Cast Iron Cookboy

My favorite pan is my cast iron skillet. 

But it wasn't always that way. After graduating college, I was watching a lot of Food Network and I picked up that the best alternative to grilling in an apartment is cast-iron grill pan. I also picked up that you wanted it "ripping hot." What I didn't pick up is how to season a pan, how to clean it, or crucially that you need some fat/oil/butter, that a pan can be too hot, and that you should't make your burgers monstrously thick and expect them to cook through just because the pan is hot. 

The first time I used it was NFL opening day in 2006. Here's what I wrote about that experience: 

I was trying out, for the first time, grilling a raw burger on my cast-iron grill pan. And I had the Chiefs game on Tivo. Well, my cast-iron pan burned the outside of the meat, and left the inside raw. Our apartment filled with smoke, and it was about the worst burger I've ever tried to eat. When the apartment got smoky, I paused the game. Then later, on fast forward I see that Trent Green just got knocked out. It was not a good day. And I haven't used the grill pan since. 

By summer 2010, that experience had scared me off of cast-iron. As I wrote back then, I thought that cast-iron was too much work. 

But in November 2010, I bought a cast-iron skillet specifically for this single recipe: Rosemary Rolls.* I got a Lodge 12-inch skillet on Amazon for 18.97. So I bought the pan for the rolls, made them once and then kinda forgot about it. The pan was heavy and I didn't understand the benefits. 

Then in fall of 2017, I had been seeing and hearing great things about Kenji's Cast Iron Pizza. It's called foolproof, so I figured I could handle it. It was great. And in the process, I realized how nice it is to be able to go from stovetop to oven and back to stovetop if necessary. Since I had been watching Babish make burgers in his cast-iron, I figured I could do that too. And since my grandpa used his cast-iron for the Aunt Gerties (the thin pancakes) I thought I should try it that way too. 

And just by cooking a few things I discovered the real benefit of cast-iron: food just tastes better.

So those experiences led me to the castiron subreddit, where I finally learned about how to season it properly. And then you see examples of other good food other people are making and you want to cook more stuff. So you cook more stuff and it tastes good and you want to cook more. 

Then I'm on the subreddit and seeing people post these vintage Griswold or Wagner pans they're finding at thrift shops and talking about how smooth and black their pans are. So then I'm browsing eBay for vintage cast-iron. Brit sees what I'm doing and says to me, "You know who has an old cast-iron pan? Us!"

And you know what, she was right. I should use the skillet that I have more often. So I did. 

And the more I used it, the more I loved it. And I stopped worrying about how smooth or black it is, because every time it cooks perfect food. 

And now I have a greater appreciation for the tangible benefits: 

• it puts a great crust on meat
• it's super easy to cook thicker pieces through in the oven 
• it's easy to control
• pretty easy to brown deeply without burning
• food just tastes better

So then when I see a viral tweet like this:

It's funny. I understand because I thought this way for most of my life. And yet now I just feel bad for the guy. 

Yeah, it's heavy. But it's surprisingly easy to clean. And this $20 pan is going to last my whole life, while "non-stick" pans wear out after a couple years. 

*Ironically, the rosemary rolls recipe would become a holiday staple forever, and yet we make batches of 36 on two sheet pans at Thanksgiving so I don't even use the cast-iron pan for these.