Cooking With Cast Iron.
Who here likes to cook with cast iron cook ware? I have several pieces that I like to use for most of my cooking. I like to find the older stuff and clean it up and re-season it. So much better than the new stuff they make today. It's nice to be able to take one from being all crusty & rusty, to looking like it just came out of the mold at the foundry. I have one old skillet that due to the design of it, I have determined to be over 100 years old, from what I can find out on the internet. It's so slick, I can scramble some eggs in it and wipe it clean with a hot wet wash rag when done. Most of the ones I have are older than I am.
We use our Lodge cast iron cookware weekly. I have a nice one with a lid that doubles as a skillet. There is no better way to cook beef stew. We cooked two whole chickens Saturday. Slice a large lemon, one large onion, and put in the pot. Remove the backbone so you can lay out the chicken whole in the pot on top of the lemon and onions. Season a desired, we used a olive oil, thyme, tony's mix. Bathe the chicken with the remainder of the mix and bake to temperature.
I have some Lodge skillets, the older ones with the heat ring & 3 notches in it, no name cast into it. But I do have a newer one with the name/logo on it, too. An old Birmingham Stove & Range skillet. Three #10 Dutch ovens, 2 with lids, a Lodge & a Birmingham Stove & Range and the other w/o a lid I am still trying to determine what it may be, that I got a week & a half ago. All I can find on it is an 8G2 on the bottom. Paid $15 for it, all rusted up, but clean & usable now. Several other smaller skillets with no markings and a square griddle skillet. It works good for canned biscuits if preheated. I even have a old round bottom, what I call a Bean Pot with 3 small triangle shaped legs with a bail handle.
I've stripped and re-seasoned all of them. I have a method that works for me that does not take a lot of time or a bunch of effort to strip them down to bare metal. I can do one in about an hour max and have it ready to go in the oven for the seasoning process. It takes off the old baked on black crud on the outside as well as makes the rust turn loose.
The pics in my last post are the before & after of a pot I was given by a guy to fix up a round crepe griddle for him.. When he handed me the pot, I looked at it and told him, this looks like a good one to fry chicken in. I could not see any markings on the bottom. Once I got it cleaned off though, I found it had " 10 1/2" Chicken Fryer" printed on the bottom. It was made by Birmingham Stove & Range also. A company that has been out of business for quite a few years now. The guy was VERY pleased with how the crepe griddle turned out as well. Before & after on it, too.
Some of the attributes of using cast iron I like are the even heat distribution of the pot, pan or whatever. Once it's heated up, the surface is pretty consistent heat wise across the whole thing. Also the heat retention ability of it. When deep frying something, fish, chicken, French fries & stuff, once the grease is hot and I start adding food to cook, it does not loose temperature as rapidly as other cook ware. Those thin aluminum or stainless steel pots cool off quickly and you need to turn the heat up to keep them cooking at the desired temperatures.
Then there's also the durability/longevity of them. Properly seasoned, used and taken care of, they can last MANY generations and still perform excellently as mentioned about the skillet in my first post on this. From what I have found out about it, it was made sometime in the 1890's. How much of this newer cookware will still be able to do that?
We cooked two whole chickens Saturday. Slice a large lemon, one large onion, and put in the pot. Remove the backbone so you can lay out the chicken whole in the pot on top of the lemon and onions. Season a desired, we used a olive oil, thyme, tony's mix. Bathe the chicken with the remainder of the mix and bake to temperature.
Did you cook both chickens at the same time in the pot or individually? Sometimes I will quarter up an onion and stuff it in the body cavity of a chicken, mix up some cream of mushroom soup, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and garlic powder and pour it over a chicken in one of the deep pots and cover it with the lid and bake it that way.
Two separate chickens , one each in it's own pot. Take heavy shears and cut along each side of the backbone and remove. Open the bird and using a cleaver or sharp knife partially cut the inside of the breast bone and then the bird will lay out flat nicely. Season with any dry seasonings you prefer. Place bird inside down on the lemon onion mix which should be well over a 1/4" thick and baste with at least 1/4 cup of the olive oil mix. This is an Ina Garten recipe.
So far, it looks like only me & Rosewood use cast iron to cook with in this group. I wonder why that is. These old deep pots are GREAT for frying fish in, or whatever you may want to deep fry. I'm having catfish, French fries & hush puppies cooked in my cast iron pot, tonight.
I prefer cast iron myself, especially for those recipes that involve both stove top and oven cooking phases. Definitely the best (only?) type utensil for dutch oven cooking and also my choice for a variety of breads. Also keep a small pot of sauce sitting on the grate in the smoker for periodic basting of whatever meat is in there at the time.
Actions
Back to TopicsReply to TopicShare this topic
Get paid just by sending us users/traffic.
Signup takes seconds, start now!
Signup as an affiliate!