Benefits of Cast Iron Cooking
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I love cast iron cooking and recently I have started a youtube channel dedicated to showing how to use cast iron skillets and pans to make delicious meals.
You can see some of the videos at https://www.youtube.com/@lovecastironcooking
I inherited several pieces from each of my grandmothers and also picked up a few at yard sales. I use them almost daily, and love their versatility, even heating, heat retention, and durability. Nothing beats cast iron for making cornbread!
i always cook on cast iron, When one of my sons married i gifted the newlyweds with a Griswold, my daughter in law was pleased, she was a believer in cooking with cast iron.
When I was in high school I would go over to a friends Grandma's house, where we would fish all night for bullhead. then in the morning Nancy's grandma would cook them in a cast iron skillet with bacon grease and eggs ( sounds yucky - but it was delicious ). All this was done on the wood cookstove. She believed that everything was better from the old cookstove and cast iron, than an electric range. What a grand lady. All those meals were priceless and tasted the absolute best.
Anybody out there know how to "season" a cast iron teakettle, in a way that doesn't impart grease into the water? I bought a Wagner Ware kettle in 1987, thinking my mom (born 1922, now deceased) would know, since she grew up using them. She didn't, her mom's kettles had what seemed to be a white mineral deposit. I'm not referring to a cooking pot, but a kettle with a spout, used for heating water. (Wagner seems to have gone out of business decades ago.) Thank you!
I have a growing collection of cast iron cookware and am always on the lookout for more. I found my first dutch oven at a yard sale, and have been buying more as I can. I can get Lodge products at Walmart and Target, or even Cracker Barrel, while Big Lots and Ollie's occasionally have some of the lesser known brands. Even some of the celebrity cookery lines have added a few iron pieces. Some of the dutch ovens are enamel coated, but I prefer the raw iron and wish I could find some of the flat lid ovens. My wife's chili works extremely well in them. But my biggest problem right now is finding the self-basting lids. Most of the stores have switched to glass lids. I do have a marginal level of hemochromatosis, but the VA doctor I see regularly says that dietary iron has a very limited effect on it. He believes it is genetic, so I made sure to have my children get tested for it. By the way, he claims that the most effective treatment he can prescribe is to regularly donate blood.
During both my pregnancies we lived in the country. Our water came from a spring and we cooked with cast iron skillets. My midwife and I concluded that my iron count when I was pregnant was higher than a non-pregnant women because of these two facts in my life. As a side note I never heard of cast iron until I married my husband 33 years ago and now I can bake biscuits and cornbread over a campfire. He is very proud of that fact and when any conversation turns to camping he is very happy to praise me to the person he's talking to.
I have several pieces of cast iron cookware: 3 skillets, 2 Griswold muffin pans, & biscuit & corn stick pans. I love to make bread so my loaf pans are special to me. I cherish all pieces including those I have purchased & heirloom pieces I have inherited.from my Mother & Great Aunt.
There are some things that only cast iron will properly cook. Years ago I invested in a set of stainless cookware at a cost of about $200 a pot. They cannot cook a steak, fry chicken, make venison bourgnione or accomplish any of the specialized tasks that cast iron can. In addition, what other cookware can go from stovetop to oven to broiler or to camp?
Cast iron! From my childhood to now, I use cast iron. My wife and I have around 25 pieces of all shapes and sizes. I cook on nothing but. We are trying to inspire our 6 children to use cast iron also but they just don't get it yet. I love all my pieces..some for cornbread, some for apples, even an old dutch oven and bean pot! Most are made in the USA but one or two are from overseas. Thank you for your article.