What happened to my pan? Seasoning came out red

D

D George

Member
Ok, so I have a cheap Cabella's 12" pan that was really sand blasted rough on the inside. So a while back I sanded the inside to smooth out the metal. This led to a very ugly splotchy seasoning as I assume the smooth iron took a different color than the still rougher part.
I recently bought a blasting cabinet and blasted it with glass at low pressure. It made a nice smooth even surface, however when I seasoned it, the bottom of the pan took on a reddish hue, while the sides which I did not blast remained black. I used grape seed oil and put it in the oven for 1 hour at 400 and let it cool down slow. I know everyone says not to blast, but I figured I would experiment on a cheap pan.red.JPG
 
Sandblasting and the grinder methods seen on youtube are not how early to mid-20th century manufacturers polished cooking surfaces. The pan was placed on a rotating mechanism and a spinning mandrel with a grindstone head shaped to the contour of the pan was moved across the surface, removing burrs, leveling the surface, and polishing the sidewalls. It left a spiral of fine polishing marks. When a pan is polished so smooth as to leave no texture to the surface, there's not really anything for the seasoning to grab onto. This is a complaint often heard with old round handled griddles: too polished for seasoning to stick. But if you think about it, those pans were meant for things like pancakes, where you applied butter or oil each time you cooked, and you weren't trying to build a non-stick seasoning layer as with a skillet or dutch oven.

Manual seasonings of just oil on bare iron usually have a bronze hue to them and don't darken until the pan has seen some use and carbon residue from cooked food has been added to the mix. This is why some advocate far exceeding the smoke point of seasoning oil to get those first manually applied layers darker, but it's more for cosmetic effect than it is necessary for polymerizing the oil.
 
Live and learn they say. I never sanded or blasted any CI,, but I wouldnt recommend it. Just use it and itll straighten up.
 
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