Did you know
that the oldest cast iron artifacts date to the early 5th century B.C.? Cast
iron is a classic piece that’s just as home over a campfire as it is in a
five-star kitchen. It comes in a variety
of ways including Panini presses, waffle irons, crepe makers, Dutch ovens,
frying pans, deep fryers, tetsubin kettle, woks, potjies, flattop grills, and griddles.
A cast iron skillet is a staple in any good cook’s home.
Though it takes a bit longer to heat up, cast iron will diffuse and retain heat well. While other pans will lose heat when you place food in them, cast iron skillets will not. Since heat fluctuates less, use a cast iron skillet to cook dishes that need consistent high heat. Seasoned skillets will sear and brown foods without allowing the food to stick to the skillet’s surface. Be sure to wash you pan carefully after each use. Maybe you’ve heard the myths below about cast iron. It’s time that you know the truth:
Myth #1:
"Cast iron is difficult to maintain."
The Theory:
Cast iron is a material that can rust, chip, or crack easily. Buying a cast
iron skillet is like adopting a newborn baby and a puppy at the same time.
You're going to have to pamper it through the early stages of its life, and be
gentle when you store it—that seasoning can chip off!
The Reality:
Cast iron is tough as nails! There's a reason why there are 75-year-old cast
iron pans kicking around at yard sales and antique shops. The stuff is built to
last and it's very difficult to completely ruin it. Most new pans even come
pre-seasoned, which means that the hard part is already done for you, and
you're ready to start cooking right away.
Myth #2:
"Cast iron heats really evenly."
The Theory: Searing
steaks and frying potatoes requires high, even heat. Cast iron is great at
searing steaks so it must be great at heating evenly.
The Reality:
Actually, cast iron is terrible
at heating evenly. The thermal conductivity—the measure of a material's ability
to transfer heat from one part to another—is around a third to a quarter that
of a material like aluminum. What does this mean? Throw a cast iron skillet on
a burner and you end up forming very clear hot spots right on top of where the
flames are, while the rest of the pan remains relatively cool.
The main advantage of cast iron is that it has very high
volumetric heat capacity, which means that once it's hot, it stays hot.
This is vitally important when searing meat. To really heat cast iron evenly,
place it over a burner and let it preheat for at least 10 minutes or so,
rotating it every once in a while. Alternatively, heat it up in a hot oven for
20 to 30 minutes (but remember to use a potholder or dish towel!)
The other advantage is its high emissivity—that is, its
tendency to expel a lot of heat energy from its surface in the form of
radiation. Stainless steel has an emissivity of around .07. Even when it's
extremely hot, you can put your hand close to it and not feel a thing. Only the
food directly in contact with it is heating up in any way.
Cast iron, on the other hand, has a whopping .64 emissivity
rating, which means that when you're cooking in it, you're not just cooking the
surface in contact with the metal, but you're cooking a good deal of food above
it as well. This makes it ideal for things like making hash or pan roasting chicken and vegetables.
Myth #3:
"My well-seasoned cast iron pan is as non-stick as any non-stick skillet
out there."
The Theory:
The better you season your cast iron, the more non-stick it becomes. Perfectly
well-seasoned cast iron should be perfectly non-stick.
The Reality:
Your cast iron pan may be non-stick—non-stick enough that you can make an
omelet in it or fry an egg with no problem. It's not anywhere near as non-stick
as Teflon, a material so non-stick that we had to develop new technologies just
to get it to bond to the bottom of a pan. Can you dump a load of cold eggs into
your cast iron pan, slowly heat it up with no oil, then slide those cooked eggs
right back out without a spot left behind? You can do that in Teflon.
As long as your cast iron pan is well seasoned and you make
sure to pre-heat it well before adding any food, you should have no problems
with sticking.
Myth #4:
"You should never wash your cast iron pan with soap."
The Theory:
Seasoning is a thin layer of oil that coats the inside of your skillet. Soap is
designed to remove oil. So soap will damage your seasoning.
The Reality:
Seasoning is actually not a thin layer of oil. It's a thin layer of polymerized oil, a key distinction.
In a properly seasoned cast iron pan, one that has been rubbed with oil and
heated repeatedly, the oil has already broken down into a plastic-like
substance that has bonded to the surface of the metal. This is what gives
well-seasoned cast iron its non-stick properties, and as the material is no
longer actually oil. The surfactants in dish soap should not affect it. Go
ahead and scrub it with soap.
The one thing you shouldn't
do? Let it soak in the sink. Try to minimize the time it takes from when you
start cleaning to when you dry and re-season your pan. If that means letting it
sit on the stovetop until dinner is done, do that.
Myth #5:
"Don't use metal utensils on your cast iron pan."
The Theory:
The seasoning in cast iron pans is delicate and can easily flake out or chip if
you use metal. Stick to wood or nylon utensils.
The Reality:
The seasoning in cast iron is actually remarkably resilient. It's not just
stuck to the surface like tape. It's chemically bonded to the metal. Scrape
away with a metal spatula. Unless you're actually gouging out the surface of
the metal, you should be able to continue cooking in it with no issue.
So you occasionally see flakes of black stuff chip out of
the pan as you cook in it? In order to get a cast iron pan's seasoning to flake
off, you have to store it in the oven for a month's-worth of heating and drying
cycles without re-seasoning it before you start to see some scaling. More
likely, those flakes of black stuff are probably carbonized bits of food that
were stuck to the surface of the pan because you refused to scrub them out with
soap last time you cooked.
Myth #6:
"Modern cast iron is just as good as old cast iron. It's all the same
material, after all."
The Theory:
Metal is metal, cast iron is cast iron; the new stuff is no different than the
old Wagner and Griswold pans from early 20th century.
The Reality:
The material may be the same, but the production methods have changed. In the
old days, Cast-iron
skillets are made by pouring molten metal into a sand mold, which is broken
apart when the pan cools. This allows the pan to merge into one piece, handle
included. The pebbly surface is polished until
it’s smooth. Vintage cast iron tends to have a satiny smooth finish. By the
1950s, as production scaled up and was streamlined, this final polishing step
was dropped from the process. The result is that the modern cast iron retains
that bumpy, pebbly surface.
The difference is more minor than you may think. So long as
you've seasoned your pan properly both vintage and modern cast iron should take
on a nice non-stick surface, but your modern cast iron will never be quite as non-stick as the
vintage ones.
Myth #7:
"Never cook acidic foods in cast iron."
The Theory:
Acidic food can react with the metal causing it to blend into your food, giving
you an off-flavor and potentially killing you slowly.
The Reality: In
a well-seasoned cast iron pan, the food in the pan should only be coming in
contact with the layer of polymerized oil in the pan, not the metal itself. So
in a perfect world, this should not be a problem. But none of us are perfect
and neither are our pans. No matter how well you season, there's still a good
chance that there are spots of bare metal and these can indeed interact with
acidic ingredients in your food.
For this reason, it's a good idea to avoid long-simmered
acidic things, particularly tomato sauce. On the other hand, a little acid is
not going to hurt it. A short simmer won't harm your food, your pan, or your
health in any way.
“The best way to make a steak is grilled over an open flame or pan sautéed
in a cast iron skillet.” (Roy Yamaguchi) [i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“10 Things to Know About Your New Cast Iron Skillet” by Ayn-Monique
Klahre
·
“5 Benefits of Cast-Iron
Skillets” by Karen Alexander
·
“How to Cook in a Cast Iron Skillet” by wikiHow Staff
·
“The Truth About
Cast Iron Pans: 7 Myths That Need To Go Away” by J. Kenji López-Alt
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