Do you cook with cast iron for taste or health or both? Is your pan a family heirloom or a recent purchase?

Hi Carolyn! I love to cook with cast iron for both health and taste! I have a beautiful Wagner 10" frying pan, a Griswold Hearthstone cast iron pot and I just found an old (but in great shape) cast iron dutch oven (McClary)

I love cooking certain things in cast iron, but my favorite is making cornbread in a 10" skillet. I preheat it, then pour the batter in, then bake. It makes a wonderfully crispy crust.

My skillets are all old family heirlooms (something which I really appreciate after seeing how much the local kitchen store, not the best place anyway to buy kitchen stuff anyway, charges for Lodge skillets!).

I also love making cornbread the same way as healthyeats does. While the oven preheats so does my skillet. Pour the batter in and listen for the sizzle. I have 2 skillets which hold 1 recipe for cornbread each. About 3 years ago the now ex-fiance decided they both needed the benefit of a run in the dishwasher. I could have throttled him when I found out as the patina had been building since 1949 when Mom received these as wedding gifts. Fifty four years of beautiful non-stick patina literally down the drain!

I've managed to build up an almost identical patina on one skillet but the other one is proving a little more persnickety. Maybe by the time I pass these two down to my son they'll have the same patina I inherited.

I have 3 other relatively new CI pieces. Two have a good patina building up almost to the point you wouldn't be able to tell they weren't inherited. One is a heavy duty press and the other is a largish round griddle or ho' pan. I plan on cooking quite a bit of bacon this weekend using both and that should help quite a bit.

The other is my 5 qt dutch oven and I'm having a little problem getting it as smooth and non-stick as I want it to be. Did I memtion I'm ready for it to have a 50 year old patina as in yesterday? I'll be cooking bacon and fatback in it this weekend for my green beans so that should help some.

I love to use my CI for the taste, the way it cooks food and its heat retention.

Neither...
Cast iron is the easiest to keep clean and ready to go after cooking a multitude of foods in many styles; some very hot water, a stiff brush and a little coarse salt for the tough spots is all it takes to be ready for another round. If you haven't tried them yet, try a rattan wok cleaning brush instead of the plastic bristled "cast iron cleaning brushes". The plastic brushes colapse when they are used on a still hot pan and never recover their shape, where the rattan takes the 400 degree surface in stride and lasts for years of daily use.

I grew up using CI, from my mother's 12" and 14" "marriange councilers" (with over 60 years of use), my recovered pans, found rusting in my grandmother's shed and painstakingly stripped, oiled and recured over more than one campfire, and my Boy Scout 14" legged dutch oven,which has seen more fried chicken, french fried potatoes, biscuits and cobblers than I care to remember (this is making me hungry!). My current favorite, a 10" Lodge which only has 4 years of patina, but fits my cooktop element perfectly and holds enough heat to sear a pot roast in minutes.

Anyone care for some breakfast? I'm making scrambled eggs with cheddar and salsa, home fries and pan biscuits...

Live deeply, cook with an abundance of love, eat well and in moderation and take pleasure in all the world's treasures.

Bear