How to Season a Cast Iron Skillet, With Rajiv Surendra | Life Skills With Rajiv

If there’s one thing everyone should have in their kitchen, it’s a basic cast iron skillet. However, what comes with owning one is knowing how to properly care for it, so today, Rajiv shows us how to properly season a cast iron skillet so it works just like new every time you use it.

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[Kookka_]

More Rajiv please!! I love everything he does.

[rebeccaumble-white]

He is a renaissance man in the truest sense. More Rajiv please!!

[senzaliving]

1. I love my cast iron pans and love to see an old pan get a second life. Nice work, Rajiv!
2. I, too, abhor pigeons.
3. I, and the world, need weekly life skill videos featuring Rajiv.

[todddarbyshire]

It seems there are a lot of people who just LOVE Rajiv, and they are absolutely right to feel that way. When I first got married in 1970, I went to auction sales, and ended up filling the house with great old, but well made furniture. Some things I had professional repaired, but mostly, I just found out how to refinish any and everything. You really learn how to appreciate great workmanship, and still have some main pieces after sizing down, like a 400 year old hall table that was in 8 pieces and I made into a coffee table.
Just like Rajiv, I found a quiet pride, joy and appreciation for every piece. It’s like living in an art gallery for a half a century. I would love to know how much money I have saved not having to replace anything, because it lasts and I love it.

[Hydrantchan]

Eight months after first watching this video, I finally have my first thrifted cast iron pan, I'm back again to actually use these lessons! 💖

[li_celly]

Another tip: best to put the oven in a higher temperature as that can polymerize the oil even more, which gives it the shiny look. Another tip is to put the pan upside down while in the oven, and have an aluminum foil under so the oil does not go dripping on the bottom of the oven. It’s really so that the excess oil that wasn’t wiped off doesn’t go inside the pan and give it an uneven coating.

[dg-susj]

Rajiv, you are such a treasure. HGTV handmade, Thank you for investing in his teaching and tapping into his knowledge!!! Reminds me of classic Martha Stewart episodes!!! LOVE!!! LOVE!!! LOVE!!!

[vasanthimehta]

How did I miss seeing this talented man on YouTube before !!??! He makes the mundane so much fun and inspiring... a wonderful sense of humor & joie de vivre peppers his presentations... I stumbled by chance on his house tour video on a day when my creativity is down and my mood a bit blah, & watching him quite simply lifted my spirits enough to feel that joy to create art again! I am Tamil (from India) married to a Gujarati, and, have so many Srilankan friends with whom I enjoy the vermicelli (hoppers as they are called) that Rajiv showed the bamboo plates for (in the house tour presentation, not this one, but I have been binge watching his YouTube shows now😁). It is delightful to see someone share the passion for all these little details! So glad I came to know about this talented young fellow!

[daniellekorneliussen]

Rajiv, you are the best there is in the world of entertainment‼️My dad was obsessed with his cast iron skillets. He would gather us around the stove for lengthy talks’n tutorials about the do’s & dont’s of caring for cast iron pans. My poor sister and I probably looked like two scary Stephen King children just standing there with eyes the sized of dinner plates but were actually in a as dad droned on about “the seasoning of the pan” after having cooked a meal in it. He wagged his finger at us saying “NEVER EVERRRR USE SOAP IN THIS PANNNN‼️” We’d be trembling in our bones at this point! “Only remove the remaining bits in the pan with course sea salt’n water, followed by a good smearing in of olive oil then set the pan on the flames for a few minutes til it’s warm’n dry.” Haha, we were nearly frightened of our own kitchen pans back then, but oh how I appreciate and adore the process today. Thank Rajiv, for unearthing a very fine memory of the formative years from my childhood in the kitchen.❤️

[lizardslaw]

Thank You so much. I inherited 3 cast iron skillets from my Portuguese mother who always kept it in our basement cold pantry with a thin layer of lard in it. She cooked a lot in them. I do not have a cold pantry LOL, didn’t quite know how to deal with these pans but they have been in our family for a long time . I never learned how to maintain them . Thank You so much. I worked along with you on this video and they look so good. Making my heritage proud. You are the BEST Rajiv.

[oldman_eleven]

Rajiv needs his own channel. What a legend

[yettawat]

Fantastic!! Would love to see a follow-up video that details care and maintenance of the pan.

[whitmaca]

If somebody ran chronically low on iron, they could occasionally cook a tomato based sauce (shorter cook time recipes recommended) in a cast iron pan to boost iron in the diet.

[mharteis]

When I need to find instructions to do something, I tend to search for the easiest, quickest answer.

But then there's Rajiv. He is the only person who I will gladly sit and listen to on how to do tasks with patience and enjoyment!

[Anakarina-er]

I love this kid. I’ll be so proud to be his mother. Love his talent.

[amaliafrancoaful]

I do love pigeons.. inocent animals and very gentle if you live close to them and watch them behave. There is a nest in front of my window and when the babys are learning how to fly they trust us and jump to my window and go back and forth :)

[Fayelin]

So the cooing doves soundtrack is Rajiv’s official outro? Love it! I have been cooking on cast iron since I was 25 and my first pan, nonstick, got too damaged to use. Shelling out 40 bucks every five years for a new pan seemed ridiculous to me. Now my pans and dutch ovens will outlive me.

[dhanyar]

I press the like 👍 button even before I start watching his videos coz I just know I am gonna love them 💖

[LedgerAndLace]

Next up: Rajiv paints his walls and we watch them dry with him . . . because we would watch Rajiv do anything!

[hildaortega]

He’s younger than me and he’s teaching me how to life. As I watch more of his videos, I wonder if I’ll run into one that I won’t enjoy or learn anything from. I doubt it.