Carbon Steel Seasoning

A 2 oz tin of seasoning balm for carbon steel. Beeswax, grapeseed oil, and cold-pressed sunflower oil. Nothing else.

• Beeswax — Pennsylvania apiary
• Grapeseed oil — Napa Valley, California
• Cold-pressed sunflower oil — Nebraska
• Tin — American steel, formed in Maryland
• Label — made and printed in New York
• Mixed and poured in Jamestown, New York
• 2 oz (56.7 g). Tin is 2.8" wide, 1" tall.

Using it on your Texas Pan skillet

Your skillet arrives pre-seasoned. Don't strip it. Wash it, dry it, and cook.

After a few uses you'll see thin or gray spots, usually in the center or where something stuck. That's when to reach for this tin.

Warm the clean, dry pan for a minute or two, just enough that the balm melts on contact. Take it off the heat. Rub a pea-size dab over the whole pan: inside, outside, and up the handle. Wipe it back off with a clean cloth until the pan looks almost dry. This is the step that matters most. Wax left pooling bakes on sticky instead of hard.

Then heat the pan on the stovetop over medium-high, rotating it until it stops smoking. Or set it upside down in a 450°F oven for an hour with foil on the rack below. Let it cool all the way.

A pea-size wipe after a wash keeps it building. The pan darkens from gray to bronze to near-black. That patina is the nonstick.

On a new pan from another maker

Scrub it with hot, soapy water first to strip the factory wax or oil it shipped in, then dry it completely over low heat. Follow the steps above, and repeat two or three more times to build a base layer.