How To Care For Cast Iron Cookware | Skill of the Month Club

We love cooking with cast iron on our off the grid homestead. But it isn't just for cooking on fire or other outdoor applications. Here we give you a tour of our three most-used cast iron pieces and show how we take care of them.

A couple of notes on cast iron:

--Cast iron is not great for boiling water or cooking acidic foods like fruit sauce or tomato sauce, as both those things can remove the seasoning and lead to rust.

--There does seem to be a small amount of iron that gets off the iron pan and into your food. Everyone says this amount is very small. Also is is variable according to the heat and length of time the food is cooked, how much water is used, how acidic the food is. For most of us this is a good thing, as a bit of iron in the body is useful and even needed to prevent anemia. However, there are some individuals who have too much iron in the body already, and in that case, cooking with cast iron may not be the best plan.

--If you are thinking you'd like to buy cast iron, I think it's a little better to look for the old stuff, either Wagner or Griswold items that were made in the early 20th century. In our experience the newer stuff, manufactured by Lodge, is a little harder to get seasoned. But maybe that's just because cast iron gets better as it gets older (if cared for properly) so getting old cast iron is like getting a head start in a race.

--if you find old cast iron that is rusted but not cracked, you can't cook in it right away, but you can probably strip it and re-season it. We didn't have an example of that today, but you can find a tutorial if you just look around a bit.

Enjoy!

You can hop over to the Skill of the Month Club FB group to share your thoughts or brag your homework.   / 363729293988483  

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About the skill of the month club:

Part community, part skill-share, we're just a group of people hanging out together and trying to encourage awesomeness in every category having to do with simple living, intentional living and homestead life. Esther will do the lessons in the first month, but as we go on to different skills we'll be hearing from all sorts of experts!

Esther Emery is "the Homestead Wife" and a daughter of Carla Emery, author of The Encyclopedia of Country Living.

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Esther's book: What Falls From the Sky: How I Disconnected From the Internet and Reconnected With the God Who Made the Clouds -- http://www.estheremery.com/books/ and everywhere books are sold.

Esther's mom's book: The Encyclopedia of Country Living http://amzn.to/2fMuOQM

Enjoy!