I took a steel scrubber pad to each pan to take off any old seasoning.
Preheat the oven, wiped organic EVOO around every surface and did 15m intervals at 375, 400, 420, and 450.
When I took them out later they looked like this. I'm thinking it was too much oil left on them causing the spotting. Question is, should I keep trying to season more layers to see if they eventually even out or do I take my steel spatula to the surface to take off the built up drips? Thanks for the help!
This is OK... It is not required to scrub it out and try again. You might if you want to but it is nothing to worry about.
Get the pan hot but not smoking temp and cook something. Cook anything, if you need a suggestion try
grilled cheese sandwiches or make lightly buttered toast.
What likely happened is you had more oil than you needed and got the temp too hot before wiping it.
I have put too much strop dressing on my strop in the past. The solution for both cast iron and a strop is
to rub it with something like grocery store brown paper bag or even news print paper not really abrasive but
coarse and rub, rub...
The steel surface looks perfect so just cook on it.
If it needs a scrubbing scrub it, A green scotch pad will not hurt if you have crunchy bits.
The spun stainless steel scrubbers will not hurt cast iron.
Hot cooking oil will soften these patches. You can warm the pan, add some common cooking oil wipe or brush it
all over and dial the heat up a bit at a time. At the smoke point (first wisps of smoke) remove to a hot pan safe board and scrub with a a couple
wads of coarse paper towel. When you no longer get any oil on the paper towel put the pain back on the burner, bring it back to that smoke point and turn off the heat. Leave it and let it cool, remember to put a hot pad on the handle so others in the kitchen know it is hot.
A general rule... season with low smoke point oil and cook with high smoke point oil and cook below the smoke point of what ever oil you use.
After cleaning run hot as you have hot water on the pan an dry. Rewarm on a burner (med, med-low) and lightly oil wipe as much oil off as you can.
You can scrub with salt and a trivial amount of fat/oil and rinse with hot water.
My Mom now passed talked about how her mom and grand mother taught her to care for cast iron.
Going back +150 years covered wagon to OK and Nebraska it was common to scrub the pan with sand in the creek if there was one
and just with sand when things were dry. Bull-rushes were ideal scrubbers.
My mom was not bashful with bacon grease, soap, water and elbow grease.
