jomk replied to your post “I politely ask for ten facts, and for you to tag five awesome people (if you like; I know you’ve probably already done one of these. But you’re awesome so yeah.)”

Thanks about the teflon thing. Also, I’ve never figured out how to season cast iron. It gets rusty every single time.

You only wipe it clean with water and a cloth.  No soap.  And then you dry it off by hand.  Leaving iron to air-dry encourages rust.

When you store it, you should ideally give it a light coating of oil (preferably something like grapeseed oil, with a high smoke point), to protect the metal—especially if the cast iron hasn’t had time to build up a good layer of seasoning through use.

This is kind of messy, though.  Alternatively, I’ve found that if you clean the pan, then give it a thin coating of oil and then put it back on the burner at a medium-high temperature until the oil has had a chance to polymerize a bit, you can store it with fewer resulting grease spots. ^_^

Over time, this treatment builds up a nice coating of seasoning, and the cast iron becomes really lovely to work with.

If you do have to scrub or use soap because something really disgusting or crusty happened (my sister keeps trying to grill fish in a cast iron pan that hasn’t been thoroughly seasoned, and I keep having to yell at her and take steel wool to it to get it clean), then after the cast iron is dry, you definitely need to give it a bit of re-seasoning, because chances are you took some off it.

You can also re-season it more thoroughly by giving the pot or pan a good coat of oil and then putting it in your oven at a high temperature.  I recommend saving this for summer, when you can open all the windows, because BOY WILL IT GET SMOKY.