Comment by mjm1138

Yeah I agree with this. It takes a long time for a piece of cookware to get well-seasoned in this way, but it works fine. Something not noted in the article is that once the oil is polymerized, it is not going to come off with dish detergent, so all the advice you hear to never use dish soap on seasoned cast-iron is erroneous. If there's non-polymerized oil on the pan after you're done cooking, you _want_ that oil off of the surface, otherwise you end up with a layer of congealed fat, not a good seasoning. When my wife and I bought our current house, it came with a stove with a cast-iron griddle, and the previous owners had taken the "never wash it" approach and it was nasty. I stripped it down to the metal and started cooking on it (after doing a quick initial season where I coated it with oil and heated it past its smoke point). Two years later, it's developed a nice seasoning, even though I wash it with detergent after every use.