Category: cooking

February 18, 2025 – Fork and Film? Gumbo

February 18, 2025 /

When I heard about this idea, I figured it was some kind of Tik-Tok fad or something. It did come from a person that is highly influenced by such things. But, when I did research on the subject, I found out that it is really haute cuisine that is served at the point the subject is mentioned in the movie. I looked up local events and the cost starts at $169 per person. What?

Here is the idea. A meal is prepared to mirror what is happening in the movie. At the right moment, a dish is served as it appears in the scene. For our ‘event’, I made gumbo for the movie ‘Princess and the Frog’. We also had hushpuppies and beignets. The truth is I was busy eating and didn’t pay much attention to the movie so I don’t know if we got the timing right or not.

Making gumbo is not hard but has a lot of preparation steps. The prep took much longer than the actual cooking. There are also a fair number of ingredients so be prepared to make a grocery list before the cutting. Aside from buying the missing ingredients, I had chicken thighs and okra to defrost and stock to make the night before.

Is gumbo Cajun or Creole? Yes, I would bet on Creole but it doesn’t really matter. For that reason there are lots of different variations of recipes. My advice is that unless you are one of them, don’t worry about it and put in the ingredients you like. Heck, try some stuff that you wouldn’t normally as well. Just don’t worry if you cannot find file powder (it is on Amazon). Just focus on the larger quantity ingredients.

I was instructed were to use a dark roux. This is flour and fat. It is heated until the flour browns and is used to thicken the soup. The recipe that I based this on called for 1/4 cup of each and I did not see it do any thickening. I am sure that it added an undertone to the dish but it added a lot of time because I did not feel comfortable chopping vegetables and not paying attention. Either make a lot more to actually get the thickening or forget it altogether.

In with the meat, chicken and andouille sausage. The purpose is to render some of the fat out. Just like French cooking uses mirepoix Louisiana cooking uses the trinity. This is equal parts onion, celery and green pepper. The meat came out and the trinity went in. After that was slightly sautéed. put the meat back in with broth and the roux. Throw in the rest of your vegetables and cook fifteen minutes or so an you are done. I added a pound of shrimp with five minutes remaining so as not to overcook.

Serve the soup with white rice and you are done. As near as I can tell, Gumbo and Jambalaya only really differ on consistency. Gumbo is more soup like but the ingredients are basically the same. Pro tip: as I ate the leftovers, it was much better the second day and it was delicious when I made it. For a bang up meal, I would make it the day before minus the shrimp.

End Your Programming Routine: I briefly got the run down on the concept about a week earlier. For most of the week, I thought that we were cooking along with the film. That was the reason I started obsessing about the recipe. It would be fun to cook along with the film but this is a much better dining experience. This was a Disney movie but file this away for Valentines Day next year. Rabbit soup anyone?

February 11, 2025 – Rotate, Rotate, Rotate

February 11, 2025 /

I do this so you do not have to. But, feel free to do your own experimentation. I recently remembered that I had some snacks squirreled away in a bag that I used to keep in the car when I commuted to work. I didn’t think that they were that old, but I guess that they were. See picture below.

At one point, I would travel from work to an event. Sometimes things like track meets would not end until 7pm making snacks an essential comfort item. As a result, I would keep things with me that wouldn’t melt and have a shelf life. I certainly forgot about these otherwise I would have eaten them over the summer when I was at the hospital.

You might be wondering what six years expired almonds taste like? I will tell you that they were stale and not great. The granola bars had a hint staleness but tolerable. The jerky, only three years expired tasted fine. They were dry like the desert and hard but no off flavors. The truth is, I don’t like my jerky sticky and moist like most of it anyway so I actually preferred it this way.

I started carrying snacks when I got really into my preparedness phase. The thought was what if I got stuck somewhere like car problems or natural disaster blocking my way home. Not being hangry would buy some time and help with making clear decisions. Fortunately, I never got stuck anywhere or had to walk home but certainly there were some late night trips from the airport where I would break into the snack stash.

Since I have built my office and finished my stereo table, the bag containing the snacks has lived behind the couch in my office. No wonder I forgot about it. One of these days, I am going to open a 30 year old MRE that I just forgot about. The point here is that stashing food is a good way to forget about it. When you forget about it is a good way to have expired food.

Technically, I have a whole tote of expired freeze dried food. I was surprised to see that the expiration date being only three years in the future. Maybe they also go stale in that particular packaging? I am willing to risk those but I am also eyeing them for my hiking trip as well. I have eaten some of those here and there with seemingly no degradation. If food is not exposed to water, light or air, it is unlikely that it is going to go bad.

There is a reason that the preparedness mantra is store what you eat and eat what you store. That is because if you eat it, then you will likely rotate it. I recently used some coconut water that had a similar best by date. I had bought a case of it when my wife was into making a Caribbean style rice with it. After the novelty wore off, it sat there for years. It tasted fine to me suggesting that best buy dates have more impact on certain ingredients than others.

I know that I cannot convince everyone. If my wife knew that that coconut water was expired, she would have thrown it away. I would advocate for cautiously smelling and tasting it and assuming all was well use it as soon as possible. It is usually those situations that I make a mental note to never buy in quantity again because it is not likely that we will use fast enough. I am known around the house for trying to ‘use things up’ menu planning.

The same day that I stubbed out this post, I heard on a podcast that inventorying your pantry was a suggested idea if you were snowed in. Whether it was force by circumstance or not, it would be a good idea to periodically see what is going on. The larger your supplies the more likely you are going to run into this problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Stale is one thing, spoiled is another. While stale food may be less desirable, it is not going to harm you. I ate all of those almonds throughout the course of a week because I hate to see waste. I am pretty sure that when you are stuck in a snowbank, some stale almonds are going to taste pretty good compared to a grumbling stomach. It would be even better if they were not stale.

February 5, 2025 – Are You Ready… To Rumble?

February 5, 2025 /

Super Bowl is this weekend. Are you ready? Below were some wings I made for division championship weekend and I was so happy despite the fact that it is hard to enjoy with a Taiwanese exchange student and two boys that couldn’t give a rip about sports. In fact, when I was asking the exchange student about football he went on and on how he watched it with his last host family watching the Sponge Bob simulcast. I was silently praying that he wouldn’t ask it today as I wanted to watch the games.

The last time I did wings, I made them in the oven. I tried something that I had never done before and that was coat them in baking soda. They were fabulously terrible. I am sure I didn’t do a good job rinsing off the baking soda and it was just a bad aftertaste. In addition, I didn’t think it really lent anything to the crispiness of the wing either. I would say that it definitely turned me off to making wings for at least a year.

I’ll be honest, I don’t love wings. Making them at home never seems as good. But even eating out, I don’t pan longingly for them. I would much rather have fried chicken and proper dinner sides. But, I thought that I would pull out the stops for the exchange student since Super Bowl is my son’s birthday this year. On the menu is hot pot :(.

This time, I thought that I would actually break out the deep fryer. We bought this thing when we move to South Carolina thinking it was was going to endear us with the natives. What we quickly found out was that it takes a lot of oil and cleaning is a pain, read messy and expensive. When I broke it out to make wings it was probably the first time in 15 years. In fact it was so long ago, I cant even ever remember using it in this house and that has been over twenty years.

This time I really focused on the details. I defrosted the wings to room temperature. I aggressively seasoned them, dried the moisture and I lightly rolled them in flower. Holding my breath, 10 minutes later they looked like the picture. That was the look but how did they taste? They were perfect.

My wife and I have a debate about wings, dry or wet? I like my dry, meaning not overly sauced. The light flour dusting soaked up the sauce but the frying meant that they were impervious enough to not get soggy. This is exactly how I like my wings.

This is what I learned. Baking wings is fine but will never get the right texture. For that, they must be fried. As a result, this process is a lot of work and not cheap. Honestly, if you have a wing place that you like then you would be time and money ahead to buy wings rather than make them. The only real justification that I could see to make your own is if you have some sort of dietary restriction. A distant second to that would be a particular sauce combination that is not commercially available.

While I believe that my wings were superior to any that I could buy, they were not four to five times better based on my effort/cost versus ordering. Also, as suspicious as I am of the food industry I don’t think what I made were any healthier than commercially available options. To each his own. If you want to have the best wings at the Super Bowl party, fry them.

Since the fryer was already going, I went ahead and threw some french fries in as well. I didn’t realize that it only took two minutes rather that the twenty in the oven. Once again, they were the consistency that you would expect from a drive through, not at home. I decided that the fryer still has a limited role in the kitchen and now dreaming of some fish tacos.

End Your Programming Routine: What drove me today was getting ready for Super Bowl. Look at your recipes so you can shop tomorrow, not Sunday. Some things need time to defrost or marinade and it is a bad time to find out two hours before it needs to be on the table. Mise en place is not just for the kitchen but also getting ready for the event. As much as I dislike the home kitchen fryer, sometimes there is no substitute for doing it right.

January 29, 2025 – Grinders: The Real Truth

January 29, 2025 /

Coffee has been big in the Pacific Northwest for over forty years now. I remember when the first coffee shop opened in my small town in 1992. There was one in the town over that was a product of the hippies and enlightenment of the 1970s but it was shortly before the explosion of drive through joints and ten years before Starbucks came south.

We used to think that we were sophisticated when we would buy whole beans and grind them ourselves at the store’s communal grinder. Occasionally, someone would give you a bag of whole beans, now what? Conventional advice was get yourself a small grinder often used for spices. They were a two bladed operation and were inexpensive at about $15.

No, no, no my friends. It is true that a small grinder will turn beans into powder. But that is wrong for most brews. I should say, I am not a purest nor a snob. I am giving this advice for user satisfaction purposes, not religion. That coffee powder tends to pack dense in the grinder and fall out at the most inappropriate times when you are trying to sweep it into the basket. Instead spraying all over the counter and floor.

The coffee is often serviceable with lots of fines in the pot if using the mesh filter. They will also plug the mesh filter over time because the grind is so fine. We stopped using the small grinder because of the hassle. Instead we tried the ‘Grind and Brew’ type models with similar complaints because it is the exact same technology, just built into the machine.

I have been using the Baratza Encore for three years now. It is not cheap at $200 but it is cheap compared to most in the category. Something like this is what you need for coffee beans. I have no complaints about it from a coffee standpoint. I will admit that it was not properly assembled for the first year and I kept wondering why it was so bad with all of the good reviews. Shame on me, I didn’t have the bowl seated properly and it was actually wide open no matter how much adjustment I gave it.

This is what I have observed. I see very little difference between the highest and lowest grind settings in terms of coarseness. I have also seen different roasts gets different results. I suspect that the beans shatter as they are going through the mill and the more brittle, the more fine they become. As I said above, I am not a purest. The results are fine for me

Maybe a small grinder is really best as a spice grinder? Nope. If you have a volume of spices that you want to make powder, it works OK. Much of the powder gets stuck to the walls and top making it difficult to handle small quantities (less than a tablespoon). That all has to be removed for cleaning unless you like turmeric with your cinnamon and electric motors do not like submersion in water.

Truthfully, I have done very little spice grinding over the years because of what I have reported. But, after inheriting a mortar and pestle, I choose that method over the spice grinder. Rarely do I need spice powder. Mostly what I want are cracked, reduced and mixed spices. Powder can certainly be made with some effort but it is a whole lot easier to clean.

End Your Programming Routine: Is there a role for the small grinder? My answer is yes in something like a vacation rental where flexibility is more important than performance. But then again, who cleans and maintains that thing? Maybe just have the guest buy pre-ground coffee and spices. It is an inexpensive stepping stone to a proper coffee grinder and mortar and pestle. If I didn’t have one, I wouldn’t buy one but I will keep it because it takes a small footprint and has a niche place.

November 20, 2024 – Maybe I Was Wrong?

November 20, 2024 /

I am a big boy. When I did my review of my Greek Table, I admitted that I had only read half of it. It was the salads, sauces, breads and appetizers section of the book. I was not really inspired and didn’t want to invest more. But, with our meeting coming up tomorrow, I had to make an effort to try something.

This last weekend, it was nasty. My wife had been gone all weekend and I wanted to do have a nice dinner prepared for Sunday night. I picked out a few recipes to prepare a Greek dinner. While it was raining buckets, it seemed like a stew night to me. The picture below is the beginnings of Greek Beef Stew.

What you see is fennel and red onion being sauteed together. Beside the beef it had red wine, cinnamon, thyme, rosemary, carrots, allspice, molasses, honey, tomato paste and prunes. What else have you got? I have to say that it wasn’t my favorite but it was definitely hearty and unique.

I made the stew to go with what I really wanted to make. That was a squash pie in-between some phyllo. We have had several packages of that hanging out since the failed phyllo pizza experiment. This recipe had a phyllo sandwiched with walnuts. The filling was made with butternut squash, raisins, ricotta cheese, cinnamon, clove and onion. There was phyllo placed on top and baked. It kind of came out as like a mild pumpkin pie.

Finally, I made a spinach salad for the second time. It has feta, Olives, spinach, red onion, oranges dressed with Olive oil and lemon juice. Clearly I liked it if I have made it twice now. We had to toast with some Ouzo I bought for some future recipes and a Pinot Noir that paired beautifully.

All of the recipes call for things like Greek olive Oil, Greek Wine and Greek molasses. Where I am at, I would be lucky to have a few choices but Greek is certainly not likely. So, I made do with what I could find. It is hard for me to imagine a better pairing of Oregon Pinot with these exotic recipes.

This meal was some work. Besides having to go to the store for ingredients that I don’t normally keep around like fennel I started at one and most of the cooking was done by four. I wasn’t completely done until six which included doing most of the dishes and setting the table. So, it wasn’t a meal for a weeknight.

So, I probably judged the book and a cuisine prematurely. I really didn’t get into the heart of Greek food even with my experimentation. The seafood and the small plates. I sure went through a lot of olive oil on this dinner, about a quart. My next attempt will probably include spanakopita and some sort of fish. I have got to find something to put Ouzo in.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess the lesson here is that you can’t judge a book by the cover. I didn’t think that I was going to like it, but because I was forced by necessity to try, I found the silver lining. That is an experience that can span a lot of different genres and activities. Ultimately, I don’t think that I am ever going to crave Greek food, but I can probably find something intriguing to try.

October 24, 2024 – Another Grape Juice Method

October 24, 2024 /

This is another thing that I have been procrastinating this year. I cannot believe the yield of grapes this year. Now, I am almost at the end of the season. I should have done something with the grapes a month ago. The same malaise that is effecting my writing is also afflicting my chores around the house.

It gets to be after dinner time and I have lost motivation to do anything. Part of it is I know that I should be training but it is dark or cold or raining and so I sit on the bed and scroll through the news while my wife watches TV. It is ‘just a break’ that turns into ‘too late to start anything’. I know some of it is seasonal, I also take it as a sign that I need some rest. But really, I can’t afford to check out after dinner.

This is the forth different iteration of juicing hat I have tried. Year one I used inexpensive crank juicer. It worked well but it plugged up the screen something fierce. I would take hours of trying to get all of the fibers out the screen. The next year I tried the cider press. That worked pretty well but it required hours of machinery cleanup. The third year, I tried steaming. This was OK, but I really didn’t want to cook the grapes. This year, I thought I would try the juicer.

I know that wineries just crush the grapes, stems, good and bad ones. The fermentation process is a preservative method. I don’t like the thought of raw bird poop in my juice. I pick out the bad ones and wash the clusters. Then I destem all of the good ones to put in the juicer. Washing the grapes is a step that I do for all of my juicing by the way. In fact, this is the amount of prep I would do for the old juicer too but not for pressing or steaming. Get settled in for a long evening.

I found the Breville juicer to be the easiest to clean up of the methods that I have tried. Nothing got plugged. It was like washing a food processor, lots of plastic parts and some sharp ones. My observation of the leftover pulp was that it wasn’t very effective. It is amazing that two sticks of celery can yield half a cup of juice but a gallon of grapes was about 16oz.

The juice itself was probably the lightest I have tasted. I suspect that has to do with the overall yield plus the amount of air that is whipped into the process as the liquid is centrifuged from the solids. There was a fair amount of striation of the resultant liquid. This indicates that for pure juice, you would want to let things separate and skim the lighter level off.

Based on the four methods I have tried, the one that has the least amount of prep as well as best yield is the steam method. You cannot underestimate how much effort is required to prep and clean. The product was so-so by comparison, but it beats going to waste because you don’t want to deal with it. I would use the Breville if I was dealing with a small amount of grapes, like making a daily juice due to easiest cleanup. Ultimately, it is too much work and too much loss to make this a primary method.

End Your Programming Routine: Experimenting is in my nature. It is why I studied science in the first place. It is a real shame that I am going to let so much of a bounteous crop go to waste. But, we have plenty of grape jelly and it doesn’t make good wine even though I have made plenty of it. I guess that is why our modern food system is kind of marvelous. It takes hours of work and distills the result down to a couple of dollars. It doesn’t pay for my efforts, only as a labor of love.

October 16, 2024 – Taking Care of Business

October 16, 2024 /

This is a takeoff from yesterday. If you didn’t listen to the podcast, then you will miss a little bit. Back when we would have those successful fishing trips, after eating a dinner or two, the rest was up to my dad. Smoked fish is one of those things that he has always had a passion for and still guards to this day.

I have heard it said that fish is best eaten fresh. To that end, I have even heard that they continue to degrade in the freezer. That is bad news because I have a salmon in the freezer that is dated 2019 that came from my in-laws freezer. The point being is that even the fish eaten two days after catch seemed to be developing some ammonia flavor, so unless we were going to eat them for four days straight, I needed to get on to some preservation mechanism. I chose smoking.

I can get the smoking down, what was scaring me was the fillet process. I know that I can learn that too, but I also know that I need practice. Unfortunately, seven fish is not enough. But, once I got over the hump of I have to do it now or it will be too late, I hacked away. I am not proud of the results, but I think I made some technique observations that will be helpful for next time.

The carcasses went into the stock pot. I have always wanted to make some fish broth. If it is anything like other stocks, this is a key component to moving dishes from OK to great. I will be working with that some other time, it was still time as the key component to what I was doing now.

I chose a dry brine. That is covering the flesh with a sugar/salt and other spices for a period of time (like overnight). That covering is to be rinsed off before smoking. I chose that because that is what my dad has always done. I also preferred the dry brine to a liquid, it seems more right to me for smoking.

The flesh was almost goopy while I was filleting. After the brining, things firmed up quite a bit. This re-enforced my decision on the technique. I made another questionable decision when the smoking was happening. The only charcoal I had was mesquite. I added some cherry for smoke, but I think a better choice would be apple or alder with plain charcoal. These heavier woods are better for almost all meats besides fish.

The smoking process took about three hours. I know that my dad uses a dedicated smoker and those fish get a lot more time under controlled conditions. But, as you can see from the picture that the fish look like leather at this point. Any more time would serve no purpose, probably they were over cooked.

The taste… I will temper this a bit by saying that I have only tried one piece to date. It was salty and dirty. Clearly, I did not rinse the brine off well enough. Dirty, I don’t know if it was my charcoal or my fish handling or the fish itself. I didn’t taste dirty when I ate the fish plain, so I have to believe that it is something that I did. Don’t worry, I am going to eat it all no matter how bad it tastes. But there is clearly room for improvement.

End Your Programming Routine: It was probably the last glorious day of the season. There is nothing better than sitting next to the smoker, in the sunshine, scrolling through the football scores. I was just pleasant and seemed like the perfect cap of a great couple of days off. Regardless of the outcome, I am looking forward to the next fishing trip and trying this all over again.

September 5, 2024 – Peter Piper Picked a Pack Of Pickled …

September 5, 2024 /

Cucumbers. One of the things that my new approach has freed me to do is write more complete posts. In the recent past, I would have written an article starting something and then maybe I would have come back to it a few weeks later. Because I have released my pressure to write everyday, I can now save up and get out what I really want to share in the format I want to use.

One of the things that I wanted to do with my crock is make some pickles, the original way. I love vinegar and quick pickling but I want the preservation skill of anerobic fermentation. In fact, I have heard that fermented salsa is the bomb. It makes me want to get another, smaller crock to satisfy all of those itches of things I want to try.

A few weeks ago, my son wanted to make some Korean military stew otherwise known as Budae Jigae. This was perfect timing because I used copious amounts of kim chi in the dish so I could clean out my crock and get prepared for the pickles I was going to make. The neat thing about budae jigae is that it was perfect for the wilted baby bok choy and a couple of stray hotdogs in the fridge. You literally just throw things in that you want to use up.

I went to the farmers market in search of fresh Kirby cucumbers at a good price. I found them, minus the good price but hey I appreciate them making money and continuing to be there year after year. Pickles are pretty simple: cucumber, dill, garlic and salt is all that is needed. I threw in about half a cup of pickling spice because I had it and I like a little extra kick.

The one thing I couldn’t find was fresh dill. I see it in the grocery store around this time of year, but I happen to know someone that has copious amounts of it, my parents. I haven’t seen them much this summer since most of it I have been holed up in Portland. So, I thought it was good to go see what was going on with them and collect as much dill as I wanted.

Unfortunately, it took me a couple weeks to get this project going after I had everything; still having hangover events to being gone all summer (like everyone else’s doctor appointments). I washed and sorted through the suspect cucumbers that stayed in the refrigerator too long. From the recipes I read, it said that day of pickling will yield the crispest results. I had to deal with the situation that I had.

Prep you ingredients and cover with 3% salt solution. That translates to two tablespoons of salt per quart. Wait three to six days and you have pickles. It seemed a little improbable to me that it would be that fast. However, the picture below is after six days.

The real results are how do they taste? I thought it was pretty good considering I really didn’t know what I was doing. I thought that they were missing a hint of sweetness but I don’t know where that would naturally come from. My wife said that they were way too garlicky. I deliberately put more in because she said that she wanted lots of garlic. Oh well, she is highly subject to strong tastes and smell right now anyway. Maybe as she heals, she will like it more.

Something I would do differently next time is not make so much. I bought 11 pounds of cucumbers. It filled my crock for sure but what happens if they are not good or turn? That would be $20 down the drain. It is always better to make more next year than bear the sting of failure or waste.

Speaking of turning, like all fermenting it continues until it is done. So if you are happy with the current results it is hard to stop. The concept of cold crashing or cooling them to halt the fermentation is in order. That presupposes that you have a fridge or somewhere cold to put the crock. I do, but I think I will leave it in the basement in the name of science this year.

End Your Programming Routine: I am looking forward to a late summer burger soon. I can have all the pickles I want without feeling guilty. In fact, it would probably be best to get on eating these fast before they get forgotten in the basement. I would definitely call this a success with an eye on perfecting the recipe in future years.

June 26, 2024 – Proving That I am Not a Purist

June 26, 2024 /

Not that I care about judgement, but I do want you to know that I am a normal person. I don’t always hold true to my beliefs. One of my beliefs is avoiding processed foods. We were experimenting with a ‘boxed dinner’ as they say in Canada. This was to see if this was something that we wanted to use to get by when we are staying up in the hospital.

Back in my early life, before I really started to challenge myself cooking we used to eat these boxed dinners. They were right sized for the two of us, the were cheap and easy to make. I shifted away from them as we started to work toward healthier choices but I remember thinking that they tasted pretty good.

I am a big fan of Crocodile Dundee. He has a famous line ‘you can live on it but it tastes like shit’. After eating one of these, I kind of know what he means. Mushy noodles, thin sauce with a slight chemical undertone. It certainly was easy to make and it definitely filled us up but boy it was not good.

Unfortunately, I bought several of these. Maybe the kids will eat them while we are gone? I doubt it since they didn’t grow up with it and my younger son is a vegetarian. But I will continue to side with Crocodile Dundee.

As I stated on the title, I am not a purist. While I would not like to recommend this as a diet plan, I think that there is a time and place. A good time would be a camping trip or being stuck at a hospital with limited facilities and options. Based on my exposure to freeze dried meals, I don’t think that this is any less bad. This was another thing that I used to think tasted much better.

One of the things that we used to consider gourmet in the early years was a boxed pasta. We would also buy some fish parts that were off-cuts of salmon considered cheeks and odd bits. I would grill them on a tiny barbeque and then serve them with fettucine. We thought that was kind of high society. At least it wasn’t ramen like we were eating in college.

Talking to my wife’s insurance company, they have a benefit for meal planning and food drop off. There is more on that to come but it sounds like they are going to suggest a menu and then drop off the food too. It will be interesting to see what they suggest. One of the restrictions on her recovery is that food cannot be over two days old. So, there is only so much planning we can do. I am thinking maybe those frozen stir-fry packages might be a better option than boxed dinner.

End Your Programming Routine: Well, we have this in our back pocket as an option. I am hoping the meal planning provides a better solution but I am also glad that we tried. It just reminds me why we left these behind. Sometimes we need reminders of why we make the decisions that we make. It is almost like you remember why taking tequila shots on Thursday night is not a good idea on Friday morning.

June 11, 2024 – Cooking With Cast Iron

June 11, 2024 /

Amongst cooks, I would say that cast iron is a standard. Everything product seems like to compares with it. We have a number of pans and skillets but I always gravitate to cast iron first. A lot of it is because I don’t really clean it but just wipe it out. I have always liked cast iron because I have only had electric cooking elements. I won’t make you read all the way through it to know the secret. It is the mass. Yes, it makes it harder to heat and make incremental decreases in temperature. But when you want a hot searing cook, you cant beat cast iron.

Cast iron has been with us for literally thousands of years. The first cookware dates back to England in the early 1700s. I suppose in our culture, I think of cast iron as Americana. It was inexpensive, but more importantly durable.

There has been a lot of todo about old cast iron versus new cast iron. Old cast iron would be cookware made before 1950. From what I have heard, it is primarily about the surface milling. Old surface milling was done by hand and yielded a visibly smoother looking surface. Whereas today’s cookware is mechanized and can have a ‘grainy’ looking surface.

The second thing you hear after cast iron is the word ‘seasoning’. This is the process of putting a coating on the metal. This coating helps prevent sticking on a hot surface. I have observed a lot of seasoning over the years and I think a lot of it is overblown. It is true that you don’t want metal on food contact. But the coating is and can be only so thick. Most of the ‘seasoning’ is the remainder of food stuck on the surface.

When cooking things such as bacon, it should be fatty enough to not stick to any surface. When the bacon in done, there is always a lot of residue which look like black bits. This is the sugar that is used in the cure. Sausage does the same thing. It is almost impossible not to have the sugar stick to the surface no matter how ‘seasoned’ it is. This happens to all cookware, not just cast iron.

Scrape off what you can with the spatula and the rest contributes to ‘seasoning’. After cooking the bacon, you are in the magic zone. Most people mistakenly think that it is the bacon fat that keeps the eggs from sticking. You need any kind of oil be it oil, lard, butter or whatever. But, the skillet has finally gotten to the proper temperature to cook an egg without sticking. You can literally pour all of the fat out of the pan and it still wont stick.

Common lore says don’t cook high acid foods in cast iron. The reason being is that acid will dissolve iron causing a potential metallic taste. In my opinion, I don’t really consider tomato sauce high acid. It probably doesn’t benefit the pan or the sauce too much from a non-stick point of view, but I have done it a lot of times with no ill effect. Wash the sauce off the pan at the faucet and go on with life.

Certain scrubbing pads, like chain mail are favored for cleaning cast iron. I don’t have one and I don’t really worry about it. I just scrape whatever is stuck with the spatula or wipe it out with a paper towel. I store the pan in the oven so I don’t have to fuss about it being greasy.

End Your Programming Routine: I talked a lot about traditional cast iron. The skillet in the picture is not the only piece I have. Enameled pieces like Le Creuset are fabulous as well. This is truly lifetime cookware unlike Teflon coated aluminum or every junky fad that has come along. Take care of it and it will take care of you,