Posted by Leila Wells

CAST IRON REQUIRED

• Cast Iron Skillet
  

One of my family’s favorite side dishes is fried okra. This underestimated vegetable of African origins is definitely a southern staple. Unfortunately, the most common method of serving okra is with a heavy breading. While it can still be tasty, the potential of the okra is wasted inside such doughy coatings. Cooking okra at home produces far more satisfying results than ordering it at the restaurant, but you’ll need a few simple pointers to fry okra up exactly right. (Incidentally, okra can add wonderful flavor to soups and can make an excellent combination with stewed tomatoes, but we’ll focus on fried okra today.)

Finding fresh okra is your first step. Typically, okra is in season year round in the south and from May through October in other areas. If, however, you are unable to get your hands on any fresh okra, pick up a bag of fresh frozen okra in the frozen food section of your local grocery.

Next, you will need cornmeal and oil. Typically, I use yellow cornmeal because I like the grainy texture. However, other forms of cornmeal will fry up nicely. I generally use vegetable oil, but canola oil will serve the purpose as well.

Once you’ve assembled your ingredients, you can begin. The amount of cornmeal you need will depend on how much okra you are cooking. You will need enough cornmeal in a bowl to coat the okra. If you have found fresh okra, you’ll want to make sure it is free of dirt. I recommend wiping the okra off carefully with a paper towel or an old towel. Running okra under water tends to make it slimy. Cutting the okra will also be a little slimy, so if you have allergies, you may want to wear gloves while cutting it. When the okra is clean, cut the ends off of the pieces and then slice the okra into small pieces of approximately 1/4 inch each. As you cut the okra, drop the pieces into the cornmeal. (If you are using precut, frozen okra, simply drop it into the cornmeal.) Run your fingers through the cornmeal and mix the okra into the meal until the okra is coated.

Pour enough oil into your skillet to cover the bottom. Heat the oil on medium-high heat. Heating the oil will take approximately 5 minutes. After a few minutes, test the oil by sprinkling a dash of water over the oil. If it pops or sizzles, you’ll know the oil is ready for the okra. Turn your heat down to medium. Using a long-handled spoon, carefully drop the breaded okra into the pan in a single layer. Do not “stack” the okra. Allow the okra to cook approximately 5-10 minutes (if it was fresh, longer if it was frozen) before stirring for the first time. Stir the okra slowly and periodically until it fries to a nice golden color. Once the okra is done, drop it onto a place covered by a couple of paper towels (to absorb excess oil). Salt and pepper the okra liberally. Continue cooking if you have more okra. You may have to add oil to the pan as you finish your okra. You may also need to scoop out the breading that has fallen in the pan as it can burn while you are cooking a second round of okra.

If you are not completely satisfied with your first effort at frying okra, please don’t give up! The most common mistakes when frying okra typically come from having your heat up too high or cooking the okra too long. You want to remove it from the heat when it has just become crunchy.

While okra makes an excellent side dish to most any meat, my favorite pairings are with grilled chicken, pork chops, or barbecued ribs. If you happen to be a vegetarian, you might especially enjoy fried okra with corn on the cob and stewed tomatoes.

---

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Leila directly at leila@cookingincastiron.com.

Tags: Leila

Posted by Rick Mansfield

Not too long ago, a friend of mine handed me a couple of cast iron skillets which were rusted and had odd stains and asked me what I could do to get them back in shape. If you’ve seen our first video podcast, you saw me use one of them as a demonstration for restoring a rusted pan. After I cleaned and re-seasoned the pans, I gave them two initial run-throughs--one in the oven with corn bread and one on the stove top with bacon.

After I gave the pans back, I offered a few tips for keeping them in good shape. Below is an adaptation of what I suggested. You should know that not everyone is in 100% agreement with all of these suggestions and that’s okay. These suggestions are what I do to keep my cast iron pans “healthy” and looking good.

1. Use your pans and use them a lot.  If your pan has just been seasoned fresh (as opposed to factory pre-seasoned) or re-seasoned it will probably be a shade of brown, BUT it should be completely black within a year if it is used frequently. There's very little that cannot be cooked in cast iron. Rethink the kinds of pans you use. If you normally cook something in the oven on a cookie sheet, it might cook just as well in the skillet. On the stovetop, skillets can be used for much more than frying, but obviously, they're good for that, too. Breads and desserts cook well in cast iron skillets, too.
2. I would recommend that you keep them handy, either on the stove top or in the oven when not in use. Don't stack them or place them under other pans in the bottom of a cabinet. Cast iron pans stacked in closed up cabinets for long periods of time often develop rust rings where one pan is sitting on another. If you don need to stack your pans, put a cloth between them or a pan protector.
3. Since cast iron distributes heat so well, under normal situations, you don't need to turn a stove burner above a "medium" heat. Always let the pan heat as the burner heats or let the pan heat in the oven as the oven heats. Don't put a cold pan on a hot surface or a hot pan in cold water. Either has the potential to crack or warp the pan. 
4. The seasoning/carbonizing process needs to continue, so, I would recommend that initially (perhaps a year or so), avoid highly acidic foods in the pans such as tomatoes, wine, and citrus fruits. 
5. Avoid metal utensils that can scrape and damage a pan’s seasoning. I use a lot of wooden spoons and silicone spatulas that can withstand high heats. See Delia’s post, “Spats & Spoons: What’s Best for Cast Iron?”
6. When you clean them NEVER* use soap as it both breaks down the seasoning and can change the taste of the pan. Clean them with hot water and a good stiff brush. If food is stuck on them, use the kind of scraper that you can get from Pampered Chef for baking stones. Don't worry about sanitary issues in regard to not using soap. Heating a pan on a medium heat will raise the temperature to nearly 350 degrees which is more than twice the temperatures needed to kill any microbes. *Some on our panel of writers will disagree to the NEVER in my first sentence. Once a pan has reached a “mature” seasoning after much use, a mild dishwashing soap will usually not harm it. However, I just prefer cleaning my pans the old fashioned way with a good brush and hot water.
7. After cleaning a skillet, you need to prepare it for it's next use. Make sure it is dried thoroughly. Sometimes placing it on a still warm burner or in a still warm oven will help with this. After the pan is dry, wipe a thin layer of cooking oil over the entire cooking surface to prepare it for the next use. I use olive oil because I cook primarily with olive oil and it will not turn rancid if left out in the air for long periods of time (of course, if you use your cast iron regularly, there’s no such thing as a “long period of time” ). 
8. If your pan starts to show signs of rust, significant loss of seasoning, or gives off a metallic taste in your food, it needs to be re-seasoned.

This may sound like your pans will require a lot of high maintenance, but not really. All of this becomes simply routine. Most modern pans wear out, but cast iron is designed to last beyond an entire lifetime. There's no reason that with the proper care, you wouldn't be able to pass these pans on to your children or grandchildren years from now

---

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

Tags: Rick

Posted by P. Delia Hollenbeck

Tools are important. Quality counts. The question has risen before as to what is the best kind of utensil to use in our cast iron cookware. This was especially true for me after I had gone to all the trouble of triple seasoning my new bare metal, deep sided cast iron skillet (I think that it would be called a chicken fryer if it had a lid to go along with the high sides). Now I know that several seasonings are fine, but not the same as, say, a year’s worth of regular use and the accumulated seasoning that would naturally occur from cooking with oil. So what can I do to really keep the seasoning even and not scratched up?

The utensil choices I have available--already in use in my kitchen--are heavy duty hard plastic, wood, the black plastic kind that can be used on non-stick pans, and lastly, stainless steel. Now I use any and all of these on my regularly used, heavily seasoned skillets. I don’t gouge, scrape or mutilate the pan surfaces when I cook. However, I know that newly seasoned pans are still undergoing that heating and hardening process known as seasoning, and the seasoning is still tender, if I may use that term.

My wood utensils are spoons. The black plastic spoons and spatulas melt (the edges fray) in cast iron if we’re not careful of the heat. The heavy duty hard plastic ones are too thick for turning eggs, and so that leaves metal. Well, maybe…and maybe not.

The newest innovation (that I have found so far) is the high heat rated silicone. I found a spoon and a pancake turner in that medium in the gourmet kitchen section of my favorite department store. I made sure the tag on them said they were good for 450 to 500 degree heat. You might ask how I know to do that. Well, I had bought a silicone bowl scraper--the kind with the wood handle--and used it to keep a pan of beans from scorching. It ultimately did not stand up to the temperature. A friend kindly told me that I was too frugal (she was too kind to say cheap?) and I should have bought the higher priced silicone that was high temperature rated. So now I read the tags and go for quality.

I can say so far, so good. No melting and no frayed edges of spoon and spatula. I am more comfortable using them as they continue to prove themselves worthy. The new seasoning is progressing well, by the way.

---

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Delia directly at delia@cookingincastiron.com.

Tags: Delia

Our first video podcast is available for download. We had to start somewhere, so it seemed to make sense to start with “Seasoning, Restoring, and Cleaning Cast Iron.”

You can click on the above image to take you to the podcast, and you have the option to view it in a variety of sizes, but medium is default. Once you are at the podcast page, if you want to download it to your computer, click the download button that will look like this at the top of the screen:

Clicking the download button (only works once you are on the podcast page--not here), will give you a variety of sizes and formats in case you want to take the video podcast with you on your iPod, for example.

In the future we will have the video podcast availabe for subscription via iTunes, but it’s not quite set up yet, and we didn’t want to wait to make it available to you. Right now, running at 20 minutes and 40 seconds, our video is also too long for YouTube, but we may edit it into a part one and part two and make it available that way as well.

We have lots of ideas for future video podcasts, but we want to hear from you. Please give us your thoughts in the comments below and feel free to offer suggestions for future video podcasts.

Posted by Kathy Mansfield

What girl doesn't enjoy accessorizing? Well, I've discovered ways to do just that with my cast iron cookware. I think my first cast iron accessory was a simple potholder to fit over the handle of our skillets. I was forever burning my fingers when grabbing onto the handle of a skillet while cooking bacon or eggs. I happened to see handle covers while shopping one day, and my worries were over. We now have 5 or 6 of the handy pads, and I keep them on my main skillets on top of the stove. We've recently purchased a couple of fajita pans that came with pads decorated with hot peppers. The Lodge Outlet store in Tennessee has many designs available, but I've seen the handle covers in most cooking stores. It is an invaluable resource to me.

Another accessory I came upon recently was cookware protectors from Pampered Chef. These are fabulous! Since trapped moisture can cause cast iron to rust, it’s very important to keep at least a minimal amount of air flow between a lid and a pan or pot when not in use. My husband would place old towels between our dutch ovens and their lids. Since we display most of our cast iron, this was not acceptable to me! The cookware protectors from Pampered Chef come in two sizes: 16" diameter and 20" diameter. Each size fits nicely on our dutch ovens.

Last, but not least, is another Pampered Chef product. It's not quite an accessory, but more like a necessity -- a nylon pan scraper. These were originally marketed through Pampered Chef to use as scrapers for their baking stones, but we've discovered they work great on our cast iron because even the best seasoned cast iron can occasionally have stuck on food. We keep one handy on the sink at all times. A package of 3 only cost a few dollars. They are dishwasher safe and fairly indestructible.

No, I don't sell Pampered Chef, but I sure am pleased with the great products I've discovered through that company to help keep our cast iron looking fabulous in every season!

---

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Kathy directly at kathy@cookingincastiron.com.

Tags: Kathy