How should you dress to run in winter?

The saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad wardrobe choices.

Yet, as I prepare to post these words on this Sunday Runday it is -34 degrees Celsius on the other side of my front door and this morning I’m leaning on the fallacy of that statement: that’s actually pretty bad weather.

I do run in the cold, frequently.

When I run in the cold a few simple rules apply.

Layer. Head to toes, it’s generally seems more effective when I have multiple varied layers of clothing than fewer. Layering not only traps warm air in the spaces between the layers, which is what keeps you insulated and warm, but it provides opportunity to select different fabrics for different jobs: insulation, wicking, wind breaking. It also allows you to shed a layer as you warm up.

Tuck. As valuable as lots of layers are, I find they are even more valuable as things are tucked into other things. Sock cuffs pulled over long underwear legs. Shirt hems slipped between skin and the underwear band. Neck buff squeezed under the shirt collar. Half way into your winter run is no time to figure out that there is a freezing breeze sneaking through a gap in your clothing defence.

Head. I often apply the layering and tucking rules to the head and neck as well, but I call it out here because getting the right gear on your noggin is a specifically important point worth mentioning. Ears get frostbite very easily. The neck line and face are tough to work around with the need to breath and all that. And you can make a snug-fit inner hat by turning a buff inside out, twisting it a three-quarter turn at the 60/40 split point, then inverting the longer side over the shorter.

Traction. Often overlooked in cold weather running is proper footwear. Ice is everywhere when the weather turns cold, and deep snow can slip into the air vents of shoes quickly freezing toes and packing into the tips of toes leading to injury on long runs. Specialized shoes are a great investment if you’re a dedicated winter runner. Or, if you’re only sticking to cleared pathways a pair of pull-over traction grips like Yaktrax will last you multiple seasons and store conveniently with your winter gear or in the backseat of a vehicle.

Support. Having a support line is too often taken for granted in cold weather running. If your winter wardrobe doesn’t include easy access to a running partner, or a phone if you’re going out solo, don’t go. Someone always knows where I am on my winter runs. Things can go bad so much more quickly in the cold, and after a few kilometers of sweaty exercise, a damp runner who slips on the ice or twists their ankle in a snowbank can be in huge trouble.

What’s the best first cast iron pan to buy?

First, always consider that the tool you’re most likely to get the most use out of is the tool you have the most reason to use. Buy a pan to suit the type of cooking you like to do.

A big flat skillet will let you cook big batches of pancakes or grilled sandwiches.

A small frying pan will be your breakfast companion for years to come.

A generous dutch oven will serve you well for chilis, deep frying and crunchy sourdough breads.

So, the simple answer here is buy the pan you need first and build out a collection from there.

But, you ask, what would the Cast Iron Guy recommend?

You’ve read all about this cast iron movement and you’re looking at your chipped and scratched collection of aluminum pans from the supermarket and pondering leaping into building a legacy collection of cookware and begin replacing your nonstick throwaways.

You can’t go wrong with a medium-sized frying pan, of course. A simple ten to twelve inch pan is a staple of any collection and will be of great use in any kitchen.

But the piece I recommend, the piece that sits atop my stove and rarely ever finds it’s way back into the cupboard, the piece that I would buy as a gift for a friend or family member who was debating their first acquisition is a round griddle.

I own the Lodge 10.5 inch round griddle. *not a paid endorsment

This piece is a low walled, simple round, smooth pan with a bit of a lip around the rim. It’s simple to use and maintain, and cooks just about everything day-to-day: grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, fried eggs, crepes & pancakes, and naan bread. It heats fast for warming leftovers. It packs well and I often take it local travelling to hotels (like when we go skiing in the mountians where we often have a kitchen but usually not-so-great pans.) It’s an all-in-one workhorse for egg sandwiches, grilling sausages, and my lunchtime meals-for-one. It goes into the oven as a roasting pan for numerous meat and vegetable dishes, and if I need to broil anything it’s the pan I turn to first.

And if I was rich, I’d buy these by the caselot and hand them out as gifts.

So, my recommendation: you need a great first pan, and you are not looking to fill a specific cooking need, I don’t think you can go too wrong with a simple round griddle.

Can I use a self-cleaning oven to strip a cast iron pan?

The short answer is yes.

The more complex answer is … maybe.

A self-cleaning oven is the closest most of us have to a blast furnace inside of our homes. And as many people will tell you while there are multiple ways to strip old seasoning from cast iron, the high heat of an oven’s clean cycle might be the simplest.

My oven claims that on self-clean mode the temperature gets to nearly 900 degrees Farenheit (or about 480 degrees Celsius.) That’s hot. Hot enough to incinerate the seasoning off of any pan.

So what is cast iron seasoning anyhow that we can burn it off our pans, pans that we use over heat all the time?

Cast iron seasoning is a layer of polymerized oil.

Oil is a word we use to describe a vast variety of chemicals with complex molecular structures and specific physical properties. Cooking oils generally come from crop plants and we can eat them.

Polymerizing is a fancy way of saying that many smaller molecules can be chained together to form one massive molecule. Plastic, rubber, nylon are examples of polymers you might be familiar with already. Cast iron seasoning is also a type of polymer.

Cooking oil at the right temperature can be turned into a polymer onto many types of surfaces. We take advantage of this process to season cast iron cooking pans, covering them with lots of very large oil polymers that at the correct window of temperatures create a non-stick cooking surface. Simplistically, we are creating a kind of coating by linking uncountable small oil molecules together using heat.

This coating improves and strengthens with just enough heat, but as with many types of natural compounds if we use even more heat we can destroy it too. By design, because we like to have clean things, it incinerates at the same temperature of other charred food bits, grease, and cooking stains… or the temperature a self-cleaning oven.

So, yes, you can exploit the almost-blast furnace temperatures available in your kitchen to burn the polymerized oil layer from your cast iron pan and “clean” it bare in your self-cleaning oven. Almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit will reduce those polymerized oils to a fine ashy powder that you can wipe off with a damp cloth.

The maybe part of this answer is that high heat is unpredictable. Even some of the best cast iron is not made as uniformly as it may appear as you heft that heavy pan onto the fire. Pans are meant to be heated and then disperse that heat in a specific way (into food, into the air, etc.) So when you heat a pan in very hot in contained space, in a way it was not designed to be heated, there is a chance it could crack or warp.

I’ve personally stripped multiple pans by this method and never had a problem, but all of those pans were replaceable and inexpensive. If I was restoring something more valuable or an antique, I might not take the shortcut of a self-cleaning oven.

So again, can you use a self-cleaning oven to strip a cast iron pan… maybe. This method is fast and convenient (especially if you’re already cleaning your oven) and you can start fresh with a bare metal pan. This might be worth the maybe.