Cast Iron Skillets: Everything You Need To Know - How To

♪♪ ♪♪ -Hi, I'm Stephen from Field Company. Here in the USA we make lighter, smoother

cast

iron

skillets

. I'm here to talk to you about cooking in

cast

iron

, caring for cast iron, and probably demystifying a few things you may have learned along the way. Cast iron retains its heat very well and develops a natural non-stick coating just by cooking it. You can buy one and you should have it forever. Seasoning, as a noun, is this type of black coating that develops by basically burning oil and other small particles on the surface of the pan. This pan is a new seasoning from the manufacturer.

It has three layers of our grapeseed oil. This is a pan that hasn't seen any action yet. Every time I get into seasoning and people ask me, "What should I use?" just get some grapeseed oil and you'll be fine. The principle is that you want unsaturated fats. One of the worst oils to choose is coconut oil. It will just burn out and really not be of much use. The job done and the job will be done better with grapeseed oil. This is the complicated part. So if I overdo it, I'll have to clean for much longer, and if I overdo it, I won't add much seasoning.

Trying to get a group there to figure it out. I'm pretty well covered here, and now I can take this and, using the remaining oil, I can take care of my exterior. If you don't season the exterior, it will rust as well. Taking care of your pan is taking care of

everything

. And now I'm going to come back here and try to get a lot of that oil out of there. It should look fairly dry, but not completely dry. I'm going to go ahead and throw this pan at 300 degrees. I'll take it out after 10 minutes and just to make sure that if any oil collects in little puddles, I can remove it before baking it on the surface of the pan. ♪♪ It's okay.

We've had the pans in there for 10 minutes at 300 degrees. There's no buildup on this tray, so I think I'm pretty good. I'm going to include that again. Alright, let's turn this guy up to 400, give him 30 to 60 minutes. ♪♪ Alright, here's our new, lightly seasoned skillet. It's a little stained, but I don't think the oven seasoning will make it perfect. I think the internet tricks everyone into thinking these pans look perfect, and they don't. Even the best seasoned pans don't look perfect. The first one will just be a simple fried egg. With the seasoning you have down there you will be able to move the egg without it getting stuck.

What this also shows is that people who complain about sticking, it's all technical. One of the cool things about cast iron is that you could probably turn off the heat and still cook this egg all the way through because it will retain a lot of heat. Go ahead and give it the old twist. Smoothness is important for gluing. When it gets hard, you get... It's harder to create this non-stick property. We also showed how it doesn't take a huge amount of heat to cook. It just... it's... Having control is the important thing, and cast iron gives you a lot of control because you put the right amount of heat into it, and then it just... keeps it there for you.

I think we can call it a day. ♪♪ The steak will benefit from a slightly higher temperature. To get a good sear on this steak, keeping the pan hot is really crucial. I'm going to go ahead and use grapeseed oil here because it has a nice high smoke point, so I can go higher without creating so much crazy. I'm looking at the frying pan. It seems to be quite hot. I'm going to pour some of that on. I want to wait until it starts smoking and then I can drop the steak right here. This is one of those events in the life of a pan that both help and can hurt the seasoning.

So maybe I take off a little bit here and there, but at the same time, I'm kind of subjecting it to some abuse. I think of seasoning as if it were a strong tree. Stronger trees will not have as much light. They're going to explode everywhere, they're going to learn that they have to be strong and then they're going to get to that level, so I feel like the same thing is happening with the seasoning. It's good to overlook it. The important thing about proteins in cast iron is that if you try to move them too quickly, they will stick.

You want it to cook for a while, turn its surface into that golden brown and then it will do it; It should release well. The three dangers of stickiness are lack of fat, too high a temperature, and trying to move the food too quickly before it is ready. Alright. I'm happy with that. ♪♪ The only thing I've done is cook an egg in butter and my pan is completely clean. I would say the way to clean this pan is to simply wipe it down. I'm going to try it here. I'll use some of that residual oil on the other sides of the pan.

Why not? ♪♪ Now I have a little bit of that caramelization that happened there. I have some stuff stuck in there and while the pan is hot I can scrape it up a little. Some of this is going very well. Part of this is removing the bottom layer of seasoning. That's actually sticking to the pan, so it's causing damage, so I'm not actually going to do that. Let that calm down a little. It's probably best to leave that there. If I keep trying to do this, I'll delete

everything

. And if I just cook over it, some of it will go away and some of it will stay and it would probably be better, in the end, to do it that way.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Your pan will last a lifetime. It will go through all kinds of different processes. It is always possible to recover. It's meant for that. You

know

, it's going to develop its own story. One of those amazing things you can do when starting that journey or starting that journey with a new pan. So, a lot of people are really worried about whether to put soap in the cast iron skillet or not, and the truth is that soap will not ruin the seasoning. The soap will degrease your pan. You always want to have a little fat, a little grease, oil, whatever you have, in the pan.

If you're a soap person, you can't stop using soap, you just want to make sure you go back, dry it, put that oil back in there and you're good to go. If you were cooking something really delicious and you thought, "I really want that flavor in my next dish," you don't have to think about it so much every time. I think the important thing with the migration of flavors from one food to another is to ask yourself: do you want it? Do you want what you just cooked to be included in your next meal? The buildup of seasonings and the way the pan stacks up will totally depend on what you like to cook, and there will be flavors there.

That's why having a sweet pan and a savory pan is always a good technique. Alright. Hopefully, we've taken some of the guesswork out of cast iron, demystified some of the things going on, and it won't scare you anymore. You'll be ready to cook all kinds of great food. And saying goodbye here to Field Company. I hope you enjoy your next meal with us. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪