Virtually Non stick cast iron cookware

[Frank S]

I don't know how many of you guys feel that a humble cast iron skillet is an important tool which needs special care or even use them.
Growing up my Grand mother and mother shared the kitchen and in our kitchen there were dozens of heavy cast iron pots pans & skillets
In fact except for a few thick copper and some pyrex cook ware there were little else the exception being cake pans and cookie sheets.
You couldn't find a single thing made of aluminum in their kitchen let alone any of the new fangled Teflon coated stuff that started coming into popularity later on in the late 60's
After I got married to my 1st wife I bought her what ever she wanted for her kitchen but it was not cast iron and since she grew up a city girl from a different culture she was not exposed to this type of cookware Heck when we got married she didn't even know how to boil water without burning up an aluminum pot , she actually did that once.
Anyway I was no kook by any stretch of anyone's imagination. I could grill steaks & burgers or cook bacon & eggs but that was about it.
Someone gave us an old cast iron skillet blackened and crusted up from many years of use but the inside was smooth and slick almost shiny it became my favorite skillet to use when I would have to make my own breakfast
Skip a couple of decades 2nd wife great cook and by this time out of self preservation I had become a fair hand in the kitchen as well.
Skip another decade or so living in another country we buy some new cast iron stuff it takes forever to get it properly seasoned it seemed
Skip another 10 years having to buy more new cast iron skillets this time I decide to short cut the seasoning time.
First off I used a sander to smooth the inside I kept sanding until I was using 400 grit making the inside look like a mirror then poured in cooking oil and heated on an outside grill until oil had completely burned away. I polished it and did this again a couple of times


And the flat skillet

4 years later