After doing some further research I found an interesting answer on reddit. u/Silent_Bob posted a detailed guide on r/castiron. I think his answer may be useful here.
His recommendation is to use Crisbee oil, but thinks that Crisco will be just fine. Two interesting things about this process that I haven’t seen anywhere else. There are temperature variations here—as opposed to throwing it in for an hour at 400.
The other interesting thing is taking the cast iron out after 20 minutes and wiping down the oil again. I wonder how important it is to actually have have a shop towel here?
This process is assuming you’re starting with a piece of bare iron. You’ve already stripped the old seasoning off either through lye (lye tank, yellow cap oven cleaner, etc), Electrolysis, vinegar scrubs, or magic voodoo. Stripping can be a different topic.
- Wash and scrub your pan with soap and water.
- Dry thoroughly with a towel.
- Immediately place in a 200 degree oven for 20 mins
- Take out (using gloves) and coat with liberal amount of Crisco. Use an old t-shirt, towel you don’t care about, or something like that.
- Most Important - try to wipe out ALL of the oil. Use a different t-shirt or towel. I do a two step wipe, the first with a towel, the second with a paper blue Shop Towel. You won’t be able to get it all and there’s enough left on the pan for the seasoning.
- Return to oven and heat to 300. Once it’s 300, take out and wipe down again. Note I don’t actually do this step anymore, but I recommend it to newbies or people having problems with their own process. It helps make sure all of the excess oil is removed.
- Return to oven and heat to 450
- Bake for an hour
- Let cool in oven (completely if you’re finished and have time. You can go to 200 if you’re going to do another round of seasoning and are in a rush)
Repeat process starting at step 3. Before starting step 2, check your pan. If you see any spots on it, that means you didn’t do step 5 very well, and I would scrub it down again starting at step 1, but if it looks good I go right to 3. Do this 2 or 3 times and you’ll get a well seasoned pan.
After seasoning your pan may look any color from brown, to dark grey, to black. Use and cooking fatty foods and time will eventually turn your pan that deep dark black you’re looking for.
Personally, I haven’t tried this method, but it sure seems like this guy knows what he’s talking about.