Shadowing Practice: How to Season a Cast Iron Skillet, With Rajiv Surendra | Life Skills With Rajiv - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Hi, I'm Rajiv and today we're going back to basics.
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Hi, I'm Rajiv and today we're going back to basics.
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One of the things that everyone should have in their kitchen is a basic cast iron skillet.
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This is something that you get,
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you learn how to use,
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and it's going to outlive you.
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This cast iron skillet is,
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I think it's from the early 1900s.
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This is a newer one,
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but these are two of my favorite pans in the kitchen.
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The great thing about cast iron is that it is indestructible.
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You can find a nasty,
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grimy, rusty pan like this.
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And truthfully, I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna show you how I turn it into this.
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Because cast iron is truly indestructible,
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you don't have to go out there and buy new cast iron.
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The stuff that was made late 1800s,
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early 1900s, my favorite stuff was made by Griswold in Erie, Pennsylvania.
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If you find that stuff at a junk shop or an antique mall and it looks like this,
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pick it up.
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because you can take it home and with just a little bit of work,
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you can turn it into something that really does become your favorite pan for eggs in the kitchen.
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What does seasoning a pan mean?
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Well, seasoning a pan means creating layers of a coating,
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really it's coatings of grease,
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that seal the iron and that keep the iron from corroding or rusting.
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And then the second step is actually even more important.
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It's maintaining the seasoning on the pan.
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Once you have a pan looking like this,
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you don't want to ruin this.
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Don't be scared.
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If you ruin it, if you get rid of this seasoning by accident,
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you can re-season it again.
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But what makes a cast iron pan great is when it develops a seasoning that has taken years to form.
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Cast iron is a great metal for cooking in, but it is reactive.
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What that means is that there are certain things that you don't want to put in here.
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There are certain things you don't want to cook in here.
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You know when you have a recipe and it says use a non-reactive pan?
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Well, that means that you want to use a metal that's not going to react with acid.
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So this is a stainless steel pan.
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And stainless steel is non-reactive.
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You can cook a tomato sauce in here for hours and hours and hours.
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It's not going to react with the metal of the pan.
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This...
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This is enameled cast iron.
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So the body of this is cast iron,
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but it's been coated with an enamel.
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And this is also non-reactive.
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You can cook your tomato sauce in here for hours and hours.
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You can add red wine to it.
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It's going to be fine.
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This metal, however, is reactive.
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You don't really want to put acid in here.
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If acidic food is left in these pans for a long time,
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it starts to eat away at the coating,
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at the coating and it will react with the metal.
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The tomato sauce might turn a kind of purpley color.
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So that's one thing to consider.
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These pans are used for frying things,
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for baking in, you can make cornbread in this pan,
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but you don't really want to cook a tomato sauce in here,
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put lemon juice in here,
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clean the pan off with some red wine for a sauce.
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That's not what cast iron is for.
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It's about to get messy.
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This is kind of a nasty job.
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This is the gross part of the process,
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removing the rust from the pan.
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So this is actually a great old cast iron pan.
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This is Wagner Ware and it was made in Sydney, Ohio.
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And from the way that the lettering is laid out here,
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there are lots of guides telling you how to identify the different logos.
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specific pan was made in Sydney,
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Ohio between 1922 and 1935.
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This one also has a little six on it.
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And the six indicates the size of pan.
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So a six is kind of in the middle a one would be a really small one
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and I think a nine or a ten would be big.
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This pan looks very sad right now but we're gonna make it classy.
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This has a lot of rust on it that's actually three-dimensional.
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You want to get this pan
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down to its flat surface so whatever means necessary to get it there go ahead and do it.
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You cannot hurt this pan.
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You could take any kind of rough tool to it at this point,
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not when it's seasoned, but at this point you can take any metal tool,
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steel wool, scouring pads, whatever,
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to get all the rust off.
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So I'm just going to do it.
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I got this for filling holes in the wall with stucco,
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but it's bendable and it's the perfect thing for this.
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When you encounter some resistance,
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you just keep at it until you grind it down to the surface of the metal.
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You want to do every surface of the pan,
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so not just the inside,
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but the handle and the outside too.
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This whole thing, the whole pan is going to be seasoned.
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Bottom top, handle everything.
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Now I've scraped off the bulk of the grimy stuff with the palette knife.
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What is this called?
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It's not a palette knife.
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It's called a spackle?
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Trowel?
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Putty knife!
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Is it a putty knife?
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Putty knife.
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Whatever this thing is.
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Yeah.
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Liz checked.
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It's called a putty knife.
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Putty knife.
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Once you're done with the putty knife,
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move over to steel wool.
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And I like to start with coarse steel wool and then work down to fine steel wool.
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So for the first scrubbing with the steel wool, just get in there.
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Look at this, all coming up.
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There comes a point when it's sliding smoothly and you know that you've gotten down to the metal pan.
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I'm going to give you an arm workout.
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I'm going to give you bicep workouts, bro.
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Scrubbing your cast iron pan,
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bringing it back to life.
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Look how good this looks now.
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This was illegible, and now we can clearly see it.
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Wagnerware, Sydney, oh.
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That's so cool.
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Okay, this is looking good.
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Looks great.
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Okay, now I'm going to move to my fine steel wool.
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Okay, I think we're pretty good.
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At this point, we want some water,
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just a little bit of soap,
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and we're going to take our steel wool and we're going to wash this pan.
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And just really get that water in there with the steel wool, the scrub.
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The water and the soap is going to act as a lubricant at this point to get off most of that rust.
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So look at that.
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It's already looking really good.
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Just keep scrubbing.
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Any place that you feel like any kind of roughness, that needs scrubbing.
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Now, this water, do not throw this water away.
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This is the perfect water to wash your wool sweater in.
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When I was in high school there was an incredibly witty girl in my drama class.
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We would go back and forth with witty insults to each other and she trumped me.
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She just silenced me one day when she said,
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go bathe your granny and drink the dirty water.
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It's a good one.
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It's a really good one.
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And here, see that there?
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Where it's red still, that means there's still rust.
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So that's what you want to scrub.
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So once you've scrubbed the pan and you've gotten off all that rust,
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all that surface rust, you want to rinse this off and as soon as you rinse it off,
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you want to dry it really well and then something's going to happen that's going to make you go, what happened?
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It's not clean.
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It's going to turn bright red or bright orange again because there still is going to be a surface,
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a skim surface of rust all over the pan.
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worry, that's fine, that's normal,
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that is part of the process, that's what happens.
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So I'm just gonna switch the water out and rinse this off.
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Yeah, clean water.
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One little scrub with the steel wool.
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Now, as soon as you've rinsed it,
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dry it off really well.
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Get all that water off of it quickly.
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There.
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This is the hard part.
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This is the really grimy bit and the next step is to take this pan to the kitchen and get it warm.
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Stove's on.
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Cast iron pan goes on the stove and gets warmed up up.
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So I've actually had this on the stove for quite a while,
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just on a low flame,
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to heat the whole pan up, even the handles warm.
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So you don't want to get this crazy hot.
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I don't see any smoke rising from the pan, but it's hot.
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Once the pan has been heated through,
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you want to put some grease on it.
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So you can use anything.
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You can use vegetable oil,
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But what I like to really use is some kind of hard fat.
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You can use lard or you can use vegetable shortening and that's what I'm going to use today.
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So I'm just going to take some of the shortening,
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well like a nice healthy amount of shortening,
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just swirl it around and coat the whole thing.
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You can see it's melting very quickly.
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So, I'm going to move from that to a little piece of paper towel and soak up this grease
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and really get it into every part of the pan, outside and in.
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So first, we'll do the inside,
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then we're going to do the outside,
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and I'm doing the bottom too.
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Every little bit.
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Do the handle too.
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I should also point out that if you're going to use oil for this,
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you want to use an oil that has a high smoking point.
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So not olive oil, not coconut oil, not like almond oil.
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You want to use vegetable oil or corn oil,
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something that can tolerate being heated at a high temperature.
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And when you're oiling the pan,
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you're going to continue to be removing rust.
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This process is going to continue to take off the remaining rust that's on there.
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So switch it up.
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Take this paper towel, rub the grease in,
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and then get rid of this paper towel and do it again with something that's clean.
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Add more grease to the pan and do it again.
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You'll see that as you keep doing this,
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the paper towel starts to pick up less and less rust.
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Getting better!
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Look at that!
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See?
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Not as intense as before.
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So we're getting somewhere.
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Remember, don't forget the sides and the bottom.
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Because if you left this bottom unseasoned,
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it would start to rust.
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And then when you put it down on the counter,
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or if you put it You put it in the cupboard,
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there's just rust everywhere.
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So you wanna be able to wash this.
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So you need to season every part of it.
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Look at that Wagner.
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He's looking healthy again.
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Hearing those nasty pigeons outside?
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I hate those pigeons.
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You hear them?
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They keep me up at night.
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Woo!
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Woo!
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3 AM.
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Blech!
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I hate them!
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Geez Liz, you really sent me rusty man.
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Look!
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We're getting somewhere!
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You just gotta put on the grease and keep rubbing.
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You do really want to focus on getting the rust off of everything.
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But the cooking area is the floor of the pan so it's vital that all of that is
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Clear of rust and it's pretty much there
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So I'm gonna do one final sweep
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With the paper towel over the whole pan and then I have all these bits of
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Shredded paper towel over the pan that I'm gonna remove with this cloth.
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I'm going to do my final rub down with the cloth
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and then the last thing that I want to do is coat it with grease and stick it in the oven.
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I have the oven set to 300 about 375 degrees So it's a hot oven.
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Grease!
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Quite a bit of grease.
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Get the clean part of my rag.
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Coat the whole thing.
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And then...
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Now, I've lowered the oven to about 300 degrees and I'm gonna leave it in there for a few hours.
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The cast iron pan has been in the oven for a
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few hours hours at about 300 degrees I've turned the oven off
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and
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if you weren't here I would just leave it in there
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overnight just to stay as warm for as long as possible until it comes to room temperature.
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That's really the full seasoning process before you use the pan
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but because you're here I'm gonna just show you what it looks like right now.
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So this is what it looks like.
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And it is not black,
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no, but it is seasoned.
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It is coated with fat and let me just show you.
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Look.
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Paper towel and no rust is coming off.
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That is the test.
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If no rust is coming off, it's good to use.
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As I cook in this,
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it's going to get better and better and better
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and it's going to eventually turn black like the other pans
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that i showed you earlier my method of doing this is to take a freshly seasoned cast iron pan
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and then to actually deep fry something in it to fill it with oil
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or to put shortening in there
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and to make like a little batch of fried chicken in there to make schnitzel in the pan as its first use.
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That frying in the pan really puts the oil all over setting its stage for the future.
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So the very best thing that you can do to make this pan better is to use it.
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Like a lot of things in life,
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like musical instruments or like a pair of leather shoes,
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they get better with age and use.
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Get yourself a cast iron pan,
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bring it back to life,
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put it to good use,
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and I guarantee you'll you'll fall in love with it.
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What do you think?
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Something you can try yourself at home?
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Let me know in the comments below.
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If you liked this video,
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give it a thumbs up.
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And if you didn't, give it a thumbs down.
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But you made it this far,
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so please subscribe for more videos just like this one.
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Bye
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Context & Background
In today’s video, Rajiv Surendra takes us back to basic kitchen skills by sharing the essential practice of seasoning a cast iron skillet. He highlights the durability and longevity of cast iron cookware, capable of being passed down through generations. Rajiv emphasizes the importance of maintaining and seasoning the skillet properly, enabling it to enhance your cooking experience over time. Through this video, viewers are not only introduced to practical culinary skills but also gain insight into using a cherished kitchen tool that has stood the test of time.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “One of the things that everyone should have in their kitchen is a basic cast iron skillet.” – A great sentence to express recommendations.
- “You can find a nasty, grimy, rusty pan like this.” – Useful for describing items in need of care.
- “What does seasoning a pan mean?” – A key question structure to clarify topics.
- “Don't be scared.” – A comforting phrase for encouraging others.
- “Cast iron is a great metal for cooking in.” – A statement to express opinions about materials.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
If you're looking to improve your English speaking skills through shadowing techniques, here’s a practical guide based on Rajiv’s informative presentation. Start by watching the video while keeping a notebook handy. As you shadow Rajiv’s speech, focus on the following steps:
- Listen Carefully: Play the video and listen to how Rajiv articulates each phrase. Pay close attention to his intonation and pronunciation.
- Repeat Immediately: Pause after every sentence or key phrase. Repeat it aloud, mimicking Rajiv’s tone and pace. This helps reinforce your pronunciation and fluency.
- Break It Down: If certain phrases are challenging, break them down into smaller parts. For example, practice the sentence “What does seasoning a pan mean?” as “What does / seasoning / a pan / mean?”
- Record Yourself: Use your phone or a recording device to capture your voice as you shadow. Compare your pronunciation to Rajiv’s to identify areas for improvement.
- Practice Regularly: Consistency is key. Engage in shadowing this video multiple times a week, utilizing it as a dual learning experience: understanding culinary skills while enhancing your English.
By effectively employing these shadowing techniques, you can significantly enhance your conversational English skills. Incorporate videos like Rajiv’s into your routine by visiting a dedicated shadowing site or a platform where you can learn English with YouTube videos to enrich your practice further.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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