Who here cooks with cast iron? Let's have a cast iron thread

Jesus Grandad who let you on Veeky Forums

I use it for a few specific things. Used to cook a lot of things with it but I eventually saw the light and bought a very nice stainless steel pan.

The kettle in OP is over a century old.

Milllenials don't know how to properly use a cast iron pan to the best of its ability.

Cast iron works great for that, but if I'm doing an enormous batch then I'll use an electric skillet.

Cast iron is also good for phillies.

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cast irons are the best IMO but the maintenance and knowledge to do so are huge. its almost not worth it

almost

Wat? Once seasoned there isn't any maintenance other than rinsing it off and wiping it down. It's the easiest piece of cookery in my kitchen to keep clean and serviceable.

Have you ever owned cast iron? As long as you don't leave it out in the rain or run it through the dishwasher it's extremely low maintenance. I have a dirty pan sitting on the stove right now, I can show you how involved it is to clean it after use. I literally just run hot water over it and use a scraper and a nylon brush to get whatever out, then you just dry it off with a towel and lightly oil it. Hell, you hardly have to oil it.

Actually here's two of them I used to make breakfast earlier. The BSR skillet on the left is full of old bacon grease. I'll clean it as I had said. The right one is a wagner griddle I always use for eggs. I don't even need to clean that one, I just wipe it off after I use it and it's done.

Cast iron is basically the worst fucking cooking meme there is. I fell for it and wasted 4 dollars on a 12 inch lodge that someone else had fallen for and thrown in the trash, where most cast iron belongs. Some hobo had found it in the trash and sold it to me.

I use it to bake in from time to time. Shit comes out alright.

Jesus christ what do you even use that beast for? Wouldn't it straight up break a stove? Are you boiling a whole cow?

You do have to season it again. I read that you should season it once a month.

I picked carbon steel over cast iron but to each their own

ergonomically the short handle on standard cast iron skillets killed me

Do americans really do this?

... toast bread with cheese? Yeah, so does yurop

Yurop hasn't even figured out how to make cheese yet

>I read
You should never believe anything you read, see, or hear. Just wipe it down with some Crisco after you're done boiling/wiping it.

>Lodge
Did you even season it?

Back in my boy scout days, moving from a shitty Wal Mart Teflon pan to cast iron was wonderful. That heavy skillet was actually non-stick, heated evenly, and cleaned easily.

The hobo, I think his name was Dan, said it was already seasoned, plus lodge pans all come pre-seasoned I think.

I have heard on /ck that cast iron is the lowest maintenance pan there is and that it can't be beat for how rough you can treat it.

I figure, if that is true, then this pan is perfect just the way Dan sold it to me.

If its lower maintenance than teflon and carbon steel, then I shouldn't have to season it again... i've never had to season my teflon pans - i just wipe them out with a paper towel when i am done cooking in them. If cast iron is EASIER than that then I am glad I won't have to do anything to this cast iron that Dan sold me, probably ever.

Seasoning works because oils fill up the pores in cast iron and form a blanket of slippery oil when it gets warm, and a congealed layer of protection when it's cold. If it gets soaped at all the oils break down and it must be reseasoned.
Also, don't trust homeless people.

Honestly I have no idea what I am going to use it for. One of my friends told me I should fill it with gold.

The dude who sold it to me gave me a big burner to go with it. He said he bought the burner intending to use it but never did.

Also if you want to know a bit about it, here is the bottom. The two lines are gate marks. They are left by older casting processes. They indicate this was made sometime in the 19th century.

You could brew some potions in it

brew a potion jesus fucking christ

I had no idea people actually used these, looks like a huge fucking hassle

If I had the means to I'd use it outside in a firepit to make chili or something similar

>cauldron
>cast iron
>19th century
somewhere along the line this belonged to a witch
also yes you should fill it with gold-wrapped candy on Halloween and pass it out and tell stories about the cauldron

Would make a boss pot of gumbo.

>If I had the means to I'd use it outside in a firepit to make chili or something similar

I could see that being useful.

>go camping with a few people
>make a fuck huge pot of chili
>cook it over the fire

Sounds comfy af

It's 15 gallons, it'll be a fuckload of chili. This thing can feed an army.

Dude I'm going to try to use it for something like that and have a big party.

I'm going to build a wooden frame outside for it and set up some chains to hang it on. I think I might want a pulley or something because it will be heavy as fuck once it's filled. It's already quite unwieldy.

user, no joke, would you be willing to sell?

I go LARPing and Camping a lot, one character concept I've been toying around with is an inkeeper, I'd not be getting involved in the combat but can still get my Veeky Forums on, one of these would be perfect for cooking big old fuck off stews in for the games.

>It's 15 gallons, it'll be a fuckload of chili. This thing can feed an army.

I mean to be fair, anything you cook in that thing will be a fuckload

again, with a firepit, it'd be great for parties

could use to to do a mean crawfish boil

You can find new ones that are going to be more affordable. I can't even find an example of this online so I'm not quite sure what it is worth. I bought it at a "used" price but it's probably worth 3-4x a new one to the right collector. I've been told the right sugar kettles can be worth a few thousand. I'm going to hold onto it because I've already talked to my family about it and my dad is going to consider recipes.

That thing would be a nightmare to dump crawfish out of

Neat, good luck user.

just make a whole lot of tea at once

Yes, they're great for crafting pies with alchemy in my atelier.

>Also, don't trust homeless people.

Do0d. That's not cool. You've never even met Dan.

That big pot is pretty awesome, maybe you could use it to hard boil a single egg?

I have a cast iron frying pan soaking in the sink right now with dish soap.

>I mean to be fair, anything you cook in that thing will be a fuckload

Actually, it depends on how much ingredient you were to place in the pot.

You see user, the size of the pot is not what dictates the amount of food that is cooked. The pot can only allow for a certain amount of food to be cooked, it does not guarantee that the maximum amount of food will be cooked every time.

I shouldn't have to explain things like this to people...

This is the proper way to clean them. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Nice cauldron.

Cast iron is cool but truth be told it's a partial meme that really is only practical in the hands of an autist or someone that really appreciates the art of cooking. Its functionalities are better replicated by other pan types. I think the only real tangible characteristic is that it's fucking iron and it would take a nuclear war to even put a dent in it

I decided to deseason it,

I cooked some chicken that was marinated in this crazy mango sauce, The sauce burnt in the pan and it's too difficult to clean it out without a good deep clean.

I've seen a few folks bring cast iron skillets camping. 10/10 would get one just for how fuck off sturdy they are

The high heat capacity and thick nature makes it great for putting a hard sear on meat.

I don't use my cast iron for much else. I generally prefer heavy stainless.

It's not so difficult to clean. You can just soak it with water and scrub it out with something. Lodge sells plastic scrapers that work well. You can just scrape it out with a metal spatula. It's cast iron. You're not going to hurt it much.

Good to know for the future, too late now.

please make a thread using the huge pot and making enough chili to last you a week

I wanna see that beast in action

Mine rarely leaves the stove top because I use it that much.

It's a meme for autists who start Jack threads.

For everyone else, it's simply a nearly perfect cooking vessel that's been tried and trued for a couple hundred years.

woah thanks for bringing some sense in this topsy-turvy thread, we almost got lost in here without you

How long has it been soaking? Modern dish soap doesn't have lye in it and it isn't really going to strip it. You can probably just go scrub it out because it has loosened up the food.

over 24 hours

How fat do you think I am? I usually use my stainless and my pressure canner when I wanna make a week's worth of chili.

>be me
>totally inept retard
>move to new house
>want to make eggs
>find a pan
>its cast iron but i didnt know it at the time. it was just the first pan i found
>put it on the stove
>start heating it
>notice like 5 mins in its still barely warm
>10 mins its getting warmer but still not that warm
>wtf is wrong with this shit
>wait another 5 mins and add my egg yolks
>instantly starts burning and smoking like fucking crazy
>the egg literally starts to bond with the iron and i can't even fucking peel it off with a fork and the whole thing is just smoking like crazy
>take it to the sink to run water on it to get it to settle down
>starts smoking 10x more
>cant even see in my fucking kitchen at this point
>run in my backyard and just throw it on the grass until it settles down

That kettle is 15 gallons I can hardly handle 2 gallons of chili.

ok well make something for a lot of people then

that thing deserves some use

Anything sugar based, like a "mango sauce", isn't going to cook well in cast iron. It gets too hot and burns the sugars. It is the one limitation of cast iron that I can think of.

Gets too hot? It doesn't magically get hotter than other pans?

Acidic sauces also pick up off-flavors in cast iron

nice thread you have here cuck
would be a shame if someone started fucking it up wouldn't it?

Cast iron? It's a meme for romantic retards who want to feel nostalgic for old inferior technology. Two words, just two words for you, "friend": Rachel Ray. Hard-anodized cookware for men (you may have a problem here) that want to cook affordably and effectively in the modern era.

>Cast iron: Because no one bakes cornbread in a non-stick aluminum skillet

I used my cast iron tonight to do the bacon & leeks for potato bacon chowda.

I think there's a better chance it was used by a slave than a witch

I bought a double dutch oven from lodge, where the lid from the dutch oven could be used as a skillet too. I got it for camping, since I wanted something that would heat evenly despite the uneven heat of a campfire, but I found myself using it more and more regularly. I have a shitty electric stove that normally heats unevenly, but that gets fixed with cast iron.

BURN THE WITCH!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxbWTJXm4I

I have a nice fire keeping the iron hot should this pig pass anywhere near my place during xmas ... he wont be seen again

Yes it does. Cast iron retains heat longer than other pans so it can build up

>for men
Men have no business on Veeky Forums, the board in which the majority of users are women

even as bait this is moronic

You have no way of knowing that, dumbass.

like cgl this place is infested with gross sluts

That looks awesome.

>majority of users are women
Veeky Forums meet up when?

It's time to become a wizard, user.

Whenever your ready to imagine 3-4-5-6-7second rule to be readily ignored along with dumpster diving pacific northwesterners chiming in with whatever organic stuff they wish to share at whatever potlucl should ever come about

Reminder chinese may use gutter oil but things like that are done for necessity on the other hand white folks are outright filthy and gross by nature

If you cooked a nice big batch of vege soup or something in one of these giant pots, reheated the leftovers
with new ingredients, how long could you keep it going before it went off? A week or so?

This is exactly how they used to use them. They'd go for days at a time, and given the number of people those pots are supposed to provide for, by the time you'd have to be concerned about the food spoiling you'd have replaced all the food you started with anyway.

>meet

There's no maintenance other than not cooking acid in it and not letting it stay wet for extended times. Or are you one of those memers with a bible full of ridiculous cast iron rituals?

>wanting to carry a gigantic iron cauldron out into the middle of nowhere and back

Do you eat children?

Next party you go to make the mother of all chilli pots.

disgusting

catfags need to die

Raised poorly but they'll revive traditionalism nonetheless.

How much did you give for that? It's worth quite a bit, mate. Dumpster Dan probably stole it.

I bought it from an old retired minister on a farm out in rural alabama. I had to drive a few hours to get it. I only gave $90 for it. I bought $300 worth of stuff from him at the time though. He was selling his collection because he was no longer mobile enough to use it.

Love my cast iron..cook asian dishes all day every day in it!

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