I discovered this a while ago, but I wanted to share my technique. It all started the first time I roasted coffee in a frying pan. My frying pan happens to be of the anodized aluminum variety ala Calphalon. It’s a great pan, but its biggest drawback is stick-age. You cannot fry an egg without Pam or copious quantities of oil. Seasoning as per the manufacturer’s instructions? Bah! I’m a guy. I never read instructions.
But I found a truly great non-stick coating that is slicker than Teflon or Silverstone, better than Pam and is persistent: coffee bean oil.
Roast raw coffee beans (green coffee beans) on a medium to high heat with fifteen minutes of constant agitation or stirring. The result: the best coffee you will ever drink and your pan now has a beautiful persistent sheen of oil that seems to form a nice molecular bond with the pan. I haven’t tried it with cast iron, but I would imagine it would work the same.
Now, I can make wafer thin french omelets and flip them with impunity.
To preserve my Coffee Bean Non-Stick CoatingTM I use the Chinese wok cleaning method, water and some sort of gentle scraper, no soap, rinse, and dry. The pan does not retain any residue from whatever I cook in it and all the stuck-on stuff sloughs off easily. If we do Puerto Rican rice dishes, the pega’o or stuck stuff on the bottom, is the crunchiest most wonderful part of the dish, all thanks to roasting coffee como un campesino.
So far, for me, this method far outstrips all other seasoning tips that come from various sources.
one way of telling a quality cup of joe or espresso shot is the oil that appears on top; good stuff!