My Fear of Cast Iron :-)

[Kate]

Odd title, isn't it? I've loved cooking since I was a teenager and I've tried all different kinds of equipment and cookware over the years. Some was great and some was lousy, buuuuuuuuuuut....

Well, I just can't get into making myself try cast iron. I know professionals use it and I've heard so many people say it's all they use. I can't get past the thought that food would stick to it terribly. If you use cast iron, how do you prevent that from happening?

Or it is somehow a natural non-stick material? Sure doesn't seem as if it would be to me, but I know I could be wrong about that.

 

[Cocobird5]

If you season your pans well, they develop a non-stick sort of quality. If you don't trust that, lots of cast iron has enamel on the inside.

 

[Tara]

I love cast iron skillets. The food taste so much better. My cast iron skillet is seasoned perfectly because it belonged to my grandmother. I do use a few drops of oil when cooking through.

 

[ally79]

The trick to cast iron is seasoning it well, and getting all of the food out when you are done. I don't know what I would do without my cast iron skillet and Dutch oven.

 

[sillylucy]

They would freak me out too! Mostly because when you wipe them down you get some of the iron on your rag. I always thought they were dirty and wondered how much extra iron I was getting in my diet because of it. You are not alone on this one!

 

[thomas pendrake]

Uncle Dave Macon sang the song "skillet good and greasy". Never scour your cast iron. You can scrub it with salt if need be. Bacon fat or vegetable lard can both be used to season it, When I get a new one I use ultra fine sand paper to polish it and then bake it with either bacon grease or lard to season it. When your skillet develops a black surface it will work really well. Keep your skillet good and greasy all the time.

 

[clairebeautiful]

When others say "seasoning it" they mean cooking in it with whatever natural oil or butter you would use to cook, and then do not clean it with soap. Just rinse it out and oil it again.

We used cast iron everything when I worked at a wilderness camp, where we cooked over a fire for all our meals on weekends. I have to admit, even after seasoning our cast irons for several months, it seemed we always had one that food stuck to. I don't know. There was always the good frying pan and the messy one. It probably matters what brand you buy, seriously.

I agree that food taste better in a cast iron, but I'd never use them in my house because they are just impractically heavy. I imaging dropping the thing and breaking the floor or my foot or my glass top stove… haha.

I'd really like to invest in a good set of frying pans like my grandmother had. They were not cast iron, but they were rugged, not too heavy but solid, and she seasoned them… never used soap to wash them.

 

[Tara]

When others say "seasoning it" they mean cooking in it with whatever natural oil or butter you would use to cook, and then do not clean it with soap. Just rinse it out and oil it again.

Seasoning is done before the skillet is first used. It's baked with oil or some type of fat. The fat or oil is baked directly into the skillet. My cast iron skillets are my grandmother's. They are older than I am. She probably seasoned them with some type of fat that I don't use like Crisco, bacon fat, pork fat, etc....

There are some cast iron skillets that are sold pre-seasoned. I have yet to find a decent brand of cast iron in my state, California, but it's hard. The best brands of cast iron are available in the Southern part of the United States.

 

[OhioTom76]

Some people love them. My dad's family always cooked with them when he was growing up. I bought a couple, one regular and one grill pan, but I never use them anymore. They're heavy, so they always wind up at the bottom of my shelves underneath all my other pans, and I usually don't feel like dragging them out. Also, they were a bit of a pain to clean because you had to wait for them to cool down before you could handle them, and use a metal brush to scrub them - which would leave all sorts of greasy black charred bits all over my sink. Plus they kind of smelled too.

There is a newer set of cast iron pans on the market that actually have some sort of non stick coating on them, and they are thinner so they aren't as heavy. Might want to check those out.

 

[thomas pendrake]

Seasoning is done before the skillet is first used. It's baked with oil or some type of fat. The fat or oil is baked directly into the skillet. My cast iron skillets are my grandmother's. They are older than I am. She probably seasoned them with some type of fat that I don't use like Crisco, bacon fat, pork fat, etc....

There are some cast iron skillets that are sold pre-seasoned. I have yet to find a decent brand of cast iron in my state, California, but it's hard. The best brands of cast iron are available in the Southern part of the United States.

Really good cast iron ware also comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch area. If there are any Amish stores near where you live, they will carry good quality cast iron and will be able to tell you how to care for it. I have also found that sanding the surface with high grit silicon carbide before seasoning it can give you a fantastic surface.

 

[megshoe]

I love cast iron skillets, especially to make corn bread! I know it's all in my head, but I just think it's not real corn bread unless it came from cast iron. You do have to be careful about greasing it properly...One time when I was younger I cooked some scrambled eggs in a cast iron skillet...that was a mess to clean up. But have no fear!