For those interested in flaxseed

I had read about that in the beginning of my interest in CI but have never used it. I have wondered about how well it would hold up on the bases of waffle irons. It looked like it gives a deep black color and would clean up easy? And what did start to ware I'd just add oil and use as normal.

Has anyone else used it for WI base Or trivet? If so what's the downside of it.


Steve,
 
I've seasoned with flax oil, but not on waffle irons or trivets. It has a much more pungent odor when seasoning but it gives the iron a rich dark brown color. Even after a lot of use the exterior of the pans I seasoned with flax oil still have a little brown to them. There doesn't seem to be much difference in cooking performance vs seasoning with other oils but I do prefer it for pans I'm more likely to display rather than use.

For a waffle iron or trivet I'd simply use whatever food grade oil on hand that happens to have the highest smoke point and adjust the seasoning temperature accordingly.
 
America's Test Kitchen is a pretty darn good recommendation. They test everything nine ways from Sunday.
I've read both positive and negative things about it, but I have yet to try it.

Some of the people posting negative reviews about it, I doubt could follow the directions on a Band-Aid. Others seem bright enough. I've also heard first hand success stories from people I trust.

To me, I think of it like pretty much anything. If you can get it to work for you the way you want it to.. Go for it. After a lot of trial and error I have my methods down pat. They work for me and I get the results I want.

Being a collector, 98% of the pieces I restore it's mostly to get them back in working order and to inhibit rust. I also cook in quite a few of my favorite pieces so I know my methods are sound.
 
RickC said:
America's Test Kitchen is a pretty darn good recommendation. They test everything nine ways from Sunday.
I've read both positive and negative things about it, but I have yet to try it.

Some of the people posting negative reviews about it, I doubt could follow the directions on a Band-Aid. Others seem bright enough. I've also heard first hand success stories from people I trust.

To me, I think of it like pretty much anything. If you can get it to work for you the way you want it to.. Go for it. After a lot of trial and error I have my methods down pat. They work for me and I get the results I want.

Being a collector, 98% of the pieces I restore it's mostly to get them back in working order and to inhibit rust. I also cook in quite a few of my favorite pieces so I know my methods are sound.
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Yes, indeed. I think I will give flax seed oil a try on the next picking find. And, gotta find a local source of flax see oil, btw.
 
Higher end grocery stores or a health food store such as Whole Foods should carry it. It puts off a strong acrid odor when it starts to smoke, more so than any of the other oils I've used.
 
Ty L. said:
Higher end grocery stores or a health food store such as Whole Foods should carry it. It puts off a strong acrid odor when it starts to smoke, more so than any of the other oils I've used.
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Ok thanks Ty. Just wondering if it gives off the same acrid odor when heating up skillet preparing to cook?
 
Re: For those interested in flaxseed -update

Update on my flax seed oil testing. I recently tested on a couple of new Lodge skillets using Wholefoods 360 brand of filtered flax oil. I followed the instructions exactly as presented in Cooks Illustrated article I linked earlier and reference from another article posted in seasoning resources here about seasoning with flax seed oil. Results: yes it is a very dark, durable finish and it is a lengthy process. So far, after cooking on it as normal, no flaking or cracking so far. Not to say it won't. No bad taste issues in the foods I cook so far. Some caveats I considered: using the filtered (same as refined, correct?), organic and requires refrigeration and is 100%, not a blend of, flax seed oil with the high smoke point of 430F and set my oven to max temp of 550F.

As I use them over time, I will let everyone know if flaking/chipping develops.
 
One more thing I forgot to mentioned is that I stripped the mentioned CI using the lye solution method. They were bought new a few years ago at some big box store.
 
I have tried many different oils over the years. I have not been impressed with flax seed, it looks nice on my show pieces but has not held up well on my users. The smell and cost has turned me off.

More recently I have tried using the Crisbee formula (crisco and beeswax) and have been happy with the results. Very easy to make your own and it gives a nice dark brown almost black finish. The smell is almost pleasant.
 
M_Osborne said:
I have tried many different oils over the years. I have not been impressed with flax seed, it looks nice on my show pieces but has not held up well on my users. The smell and cost has turned me off.

More recently I have tried using the Crisbee formula (crisco and beeswax) and have been happy with the results. Very easy to make your own and it gives a nice dark brown almost black finish. The smell is almost pleasant.
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I use Crisbee too on all of my old iron and works great.

---------- Post added at 02:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 PM ----------

So far in my experiment, no chipping or flaking or pealing.
 
I followed this exact seasoning procedure (Cooks Illustrated/ATK), but ended up with wavy or pooling oil marks in my pan.

I was new to this process, and naively thought that just flipping pan over gravity would prevent this from happening. I now know from further research I should have checked pan about 10 minutes in to each seasoning cook and re-wiped.

The waves seem pretty well baked in. Do I have to to start all over and strip the seasoning or will this pattern go away over time? Or maybe do a few acidic food cooks?

The polymerized flax seems really hard. I did 5 or 6 treatments until I realized I had really baked in those waves of oil. Judging from the parts of the pan that don't have the wave pattern, I bet if I had wiped the pan would have an incredible black mirror finish from the flaxseed oil.



Thanks
 
The two options would be:

Strip it and start over. Might take all of 5 minutes in a lye bath or in a bag with oven cleaner.

Just cook with it, and eventually the long term seasoning will obscure any unevenness.

It's unfortunate that CI/ATK decided to hop on the flaxseed oil bandwagon without realizing that, as most collectors already have, it's quite often not the be-all to end-all it's purported to be.
 
M_Osborne said:
I have tried many different oils over the years. I have not been impressed with flax seed, it looks nice on my show pieces but has not held up well on my users. The smell and cost has turned me off.

More recently I have tried using the Crisbee formula (crisco and beeswax) and have been happy with the results. Very easy to make your own and it gives a nice dark brown almost black finish. The smell is almost pleasant.
Click to expand...

What ratio Crisco:beeswax do you use when you make your own?
 
So far in my experiment, no cracking, or bad food odor leeching into cooked food from using flax seed oil seasoning in the Lodge skillet I am using to conduct experiment.
 
I am interested in the flax oil conditioning. I took a look at the Cooking Illustrated link and Item #1 in the instructions shows a serious flaw. There are no pores in cast iron. If you heat up cast iron it will expand but it will do so due to the laws of thermodynamics. What we are looking at is thermal expansion and the amount is based on the material which dictates the thermal expansion coefficient and with the change in temperature you can find the difference in size. BUT there are no air spaces left because of that and there are none to begin with. The Crisbee website makes the same error. it won't cause you any problems, it is just unnecessary.

Speaking of Crisbee, I just ordered a "puck" from them and I am going to examine the density of the puck and compare it to the density of Crisco and Beeswax and should be able to come up with a close approximation. Won't be exactly the same but I doubt if that would matter. I just do not want to violate anyone's legal information. I made a mixture of food grade mineral oil and beeswax for use on turned wood bowls that I am messing with.

One other issue and I don't know if any of you have tried this. I see all the lye bath instructions to get rid of rust. There is an old tried and true method to do the same thing. It is called rust bluing, an old standby finishing method of coating firearms. I have been doing that for 30 years as a commercial (although part time) enterprise.

In short, red rust (Fe2O3) is an unstable compound and will continue to "propagate". The simplest way to stop it is to expose it to steam or boiling water for 10 to 20 minutes. Best if the water is distilled. What you create is magnetite (Fe3O4) which is a stable compound. You can then use a stainless brush to remove any scale and it will not continue.
 
Those talking about pores in cast iron are simply repeating misinformation they've read elsewhere. But since it sounds plausible and it's on the internet, it must be true, no? Actually, lye has no effect on rust, it's the electrolysis tank for that. I suppose if boiling water or steam was as effective but simpler and less hazardous, it might be embraced, but electro tanks do have that kind of techno-cool cachet. If you search crisbee on here, the proportions are somewhere. I don't use it, so I'm not sure offhand.
 
Doug, you might be right about the acceptance. It just seems too easy. It has been around as a process for firearms since the 1800's. If you had rust inside the pan all you would have to do it put water in it and boil it for 10+ minutes. An electric drill with a thin wire wheel would do a good job as a "carding brush" (gunsmithing term for .... taaadaaa... a stainless steel wire wheel). And what happens visually is that the red rust turns black.

I have suggested at times when someone has some rust on a barrel to fire up a tea kettle and hold the rusty area in the stream from the spout for an appropriate amount of time. Others have used large PVC pipe as a steam "cabinet". Still not big enough for a pan.
 
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