20 Cast Iron Tricks Farm Kitchens Used That Nobody Teaches Anymore

Somebody handed you a cast iron pan and a list of rules to go with it. No soap. Never scrub it. Oil it every single time. Most of those rules came out of a kitchen that no longer exists, and one or two of them will quietly ruin the pan you are trying to look after. These are twenty things the women who cooked on these pans every day of their lives knew about them. The one thing that truly cracks a pan, and why it happens at the sink. Why soap stopped being the enemy about a hundred years ago. Why a pan has to be heated slowly, and what a fast flame is really doing to your supper. The mistake that leaves a sticky brown gum instead of a hard black finish. What the pan quietly puts into your food, which has been measured since nineteen eighty six. And why your grandmother's pan felt like glass under your hand, and the new one does not. Nothing here needs a special cleaner, a scrubber sold for the job, or a bottle of anything. WHAT I MENTION → Lodge says soap is not necessary, but a mild dish soap is fine, and that any utensil is welcome on cast iron, metal included. → Lodge also says rust does not ruin a pan, and that small amounts of acidic food are fine while long cooking breaks the seasoning down. → Iron carries heat about a quarter as well as aluminum does, which is why a fast preheat leaves a hot ring in the middle and cold edges. → A study published in nineteen eighty six tested twenty foods cooked in cast iron and found most of them gained iron, with the acidic ones gaining the most. → Before the middle of the last century, the cooking surface of these pans was ground and polished smooth by hand. That step was dropped when demand rose, which is why old pans feel smoother than new ones. → Flaxseed oil makes a seasoning layer so hard that it cracks and flakes. SOURCES → Lodge Cast Iron, on cast iron myths, and their guide to restoring a rusty pan → America's Test Kitchen, on cleaning and seasoning cast iron → Journal of the American Dietetic Association, nineteen eighty six, on the iron content of food cooked in cast iron → The Cast Iron Collector, on how foundries finished cookware before and after the nineteen fifties Tell me in the comments whose pan you have. Your mother's, your grandmother's, or one you bought yourself and are still learning. And if there is a name on the bottom of it, tell me what it says. Tell me in the comments whose pan you have. Your mother's, your grandmother's, or one you bought yourself and are still learning. And if there is a name on the bottom of it, tell me what it says. And tell me what part of the country you are writing from. I read every one. Nothing here is lost. Just untaught. #castiron #farmhouse #oldways #kitchentips #castironcooking