Reddit user's outrageous pan project sends internet into meltdown – City A.M.

By: Steve Dinneen
There is an unlikely new star of Reddit: a user called fatmummy222 who has become perhaps the most famous cast iron pan seasoner in history after larding, buffing and heating the same pan 80 times until it glistens like a portal into another dimension.
The user posted the epic experiment to the subreddit r/castiron and it quickly became the most popular story ever on the admittedly niche forum, eclipsing a photograph of a refrigerator bulging with eggs.
Pan seasoning is an esoteric skill practiced by professional chefs and diligent home cooks. It has nothing to do with salt and pepper, rather heating fat onto the pan, which bonds to the metal in a process called polymerization.
In practice, it allows you to fry your breakfast without it sticking to the pan. You would usually perform the ritual once or twice to achieve a nice smooth surface but fatmummy222 repeated the task over and over again until the usually mottled face has the sheen of polished marble. Eggs cracked onto it now glide across the surface like little ice skaters, a sight that’s strangely beautiful.
Thus far the post, titled “I’m at 80 coats now. Don’t do it guys. This is just for clout and for ‘science’. And also to make random internet strangers unreasonably mad” has gathered more than 50,000 Reddit points – the equivalent of likes – with more than 4,000 people commenting.
When we contacted fatmummy222 to ask if the project was finished they said: “I’ll probably keep going. I’m testing out some new stuff but it’s very experimental.”
Seasoning can be smelly, dirty work but fatmummy222, they said their house “smells like I’m frying something when I’m seasoning and smells like ‘balsam & cedar’ when I’m not”.
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“If you season it 30 more times it becomes a window to a parallel universe,” said one user when the pan was at a mere 30 coats of seasoning.
“It becomes a trillion different realities folding onto each other like thin sheets of metal forming a single blade,” said another called Weekly_Resource_102.
Other users feigned cynicism over the project, such as m0nkeyh0use, who ventured “I think Big Pan is involved somehow. And the illuminati of course.”
We now hope fatmummy222 will see the project through to 100 coats, thereby triggering the end of everything as we know it.
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