12 Things You Should Never Do to a Cast Iron Skillet

Your cast iron pan looks fine on the outside, but chances are you're already breaking at least a few of the rules that quietly wreck one over time. Most of them have nothing to do with soap or seasoning the way you'd think. In this video, I take you back to a ranch outside Uvalde, Texas, and the skillet that fed a ranch crew for thirty years without a single crack, rust spot, or ruined season along the way. I walk you through all twelve habits that kept it that way, counting down to the one mistake at number one that ends more good skillets than every other item on this list combined. If you've ever wondered why one cast iron pan lasts three generations while another one rusts out in a year, this is the video that finally explains it. Got your own family trick for keeping cast iron in shape? Drop it in the comments — the one that gets the most replies is the one I go deep on next.