The beauty of cast iron
I’ve owned a cast iron Dutch oven for several years now and wouldn’t cook a pot roast in anything else. I love the versatility of cast iron, which can be heated on a burner and transferred to the oven with no trouble at all. I would say a cast iron Dutch oven and skillet are must-haves in any kitchen where cooking is done. My mom had a skillet when I was growing up and she used it for everything. I especially remember that she would not fry chicken in any other pan and would often bake her corn bread in the same skillet.
Oddly, it took me years to finally obtain a cast iron skillet. Now, thanks to my dad and his girlfriend, I have three different sizes, from the standard size down to a cute little pan just perfect for frying a couple of eggs.
Don’t take my word for it on the benefits of cast iron. Check out these tidbits from “Tips Cooks Love,” a Sur la Table book:
* Cast iron absorbs heat more slowly than other materials but retains heat better and more evenly.
* Cast iron can be used on the stove top, in the oven, under a broiler or on the grill.
* It is perfect for high temperature cooking and you can develop nice caramelization on foods.
And a few words of caution:
* Cast iron can be reactive with acidic ingredients like tomatoes. For this reason, you might consider an enamel-coated Dutch oven, which is non-reactive.
* Unless you buy an already seasoned cast iron pan (many these days are seasoned, including products by Lodge, the biggest dealer of cast iron), you’ll have to season it before you can use it. Why season? Because unseasoned cast iron is brittle, and seasoning strengthens the material, prevents it from rusting and creates a non-stick surface.
Read on for instructions on seasoning cast iron and a few other tips.
To season a new piece of cast iron:
* “Tips Cooks Love” says to rub the inside of the pan with flavorless vegetable oil, place on a baking sheet and put in a 350 degree oven for one hour. Let cool, then wipe off any excess oil.
* The folks at kitchenemporium.com suggest using lard or bacon grease instead of vegetable oil, saying vegetable oil leaves a sticky surface and does not season as well. They suggest placing the greased pan in a 300 degree oven for 15 minutes, pouring out any excess grease and continuing to bake for another 2 hours.
After seasoning, it might be good to use the pan only for oily cooking for the first few times. This will further season and strengthen the material. And you don’t want to wash cast iron with soap and water, because that will remove the seasoning. Also do not use scouring pads. Simply rinse out the pan with hot water and scrape off cooked-on foods with a wooden spatula, then sprinkle with coarse salt and rub clean with paper towels.
Let it dry well to discourage rusting. I will usually put my Dutch oven in a warm oven or on a burner over medium heat to make sure it has completely dried.
Finally, the Sur la Table folks warn against storing cast iron cookware in a plastic bag, because the bag can trap moisture and cause rusting.
I know many of my readers are fond of using cast iron and have experience with caring for it. What other tips would you give new owners, and how does the information I have provided differ from your experience?
January 25, 2010 - 11:21 AM
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Funny you should post this today — I just reseasoned my cast iron pot on Saturday. I had accidentally let it get rusty. It looks beautiful again now though.
I’ve only used it once because there are so many rules that I get nervous about it. I’ve read that you have to be careful with using it on an electric range but I’m not sure of why. And now the tomato thing bothers me too — I put tomatoes in practically everything!
I also have a hard time understanding how it gets clean if you can’t use soap. I’d love for some of your readers to set me straight!
Gretchen, there are different schools of thought on the tomato issue. But from all I’ve read and can gather, cooking acidic foods in cast iron can do two things:
1. If your pan is not seasoned well enough, it can degrade the finish.
2. If you leave acidic food in cast iron, it can take on a metallic flavor.
This leads me to think if your pan is well-seasoned and you don’t let food sit in it for a long time (and never store food in cast iron at all), you’ll be okay.
My personal feeling is that I would not cook tomato sauce in cast iron, but if it’s something like chili that just has tomatoes in it, I don’t worry about it.
The deal with electric burners is that they can supposedly have hot spots that could warp your cast iron. But I wouldn’t let that keep me from using it. Also, they say to be careful about transfer from very hot to very cold with cast iron to prevent possible warping.
The soap just takes off your seasoning. Hot water and sponge should get it clean; if something is stuck on, boil some water in the pan to dislodge it.
Rules, rules, rules. But hey, the more you use it the more you’ll get the hang of it. I guess ruining it would be better than letting it sit unused.
We used to use cast iron pans, skillets, and a dutch oven…until a temporary roommate ruined the ones we had. We’ll have to pick up some new stuff, we don’t eat or cook pork products but she fried up bacon in them, and then left them sit for a prolonged period of time. We just let her keep them. We used ours for steaks and chicken mostly, some pan cornbread, frying up sausage, and for making soups, pot roasts, and stews.
I love my cast iron pans. In fact, I baked biscuits in one last night and fried sausage and made gravy in the other. I keep one cast iron 10″ skillet just for cornbread.
I let my cast iron pan get rusty! Any tips for quickly getting it back into shape?
Ken, scrub all of the rust off with steel wool, wash, dry and reseason the pan. It should be fine.
Northwest Hardware has a nice selection of Lodge cast iron cookware. It’s not crazy expensive either.
I’ve not tried this (and not sure I am brave enough), but I read that you can put an old rusty cast iron pan in the oven on the auto cleaning cycle to burn off the rust, etc. and then proceed to season it. I’m brave enough to try it at your house, not mine.
I saw this in the btw section of the Extra section last week.
Martha White and Lodge Cast Iron are accepting entries hrough March 1st in their 14th annual National Cornbread Cook-Off contest. Entries must be an original main dish recipe and prepared with at least one package of Martha White Cornbread Mix using Lodge cast iron cookware. Winner receives $5000.00. For more info, visit http://www.marthawhite.com
Thanks, Debbie!
And Harold, that sounds like a case for “Myth Busters”
Harold, I’ve done that before when one of my pans got rusty. But you have to clean the rust off first with steel wool. You can also do this by putting the pan in a hot wood stove. After doing it I realized that it really wasn’t necessary to do the whole pan. The high heat just burns off all the old seasoning and you start over from scratch. I would just clean the affected area with steel wool and reseason as described above.
My favorite use for my big cast iron dutch oven is deep frying. You can’t beat it- tt holds heat much better than my basket style electric deep fryer and can take a lot more food in a batch. Only downside is you use a lot of oil.
I absolutely LOVE cast iron! I could go on for days about the benefits, but I’ll try to be brief here. Or more brief, at least, ha ha!
I have four cast iron skillets & two dutch ovens. I use them almost daily, and here are some truths I’ve discovered…
Don’t buy imported cast iron. Buy Lodge, preferably (a good ole eastern Tennessee company!) or some other domestic manufacturer if you wish. Cast iron cookware is ridiculously inexpensive, so buy the good cheap stuff.
Lodge’s preseasoned cookware is great. The way I season cookware is the way my mother taught me, and her grandmother taught her. Take your skillet and coat it on the outside with Crisco. Yes, on the outside. Put the skillet upside down in your oven and bake for 1 hour on 400. Then take the pan out, coat the inside with Crisco, very heavily, let it puddle in the bottom of the skillet, and put it back in the oven for another hour on 400. Take it out of the oven and let it cool. Then wipe out the excess. That’s it. The pan is seasoned, and will last you forever. The reason you season the outside is to prevent rust and to protect against drips, spills, etc. Lodge preseasons their cookware much longer than that, but this works for the homeowner.
The only thing to use when cleaning is hot water. No soap or abrasives, as that takes out the coating of oil. Don’t worry about germs, between the hot water and the cooking, the germs are dead. Way back when I first got married, my wife about freaked when I told her not to wash the skillet with soap. She didn’t know anything about cast iron, and it went against her logic to do that. She wouldn’t eat cornbread for the longest time because of that, ha!
Lodge makes a series of cookware called ‘Logic’ that is much more ergonomically friendly than the old fashioned style of stubby handled ones. Those who are not built like Popeye should certainly appreciate them.
I’ve cooked all types of tomato based sauces in my Lodge for over twenty years now, and it does them no harm. If you leave the sauce in the cookware overnight or something, it might be a different story, but you can cook with it, then clean it, and it’s not an issue at all.
Also, the thing about not using cast iron on an electric range is a fallacy. I’ve used mine on nothing but electric ranges for over two decades without any problems.
I actually only use cast iron skillets. No teflon skillets in my house. Talk about high maintenance, think about it! With cast iron you can use metal, wood, plastic, whatever you want to stir your food without worry. I fry eggs, and they slide out of a seasoned pan as slick as a whistle. I brown meats, I can do whatever I want with it. Baked beans in the 4 qt dutch oven, yum!
When I’m done cooking with my cast iron, I rinse & wipe it out. Since it’s seasoned inside & out, I don’t have to worry about rust. This stuff will last another hundred years, and I don’t think I spent more than $20 for any of it.
I knew I couldn’t keep it brief. I just love cast iron.
Awesome comment, Abdnva.
Thanks for the tips on seasoning. I have been wondering about whether to grease the whole thing or just the inside. My instinct told me to grease the whole thing.
I’ve heard cast iron referred to as the Teflon skillet of the old days. Consider that you don’t have to worry about scratching it or scraping bits of Teflon into your food and it does start to seem silly to even mess with anything else.
I have heard of families who pass down their cast iron from generation to generation, so when you say they can last 100 years, you are definitely not exaggerating.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely do the outside, too. As for passing down the cast iron, I use one particular one for cornbread that my mom got that was passed from her grandmother, so it is at least sixty years old.
In my opinion, there aren’t a lot of rules for cast iron. There are rules for everything else, but not cast iron. You oil/grease the pan, cook in it, rinse it out, dry it, and you’re done. How can it get any simpler than that? With teflon you have to do this & that. Then throw it away five years later, if not sooner. With anodized you can only use certain implements. And you pay an arm & a leg for it. With stainless you have to scrub & scrub, and you deal with the hot spots. With porcelain you have to do this & that, and it’s as expensive as anodized.
To me, cast iron is the ultimate American cookware. Humble, yet versatile. Produced domestically, at a bargain price. It lasts forever, brings families together (cornbread, anyone?) and withstands almost any challenge.
I’ve been using cast iron skillet for years for camping. It is one of the Lodge preseasoned and looks just like the one in your picture here. It’s great. I cook up bacon and eggs then do home fries. I’ve even made chili in it. I’ve even used it right over the campfire. Like many have said it is easy to clean. I do have to battle rust a little bit being that it’s used out doors. Rain storms present are the biggest culprit even though it doesn’t get rained on. I do have one small cast iron skillet my grandmother gave me that I use at home. I do plan to buy more for the house one day. I’ve tried biscuits in twice when camping in the Lodge. I’ve gotten them to turn out fairly well on the Colman stove.
I’ve been cooking in Cast Iron for years and would not use anything else. Here is the best method for seasoning that I’ve used
You know we all have our own ways and methods to season, but the method below has been used by many collectors and cooks alike and it appears to be the BEST for seasoning.
Take the extra time to actually season in the oven as makes a world of difference in the end result.
Once a piece is fully cleaned and dried put it in the oven “naked”; no oil of any kind and heat it to 450°F. Leave it in long enough to just reach that temperature. Be careful and remove the piece from the oven and let it cool to where you can just handle it. This step works great for slightly darkening the peice and giving it a uniform appearance. No one likes a spotted or zebra stripped piece. Use Crisco shortening only and use a cotton rag (t-shirt) to apply a thin/very light coat on the entire piece. If there are tight nooks and crannies to fill in, use a Q-tip.
Once completely and lightly coated (note: we stress a LIGHT coat), put it back in the oven at 400°F for 30 (use a timer) minutes and at that point turn off the oven and leave it in the oven till it cools on it’s own.
When you remove the piece it will have a nice dark brown uniform pantina that shines brightly.
You can repeat with one or more coats of Crisco, if you like, but you’ll be happy none the less.
I have one cast iron pan of my mothers, and one I bought new,which I love to cook in.My mother taught me how to season it years ago, and I remember she used a few drops of vinegar in the process. Can anyone tell me the benefit of using the vinegar, I can’t recall her telling me???
For Ellen #17
The only benefits of using vinegar in my experience with cast iron would be to remove small amounts of rust before seasoning perhaps thats what your mother was doing. Vinegar is very acidic and will eat through the iron if exposed to it for long periods of time.