Ironclad love
COOK'S FAVORITE | Prized for their longevity and versatility, cast-iron pans never fail to deliver
The cookware huckster at the department store was wrong: My heavy clad nonstick cookware set hasn't outlasted me or my marriage.
Eight years later, I can still see the clerk from the kitchenware department of a particularly famous Chicago department store shaking her head disapprovingly as I fingered the dull finish of a new cast-iron skillet.
(Char Searl/Photo illustration)
Still, the pre-coating performs better with an extra coat of fat.
So for new pans or pans that have lost their seasoning:
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Melt vegetable shortening (or pork lard, if you happen to have some on hand) and wipe a thin layer of the melted fat over the inside and outside of the pan.
Place the oiled pan in the oven. Place a sheet tray or foil on the bottom rack to catch any drippings. Bake the pan for an hour, let it cool and store in a dry place.
For secondhand pans:
Run steel wool or an abrasive cleaning pad across the surface of the pan until the rust disappears. Wash it with hot, soapy water (the only time you should let soap near this pan) and then follow the instructions above to season.
If there is particularly tough buildup on the pan, sprinkle it with salt and use a stiff plastic-bristled brush to scrub clean.
If you're not as obsessive as me, there's no reason you can't swirl a little hot water in your pan before scrubbing (with or without salt). But avoid using soap or abrasive cleaners, as this will remove the seasoning.
Do not soak in water, let water sit inside the pan or run it in the dishwasher. Rust will develop.
And never air dry before storing your pan. Always towel dry.
Michael Nagrant
She harrumphed and whipped off her glossy red reading glasses and beelined for my wife and me while we built our wedding registry. I almost expected her to smack my wrist off the pan, but instead she pitched a tirade about how cast-iron pans are too much work, how they rust and how what we really wanted was a heavy clad nonstick collection.
She said she'd throw in a free wok if we registered for the set. If only we'd held out for a set of Ginzu knives.
Maybe it wasn't the clerk's fault. Wedding registries tend to encourage witless excess. After all, who really needs five Waterford lead crystal pieces, NASCAR china or a Baccarat dolphin sculpture?
And at that time, I thought that cooking was something my grandmother did, Outback Steakhouse was luxury food and the chrome lids on the recommended set were pretty sweet.
So for a year or so after we were married, our shiny set was a pride-inducing museum display of unused gleaming glory on our kitchen shelves.
Then I learned to cook.
Two years later, I finally got that cast-iron skillet. I coddled it, fed it precious bacon fat when it was thirsty and it returned my love as the workhorse of my kitchen.
While the nonstick coating on those wedding gifts is long gone, after six years, the non-stickiness of my fat-laden cast-iron skillet keeps on going.
By cast iron, mind you, I'm not talking about those bank account-draining, oven range-gulping yachts slathered in pretty, vibrant colored enamels. I'm talking about the $20 pans so heavy that they can double as a handy bludgeon for would-be intruders. For value, there may be no better pan, especially in these troubled economic times.
My Lodge skillet is the only pan I use to make breakfast. It does double duty at dinner, ensuring a uniform, crispy-brown crust on steak or any protein, for those of us without 1,500-degree infrared restaurant broilers.
Even those with restaurant equipment tend to love cast iron. A few years ago at Avenues restaurant in the Peninsula Chicago hotel, I watched as chef Graham Elliot Bowles' staff, surrounded by gleaming copper sauce pans and Dutch ovens, seared meat exclusively in a cast-iron pan.
Says Rob Levitt, chef-owner of Bucktown's Mado, who uses his to pan-fry soft-shell crabs, braise lamb belly and render pork fat: "Aluminum saute pans just don't cut it. There's nothing greater to sear protein."
Cast-iron pans are prized not only for their function, but their durability. Even a fully rusted one dug up at a thrift store can usually be revived with a healthy coating of lard and an hour or two in a 375-degree oven.
While I've always said it would be the first thing I'd grab on way out of the door during a fire, my cast-iron pan would likely endure that, too.
In fact, Rogers Park pursemaker Cinnamon Cooper told me that when she was in fourth grade, a classmate's kitchen chimney caught on fire and the cast-iron pans were among the only things that survived.
Because of this, and also because her own mother cooked with cast iron so often during her childhood, when Cooper worked as a clerk for Williams-Sonoma, she'd often try to convince would-be purchasers of expensive cooking sets to consider cast iron instead.
"I remember one guy came in and bought this 14-piece set, came back two weeks later with a warped pan and said, 'Alright, show me the cast iron,' " Cooper, 37, says.
Because cast iron is so durable, the pans are often handed down between generations. Catherine Jahns, a 92-year-old Chicago woman, got her pan from her Aunt Margaret over 60 years ago.
"She could no longer use it on her new electric stove," Jahns says. "I will not part with it for love or money."
Carol Bernard, 74, of Chicago owns three of her grandmother's cast iron pans -- a 12-inch frying pan, 8-inch frying pan and a Dutch oven.
"These pans have to be at least 100 plus years old, probably more like 125 plus and still going strong," Bernard says.
Cast iron was originally forged in in China in 6th century B.C., though it didn't really come into wide culinary use until the early 18th century in England.
Lodge, America's largest domestic manufacturer of cast iron cookware, was established during the first presidential term of William McKinley when founder Joseph Lodge established the Blacklot foundry, named after his favorite Episcopal priest, in South Pittsburg, Tenn.
The company also manufactured stove pieces, pipes and, during the Depression, cast iron gnomes, dogs and doorstops. Today, Lodge's great grandchildren still run the business.
Mark Kelly, Lodge's market promotions manager, says cast iron pans are the most popular they have been in the last 40 years.
He credits the recent innovation of pre-seasoned skillets and Food Network celebrities like Paula Deen and Bobby Flay for raising awareness of the product, but adds that the pans are popular because they're like "the utility infielder of kitchen, one from which you get Hall of Fame play every day."
To illustrate how prized cast iron is in the South, Kelly tells the story of a burglar who broke into his friend's New Orleans house and didn't touch the widescreen televisions and high-end electronics, but instead took six seasoned cast iron Dutch ovens.
Apart from superior cooking, one of the beautiful things about cast iron is its low maintenance. Cast iron pans don't even really need to be washed.
Because the non-stickiness of the pan and the flavor of cooked items is often dependent on years of accumulated cooking, many people try to keep soap away from the pan surface. Cleaning usually involves salt, a scrub brush and a dash of water for really tough stains.
"I've worked at French restaurants where everything goes through the dishwasher, except the cast iron," Mado's Levitt says. "The cooks always lovingly hand-scrub those."
My wife and I have had more than a few disagreements after I've caught her on the precipice of unwittingly soaping or watering down my cast iron skillet.
That said, our marriage will likely never be felled by such petty things. And I'm confident that unlike our heavy duty nonstick set, our cast iron skillet will live up to its promise and last as long as our relationship.
Michael Nagrant is a Chicago free-lance writer.
Readers, we had a hunch you treasure your cast-iron pans as much as we do. We were right. Here, in your own words (slightly edited for space), are your stories.
Do I have a cast-iron pan! I was told my parents bought this Wagner Ware Dutch oven shortly after their marriage in January 1934.
I've been using it for a good number of years to feed my family of three girls and two boys, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
One of my daughters is waiting in the wings for her turn at ownership of this family treasure. It'll be a while yet.
Pat Harding, Willow Springs
The cast-iron pan that I have was my grandfather's. He was born March 13, 1886, and died Oct. 3, 1990.
When my two brothers and I were children, he used to cook up everything in one pan. Bacon and eggs and toast. Chili, chicken, everything.
Now I cook everything in it (especially fried chicken). ... It brings back the good old days.
Barbara Ross, Chicago
The cast-iron pan came to Illinois when our mother and father left Louisiana. We grew up with delicious fried chicken, cornbread, sauteed ingredients for gumbo. The pan did it all. We always hurried home hoping the pan was working its miracles.
In July, I'll be married 59 years and still keep the pan working its miracles.
Marion L. Frazier, Calumet City
In 1979 I moved to Chicago, had my first real job out of college and was setting up my first real apartment on my own. I had nothing for the kitchen. So I went to the Woolworths on North Broadway, in what was then known as New Town, to buy some kitchen and dining needs.
On display were brand-new cast-iron skillets. Some were priced at $4.99 and some had no price at all, but one was priced at $2.99. So that is the one I selected and purchased. I have had it ever since.
Terry J. Baublis, Chicago
My cast-iron Dutch oven is at least 100 years old . . . I mainly cook my mixed greens and my various beans in it. I love it because it was handled by a minimum of four generations and it is a part of my history.
Shirley E. Griffin, Chicago
My 13-inch, deep-walled, cast-iron skillet was bought at a garage sale about 33 years ago in Blue Island. I was just out of the Marine Corps, going to night school, newly married, and we had no money. So we used to go camping just to be able to go away somewhere. The $3 skillet looked like a good, durable cooking item that could be a very versatile cooking tool.
It later morphed into a pan I would take along for the "just guys" fishing trips, and I learned the hard way what you should not cook in it . . . like eggs, for instance.
After an attempt at a large egg casserole, the pan spent a night in the wavy surf of Lake Michigamme, Mich., as a start to the next morning's scouring. But lo and behold, I reeled it in just before dawn, and not a speck was left on the pan. It was washed up and put back in duty.
It was just after that that I learned about seasoning the pan. Rust is not a good thing for cast iron. I figured out the oiling process around 1980 or so.
From that point forward, no water -- or very little -- would ever touch that pan again. And since I loved to fish and had a family that loved to eat fish, especially fresh perch, the skillet reinvented itself as the Perch Pan.
Incredible what butter, butter, garlic, olive oil, salt, butter and corn flakes -- did I mention butter? -- can produce in a cast iron skillet.
Jack Althoff, Geneva