cast iron can be intimidating if you have never used it before. Once you learn the correct way to cook on and care for your cast iron, you’ll want to cook everything in it!
our favorite cast iron pan is this lodge one. It comes seasoned, so once you get it, you’re ready to cook.
you always want to heat it up with some sort of fat in it, such as oil or butter. If you don’t have it hot enough, food will stick. It can also be good to fry up some ground beef or something with a lot of fat in it before you use it the first time.
there is a lot of controversy about using soap on cast iron. We try not to, but will once in a while. Once all the food is out of the pan, we fill with hot water in the sink and let it soak for a couple of minutes. Then we use our dish brush without soap to get all the food off, and rinse. If you burn something on, you can let it soak for a few minutes and scrape it off or use a wire sponge. Make sure to dry it right away so that it doesn’t rust. Then add some more oil to all the surfaces on the inside of the pan, and rub it around with your fingers. If you’re just frying something up like a sandwich, you can sometimes just wipe the pan out with paper towel instead of washing.
some of our favorite things to make in the cast iron are fried sandwiches on homemade sourdough, any kind of meat, and the best sourdough chocolate chip cookie skillet.
we use it for basically all of our meals, unless we want to fry up one egg or just make a couple scrambled eggs and such. For that, we like our green pans. Green pans are non stick but also non-toxic.
if you fail with your cast iron, keep trying! We had lots of struggles in the beginning also. Almost everything tastes better made in cast iron!