Cast Iron Pans

I’ve taken up ironing!  Not the kind that fights wrinkles but cooking in cast iron.  In another one of my maybe steps to improve our family’s health, I’ve ditched the non-stick pan (which let’s be honest had lost most of its non-stickiness). 

At an auction last month we picked up a 6 inch and a 10 inch pan.  These had both seen better days and were rusty so my husband had to go at them with a wire attachment on his drill and then reseason them.  That could be a post on its own and if I ever get the pictures he took off his phone maybe I’ll do one.  I will share that at one point he thought he’d overcooked the pans as the first layer of oil seemed to be bubbling and flaking.  It turns out there was a second layer of rust that had been seasoned over before and he had to get the wire attachment out again.

When he was sure he’d gotten down to good clean iron, we applied a thin layer of oil, baked it in the gas grilled, let it cool till he could handle it again and repeated the whole procedure two more times.  The final appearance of both pans were a glossy  black.  I was still a little skeptical—would they really be nonstick?

The best test I could come up with was scrambled eggs.  I didn’t put any oil in the pan and I hadn’t cooked sausage or bacon in it before the eggs—this was straight out the the drawer and onto the stovetop.  I did let it heat up for felt like quite a while (after all, you’re not supposed to have an empty non-stick pan over heat for long).  Well, a picture is worth a thousand words—take a look at my results….

And here’s another great thing—I can use this pan in my oven and over our firepit (in fact we originally bid on it for that reason).  I found a great recipe for a deep dish pizza in a cast iron pan that I can’t wait to try.