Rescuing a rusty cast iron skillet

Today I popped into Savers to hunt for shoes for Pyper's Halloween costume, and of course had to roam around a bit to see what else I could find. I came upon this rusty old 8 1/2" cast iron skillet marked $6.99. Today was 50% off blue tag items, so for about $3.50 it came home with me.

Gross, right?

I did a quick Google search for how to clean rust off of cast iron and found something that sounded easy. Here's what I did.

First I gave the skillet a good cleaning with just some warm water and a scrub brush then set it on a hot burner on my stove to get it nice and dry. Then I cut a small potato in half and poured some baking soda into a measuring cup.

I dipped the cut side into the soda then began scouring the skillet. I don't know what properties a potato has that make it good for this job. Maybe Aaron knows. But it works!

After just a few turns around the bottom the potato got pretty gross.

Then it got even grosser.

But soon most of the rust and a lot of the "seasoning" had been removed. I rinsed it in the sink and dried it really well again. Then I set it outside to cool. (It happened to be snowing while it was out there, so my "really dry" skillet was no longer really dry.)

Already looking tons better!

I repeated the process again and this is how it looks now. Zero rust, but a lot of the seasoning had been stripped off.

Next I poured in a generous amount of olive oil...

...then used a napkin to coat the bottom and sides.



Then into a 275 degree oven for 2 hours.


Hopefully this will get that skillet back on its way to being useful again!

This may seem like a dumb thing to get excited about, but I've never owned a cast iron anything, so I'm anxious to put this thing to good use. I'm thinking this recipe may be what I use it for first.