I've had great success using this method with my CI. I clean the pan with hot, soapy water and a stainless steel scouring pad. I make sure to rinse it very well. I wipe it dry with a paper towel. I then put it on the stove top over a high flame (gas stove) and let it get hot. I then rub cooking oil into the pan with a paper towel, just to make a sheen or oil. I let it smoke and let the oil start to bead up and caramelize. I wipe it again with paper the same paper towel to even out the oil and repeat the heating process. I repeat this for about 4 to 5 times (with the window open to keep from smoking up the house) and then remove the pan from the heat. I wipe it with oil to get a light sheen, and hang it to cool. Whenever I cook with my CI, I let it get to the desired cooking temp, add about half-a tsp. of whatever cooking fat I'm using and the pans are virtually stick free.
Cast iron is a poor heat conductor, so that the heat absorbed where the flame or heating coils touch the pan get hot, and don't distribute the heat well. Stainless steel shares this characteristic. That's why most stainless steel cooking pots and plans are either clad, or have a heat distributing disk attached to the bottom. They are also fairly resistant to electrical current compared to copper and aluminum. That's why they work so well with inductive stoves. The magnetic lines of force from the stove move accross the metal, creating eddy currents in the metal. Since the iron and steel are not great electrical conductors, the currents create heat in the metal, and the pan gets hot. If the pan weren't over the "heating" element, which is really an electrical transformer or wire coil, you can place your hand on the heating element at full power and you will feel no heat.
Heat resistant materials, or insulators, are said to maintain even heat. A cool characteristic of insulating materials is that though the insulators are slow to heat up, they also don't readily give up the heat that they have absorbed. In other words, they resist temperature change. That means they cool more slowly, and heat more slowly, thereby providing a more constant heat in, say, an oven that cycles on and off to keep a constant temperature, or a slow cooker, or a fluctuating flame.
When it's stated that you get even heating from a CI pan, griddle, or dutch oven, it means that you get even temperature of the pan in spite of minor heat variations from the heat source, not that the material distributes the heat evenly across its surface.
And there you have a bit of extra info to play with.
Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North
