Introduction
There are thousands of web sites on the internet with information about seasoning cast iron. Many of them contain good information, many of them don't. Something you will come across eventually is the recommendation to use flaxseed oil to season your cast iron. In fact, you may come across articles claiming it is absolutely the ultimate oil for seasoning cast iron. It has a low smoke point and polymerizes more quickly they say. But lots of folks have tried it and ended up disappointed with the results. The resulting seasoning can be brittle and flake off. However, if done right these articles say, flaxseed oil can produce a truly remarkable layer of seasoning on your cast iron. So let's try seasoning a vintage cast iron pan with flaxseed oil and see how it does.

What Is Seasoning?
Seasoning is done by heating a thin layer of oil on your pan until it polymerizes and adheres to the cast iron. The key concept here is polymerization. What is polymerization? Simply put, when oil polymerizes, many small molecules combine chemically to produce a very large chainlike or network molecule. This large chain molecule is called a polymer. It's this layer of polymers that gives you the hard seasoning layer. Not only does it make your pan non-stick, it also prevents it from rusting. Initially, you season the pan by building up a layer of this polymerized oil with a few rounds of seasoning in the oven. Subsequently, normal use will add to the seasoning and you won't have to use this process again.

Why Flaxseed Oil?
While all cooking oils and fats can be used for seasoning cast iron, typically vegetable oil, melted shortening, and canola oil (which all have relatively high smokepoints) are common recommendations. However, flaxseed oil contains much higher levels of the fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) than all the other oils commonly used to season cast iron. And ALA promotes the formation of a very hard polymer, and this is why flaxseed oil should be a good seasoning oil.

Not All Flaxseed Oils Are Created Equal
So, why do some people report bad results using flaxseed oil to season their cast iron? The primary reason is most likely not using the right flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil for seasoning is:

1. Organic – You want pure unadulterated flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is prone to going rancid, so some oils are partially hydrogenated or have other chemicals added to extend their shelf life. This interferes with the seasoning process, so in choosing your flaxseed oil, make sure that the only ingredient is flaxseed oil. The oil can be filtered or unfiltered and te bottle may also say that it contain lignans. It is uncertain as to whether or not lignans interfere with the seasoning process, so it is probably best to look for oil without lignans.
2. Refrigerated – Look for oil that has been kept refrigerated by the seller. Refrigeration prevents the oil from going rancid which is also not good for the seasoning process.
3. Expensive – Pure flaxseed oil is going to be expensive. If your oil was cheap, you got the wrong stuff. We chose to use Barlean's Fresh Flax Oil because we wanted to buy it at a local store (Whole Foods) and verify that it was refrigerated. It cost $27.99 for 16 ounces, although we have seen it online for as little as $21.99. Of course, there is no guarantee that oil sold online has been handled properly.

How To Season Cast Iron With Flaxseed Oil
So, how do you season your cast iron with flaxseed oil? Here's the basic procedure that we used for the purposes of this article. But first, to get to this point we took an 80-year old Griswold fully marked Victor skillet and stripped it to bare iron using oven cleaner. We then scrubbed it thoroughly with soap and hot water. After we dried the pan, we began:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F.
2. When the oven is up to temperature, place the pan in the oven for 10 minutes. This ensures that the pan is dry. Also the hot pan will help the flaxseed oil coat the pan's surfaces when its wiped on.
3. After 10 minutes, remove the pan from the oven and bump the oven up to 300°F. Use a paper towel to apply a very light coat of the flaxseed oil to the pan, making sure to get the oil onto all surfaces and into any corners. Use a another clean paper towel to wipe as much of the oil off the pan as possible. It should now appear that there is no oil at all on the pan.
4. Once the oven is up to 300°F, place the pan in the oven for 10 minutes.
5. Remove the pan from the oven when the 10 minutes is up and bump the oven up to 450°F.
6. While the oven is heating up for the final step, look at your pan. You should see that the nearly invisible thin layer of oil that you started with all of a sudden has turned into a mosaic of little sections of oil. The heat increases the oil's "motor activity" which allows it to draw up into these small patches of oil. Use a clean paper towel to carefully give the pan another wipe in order to remove as much oil as possible and spread it back out into a thin smooth layer. (Failure to do this will result in all those little patches turning into hard little bumps of seasoning, which is not what you want!)
   




7. Once the oven has reached the final temperature, place the pan back in the oven for one hour.
8. After one hour, turn off the oven and leave the pan in the oven to cool.
9. Repeat this entire process five more times and you are done!

How Did It Turn Out?
So, how did our pan do after 6 rounds of seasoning with flaxseed oil? Was the seasoning truly remarkable? Is flaxseed the ultimate seasoning oil? Well, no. After six rounds of seasoning, our pan was not as well seasoned as our other pans were after six rounds of seasoning with Field Cast Iron Seasoning Oil. As we are typing this, our test pan is in the oven getting its seventh round of seasoning. And it will get an eighth round before we will try cooking with it again.

So if you want to follow the fad, flaxseed oil appears to be no better or worse than other oils we have used. But as long as you use the right kind of flaxseed oil, it should do ok for you.

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