Caring for a Cast Iron Pan

A cast iron pan used to be the basic cooking tool of our grandmother's kitchens. Even in my mother's kitchen, cast iron pans were some of the most-used. I grew up using them and didn't think twice about the care they required - I was just thrilled that they didn't show up in the dirty dishes pile to be washed.

After a long absence, cast iron has finally made a return to my own kitchen. The care and feeding of a cast iron pan is slightly more complicated than the care of a modern non-stick pan. The payoff for your extra sixty seconds of attention comes when you don't have to spend money on a new set of pans every three years, and you never involuntarily become a guinea pig for the great experiment of seeing how a lifetime of ingestion of Teflon flakes affects human biology. Your food will increase in iron content, as well.

Successful use of a cast iron pan requires a different attitude in the kitchen. First of all is the intimidating concept of "seasoning the pan". Stop right there, it's not a as bad as you think. In fact, don't think of seasoning as an event - it's a process. It's ok not to achieve perfection in the first week. Your pan will improve as time goes by. If you have been using Teflon for a long time, you will need to reset your expectations - some foods will have some sticking, some of the time. With a little experience you'll realize that there are so many good things about cast iron that it's easy to overlook a little sticking now and then.

It was this relaxed attitude about seasoning that recently got me through a possible cast-iron disaster. I was in the back of the house when my spouse came up with a funny look on his face and said, "Uh, Honey, I think I ruined your cast iron pan". This sentence made me pause. What on earth could one do to really ruin a cast iron pan, short of detonating a bomb in it? Since I hadn't heard a blast coming from the direction of the kitchen, I remained calm. Sure enough, the problem was minor. One of the most common cast iron calamities had happened: the food stuck to the pan. The pan in question is a "reclaimed" pan, found in a thrift store and stripped with harsh detergents to the point that it had to be completely reseasoned. An hour or two in the oven, coated with oil, kicks off the reseasoning process.

After that comes the part that some see as the dreaded "high maintenance" portion of cast iron care. To the contrary, I have found it to be neither difficult nor time consuming. After cooking food in the pan, it's a simple thing to either wipe the pan out and recoat with oil, or if something did stick, add a bit of water to the pan over heat. Once the stuck food is softened, dislodge with a gentle scrub - no soap! Dry the pan, place back on the heat for a moment to evaporate any water, and recoat with oil. Keeping the pan right on top of the range will encourage you to both use and care for it so that both processes will become second nature very quickly.

That's really all there is to it, and if you are dissatisfied with the pan's performance you can take it up a notch - give the pan some more opportunities to build up its non-stick coating. Splurge and deep-fry some fresh Yukon Gold potatoes cut into fries in your pan. Your pan will love it. Your kids will look at you like you suddenly developed superpowers, and suspect you stopped into a fast food place on the way home. When you bake, take the opportunity to coat the pan with oil and put it into the oven.

If you still have sticking problems, consider whether you are using enough oil when you cook. It is necessary to use oil, and most of us are used to the miniscule amount required in a Teflon pan. That's not enough for your cast iron, unless it's been properly cared for long enough to reach the pinnacle of seasoning. There are going to be some foods that stick a little, especially if you forget the oil or forget to wipe out food residue before the next item goes into the pan. Some foods, like starchy foods, tend to stick more than others and are likely to stick a bit till the pan reaches super-seasoned status.

Of course, the ultimate test for a cast iron pan is the fried egg. Don't expect eggs to slide around your pan in the early stages of use. Fried eggs are the master's thesis of cast iron cooking, and can't be expected to succeed right away. I have a few months in on my reclaimed pan, and I'm getting to the point I can cook scrambled eggs in it with minimum sticking.

The small changes you must make to cook in cast iron have great benefits. Even when your pan is still a little sticky, you'll notice that food cooked in it tastes better. There really is nothing like a serving of leftover spaghetti reheated in a cast iron pan, or a batch of homemade hash browns cooked crisp with onions and rosemary. Bread baked in your cast iron pan develops a delicious crispy crust. Even if you prove to be a less than attentive owner and sometimes abuse the pan or hurl curse words at it, all will be forgotten as soon as you sit down to your delectable cast iron cooked dish.