Cooking with Cast Iron

By Susan Clotfelter
Published on October 1, 2008
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The cast-iron skillet is one of the most popular cookware items on the market.
The cast-iron skillet is one of the most popular cookware items on the market.
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Our ancestors knew cast iron well.
Our ancestors knew cast iron well.
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Bumps on the lids of Dutch ovens evenly and continually baste the contents of the oven.
Bumps on the lids of Dutch ovens evenly and continually baste the contents of the oven.
Sidebars:
Chicken-Apple Sausage Fry-Up
Seasoning Your Cast-Iron Pan 

When Food Network stars Mario Batali and Paula Deen, genius Mexican restaurateur Rick Bayless and domestic diva Martha Stewart are all pitching lines of cast iron, you know it has to be scorching.

When French stalwart Le Creuset, longtime makers of Dutch ovens for the gourmet class, serves up its old faithful designs in colors like Kiwi and Caribbean Blue, there’s got to be some serious luring of youthful tastes going on.

If you talk to kitchen connoisseurs – from cowboy cook-off champs to trendy chefs – one pan rules them all. There’s one pan you want if you were stranded on a desert island, or had to move into a new home with hungry mouths to feed and no luggage but what you can fit in the trunk of a Prius.

That pan would be the cast-iron skillet.

The conductive quality of cast iron smoothes out the uneven heat of the crankiest electric burners, gently sweats onions, brings frying oil to just the right temperature and keeps it there. The skillet leaps into service to flatten a chicken breast, crush cookie crumbs or, in a pinch, hammer a nail or clobber a mouse. Iron puts the perfect crust on corn bread, releases frittatas without regrets. You can sear a sesame-crusted salmon fillet one moment, rinse the pan, wipe it clean with a paper towel and then poach pears for dessert. Fire it up dry to toast nuts or spices. Plop it on a wooden cutting board at the table to keep a gratin warm. Exploit its willingness to go from stovetop to oven to table. Use it. Use it again.

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