You season cast iron pans, not stainless steel. How odd!

Thanks, sushipup. I actually found another forum that discussed seasoning stainless. That one talked about using oil and salt. They even went in to the chemistry of it, none of which I understood! Maybe I'll post this in the Cooking forum and see if I get any more responses.

Thanks again. Whistle

Yes, post in the Cooking Forum. I'll be interested in hearing what folks might say. (Oil and salt for cast iron, again.)

Cast iron needs to be seasoned.....not stainless. I'm a chemist who wrote extensively about the seasoning of cast iron in another thread on this forum. What is the site that spoke about the chemistry of seasoning?

Dan

Dan, I ran across another forum that dated back to 2004 and for the life of me, I can't seem to locate it again. It does seem to be the consensus of this and the Cooking forum that you don't season stainless steel.

Thanks, Whistle

Season stainless? By its very nature and manufacturing process there should be no pits and it should be non-reactive. I cook primarily with cast iron and stainless, and have been cooking for 45 years, and never heard of (nor felt the need for) seasoning stainless steel before. You can surely tell the difference if you try to cook on un-seasoned cast iron. You can see the difference between a seasoned and un-seasoned piece of cast iron. But, I've never cooked on a 'seasoned' piece of stainless.

I got my curiosity piqued, so went nosing through some cookware sights and came upon something you may find explains seasoning cookware other than cast iron.

There is a steel cookware, although it's not stainless steel. Stainless steel is inert, like I said and not porous, but plain steel cookware is not inert, and you do season it. The article I read said it will take on a blue cast, when it is seasoned, or sometimes you can already buy blue steel cookware. The article does not recommend you cook acidic foods in plain steel cookware and it does leach iron.

Thanks calliope, for the continued research. The site from Overstock.com clearly states stainless steel, which is why I was curious. It even says that the oil "fills the pores with carbonized oil, which blocks the oxidation process, keeping the cookware from rusting and pitting". I guess you just can't believe everything you read on the internet! No one on the Cooking Forum had ever heard of it either.

Whislte

I purchased a stainless steel electric skillet and the instructions were to season it. What a totally useless thing to do!

I assume nobody in here is a professional culinary artist, since you never heard of seasoning stainless steel pans or griddles. Must you season a stainless steel surface, no, can you, yes! Why should you? If you plan to cook things like eggs and even pancakes, seasoning a stainless steel cooking surface is a recommended process by professionals. It doesn't surprise me that non-professionals have never heard of doing it and yet still claim they can cook eggs and other foods in their SS pans without them sticking. Salt and Oil are indeed the two items to season SS with. You don't need Salt to season cast iron with. These are two very different metals.

I cook eggs and whatnot in stainless by simply slicking the hot pan with oil.

I also, every few months, get out the buffing wheel and polish the pan's interior. The polished steel is wonderfully slick.

Seasoning a stainless steel pan with oil seems like something you'd do for a pan that you reserve for eggs. The more general-purpose steel pans, that you use to develop fond, or simmer sauces, or sear meat then stick the pan under the broiler - I would think that seasoning those is a waste of time. Because after those uses, you're going to have to wash the pan, and the soap will remove whatever seasoning survived the scraping, simmering, searing and broiling.

Make sense?

I cook in cast iron and stainless steel, but I fry eggs in a Tramontina non-stick skillet used only for that purpose, and with a plastic spatula. I gave up on frying eggs in CI and SS. : )