On a whim yesterday, I bought a 10-inch Lodge skillet at Target for FOUR bucks (must’ve been a mistake, since the 8-inch was like $10, and then is $15 online). Now I know all about seasoning it and cleaning an so on (thank you Alton Brown), but I realized I have no idea what to COOK with it. Mind you, I have a tiny apartment kitchen and my cookware consists of two non-stick skillets and some pots. I’ve never used a cast iron skillet before.
My first goal, of course, is to cook a really nice steak.
Well I was going to say steak! I love cooking steaks on cast iron. Sear on each side for about a minute and then cook it on the pan in the oven for another 8 min or so. Comes out perfect.
The first few times you cook in it it’s going to suck. Factory “seasoning” is utter garbage and the traditional methods described by Alton and the like really don’t do the job adequately. The only way to properly season a pan is through lots and lots of greasy cooking. I suggest you cook about a pound of bacon in it before you subject a steak to it, all that fat really needs to settle into the cracks in a way that the typical slow oven method doesn’t allow. Avoid cooking anything remotely dry in it for a while. No potatoes, no eggs, no fish, no chicken. Stick with bacon, steak and well buttered grilled cheeses for the first few weeks.
Get it seasoned. It says it’s seasoned, but it really isn’t.
There is a lot of debate about the best way to season a skillet, here is what has worked well for me after experimenting with a wide variety of seasoning techniques.
Preheat your oven to 450F. Place a rack in the upper position with a second rack right below it. Cover the lower rack in aluminum foil (or a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.)
turn on your stove to high and place the skillet on the stove until it is warm but not hot.
Get some lard or Crisco. Lard is better, but crisco will work. Coat the whole thing in crisco including the handle and the outside and the bottom while it is still warm (this is why you don’t want it hot.) A very thin coating is all you need, in fact I would suggest going back over the skillet with a clean paper towel after to make sure you get up the excess.
***4.Open all your windows and turn on all your fans.
Place the greased skillet upside town on the top rack. It will smoke. A lot. Don’t worry. Keep it in there until it stops smoking. **Do not **open the oven at any point after you have placed it in. When the smoking stops (usually about 2 hours) turn the oven off, leave it closed and walk away for at least 12 hours.
Now that is finished. You are going to want to cook. First make cornbread. Make 3 or 4 loaves. Use it only for cornbread. Find a good southern recipe that has a lot of oil in it.
After a few loves of cornbread start making pancakes in it. Use a generous amount of oil and butter, things will be a touch sticky. That’s ok, keep at it. If you like French or Cajun food this is a good time to make up a mess of Roux to use later also.
After every use rub it down with vegitable oil, lard or crisco and stick it in a **300 **degree oven for an hour or so. Turn off the oven and let it cool on its own like you did with the higher heat.
After about a dozen uses cooking the above you can start to cook things like bacon and steak and stop with the oven heating. Keep at it and eventually you will be able to cook all sorts of other stuff and use less and less oil every time. I hardly have to put any oil on mine anymore unless I am cooking something super sticky.
I know this sounds finicky, but it *does *work and works better and faster than the other methods I have tried.
First prep it correctly. They should have provided instructions. You want to wash it and use some light vegetable oil to clean out any machining oil residue left from manufacturing. Then oil the pan well and put it in a 300F oven for an hour or so. Cast iron is somewhat porous. This helps seal the surface. Wipe it clean, but when you wash after using, don’t scrub it down to bare metal again.
On the stovetop: Hash browns, meat, just about anything you can cook in any other frying pan. It may be too dark for good pancakes, the surface may be too rough to keep an omelette from sticking, but otherwise, just use it.
In the oven: Cornbread, deep dish pizza, anything you would cook in an open casserole. Or closed if you got the lid to match.
If you are Granny, and Jethro does something stupid, hit him on the head with it. Not too hard, you might dent the pan.
Start off with fatty stuff like bacon, steak, hamburger and the like to start, the Lodge preseasoning is merely a starting point, just keep cooking meats and veggies (with a little oil) to build up the seasoning layer
Do not cook acidic foods like tomatoes on it for a while, the acids in tomatoes can damage the seasoning layer
I would avoid cured bacon until the seasoning is already started. It got all sorts of sugars in it that make it very sticky and a pain to clean after. I know I am the only one saying it, so I am going to say it again. Cornbread, pancakes, Roux, and grease it down when you are done. Nothing else until you have used it at least 20 times. Everything else will cause a mess while you are building your seasoning.
I am also a fan of using metal instruments on my cast iron, and not being gentle with them. You want seasoning that is strong enough to stand up to that sort of thing. It might slow you down a bit at first, but ultimately you get a better seasoned pan.
I’ve never used a cast-iron skillet before, and I’m intrigued by this whole “seasoning” business. Is it something you can observe by looking at a pan, or is the degree of seasoning only apparent in the cooked results?
Would an inexperienced cook (i.e., me) be able to tell when a pan is seasoned? What change in the cooked product would I be looking for?
If it’s jet black and shiny it’s seasoned. If it’s dull grey and rough it’s not. The better the seasoning the blacker and smoother the surface gets.
ETA: The change in the cooked product would be that food cooked in a seasoned pan actually comes out of it. Food cooked in a unseasoned pan becomes one with the pan into perpetuity.
This is the seasoning technique I used. It worked beautifully and the pan is as nonstick as Teflon now. We cook everything in it - sauteed vegetables, meats, even eggs. (I wouldn’t recommend eggs until you have a truly well-seasoned pan, though.)
And right now my problem with the whole “season it upside down with a pan underneath it” is my oven only has one rack. It’s a very small oven. So I’ll have to figure something out.
Here’s the new, Straight-Dope, scientific method for cast iron seasoning. Forget everything else posted here, and all other lore you find on the internet and from your friend’s neighbor’s mother:
A well-seasoned cast-iron skillet will have a smooth, non-stick texture.
While there’s fancy ways to season your skillet, the best way is to simply use it. If something sticks to it, use more oil/grease/fat next time.
Note that cast iron is nigh indestructible. There’s “rules” for keeping the seasoning, but you don’t really have to follow them. I have the skillet my grandmother used for decades. She scrubbed it clean with soap and water after each use. Despite that abuse, the decades of use have given it a fine surface.
