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Seasoning

The darker the better

Seasoning is what turns raw steel into a jet-black, naturally non-stick cooking surface. You start it in an afternoon — and it keeps getting better with every meal you cook.

Start seasoning Get Flat Top Oil
The short version

It’s a chemical reaction, not a coating

Seasoning isn’t something you buy in a bottle and paint on. It’s something you build.

When a thin film of oil is heated past a certain point on bare steel, it doesn’t simply burn off. It bonds to the metal through a process called polymerization, leaving behind a hard, slick, carbon-based layer that is chemically part of the surface.

Repeat that a few times and raw silver steel turns a deep, glossy black with genuine non-stick performance — no Teflon, no PFOA, nothing to scratch off into your food. If you’ve owned cast iron, you already know the feeling. A Flat Top gets there faster, because you’re cooking across far more surface every time you use it.

Unless you ordered it pre-seasoned, your Flat Top arrives pre-oiled, not seasoned. We ship every unseasoned Flat Top with a protective coat of vegetable oil so it survives the trip. That coat is there to stop rust, not to cook on — step 1 below washes it off and starts the real seasoning.
Ordered yours pre-seasoned? Skip step 1. Rinse with warm water only (no soap), dry it completely, wipe on a thin coat of oil and start at step 2. The pre-seasoning is a thin base layer that your own cooking takes over from, so it’s normal for the black to lighten or thin in spots during the first several cooks. Keep cooking and oiling and it fills back in darker and tougher.
Step by step

The seasoning process

Three steps to a working surface. Everything after that is just cooking.

Pouring a thin coat of oil onto a new Steelmade Flat Top on a kitchen range
1

Wash it, then lay down the first coat

Wash the shipping oil off with warm water and dry the surface completely. Then wipe on a thin coat of oil — thin is the entire trick. If the surface looks wet, there’s too much on it. Wipe it back until it just looks damp.

Heat to 300°F for about 15 minutes, then let it cool completely and wipe on one more thin coat.

Keep the first heat under 375°F. The vegetable oil we ship on smokes above that. It polymerizes — “bakes in” — at around 350°F, so there’s nothing to gain by pushing higher on the first run.
Steaks and sliced potatoes cooking on a partially seasoned Steelmade Flat Top
2

Cook something greasy

Bacon is the fastest way to build seasoning, and you get bacon out of the deal. Cook it across the entire surface so the fat works into every inch — corners and edges included, not just the middle over the burners.

Burgers, sausage, skirt steak and chicken thighs all do the same job. Just don’t overload the surface on the first cook; a crowded Flat Top steams instead of searing, and you want that fat rendering hot.

A fully seasoned black Steelmade Flat Top installed on a kitchen range stove
3

Keep cooking — it builds itself

After a handful of meals the surface goes from patchy brown to an even, cast-iron black with a low-maintenance finish that releases food easily and wipes clean in a couple of minutes.

The only ongoing maintenance: after every cleanup, while the steel is still warm, wipe on a thin coat of oil. That’s it. That’s the whole routine.

See the 2-minute cleanup routine →

Bottle of Steelmade Flat Top Oil
Which oil?

Everyone has an opinion. Here’s ours.

We’ve spent years testing oils on these surfaces, and for our money nothing beats a food-safe vegetable oil blend — a smoke point high enough to polymerize cleanly, and neutral enough that it never turns sticky. That’s what’s in our Flat Top Oil.

Day to day, cook in whatever you like. We use olive oil. Then finish every cleanup with a thin coat of Flat Top Oil to protect the steel from moisture and leave it ready for the next meal.

Two to avoid Flaxseed oil builds a beautiful hard layer that tends to flake off in sheets later. Butter smokes at 200–250°F — wonderful for eggs, useless for seasoning.

See the full oil smoke-point chart →

Troubleshooting

When it doesn’t look right

Almost every seasoning problem is one of these four, and all four are fixable. You cannot permanently ruin the seasoning on a piece of solid steel — worst case, you scrub back to bare metal and start again.

The surface is sticky or tacky

Too much oil, not enough heat. The oil never fully polymerized, so it’s sitting there half-cured. Heat the Flat Top up past the smoke point of the oil you used, let it burn off, then wipe it back to a thin film while warm.

Next time, wipe on less than feels right. A properly oiled surface looks barely damp, not wet.

The color is patchy and uneven

Completely normal for the first several cooks, especially directly over the burners where the steel runs hottest. Grease evens it out. Cook a few more fatty meals and spread the food across the whole surface rather than parking it in the middle.

There are rust spots

Moisture reached bare steel — usually a surface that was put away damp, or one that got scrubbed back harder than intended. Scrub the rust off with a Flat Top Scrub or the cleaning brick, dry it with heat from the stove, and re-oil while it’s warm.

Rust is cosmetic on 3/16" steel, not structural. It just means that patch needs re-seasoning.

The seasoning is flaking off

Usually thick layers built too quickly, or flaxseed oil. Thick seasoning is brittle seasoning. Scrape the loose material back with a metal scraper, then rebuild with thin coats and greasy cooking.

How long until it’s fully seasoned?

You’ll have a working non-stick surface after the first bacon cook, an even black after roughly five to ten meals, and a finish that keeps improving for as long as you own it. There’s no finish line — a Flat Top that’s been cooked on for years is better than a new one.

What we use

Seasoning & care kit

Flat Top Oil Flat Top Oil Scrub and Oil Bundle Scrub + Oil Bundle Steelmade Cookware Seasoning Conditioner Seasoning Conditioner Flat Top Tool Set Flat Top Tool Set

Keep reading

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Every Steelmade Flat Top is 3/16" American steel, made in the USA, and backed by a lifetime warranty. Tell us what you cook on and we’ll tell you which one fits.

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