cast iron - Common Sense Homesteading

How To Restore Cast Iron Cookware

July 21, 2014 by Guest 47 Comments

I cringe a little every time I see rust this bad on a cast iron pan. Yeah, it's kind of nasty looking but that's not what bothers me. When I was first married I had a cast iron pan and my husband, after cooking breakfast for me, left the pan soaking in the sink. Yes, you read that right, he left it soaking. As a young girl who thought men should just “know better” you can imagine the argument that followed. What was worse is that I had no idea how to fix the pan – there was no internet to speak of at the time, and I wound up throwing it away. So those rusty pots and pans remind me of a time when I made a few more mistakes than I do now. Now, that I know better, when I see those neglected pots or pans I have an overwhelming desire to take all of them and show them love and affection and help them “look and cook” like they they were intended to. A little like marriage, it takes a little time and a bit of work to restore cast iron cookware, but it is really worth the time and effort! [Read more…]

How To Season Cast Iron Cookware

June 23, 2014 by Guest 27 Comments

Cast iron is my favorite cookware; I talk all about the reasons why here. Cast iron needs a little more care than most cookware, but the trade off is that it will last forever (well, at least your lifetime and probably your child's lifetime). There is a lot of cast iron of varying quality on the market today. Some of it comes pre-seasoned and some of it ships unseasoned. Believe it or not there are times when you will want to strip the pre-seasoning off a new piece of cast iron, but I'll get to that in a moment. If you purchase new cast iron and it arrives unseasoned can you start cooking with it? You could, but you would probably have a hard time with food sticking to your cookware. The seasoning is the black covering (or patina) that makes cast iron non-stick.

I'm going to show you how to season your cast iron cookware so that it will have a non-stick surface. The more you cook with cast iron the more non-stick it becomes. It's a process. You would also use this method if you found some old cast iron at a yard sale and it needed to be stripped and re-seasoned. I'm not going to get into the stripping in this post, but I will in a later post. For now let's just say you have “naked” cast iron and you want to season your piece. [Read more…]

Cooking With Cast Iron—How And Why To Get Started

May 4, 2014 by Guest 43 Comments

This is a guest post by Jennifer Osuch.

Cooking with cast iron was one of the first back to basics moves I made; I wish I could say it was intentional, but the truth is I fell into it out of circumstance. When my sons were younger my husband and I led their Cub Scout pack, and over the years of endless campouts I learned to cook in Dutch ovens over campfires because I wanted my boys to have healthier food than traditional pre-packaged “camp food”. I’m a seasoned (pun intended…) cast iron user and I’ve been battling it, loving it, and learning from this traditional cookware for years. Yes, I say “battling” it because I didn’t know how to take care of it in the beginning. It’s not hard to take care of or hard to use; it’s just a little different. Luckily, the years of battling are over and now I’m just loving it. Let me share with you what I’ve learned. [Read more…]