are more consistently happy than others, but all have their bad moments when they just seem to puke-up their seasoning, and go home (Even when you've never done a single thing wrong to them.)... I've spent a long time trying to figure this out. I still don't have answers, but I do have conjecture, that is gradually starting to make more sense in my head, the more years I do the same battle that you've been doing.
Here's what's starting to make sense:
#1 - If you're afraid of fats, or animal proteins, or can't afford them, stay away from reactive pans. Bare carbon/cast iron thrive on these things.
#2 - If you're not cooking in your carbon/cast iron at least 3-4 days out of 7, it seems to hate you. They love to be used.
#3 - Use butter, or a butter/oil mixture when cooking eggs, or anything else you want to be nonstick at lower temps (200-300f)... It just works, if you're not into high-temp, practically deep-fried eggs... Straight oil works about once at low-temp
if your seasoning is
perfect, and then the pan is likely to throw a wobbly straight after...
#4 - Don't do the 100-coats of oil (Don't even
think about Flaxseed! Use whatever high-temp veggie you normally cook with, or lard.) before you cook anything, or oven methods of seasoning. That's a great way to create a weak seasoning that'll peel off. Do it like the Chinese treat their woks... Heat treat the bare pan until it starts to change colour, to create a perfectly clean, oxide film on the surface that will help to hold the carbonized oil/fat. Then, put one layer of high-temp veggie oil or lard on the pan, start to bake it off way past the smoke point until you see the fat turn into droplets on the surface, rebuff the pan with a towel to level out the coating, and then finish off on the heat until all the smoke disappears. Only do this 1-2 times, before you start cooking things in the pan, and letting the rest of the seasoning build up naturally. After that, there are certain things that carbon/cast iron pans love, that seem to help them settle in quicker.
#5 - Carbon/CI loves starchy potatoes, sausage patties, and low-sugar onions (Like the Spring Onions mentioned above.). If you're not ready to cook things yet, cook some russet potato skins with a lot of oil and salt, or some scallions, until they are inedibly dark, and with enough salt and oil to embalm a corpse, and bin them after... Otherwise, make Latkes/Hash Browns, Pork Sausage Patties, and saute some not-too-sweet onions and peppers. Do this a ton. Your pan will love you, and quickly develop a very even, as-durable-as-it-can-get seasoning.
#6 - Carbon/CI needs surface texture. Not the pebbly, truck bed liner texture of Lodge, but enough of a surface profile for the oil to cling to. Pans with ground finishes hold seasoning worse than pans with pickled (Acid etched), or abrasive blasted finishes. I think it was Stargazer that actually commented on having to change their process, and implementing a bead-blasting step
after grinding/polishing, so the seasoning adhered properly. Same applies to carbon. Seasoning is just like paint... Paint needs texture to stick. Grinding/polishing creates a really crappy base for coatings to adhere to. I think that companies that blast or pickle their pans, tend to have less issues than ones that sell them in a freshly-ground state. I stopped sanding/grinding rust out of pans I restore, and started using chemical treatments to preserve or introduce an etched profile. Really need to get a blasting booth up and running. This would be even better... For what it's worth, DeBuyer's seem to be pickled, which makes them respond to seasoning a little better than a lot of other carbon I've tried. They also use something like C100 carbon steel (1% carbon; basically cutlery grade.), and that added carbon seems to make them respond a little differently than mild steel on cheaper pans... Some of the new cast iron startups are blasted, which is going to be even better, providing they get the Ra profile in the right depth range, and use the right media shape.
#7 - I've babied carbon/cast-iron cookware, and had it spank me. It's crushed me when I've met people with some beat-up carbon/cast-iron pan, that they've been using for decades with none of the rules I or others have created on how to treat this stuff, and it's got a better seasoning than I've ever been able to make... I'm talking, they've got carbon Lyonnaise skillets or American-style cast iron pans that have been used for decades, that they can cook shakshouka or even caramel sauce in every week, and it still looks great, and can immediately fry an egg without sticking after... I wouldn't believe it, if I hadn't actually seen it in person... This sort of stuff makes me feel that all the care I've lavished on my carbon/cast-iron cookware hasn't let it shine, and that you kind of need to let go of your standards a bit, and just cook in it like you don't understand it, or care about it. These people flog it, and don't worry about a darned thing (Rust? Just bake another level of fat on, and keep going... In some ways, rust is actually a great bonding agent for coatings.), and their pans are better behaved than mine. Kind of reminds me of carbon knives. At some level, our worry doesn't help them, and they just like being used.
#8 - Temperature is critical. I think part of the problem (Although those mystery carbon/cast-iron pan abusers with perfect seasoning make me doubt myself.), is that I'm not always using enough temperature, or am maybe using temperature in the wrong way. My pans seem to especially love when I flog them up past 500f, on a routine basis. Eggs stick less when I cook them at least 50f higher than I would in nonstick. When I dry the oil out of my pans on the stove to keep building up their seasoning, they don't just like something hovering around the smoke point, and turning off flame immediately once the oil starts drying, they like something WAY beyond those points. The surface gets smoother, and blacker, when I use them hard. Especially when I'm cooking things in them at those high temps, rather than just drying oil onto them empty. Something about mild food acids helps the oil layer to bond, and temp/timing also plays a big role in not getting things to stick. Really high temps seem to create that smooth, black, glassy layer. You definitely need an awesome vent fan, or to work outside for this, along with at least 15K BTU's.
#9 - Honestly, I don't know how people without high-output gas can get a proper seasoning on carbon/cast iron based upon my own personal experiences (Those 'zero f's given' people, with the perfect seasoning on their pans, often prove me wrong. Many do so with like 5-7K BTU's, or coil stoves. I can't explain it. Maybe it's more repetition in cooking than me, or the certain fats they use, or the temp curves, that make this work. Or, the fact that they do let their pans go too far, and the corrosion helps hold the seasoning better?). The oven method is a waste of time; seasoning is built up by cooking, and methods that aren't continually enhanced through use seem to be weakest. Based upon what I've seen with how Carbon/Cast Iron performs on induction, I'd probably just accept stainless and teflon pans, and say goodbye to my days screwing around with reactive pans. They just don't seem to be able to create a seasoning as well, due to the nature of the heat. Coil/glass top electrics also appear to be worse than gas at this job.
#10 - IR temp readings only work with fully seasoned pans. Spots with shiny-brown spots, don't read as accurately as spots that are fully matte black. It makes your pan look like it has hotspots, even when it doesn't.
I've played around with a lot of carbon and cast iron ware... DeBuyer, out of the box, is the best experience I've ever had with carbon cookware. A carbon-steel 'USA' wok from the Wok Shop, which came rusty enough I had to take an angle grinder with a flap wheel to it, despite the nasty industrial-oil finish, was and is my very worst. It flakes off huge amounts of seasoning into every other meal, no matter what I do. The DeBuyer's have been really well behaved, until recently, when they seemed to lose whatever 'magic' they had initially, and are now rusting like crazy on me, and struggling to develop the quick/consistent seasoning they did before. I'm currently attributing this to neglect, and lack of abuse. I haven't been cooking in them as much, and haven't been taking them much past medium lately since their seasoning started getting really good. I think they need more... More cooking, more temp, more often. That cheap wok, I'm determined, is unfixable, unless I could maybe low-pressure crushed-glass blast it, and even then the material might just be rubbish.
I'm not giving up... Still trying to solve this mystery. It's too intriguing.