The pan that lasts a generation, if you don’t ruin it in the first month.

Cast iron is the pan everyone in your family will inherit. It is also the pan most people abandon after two months because it rusted, stuck, or leached metallic flavour into the eggs. None of that is the pan’s fault. It is the seasoning’s fault.

Seasoning is a layer of polymerised oil baked into the iron’s pores. It is what makes cast iron non-stick. New pans come with a thin factory coat. You strengthen it with two simple coats at home.

The first seasoning (do this when the pan is new)

Wash the pan in warm soapy water with a stiff brush. Yes, soap. Pre-seasoned does not mean ready-to-cook. Dry it completely with a tea towel, then place it on the stovetop on low heat for two minutes to drive off the last of the moisture.

Pour half a teaspoon of neutral oil (grapeseed, canola, flaxseed) into the warm pan. With a paper towel, rub the oil over the entire surface, inside, outside, handle, base. Then take a clean paper towel and wipe it almost completely off. The pan should look dry, not greasy. The thinner the layer, the better.

Put the pan upside down in a 220°C oven (200°C fan) for one hour. Place a sheet of foil on the rack below to catch drips. Turn the oven off, let the pan cool inside. Repeat the oil-rub-bake step a second time the next day. Two coats is enough to start. The pan will get blacker and smoother with every meal you cook in it from here.

How to wash it (this is the part everyone gets wrong)

Hot water and a stiff brush or chainmail scrubber. That is it. No dishwasher, no soaking, no steel wool. If something is properly stuck, boil a centimetre of water in the pan for two minutes and the food will lift off. Dry immediately with a tea towel, then place on the stovetop on low heat for one minute to drive off the moisture you cannot see. Rub with the smallest possible smear of oil while it is still warm. Hang it up.

The myth that cast iron cannot touch soap is a myth. A drop of dish soap occasionally is fine and will not strip the seasoning. What strips seasoning is hours of soaking, the dishwasher, and acidic foods left in it overnight.

What not to cook in it (yet)

For the first month, avoid acidic foods: tomato sauce, wine reductions, lemon-finished pan sauces. The acid eats through young seasoning and leaves a metallic taste. Cook eggs, steak, bacon, pancakes, cornbread, high-fat foods that build seasoning. After three or four months of regular use, you can deglaze with wine and simmer tomato sauces in it without issue.

If it rusts

Scrub the rust off with steel wool, wash, dry, and re-season from scratch. Two coats. Cast iron is the only pan you can resurrect from neglect this easily.

What to cook first

A steak. Heat the dry pan on high for three minutes until it is smoking. Add a tablespoon of beef tallow or neutral oil. Lay a salted, dry, room-temperature steak in it. Don’t move it for three minutes. Flip. Three minutes more. Rest. The seasoning will absorb a layer of beef fat, the next thing you cook will release more easily, and so it goes.

Steak with chimichurri is the obvious next step.