cast iron cooking

Thanks!

Well hot diggity! Thanks for the replies... Back out they come!

Pretty sure all of these are made by Vermont Castings in Randolph Vermont for Lodge.

Right up the road.

I recently "restored" a big Lodge pan with some relatively light spots of rust using a nylon wheel in my drill. I don't know what grit of abasive but its one of the ones sold for removing paint and rust, etc.

Washed with soap and water to get the residue out and immediatly put on stove to dry out.
Seasoned it with oil in the oven and then cooked some bacon.

Works great and no stick now.

I have one dimpled and one that I cleaned up, I like the dimpled one better. I also have both gas and induction but my induction is a $80 hotplate and the funny thing is I do most of my pan cooking on that.

pittsburg,tn i think?

The actual cast iron is made in Tennessee. He's thinking that the carbon steel pans Lodge sells are made in Vermont.

Wish I would have read this before going through a whole sheet of 400 wet-sand by hand.


I'm going to go down a level or two for the next bout. My MIL (who is a great cook) thrashed my 12" Lodge while I was away. Gave me a good excuse to refinish it.

well guy's some of yall have a lot to learn about cast-iron pots.. down here we love our cast as weve been using them for centry's literally.. Coon-ass's love our food and we mailnly use cast.. when ever you get a pot, as example a new one, it should be seasoned, some do it in the oven, but if done right it will caused you to abandon the house and your neighbors to call the fire dept.. pan should be heated up until almost glowing, then cooking oil or best hog lard, should be applied to pan. it will smoke catch fire and smoke more. let pan cool and keep appling oil until it is entirely coated. once cooled off, it should be heated again until it is burning and all oil is pretty much gone, pull out and apply oil again.. two or three times will get the job done.. this is done to open the pores of the cast and it will absorbe oil.... as far as for rusty old pots, stop sanding then siimply throw them in a fire and reseason them,its cast, and you will not get into the pores, only heat will open it up.. if you get and old pan thats not rusted and is smooth,along the bottom and sides, thats the person that knew how to take care of their pot as they knew how to properly clean it, and it has what everyone calls seasoned, and all foods cooked it it will be just out of this world... Cleaning your pan after use,,,NEVER,NEVER ever use an S.O.S. pad and never let it soak in detergent or clean it with any kind of abrasive pad.. only light soap and a soft rag.... you want to see you pot turning blacker and blacker with time and what seems like a film or crust starting to develop over the inside of it. never scrape it off let it get thicker and thicker, the the thicker the better.. you will never cook with any other pan again... thats why you hear some people use a pan that hasnt been used in years and once heated you can smell the food that was last cooked in it when heated... remember it Cast and stop trying to sand it, it supposed to be rough, so it can start and hold what everyone calls seasoned.

Sounds like good advice. It's the having of a fire in the first place that's tough for us city/urban slickers. But I have a back yard, so maybe I'll try to get a real fire going and try to season that way with one of my skillers.

I'm surprised you say soap, when others seem to recommend water only, and never soap... and they don't seem to say to stay away from an SOS pad. I have only ever used an SOS pad twice on a skillet, but I've never heard to not do it til now.

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I just got done cooking chicken friend steak, gravy and some biscuits in my cast iron today. I was using this video as the inspiration... problem being that I also tried it on the outdoor gas range... and that just doesn't seem to get cast iron hot enough (maybe 'cause the flame is so far away?). So I transferred it inside where I finished with making the gravy... and got my stove top a big mess again after cleaning it real well yesterday.

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yea dave, really should'nt ever use any soap, once you start to get a good film in it, nothing will really stick to it... also once cleaned, it should also be heated and oil applied to it before storage. just dont oil after cleaning and put up. always heat,oil it..also if you have a pot with a lid, season it also, most people dont. it will make your food taste meatally if it isnt cured, because if it isn't,it will start turning brown, and when heated the pores will open up and release that metally taste into your food.. thats the key to a good cast pot.. the pores have to be opened and oil absorbed into it to seal it, it takes a lot of heat, an oven just doesnt cut it....

Eh. The 'blacker and blacker' you mentioned earlier is a surface coating, no 'opening up the pores' required for such.

We need to get this guy to come cook at our next rally.


:dg


Mike

You better damned well invite me then, Mike

If I had a decent job, I'd be headed to his cooking school soon.

Damn good video, going to try the steak tonight. And find that tater recipe.

What What?!?!?!

Glad you guys are liking that video - I hoped it would spark some interest here.

I gotch'ya back:

http://www.cowboysindians.com/Blog/February-2012/Dont-Think-of-Calling-These-Taters-a-Side-Dish/

Don't Even Think of Calling These Taters a Side Dish



Sparklin' Potatoes

1 lb. bacon​

2 jalepenos, diced​

2 onions, chopped​

1 tablespoon garlic, minced​

8-10 potatoes​

2 cans lemon-lime soda​

Red River Ranch Seasoning / salt and pepper​

Brown bacon with onions, jalepenos and garlic. Drain grease and set aside. Wash and slice potatoes 1/2 inch thick. Place in a Dutch oven or deep casserole dish alternating potatoes and bacon mixture in layers. Finish with potatoes on top. Season each layer to taste. Pour soda over potatoes. Cook with coals or in a conventional oven covered, at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minute or until potatoes are tender.

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5 PM edit - Word of warning - I just cut the recipe in half and everything filled my skillet up fast. Use a big skillet. By cutting it in half I was only barely even able to fir the fourth potato in there, and really used only half a large onion. Further edit - even 26 minutes wasn't enough... I have a feeling the time listed for cooking was for cast iron already at 350 degrees, not cold cast iron... and my CI 'lid' (upside-down CI skillet) was already pre-heated from having cooked the bacon.
​

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I've spent... far too many hours over the last two days researching what else to make in the cast iron I already have.

Something that eluded me yesterday was quality biscuits. Yeah, tons of recipes are all out there for good dutch oven ones, but I don't have a dutch oven, nor a fire pit to get coals from... and buttermilk isn't something I regularly buy... so I'm trying to find a similar recipe for biscuits to make in the CI that used canned milk and the oven. My rendition, yesterday, were edible but comical little ... very dense balls of something someone, at some time (maybe the civil war?) might have called a 'biscuit,' lol, but they certainly weren't flaky. With the gravy that Ken made (and I copied) they were edible.

I cook with good 'Wright' brand thick bacon in my skillets, so I save the bacon grease in a mason jar (strained through a paper towel) each breakfast, and this is the 'cooking' lard I used to both fry my chicken fried steak in, and to make the gravy from.

I've been two places looking for pork fatback to render some more clean lard from, but neither had it. I won't buy the hydrogenated lard sold in plastic tubs at stores, and if I'm going to get more into being creative with the cooking and CI it seems I should have more lard at the ready than the measly amount that saving up bacon grease can get me. We have some grocery stores called 'Penn Dutch' down here that specialize in their meat departments, but it's a ride through hellacious traffic to get there.
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This.

Iron isn't skin, there are no "pores", just the sand pattern from the casting itself if it hasn't been sanded down smoother. The "seasoning" is the filling up of that texture with burnt crud and oil, which provides the non-stick feature we all so desire.

Iron, left unseasoned and exposed to water either from the sink or general humidity, will rust - and that will leave a bad taste in your food. But it won't hurt you, just being iron oxide. And good seasoning won't hurt you either, since you're cooking at temperatures that should kill anything you might be worried about.

And while I agree with ya, what's your take on the method he uses anyway to season - get the pan damned near red hot and coat, then again and coat - is this a faster way, or do you think it would make a harder and more durable seasoning from the polymerized (at higher temps) layers? I know you don't work with polymerization in what you do, but you certainly would seem to have the equipment to test the theory of seasoning that way, vs. the typical oven way.

You just need to burn your oil in, so whatever method gets the iron hot enough for this, should work. I am having trouble with my little 8 inch, because the flame pattern on my gas range is too wide - heats the edges, and the pan heats nicely for cooking, but it's really hard to burn anything in it... which is making it hard to season, as the heat just shoots up the sides. I'm about to take my camp stove, which has a much smaller flame footprint, or take it out to the shop to get the floor of the pan hot enough to take a good seasoning. My 12 inch skillet is bulletproof and smooth, and just doing the normal overheat on the range thing worked fine for it. Stove/oven/fire doesn't make any difference, as long as you can get it all hot enough to burn.

Instead of the camp stove, I'd just do it like most people do it - in the oven (upside down) a few times between applications of lard. I do all my CI that way, but only up to 500 degrees.