Care for cast iron cookware

[howlinowl]

Wife just received some new cast iron cookware.  Skillets, dutch oven, ect.  So........ She just gave me the old ones to keep in the camper.... Score!!!  But, since they will be stored in the camper, and possibly not used for some period of time between camping trips, how should I store them so they don't get rusty and need to be reseasoned??  I've thought about maybe coating them with shortning, but thought I'd ask here for some advice on what others do.

Thanks,
Allan

[AustinBoston]

Warm them up enough to melt the shortening, then put a VERY THIN coating of shortening on them.  (I usually coat thicker and wipe it almost dry.)  Add more heat, ideally not quite enough to make them smoke.  I do this on a stove top.  Let them cool.

Store them (at least, the ones with lids) with a paper towel folded several times between the lid and the pot so that they can breathe.  This greatly reduces the chance of condensation, and condensation + cast iron = rust.

Austin

[Old Goat]

We use olive oil on cast iron pots in the same way and it works very well too....

[brainpause]

AB's idea sounds like a good one.

But here is what we do: First we seasoned ours at home at least 8 or 10 times before we used it. Here's what we did: It was fairly new, but we had not seasoned it properly, and it had some gunk and a little rust on it. I cleaned it as best I could, and then immediately put it through a cleaning cycle in the oven. That burned off anything else.

After everything cooled off, I did this procedure probably 4 or 5 times/week for two weeks: Put a thin coat of some type of oil (I think we used vegetable oil) all over the inside, outside, top of lid, bottom of lid, everywhere. I then put both pieces (lid and pot) in the oven with pot upside down. Oven was not preheated. I turned the oven on to 350 degrees, and set a timer for an hour. When the hour was up, I simply turned off the oven and let it cool inside the oven. Repeat several times.

After we did this, the DO became like Teflon, and works very well. Ours is almost completely black after 2 or 3 seasons of doing this.

Now, after cooking in it, I carefully clean it out with water (only) and a paper towel. Once I have it good and dry, I coat it with more vegetable oil, all over, with a paper towel and bottle of the oil.

We then just store it in a DO bag, bought from Lodge. That has been one of the handiest items: It keeps the oily DO off other things. We don't store ours with paper towels, as AB suggested, but we have never had rust problems or anything else, probably due to thorough drying and generous oiling afterwards.

Larry