cast iron – Page 10 – Cast Iron Guy

2021-03-052021-04-22

Ten Bread Creations Worth Warming Up Your Cast Iron

An idea that often blows my mind is that a handful of ingredients like flour, water, salt and sugars can be blended together to form some of the tastiest food staples.

Bread is one of those few universal foods, and cast iron turns out to be a great way to cook it …in a whole variety of ways. Here are 10 Friday ideas for adding some gluten to your day.

1. Sourdough. Baked big and bold in a Dutch oven and crackling as it cools waiting for a dab of butter, slice of fresh cheese, or dipped in oils and vinegars.

2. Cornbread. Served on the side or to swipe up the leftover sauce from your plate, a hearty bread hot from the oven.

3. Biscuits. Buttery and buttermilk, light and fluffy and served with a hot stew or a big bowl of fresh homemade soup.

4. Banana Loaf. Browned bananas blended into a batter and baked in a cast iron loaf pan into a warm, sliceable serving, then toasted and topped with butter.

5. Rolls. Simple bread sides to make a handy sandwich or accompany a big meal.

6. Corn Tortillas. Squeezed thin and round in a cast iron press.

7. Doughnuts. Deep fried in a Dutch oven full of hot oil and sprinkled with sugar or drizzled with sweet glazes.

8. Naan. A little spicy and charred, washed with a bit of ghee and dipped in a delicious curry.

9. Yorkshire Pudding. Added to a rich roast meal, puffed and golden brown.

10. Discard Fry. A hot pan and a bit of sourdough discard destined for the bin, instead sprinkled with spices, or sugar & cinnamon and fried into a tasty treat.

_{People like lists. I like people. So I’m giving the people what they like. I ran a blog for 16 years and one of the most popular posts ever on that blog was a list of “100 things” that I’d compiled and posted. I’m trying to recreate something similar over the next couple months for the cast iron guy blog. This post will eventually form part of that mega list.}

2021-02-272021-02-27

How do I know when I need to re-season a cast iron pan?

You get a new pan from the store, or an old, new-to-you pan from a family member, and the first thing you’re likely to do is spend some time re-seasoning. Fresh from the factory, or stale from neglect, obviously is a great time to put in the effort.

But what about the pans you already own and are using regularly? How do you know if they need some intensive cast iron care or even a full seasoning restart?

I was cooking a batch of buttermilk pancakes this morning and noticed a chip on my twenty inch grill, the same pan that had given me some trouble a couple months back (but in a different spot on the pan!) That blemish had likewise started as a small chip and I’d let it fester for a few months only to watch it grow from a dime-sized divot into a scar that rendered a quarter of the large pan basically useless.

Now this new pit has me pondering my pan options: to push through, spot-repair, or fully re-season?

So, how do you know when it’s time to start the re-seasoning process?

It’s Wearing Out

Seasoning is just layers and layers of carbon built up over time and effort. Maybe those layers are just getting old, or thinning out in various places. Maybe you’ve been cooking too many delicious tomato sauce-based recipes and the acid and lack of fresh oil is leaving those layers a bit lacklustre. Or maybe you’ve built up so many layers that the actual shape of your pan is starting to change. Seasoning does get old and wear out, and a once-amazing pan might just need a refresh.

It’s Chipping Off

Like my morning dilemma, sometimes you pull a pan from the shelf and either from rough use or being bumped in the cupboard, a bit of the seasoning has actually cracked and chipped away. This creates an unwelcome uneven surface and over time is simply going to get bigger and rougher and make your pan less useful. A full re-seasoning on a big chip or a chip in the main part of the pan is probably the best course, but try a spot re-seasoning first. Scrub the spot down with some steel wool or an abrasive sandpaper, then re-season like it’s a new pan. If that doesn’t work, strip the whole piece to bare metal and start fresh. Plus, you don’t want any of those stray seasoning chips mixed in with your morning hashbrowns.

It’s Rusting Up

The worst cast cast iron scenario is rust. Stored wet, or maybe having been through a long cold winter (accidentally, I swear) left inside the barbecue, rust damages the iron at a molecular level and loosens your seasoning. Also, it tastes awful with eggs. A full cleaning and do-over is probably the best way to get back on the right foot with a pan that’s got a case of rust.

Most of all, you’ll likely just know when you need to re-season. A well-seasoned pan is a great tool. A pan that needs some care and attention from years of use, wear and tear is just …less so.

2021-02-262021-04-22

Ten Deliciously Bready Ideas for Using Your Cast Iron

I love sandwiches, wraps, and more. Putting almost anything between, atop, or inside bread …and toasting it up on a cast iron pan (of course!) makes for a great meal… or just a quick snack. Here are 10 Friday ideas for putting that iron to work for a hot treat.

A simple grilled cheese sandwich on a flat cast iron pan.

1. Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Simple: bread, butter and cheese grilled on a hot pan and served with your choice of sauce, or just as is.

2. Inside Out Cheese Toasty. Hot iron meets an outer coat of shredded cheddar and the fried cheese goodness wraps the toasty bready middle.

3. Quesadilla. A hot pan fries up your fillings, then fold a tortilla in half, add some cheese and salsa, and toast to a crunchy finish.

4. Burrito. Fry your veggies. Fry your meat. Wrap tight and toast into a warm, toasty one-hand meal for home on on the go.

5. Panini. A specialty hot press or just an extra pan heated up, the pressed sandwich is great with all variety of fillings.

6. Meatball Sandwich. Orbs of pan-fried meat coated in a warm tomato sauce fill up a toasted bun and leave a delicious mess.

7. Egg Muffin. A fried egg. Some grilled ham. Stacked together and melted with cheese and served on a toasted English muffin is better than the drive thru version.

8. Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Fry up a bit of breaded chicken, smother in hot sauce, and squeeze it into a bun with some crisp lettuce for a worthwhile weekend lunch.

9. Calzone. Pizza dough, filled and folded, crimped around the edges into a sealed sandwich and finished in the oven.

10. Campfire Pie. A couple slices of white buttered bread pinch-seal a bit of hot fruity filling to warm you up around the evening fire.

2021-02-222021-02-22

Guinness Sourdough (Part Two)

Guinness stout has a very distinctive flavour. You either like it or you don’t. I do. My wife could go the rest of her days without another pint and not miss it.

This past Saturday I tried to borrow some of that distinctive flavour for a loaf of sourdough. How? Simply by replacing the tap water in my base sourdough recipe with the contents of a can of Guinness stout.

The first note of that process was simply that the dough was a lot stiffer than my regular recipe. As a bit of lucky timing, I was also short on breakfast bread, and not knowing for sure how if the taste of Guinness sourdough would accompany my morning peanut butter I simultaneously started a batch of white sandwich loafs. I have a pretty good feel for the textures, scents, and proof times of my bread recipe these days, but having an experimental loaf literally side-by-side with a control loaf was an interesting comparison.

In addition to a stiffer dough, the rise time was much longer for the Guinness loaf. Both batches spent the better part of Saturday in the fridge, and overnighted there. On Sunday morning I pulled both out at about 6 am, put the beer bread into a proofing basket and covered, and split my sandwich batch into my two loaf pans. By 5 pm as we were finishing off making our evening meal the sandwich loafs were clearly ready for the oven — almost too ready — and actually starting to creep over the edges of the pans. The beer loaf, on the other hand, needed more time, and I pushed the bake back to almost 9 pm (because I eventually needed to go to bed!) and I think it still could have used another hour of rise.

What is not entirely clear from the photo was that (just like the dough) the baked Guinness bread was darker and richer in colour than the white bread loaves.

And when I sampled this morning my take was actually… meh.

The bread is okay. It’s definitely edible, but my first impression of the taste was that it was a little bitter or even carrying an undertone of burnt coffee.

The crust definitely has an after-taste that lingers. And to be clear, the bread was not burned. In fact, other than only hitting about 80% of what I’d call a good rise, it was perfectly baked and timed out of the oven. The crust was crackly, and the besides cutting through an unfortunate air bubble for my glamour shot, the crumb was not too bad either.

But there was definitely a burnt aftertaste in the crust, and (to a lesser extent) in the softer parts of the bread.

My takeaway from this was to ask myself the simple question: Given that I pay about four bucks for a can of Guinness locally, was it worth the substitution over my basically free tap-water? And sadly, even though I was very excited to try this beer bread this morning, I would have to say …no.

I think I’ll stick to this stout in liquid form for a while longer.