Cast iron pans have been around for centuries. Dating as far back as the 5th century B.C. There are even some families that pass the pans down generation to generation. They last forever, when taken care of.
Kyle Fee is a technician at Fanshawe who works at the Chef’s Table at the downtown campus. He was able to out line some of the best and not so best uses for cast iron pans,
“So other pans, when we’re cooking, especially doing ala carte cooking, you want a pan that’s highly reactive and a good conductor of heat. Oftentimes, we’ll go to stainless steel, because they heat up really quick. And they’re very, very fast. Cast iron as awesome as it is, it’s pretty clumsy by design. It’s very thick, not a great transmitter of heat; so it’s not a great conductor. But, retains heat really, really well. So if I want to do a hard sear on something, or if I want to bake something in the oven and get a really nice crust, I’ll go to cast iron every single time”.
Although with a great cast iron pan, there comes a lot of work. You have to build a seasoning. The seasoning on cast iron is a layer of carbonized oil. The carbonized layer of oil is what makes the pan non-stick.
“Go to a flea market and see if you can find a really old one. Because chances are somebody’s already done all the work for you. You can get pre-seasoned pans, from any retailer. The pre-season term is very kind of light. The whole idea behind them is the more you use them, the more the oil polymerizes and creates a very thin film. So the more you use it, the better you maintain it. So once you do a couple of really heavy seasons on it, go scrubbing it with salt and then heating it with a thin film of oil to create that nonstick layer. They’re pretty much bulletproof”.
Fee recommends using an oil with a high smoke point like vegetable or canola oil.
Heather Lorimer is the owner and head cook at the SouthSide Restaurant. She has been using cast iron for a long time.
“It holds heat, it cooks thoroughly and evenly. You can sear on the stove and cook in the oven in the same pot or pan, you’re not going to be doing double dishes. There’s also nothing better than a cast iron taste”.
Both Fee and Lorimer recommend the cast iron pan. It’s a useful tool in the kitchen wether you’re a home cook, or a professional cook.
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