I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this, although I think sometimes it's helpful to have the viewpoint of a non-expert who can't tell you to look for things that you haven't yet learned to see, and who has to explain things at a level more near that of a beginner.
A couple of months ago, my mother had a little freak-out about Teflon and the possible health issues involved in cooking on it. She sent me out to get a bigger cast-iron frying pan (we have two little ones--a Wagner and something else--that were my grandparents' and are worn smooth, but aren't big enough to do much cooking in). She also wanted to cook proper cornbread, which should be poured into a preheated cast-iron pan so it develops a crust on the outside. Cast-iron can be used both in the oven and on the stove, which is pretty cool.
The other advantage to cast iron is that, in addition to avoiding Teflon, you can pick up a little extra iron in your diet. Vegetarians, take note. You don't want to use it, though, if you already have problems with too much iron.
I bought a 10 1/4 inch no-frills Lodge at--shame on me--Wal-Mart and then did some Googling to find out how best to break it in. (Most home stores and some sporting goods and camping stores here seem to have a reasonable selection of cast-iron cookware. If you're lucky enough to have an old-school hardware or drug store in town, they'll probably have it, too.) I think it was about $15.
(A word on pan size. You don't need a small frying pan. We have two small frying pans that we never use. Most people just need the one larger one, because you can cook small things and big things in a big pan, but you can only cook small things in a small pan, and it's harder to maneuver your cooking implements in a small pan. Just get one larger pan. The 10 1/4 inch is a pretty good size.
My only complaint thus far about the Lodge is that the handle is a bit small, which makes it hard to lift because it bites into your hand and doesn't give you a lot of leverage. You have to handle it with a hot-pad, anyway, though, which helps. It's also heavy, which of course is unavoidable with cast iron, but is a little difficult for me since my left wrist is kind of temperamental. There is, however a tab on the side of the pan opposite the handle, so as long as I have two hot-pads, it's not hard to manage.)
The first thing I learned is that "pre-seasoned" doesn't really mean anything. This doesn't surprise me: Pre-seasoning is a shortcut and a bit of a sales gimmick, and neither of those things ever amounts to much. Most pans are sold pre-seasoned and they are virtually guaranteed to stick, burn, and make a mess if you just bring them home and throw food into them. Seasoning involves heat and grease: The idea is to open the "pores" of the metal and embed oil to create a carbonized, naturally non-stick surface.
There's a lot of semi-conflicting information out there on how to season cast iron, so I just sort of took an average. I scrubbed the pan in hot water with a stiff nylon scrub brush. The brush I have says "Ergo" on the back and is probably 30 years old, though barely used. The bristles are coarser and stiffer than most dish scrubbers. It looks very much like the one Lodge sells, but is plastic (the Lodge one gets lousy reviews on Amazon, though). I don't know what to tell you about that, except that you'll have to shop around. Maybe a barbecue store would have a better one.
Okay, so I scrubbed the pan in hot water. I forgot that I had Crisco in the cabinet or I would have used that instead, since it seems to be popular, and used plain old canola oil. I coated the whole pan, inside and out, and baked it for a couple of hours at 350 degrees. Some sites said I should have done it hotter, but it seems to have worked OK, turned shiny black, and wasn't sticky.
After that, I just cooked in it. The big tricks to cooking on new cast iron seem to be 1) don't cook anything on it dry, and 2) wash it properly.
I don't like oily food so I pour a little oil into the pan and then push it around with a flat-edged pancake flipper to coat the bottom as it heats, which allows me to spread less oil further than would the less-precise heat-and-tilt method. Yes, the food picks up the oil as I cook, but as long as I pay attention, I haven't had any problems with sticking (I do tend to move the food around, though).
Some sites say you can use soap and some say you can't, but everybody seems to agree that you should never, ever, soak cast iron, under penalty of being coated in syrup, rolled in ants, and locked in a room with a dozen starving armadillos. Like, I think this might be a transgression right up there with adding an electric bass to your bluegrass band. (Not to perpetuate any stereotypes here, of course.) So far, mine has cleaned up just fine with hot water and a nylon scrub brush. I haven't had anything cook onto the pan so that I have to scrub really hard, but the metal doesn't feel greasy once I've cleaned it so I seem to be getting the old oil off (so it won't go rancid), but water does bead, so I'm not stripping the cooking surface.
I wipe dry, then I put it back on the stove, heat it, and give it a wipe of clean vegetable oil. Not a lot; I don't want to put it away oily. And that's about it. I try to use it no less than twice a week so it gets heated, oiled, and cleaned regularly.
We have a couple of old cast iron Dutch ovens, too, but I haven't used them. Everything I would cook in a Dutch oven seems to involved lots of tomatoes, and acidic foods can be hard on cast iron, at least until it's very well-seasoned, which ours are not any more. The solution to this seems to me to be enameled cast-iron, but I haven't tried using it.
A couple of months ago, my mother had a little freak-out about Teflon and the possible health issues involved in cooking on it. She sent me out to get a bigger cast-iron frying pan (we have two little ones--a Wagner and something else--that were my grandparents' and are worn smooth, but aren't big enough to do much cooking in). She also wanted to cook proper cornbread, which should be poured into a preheated cast-iron pan so it develops a crust on the outside. Cast-iron can be used both in the oven and on the stove, which is pretty cool.
The other advantage to cast iron is that, in addition to avoiding Teflon, you can pick up a little extra iron in your diet. Vegetarians, take note. You don't want to use it, though, if you already have problems with too much iron.
I bought a 10 1/4 inch no-frills Lodge at--shame on me--Wal-Mart and then did some Googling to find out how best to break it in. (Most home stores and some sporting goods and camping stores here seem to have a reasonable selection of cast-iron cookware. If you're lucky enough to have an old-school hardware or drug store in town, they'll probably have it, too.) I think it was about $15.
(A word on pan size. You don't need a small frying pan. We have two small frying pans that we never use. Most people just need the one larger one, because you can cook small things and big things in a big pan, but you can only cook small things in a small pan, and it's harder to maneuver your cooking implements in a small pan. Just get one larger pan. The 10 1/4 inch is a pretty good size.
My only complaint thus far about the Lodge is that the handle is a bit small, which makes it hard to lift because it bites into your hand and doesn't give you a lot of leverage. You have to handle it with a hot-pad, anyway, though, which helps. It's also heavy, which of course is unavoidable with cast iron, but is a little difficult for me since my left wrist is kind of temperamental. There is, however a tab on the side of the pan opposite the handle, so as long as I have two hot-pads, it's not hard to manage.)
The first thing I learned is that "pre-seasoned" doesn't really mean anything. This doesn't surprise me: Pre-seasoning is a shortcut and a bit of a sales gimmick, and neither of those things ever amounts to much. Most pans are sold pre-seasoned and they are virtually guaranteed to stick, burn, and make a mess if you just bring them home and throw food into them. Seasoning involves heat and grease: The idea is to open the "pores" of the metal and embed oil to create a carbonized, naturally non-stick surface.
There's a lot of semi-conflicting information out there on how to season cast iron, so I just sort of took an average. I scrubbed the pan in hot water with a stiff nylon scrub brush. The brush I have says "Ergo" on the back and is probably 30 years old, though barely used. The bristles are coarser and stiffer than most dish scrubbers. It looks very much like the one Lodge sells, but is plastic (the Lodge one gets lousy reviews on Amazon, though). I don't know what to tell you about that, except that you'll have to shop around. Maybe a barbecue store would have a better one.
Okay, so I scrubbed the pan in hot water. I forgot that I had Crisco in the cabinet or I would have used that instead, since it seems to be popular, and used plain old canola oil. I coated the whole pan, inside and out, and baked it for a couple of hours at 350 degrees. Some sites said I should have done it hotter, but it seems to have worked OK, turned shiny black, and wasn't sticky.
After that, I just cooked in it. The big tricks to cooking on new cast iron seem to be 1) don't cook anything on it dry, and 2) wash it properly.
I don't like oily food so I pour a little oil into the pan and then push it around with a flat-edged pancake flipper to coat the bottom as it heats, which allows me to spread less oil further than would the less-precise heat-and-tilt method. Yes, the food picks up the oil as I cook, but as long as I pay attention, I haven't had any problems with sticking (I do tend to move the food around, though).
Some sites say you can use soap and some say you can't, but everybody seems to agree that you should never, ever, soak cast iron, under penalty of being coated in syrup, rolled in ants, and locked in a room with a dozen starving armadillos. Like, I think this might be a transgression right up there with adding an electric bass to your bluegrass band. (Not to perpetuate any stereotypes here, of course.) So far, mine has cleaned up just fine with hot water and a nylon scrub brush. I haven't had anything cook onto the pan so that I have to scrub really hard, but the metal doesn't feel greasy once I've cleaned it so I seem to be getting the old oil off (so it won't go rancid), but water does bead, so I'm not stripping the cooking surface.
I wipe dry, then I put it back on the stove, heat it, and give it a wipe of clean vegetable oil. Not a lot; I don't want to put it away oily. And that's about it. I try to use it no less than twice a week so it gets heated, oiled, and cleaned regularly.
We have a couple of old cast iron Dutch ovens, too, but I haven't used them. Everything I would cook in a Dutch oven seems to involved lots of tomatoes, and acidic foods can be hard on cast iron, at least until it's very well-seasoned, which ours are not any more. The solution to this seems to me to be enameled cast-iron, but I haven't tried using it.
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