I’m back again, this time with a friend’s pan that he inherited from his grandmother. He entrusted this to me to remove the decades of use, to put it back into service after sitting on a shelf for years. This took four rounds of Easy Off in a plastic bag to remove the gunk, and then three rounds of seasoning with canola oil.
The before pics:
Essentially you scrub it down with steel wool to remove any rust.
Then, you rub it down with a really thin coat of oil, preferably flax seed oil.
Then you stick it in the oven at 500F for an hour, then turn off the oven with the pan still inside. Let it all cool down over time.
Then repeat the oiling and heating process a couple more times.
Flax seed oil is a waste of money for this. Any oil with a reasonably high smoke point works.
I find 500 too high for flax, but every oven is different. 425 works for me.