Cooking with cast iron

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One more cast iron lover here. PPs pretty much covered it.

The most useful single pan, I think, is the 10" skillet. It never leaves the stovetop. I only got it a couple of years ago, before that I mainly used the 12" skillet (which I've had since my 20s--I got it on the theory that you can always cook for one in a huge pan, but you can't cook for 6 or 8 people in a little pan). That 12" sure seems heavy now by comparison.

Only thing about that cornbread--shouldn't you be using bacon fat instead of butter?

OP here. I got a 10-inch skillet because I thought the 12-inch would be too heavy. Glad I did. Re: the bacon fat, we're vegetarian so can't go there. Butter, though. . . . Mmmmm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:P.S. There was discussion in the Food chat today about doing eggs in cast iron. I do all my eggs in cast iron, including omelettes and scrambled. Never a problem. (The pans are very well seasoned.)

I hear from a lot of people that this is BS and that eggs turn into a holy mess. I think those folks have their heat way too high for eggs. On my electric coil top, I do eggs on about 4. (Sometimes 3, sometimes 5.) With gas this would be a low-medium flame. If you blast them on medium high, sure they'll stick, and they'll also generally be pretty hard to handle. With low-medium heat they're very manageable and come out great every time. (Provided your pan is seasoned properly.)

I will try this. Thanks for the tip on heat; low-medium is surely the way to go.

I read something about flaxseed oil being ideal for seasoning cast iron. I may try that.

[Anonymous]

I think some people don't like low heat eggs because the curds are too small and soft and its not what they traditionally think of.

If you scramble eggs on extremely low heat, stirring often, over a longer period of time (10-20 minutes) you end up with a super small-curd and soft scramble that is spreadable with a knife and tastes excellent on buttered toast. It is a bit too intense to eat a large plate of it though.

[Anonymous]

Guess I'm making cornbread tonight - yum!

I suck at making eggs in cast iron. Maybe my pans aren't seasoned enough? I'll never try again though - I still have nightmares about my last attempt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:P.S. There was discussion in the Food chat today about doing eggs in cast iron. I do all my eggs in cast iron, including omelettes and scrambled. Never a problem. (The pans are very well seasoned.)

I hear from a lot of people that this is BS and that eggs turn into a holy mess. I think those folks have their heat way too high for eggs. On my electric coil top, I do eggs on about 4. (Sometimes 3, sometimes 5.) With gas this would be a low-medium flame. If you blast them on medium high, sure they'll stick, and they'll also generally be pretty hard to handle. With low-medium heat they're very manageable and come out great every time. (Provided your pan is seasoned properly.)

I will try this. Thanks for the tip on heat; low-medium is surely the way to go.

I read something about flaxseed oil being ideal for seasoning cast iron. I may try that.

I tried it, and wasn't impressed. I've never gotten a good baked on season with it. Flaxseed oil always starts chipping out when cooking.

[Anonymous]

I can cook both over easy and over hard eggs in my cast iron, but I cannot get a good scrambled egg to save my life. I also cannot cook egg beaters in it. Big mess!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:P.S. There was discussion in the Food chat today about doing eggs in cast iron. I do all my eggs in cast iron, including omelettes and scrambled. Never a problem. (The pans are very well seasoned.)

I hear from a lot of people that this is BS and that eggs turn into a holy mess. I think those folks have their heat way too high for eggs. On my electric coil top, I do eggs on about 4. (Sometimes 3, sometimes 5.) With gas this would be a low-medium flame. If you blast them on medium high, sure they'll stick, and they'll also generally be pretty hard to handle. With low-medium heat they're very manageable and come out great every time. (Provided your pan is seasoned properly.)

I will try this. Thanks for the tip on heat; low-medium is surely the way to go.

I read something about flaxseed oil being ideal for seasoning cast iron. I may try that.

I tried it, and wasn't impressed. I've never gotten a good baked on season with it. Flaxseed oil always starts chipping out when cooking.

What oil works better?

[Anonymous]

Ironically, the worse an oil is for high heat cooking, the better it tends to be for seasoning. (That's why a lot of people like flax seed oil; it ought be a crime in any other context to cook flax seed).

The best traditional choice for seasoning cast iron is lard, but supermarket lard and supermarket pork both have much less ALA than they used to and its hardly worth buying heritage pork just to season a pan. (But the poster in the other thread asking how to cook her artisanal pork shoulder may want to save some fat for later!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ironically, the worse an oil is for high heat cooking, the better it tends to be for seasoning. (That's why a lot of people like flax seed oil; it ought be a crime in any other context to cook flax seed).

The best traditional choice for seasoning cast iron is lard, but supermarket lard and supermarket pork both have much less ALA than they used to and its hardly worth buying heritage pork just to season a pan. (But the poster in the other thread asking how to cook her artisanal pork shoulder may want to save some fat for later!)

So for a vegetarian like me. . . what would is use in place of lard? It seems like you wouldn't want to use something like olive oil that quickly goes rancid.

[Anonymous]

interesting

...They are all wrong. It does matter what oil you use, and the oil that gives the best results is not in this list. So what is it? Here are some hints: What oil do artists mix with pigment for a high quality oil paint that dries hard and glassy on the canvas? What oil is commonly used by woodturners to give their sculptures a protective, soft-sheen finish? It’s the same oil. Now what is the food-grade equivalent of this oil?

The oil used by artists and woodturners is linseed oil. The food-grade equivalent is called flaxseed oil. This oil is ideal for seasoning cast iron for the same reason it’s an ideal base for oil paint and wood finishes. It’s a “drying oil”, which means it can transform into a hard, tough film. This doesn’t happen through “drying” in the sense of losing moisture through evaporation. The term is actually a misnomer. The transformation is through a chemical process called “polymerization”.

The seasoning on cast iron is formed by fat polymerization, fat polymerization is maximized with a drying oil, and flaxseed oil is the only drying oil that’s edible. From that I deduced that flaxseed oil would be the ideal oil for seasoning cast iron.

As a reality check of this theory, I googled “season cast iron with flaxseed oil” to see what came up. The very first hit is a page written by a guy who seasons his cast iron cookware with linseed oil from the hardware store because it gives the hardest surface of anything he’s tried. (I’m not sure how safe that is; I don’t recommend it.) Below that were several sites selling traditional cast iron cookware from China, which they advertise as being “preseasoned with high quality flax oil”. I don’t know whether they really use food-grade flaxseed oil (which is expensive) or linseed oil from a hardware store. What’s significant is the claim. Seasoning with high quality flaxseed oil is something to brag about.

With this encouragement, I stripped one of my skillets and reseasoned it with flaxseed oil. As you can see in the picture above, the result was a dramatic improvement. The finish is smooth, hard, and evenly colored.

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ironically, the worse an oil is for high heat cooking, the better it tends to be for seasoning. (That's why a lot of people like flax seed oil; it ought be a crime in any other context to cook flax seed).

The best traditional choice for seasoning cast iron is lard, but supermarket lard and supermarket pork both have much less ALA than they used to and its hardly worth buying heritage pork just to season a pan. (But the poster in the other thread asking how to cook her artisanal pork shoulder may want to save some fat for later!)

So for a vegetarian like me. . . what would is use in place of lard? It seems like you wouldn't want to use something like olive oil that quickly goes rancid.

I probably wouldn't use extra virgin olive oil, but your (and my) intuition to avoid things that go rancid easily is actually backwards. You want oil with ALA to help bind the seasoning to the pan, and ALA oils are very volatile. That's why flaxseed oil has become so popular for seasoning; it actually has a low smoke point and can easily go rancid (this is also why the only good edible foods with flaxseed in them are raw).

I believe the oil with the next highest ALA amount is soybean oil, so if I were veggie I'd try that next.

The problem with olive oil is not the rate at which it goes rancid but the amount if non-oil components it has in there. The reason good EVOO is so good is because there are other flavors in there that don't need to be burned in to the pan. (This is also why bacon grease is not a good substitute for old fashioned lard). A deep frying grade olive oil like you can find at GrandMart might be okay for seasoning.

All that being said, I actually do season my cast iron with high heat oil like grape seed oil and just accept that it takes a very long time to get a good seasoning on it. The upshot of this approach is that you don't have a seasoning chipping concern a pp mentioned. But it takes a long time to get a real nonstick layer and it's really really tragic when a friend tries to help you with the dishes and scrubs a soapy hole in the seasoning.

[Anonymous]

Most all of my cast iron cooking is done in the oven, (except for my enameled Cast Iron which I use for soups). IN the oven I use it for:

-Steaks
-breads
-Almost all vegetables
-casseroles
-rice

I use it so much that I have 3 pans and often have the double ovens going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most all of my cast iron cooking is done in the oven, (except for my enameled Cast Iron which I use for soups). IN the oven I use it for:

-Steaks
-breads
-Almost all vegetables
-casseroles
-rice

I use it so much that I have 3 pans and often have the double ovens going.

How do you cook rice in cast iron in the oven? I'd love to hear!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:interesting

...They are all wrong. It does matter what oil you use, and the oil that gives the best results is not in this list. So what is it? Here are some hints: What oil do artists mix with pigment for a high quality oil paint that dries hard and glassy on the canvas? What oil is commonly used by woodturners to give their sculptures a protective, soft-sheen finish? It’s the same oil. Now what is the food-grade equivalent of this oil?

The oil used by artists and woodturners is linseed oil. The food-grade equivalent is called flaxseed oil. This oil is ideal for seasoning cast iron for the same reason it’s an ideal base for oil paint and wood finishes. It’s a “drying oil”, which means it can transform into a hard, tough film. This doesn’t happen through “drying” in the sense of losing moisture through evaporation. The term is actually a misnomer. The transformation is through a chemical process called “polymerization”.

The seasoning on cast iron is formed by fat polymerization, fat polymerization is maximized with a drying oil, and flaxseed oil is the only drying oil that’s edible. From that I deduced that flaxseed oil would be the ideal oil for seasoning cast iron.

As a reality check of this theory, I googled “season cast iron with flaxseed oil” to see what came up. The very first hit is a page written by a guy who seasons his cast iron cookware with linseed oil from the hardware store because it gives the hardest surface of anything he’s tried. (I’m not sure how safe that is; I don’t recommend it.) Below that were several sites selling traditional cast iron cookware from China, which they advertise as being “preseasoned with high quality flax oil”. I don’t know whether they really use food-grade flaxseed oil (which is expensive) or linseed oil from a hardware store. What’s significant is the claim. Seasoning with high quality flaxseed oil is something to brag about.

With this encouragement, I stripped one of my skillets and reseasoned it with flaxseed oil. As you can see in the picture above, the result was a dramatic improvement. The finish is smooth, hard, and evenly colored.

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/

I have tried her method, and it does give you a shiny, beautiful surface. The problem is that it chips off when cooking. So, if you're not going to use the pan, and just want pretty, Canter's method works. It will not work for a pan being used.

This is the closest to the method I use: http://www.castironcollector.com/seasoning.php, but there are literally hundreds of methods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ironically, the worse an oil is for high heat cooking, the better it tends to be for seasoning. (That's why a lot of people like flax seed oil; it ought be a crime in any other context to cook flax seed).

The best traditional choice for seasoning cast iron is lard, but supermarket lard and supermarket pork both have much less ALA than they used to and its hardly worth buying heritage pork just to season a pan. (But the poster in the other thread asking how to cook her artisanal pork shoulder may want to save some fat for later!)

So for a vegetarian like me. . . what would is use in place of lard? It seems like you wouldn't want to use something like olive oil that quickly goes rancid.

I probably wouldn't use extra virgin olive oil, but your (and my) intuition to avoid things that go rancid easily is actually backwards. You want oil with ALA to help bind the seasoning to the pan, and ALA oils are very volatile. That's why flaxseed oil has become so popular for seasoning; it actually has a low smoke point and can easily go rancid (this is also why the only good edible foods with flaxseed in them are raw).

I believe the oil with the next highest ALA amount is soybean oil, so if I were veggie I'd try that next.

The problem with olive oil is not the rate at which it goes rancid but the amount if non-oil components it has in there. The reason good EVOO is so good is because there are other flavors in there that don't need to be burned in to the pan. (This is also why bacon grease is not a good substitute for old fashioned lard). A deep frying grade olive oil like you can find at GrandMart might be okay for seasoning.

All that being said, I actually do season my cast iron with high heat oil like grape seed oil and just accept that it takes a very long time to get a good seasoning on it. The upshot of this approach is that you don't have a seasoning chipping concern a pp mentioned. But it takes a long time to get a real nonstick layer and it's really really tragic when a friend tries to help you with the dishes and scrubs a soapy hole in the seasoning.

Makes sense. I may try avocado oil as well. Do you store cast iron with oil on it, or no? If so, what kind? Seems like oil would go rancid (I know I'm obsessed with that but it's so nasty), and might attract dust.

I like the looks of tiny cast iron skills but they're probably not useful.