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Ten Breakfast Foods that Cook Up Great in Cast Iron

Breakfast. For many it’s considered the most important meal of the day. For others, it is a way of life. Here are 10 ideas for cooking a hot first meal of the day in your cast iron.

Eggs. Fried. Scrambled. Sunny-side up with a bit of butter, salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Served over toast or with bread for dipping.

Bacon. Crispy or just a bit soft. Smokey and rich. And the grease is good for the pan.

Hashbrowns. Fried potatoes. Warm. Salt. And crunchy. Soaking up a dose of ketchup and mopping up the egg yolks.

Sausages. Grilled and spicy. Flavour dripping from the tips as you bite into them.

Ham. Thick sliced and grilled warm in the pan. Sliced into chunks, and served with a rich, grainy mustard.

Omelet. With cheese, onions, tomatoes, or seafood, folded and fluffy, fancy, too.

Pancakes. Spotted with chocolate chips or decorated with sliced banana. Drowned with fruit and drizzled with syrup.

Crepes. Thin and round, wrapped around chocolate, fruit, and whipped cream and drizzled with sauce or syrups.

Waffles. Crisp and doughy, pocketed with pots waiting to be drenched in maple syrup and adorned with fruit.

Skillet. Potatoes, cheese, eggs, veggies, and bits of everything that makes breakfast great, come together with spices and love.

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.

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How long does it take to season a cast iron pan?

Probably one of the most well-known bits of cast iron lore is that the more that you use your pan the better it will get.

This rule of thumb is referring to the seasoning, the thin, black layers of polymerized oil that have been converted to this state by heat and have adhered to the surface of the pan creating that famous non-stick state of cooking bliss.

Pre-seasoned pans from the factory are sold with a few layers of seasoning applied shortly after manufacture, and for many this is “good enough” to start cooking with your new pan even as you peel the labels off. But for others, a fully seasoned pan takes work, and adequate seasoning is a matter of opinion and personal evaluation. To them, no pan ever comes from the store with enough seasoning to be considered fully ready to cook on.

The most unhelpful advice I’ve ever read on seasoning basically says that a pan is fully seasoned when you know that it is fully seasoned.

What those folks are getting at is simply that it will feel like it cooks better. Or it will pass some kind of non-stick test. You’ll just know… y’know?

A test, you say? For example, some swear that a pan is only seasoned when it passes the egg test: crack an egg into the center of a hot pan, cook it to doneness, then slide it onto a plate… all of this without using a spatula or any other cooking tool. If it slides into the plate and leaves a clean pan behind: voila! Your pan is perfectly seasoned. If it sticks then get back to work: you’re not there yet.

But no, you insist, really… how long does it take to season a cast iron pan?

In my experience, it takes however long it takes to build up five … ten … twenty solid layers of seasoning. You’ll just know… y’know?

That might take just one quiet afternoon with a hot oven, some oil and a bit of elbow grease.

Perhaps a full weekend out camping and cooking all your meals over a fire where the hot flames meld oil to iron will find your pan seasoned perfectly.

Sometimes a couple months of casual cooking at home is required as you notice week by week that your pan gets a little smoother and easier to use each time you fry.

Or occasionally it will take years of waking up early to prepare delicious Saturday breakfasts for your still-sleeping kids until you realize that your seasoning should be considered a family heirloom.

So maybe those folks with the unhelpful advice are right. A pan is fully seasoned when you know that it is fully seasoned. You’ll just know… y’know?

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Embarrassing & Stupid

(serialized fiction)

The video faded to credits and I pulled the lid of the computer closed with that familiar magnetic click. My arm hurt. I let the aluminum rectangle slide to my left side where it caught between a fold in the blanket and my hip. I leaned back into the pillow and I’m sure an involuntary groan escaped through my lips.

“That looked interesting.” A nurse stepped into the room leading a wheeled cart of vials and medical implements in front of her. Her nametag read Gail. I could only see her now-familiar eyes which scream pity and the pink medical mask covering her mouth and nose buckled ever so slightly in sync with her lips as she spoke. “Was it you?”

“In the video?”

“Yeah?”

“Nah. It’s just some guy —” I shrugged weakly. The medication had dialed the sharp pain back to merely a dull ache. That ache was the various muscles in my back and neck waving a white flag. “— a channel I’ve been watching lately.”

“I need to take some more blood, okay?” Gail moved my laptop to the bedside table, careful to untangle the power cord from the safety rail. She prodded the space on the hospital bed beside me smoothing the blankets into a makeshift workspace for her collection of vials and labels she would need in a moment. Then, she took my arm with her hand and lightly touched around the intravenous tube with practiced fingers. She asked. “So — you’re an athlete right?”

“I guess. I run.” I replied but I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and think of my accident then correct myself. “I mean — I used to run.”

“I run, too.” The fabric of her mask implied she smiled, and with a nod she added. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you back out there.”

Neither of us said anything as she peeled printed sticker labels from a tear-off sheet and applied them to a small collection of glass tubes, the soft clicking noises filling the silence in the air.

“I do envy some of the people in those videos though.” She said finally as I watched her start to fill the vials one at a time with dark, red liquid draining from the tube in my arm. “You know — they’re out there doing it — right? Really living.”

“I tried that — “ I shrugged even while realizing I was only stoking the fires of her pity for me. Not a good look. “See where really living got me?”

Her eyes finally met mine. “You going to let a little tree branch swatting you in the arm stop you, then?” And when I looked away sheepishly and didn’t reply she continued. “I haven’t told anyone this — so if you tell Sasha out there I won’t be so gentle with your blood draw tomorrow —“ she winked. “— but last week I was out for my run and a wasp flew into the front of my shirt. She managed to wriggle under my bra and stung me good and hard — right here.” She tapped her chest over her heart at the top of her right breast.

I smiled, weakly.

“Not funny.” Her eyes flashed a fake scolding glare. “It hurt like hell — and I had an itchy welt there for three days.”

“And you got right back out there?” I teased. “Is that my lesson for today?”

Gale dropped the vials of blood gently into a pink plastic basket on her cart. “No lesson.” She shrugged. “I’m just saying that nature has it out for all of us — and there are plenty more boring ways to earn a scar than having a tree fall on your head.”

“Boring, no. Try embarrassing.” I corrected. “Or maybe just stupid.”

(cracking woods - part 02)

Gaige Gildon is a fictional trail runner who lives and trains in Edmonton. After a trail accident, he quit his tech job in 2019 to focus on his recovery and his passion for outdoor adventure. In 2021 he partnered with The Cast Iron Guy blog to write and post about his upcoming pan-Canadian multi-sport trip.

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Sculpting Sand & Polar Vortexes

The cold is breaking.

Where I live in Edmonton, Canada, a small city of about a million people in the middle of the Canadian prairies, it gets cold. Yet, even a stretch of brutal chill is mostly unusual. A polar vortex as they called it, where we’ve not had a day this month where the temperatures have been warmer than minus twenty degrees, has given us a February locked in our houses avoiding the bone-chilling cold even while we’re locked in our houses avoiding the pandemic.

But it is supposed to warm up today. A little. Minus twelve, the forecast promises.

Still, I’ve been dreaming of warmer places.

A sandcastle on the beach in Maui
for whatever one photo is worth:

A few years ago, we spent ten days in Maui.

Exploring.

Eating good food.

Playing on the beach.

Maybe it was because sitting on a beautiful beach in Hawaii is such the opposite of where I am now, land-locked in a frozen city, I saw this picture and I was pleasantly reminiscent of tropical vacations on this particular Travel Tuesday.

The quality of this photo was not brilliant, but was one of dozens I took with my sun soaked sports camera after spending a hours snorkelling in the reefs, playing in the waves, and building elaborate sand castles.

The sand castles were my particular favourite. Between my then-nine-year-old daughter and I we would construct elaborate buildings, tiny temples, and sprawling relic-inspired courtyards with the collection of plastic sand tools we’d bought at the local ABC Store. And as we dove back into the salt water we would watch from afar to see how many people would stop to look or even take photos of our creations.

We can’t travel now.

And it’s far too cold to turn the crispy snow in our front yard into similarly elaborate snow sculptures, if only because the snow doesn’t stick in those conditions.

Yet, it doesn’t hurt to look through old photos and remember long ago vacations and wonder how and when we might spend our next day at the beach…

How would you spend a day on the beach?

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