282431 Sat Jan 14 12:36:05 -0800 2006 17 31 Home Cooking 0 1505172 There have been so many posts recently about cast iron cookware that it got me thinking about the pros and cons of new pre-seasoned pans VS Grandma's pan, washing with detergent VS water wash only, first use etc. Lots of conflicting information has been swirling around and I'm curious if there really is one single answer that is absolutely correct. Curiosity really did kill the cat and has gotten me in trouble over the years but in this case, neither maturity nor caution did occur. I went ahead with my hare-brained scheme. I bought a brand spanking new 10" pre-seasoned cast iron skillet and used it head-to-head with my 50+ year old seasoned 10" beauty, cooking the exact same things twice for this entire week. The results are more than surprising to me. To make the experiment more slanted than it ought to have been, the first item I chose was cornbread. Eschewing common wisdom to cook a lot of high-fat foods in the new pan, I figured baking something would be the first, last and only test with an easy-to-pick winner. HA! The products were identical in all aspects. The new pan did not stick as I'd expected, nor did it have a lackluster crust. As I said, the two pans of cornbread were absolutely identical. Even my Yankee husband was impressed. Next, I threw caution to the wind and decided to make plain, old red spaghetti sauce. If anything could be guaranteed to fail, an acidic food ought to be it. +/- 1 TBLS of olive oil in each pan, 1 chopped onion to soften, garlic, bay leaf ..... deglazed w/ red wine and added a large can of Roma tomatoes w/ juice. Simmer for an hour -- you know the drill. Identical products! I was fully prepared for a mouth-puckering distasteful bite but was disappointed (?) with a pleasant product. Granted, they both needed some further attention before serving, but they were the same sauce. By Day Three, I'm getting discouraged. Can all the pre-seasoning business be just an urban myth designed to make cooks everywhere feel like we're doing something important? I decide to brown floured chicken thighs in butter & oil. They're wonderful. Day Four is a blur and I don't remember exactly what I did but know that it was cabbage prompted by Dommy!'s request on this board for some interesting variations. I do recall deglazing with vinegar and liked each, identical product. OK, now it gets serious. I am cleaning the pans the same way, a hot water rinse & dried over a flame. Stack them using old potholders as a buffer between pans, like I do with all the others. The cleaning must change. On Day Five I cook bacon & fry eggs in the bacon fat for breakfast - what could be more "black iron skillet friendly" than this favorite? To make the challenge slightly more interesting, I decide to move the eggs before they're properly set. This is designed to guarantee failure and it does succeed - in both pans! Each egg sticks. The pans must be cleaned. I fill each with some water and over low heat, scrape off the stuck egg. I wash the new pan with Dawn liquid detergent in hot water, drying as before over a flame. I rinse out the old skillet and dry over the flame. Tomorrow will be the real test to prove my long-held theory of the importance of pre-seasoning. Day Six: Hash Browns! Absolutely identical product! Hands in the air in defeat, I tip my toque to whatever-the-hell is being done to pre-season cast iron cookware and decide to humbly retire from the world of science. Somebody knows something I'll never know. Sat Jan 14 12:36:05 -0800 2006 0 Sherri 1 1505176 Great information. You have my vote as an early contender for the 2006 Harold McGee Distinguished Service Citation, along with the Alton Brown Legion of Merit Award. Sat Jan 14 12:50:43 -0800 2006 1505172 0 FlyFish 1 1505191 Sounds like an interesting week! Having about 70 lbs. of vintage iron vessels and two that I got brand-new, I can only agree that there is NO discernible difference in the performance between new and old, so long as you follow the basic rules of proper use. My take on it is that there are two reasons to prefer old pieces: (1) that they are often cheaper, since very nice ones can still be found in antique malls and at swap meets, and (2) that the iron is often of much higher quality, meaning that the pieces can be thinner and lighter. A good 70 year old Griswold or Wagner skillet has a lightness and liveliness to its heft that a new Lodge can't begin to match; whether that's because of how it was made, or because it's improved somehow with age, I have no idea. Sat Jan 14 14:52:38 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Will Owen 1 1505197 >> Somebody knows something I'll never know. Probably the folks who research to maintain stable coatings of oil and fat, either animal or vegetable-based, which will, in time polymerize. This polymer formation including chain growth, step growth, ring opening polymerizations, and emulsion polymerization flows over the surface of the object to form a smooth surface, almost always possibly a surface more smooth than surface of the object prior to the application of the fatty or oily topcoat. The coating may be expected to adhere to a vertical surface (vertical relative to gravity), or even "upside down.", as in the sides or undersurfaces of lids Thus, the viscosity of the oil or fat must be low enough to permit flow, but high enough so that the film doesn't sag. Note that the sag problem would also occur if you painted a ceiling, and the paint came to one spot and then dried like it was about to drip. Sags can accumulate into pools, and when pools of oil or fat are exposed to polymerization temperatures on a cast iron surface, incomplete polymerization occurs, with a surface that is prone to rancidity; certainly not one that is durable or even capable to cook on. The cast iron surface must be free of dross, brown rust, red rust, waxy film sometimes misdiagnosed as "plastic" film, white rust or contamination, when received by the application process, whether at home or industrial, depositing the oil or fatty film. A passivating chemical treatment, certainly considering that the utensils will be used in the preparation of food, should not be applied. Ideally the cast iron utensil should be coated as soon as possible and all efforts should be made to ensure that the time between galvanising and coating is kept to a minimum. If the cast iron is of inferior grade, and prone to "gas", then the metal should be "degassed" by heating to around 210ºC to 220ºC prior to coating. Attention to the microbial safety of food-based films is guided by standard considerations of water activity, pH, temperature, oxygen supply and time. Importantly, proper seasoning is crucial in order that edible films do not function as a carriers of microbials, which could perhaps be impervious to cooking temperatures. The challenge for the successful use of an oil or fat-based cooking is achieving virtually uncontrolled lifetime. The seasoning film roducts must remain stable and function properly during storage and intended use, but then, not biodegrade later. This means avoiding environmental conditions - such as extreme moisture, or cooking conditions - such as extreme acidity (at least, until a sizable polymer film has been built) conducive to biodegradation. In time, better oils or fats may be developed for the deposition of a fat polymer lare in cast iron utensils. The possibilities include genetic modification of existing oil crops and chemical methods. For example, the seed oil of many Umbelliferae species including the spice plant coriander contains 70-80 per cent petroselinic acid, an isomer of oleic acid (C18) with the double bond in the C6 rather than the C9 position. This can be converted to hexane-1,6-dioic (adipic) acid through oxidative ozonolysis. Adipic acid, in turn, can be used over a wider heat range for the manufacture of polymers. Since the coriander plant is not a high-yielding oilseed crop, attempts have been made to transfer its genes to the rapeseed plant for reasons of producing a high-petroselinic oil crop. When adipic acid is manufactured from petroleum, huge amounts of ozone depleting nitrous oxide, N2O, are produced. Therefore, the method for producing adipic acid through biosynthesis coupled with chemical synthesis has environmental advantages over the currently used method, which involves petroleum. Other chemical methods for transforming fatty acids and their derivatives include hydrogenation, isomerization, epoxidation, hydroformylation and dimerization. The way a baking fat or shortening is formulated also affects the polymer plasticity, a property that describes how soft or pliable the coating is to abrasion at cooking temperatures. Fat polymers must also resist the hydrolytic effects of water as it "cooks out" of foods, yet simultaneously must strongly cling to or wet the food's cell wall structures to provide efficient cooking. Today most cast iron cooks use hydrogenated vegetable shortenings in their seasoning formulas. These products have replaced tallows and lards that were used almost exclusively until the early 1900s when hydrogenated oils were introduced. These hydrogenated, semi-solid (plastic) fats and shortenings may be produced from a single oil, or they can be blends of oils. With both saturated and unsaturated fattyacids present in such processed fats, melting occurs more gradually. This allows food surfaces to be coated and provides a continuous coating effect in your mouth (mouthfeel) when eating traditional cooked goods. It is important in the establishment of your polymer coating to avoid the degradation reaction for fats and oils; oxidation, also known as rancidity. Oxidation of fats and oils can yield off-flavors which will cause the food to taste bad. These off-flavors and odors are the result of the formation of hydrocarbons, ketones, aldehydes, epoxides and alcohols. Oxidation reactions may be initiated in the presence of metals, light, heat and especially peroxides. It is believed that polymers are formed by direct linkage of carbon to carbon atoms or through oxygen bridges. These are very stable entities, not subject to distillation (escape in the form of steam). They accumulate in the oil and eventually begin to plate-out on cast iron walls, forming the brown shellac-like material visible during incomplete seasoning. Polymers make up the largest single group of compounds in degrading oils, and are considered by many to be the best indicator of oil degradation. Polymers also contribute to foaming, increased viscosity and darkening of the oil, and will, if properly processed, contribute to the buildup of a stable, smooth, nonstick cooking film over time. Avoid overheating as a part of the process, as one of the compounds that forms when oils are overheated or pyrolized is acrolein, a pungent irritant, which can make the working environment quite uncomfortable. Acrolein is formed from the glycerine left from the hydrolysis of triglycerides. Proper film deposition will in time fill in the "hills and valleys" present in all contemporary manufactured cast iron cookware and provide a slick, smooth stable polymer coating - NOTE: cast iron cookware is made in sand molds, hence the rough surface. "Smoothing" or lathing this surface to provide a smooth one would be labor intensive and have a prohibitive effect on price. In the past, some manufacturers lathed surfaces to remove casting defects, and that the ones with the even, slightly nubbled surfaces were the better castings. Generally, oiling the cookware and heating will season the pan. What is never stated is that the shiny black nonstick seasoning is a result of long hours of patience. The "oil in all the pores" seasoning resulting from, say, wiping the cookware with a generous coat of Crisco vegetable shortening and baking at 350 deg. F for 2 or 3 hours is only a start. In the early stages, high heat only serves to reduce any beginnings of shiny black patches to the first stage, sometimes even worse. While frying bacon is often recommended, a good choice is frying eggs in fat. When cleaning, don't be fanatical at first. Wipe gently and reapply a coating of fat. of fat, be it shortening, lard, or bacon fat. If you worry about microscopic food residue, do the heating step again. All food residue should be sterilized by it. Ideally, any such residue will blacken and maybe even become shiny black. Again, avoid high heat. While it seems that this would blacken the oil, varnishing the cookware, it actually tends to reduce the nascent seasoning to the initial stage, as if the effect was like the high heat of the self cleaning cycle found on some ovens. When you feel the need to scrub a little more thoroughly or when you feel the need for more sanitation, use some kosher salt. This has the right coarseness and the salinity will kill bacteria and if you've endured my BS to the end of this post, then you deserve some cast iron baked cornbread with jalapenos to purge yourself... Sat Jan 14 15:16:25 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Jimmy Buffet 2 1505283 Geeze, I wish my dear ol' Mom had told me this. Sure would have saved me a lot of sleepless nights! ;-) Great post man although I must admit about 85% of it went over my head' I've often thought someone could use this subject as a topic for a master's thesis in history or industrial archology. Thanks, -Robert Sun Jan 15 10:45:14 -0800 2006 1505197 0 Robert 3 1505346 I mean archeology. Sun Jan 15 16:52:40 -0800 2006 1505283 0 Robert 1 1505198 I LOVE your approach! I have always secretly theorized that cast iron lore was a bit over done (mainly because I have an old one that I HEAVEN FORBID use soap on to clean with no ill effects; and I EVEN have been known to soak it in the sink). Thanks for the hard work! Sat Jan 14 15:40:38 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Donna Gresh 1 1505204 I tip my toque off to you! Appreciate your experimentation and report. This HAD to be done! This should qualify you for an award from America's Test Kitchen or something... Now, the next step might be comparing cast iron to non-stick or stainless steel. I had a big batch of chicken to fry so I used my old 10" Lodge CI and my All-Clad 12" saute pan. I was really surprised when the AC maintained a very stable heat and prevented the coating from browning too quickly compared to the CI. I've also seared steaks in both my CI and Calphalon hard anondized non-stick, and I can't really tell the difference. Sat Jan 14 16:14:00 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Carb Lover 2 1505261 FWIW, one time I had to cook a lot of steaks at once. I used a cast iron as well as a large Le Creuset dutch oven--with lid off, of course. The steaks on the LC were arguably better. Tonight, I grilled burgers on a cast iron as well as a stainless steel skillet (I need to stop letting 13 people come hang out in my one bedroom apartment). Again, no one could tell which patties were which. But the cast iron was much easier to clean. Sun Jan 15 05:06:47 -0800 2006 1505204 0 nooodles 3 1505276 and... in both of the comparisons you mention, the cast iron was the more inexpensive pan... by a large factor... Sun Jan 15 09:00:15 -0800 2006 1505261 0 adamclyde 3 1505294 Thanks for the input. I could see how CI would be a cinch to clean after frying burgers compared to SS. Adamclyde's point is a good one, but many people I know (as well as lots of hounds) seem to have (and be able to afford) all types of pans these days. I sometimes wonder what CI's benefit is over the others, sentimental value aside. I use my 10" CI the least b/c it's smaller than my other pans, is heavier, and doesn't seem as versatile. I inherited this from my husband's kitchen, so I don't know if I would have been compelled to seek one out myself. I'm most certainly lusting after a LC though! Sun Jan 15 12:01:49 -0800 2006 1505261 0 Carb Lover 4 1505299 >> I sometimes wonder what CI's benefit is over the others, sentimental value aside. But that sentimental value, or nostalgia appeal can mean a lot. Sort of like garnishing a dish. Its hard to measure, but it seems to be a factor in overall enjoyment. Or maybe control... Sun Jan 15 12:24:53 -0800 2006 1505294 0 Jimmy Buffet 5 1505350 I have/had Le Creuset also and I like them. My problem with LC is using or storing them without chipping or scratching them. I have a great small pot that I use for gravies but the enamel is gone on the upper edge where I hit the spoon to knock of the gravy before I set it down. I know there is remedy for this so let's just say 'I forget'. I can stack and knock around the cast iron no problem. Adds patina. -Robert Sun Jan 15 17:08:03 -0800 2006 1505299 0 Robert 1 1505216 I'm trying a new method of seasoning today, on my new Bayou Classic 17" discada: Heat using high heat on 160,000 BTU wok burner, burn shortening, rub lump charcoal into the surface while grease is smoking, cool down, rinse/wipe, repeat. After one pass, it looks like it's been cooking for decades, and the rinse water beads like off of teflon cookware. I really think grinding the charcoal into the surface and baking it on is a fast track method. Sat Jan 14 17:17:38 -0800 2006 1505172 0 rexmo 2 1505243 >> Heat using high heat on 160,000 BTU wok burner, burn shortening, rub lump charcoal into the surface while grease is smoking, cool down, rinse/wipe, repeat. Napalm instead of the shortening will season it faster. Can't find napalm? Apply Sterno with a cotten rag. Sat Jan 14 23:01:04 -0800 2006 1505216 0 Jimmy Buffet 1 1505284 Yes, great effort Sherri. I too bow to you and nominate you for the America's Test Kitchen 'Metal of Honor'. Congratulations!! -Robert Sun Jan 15 10:53:00 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Robert 1 1505314 I respect your perseverence! Could it be...you are such a good cook that you could make food taste good, even baked on...foil?! (A confounding variable, indeed!) (Think about a great recipe you pass along to a friend. He/she makes it and it tastes completely differently...) Sun Jan 15 13:27:11 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Funwithfood 1 1505334 I really appreciate all the kind, and aften funny, words. Thank you. It was an interesting experiment, although until I read the post by Jimmy Buffet, I had no idea how interesting it could be! Note: I wrote "...read the post by Jimmy Buffet", I do not admit to fully understanding it all. One of the things this proved to me is there is no single "only way". I suppose if there was, we would have died out as a species long ago. Some days the kitchen gremlins win and I couldn't beat an egg white in a copper bowl if my life depended on it, on other days, everything just sings along and it feels as if I could cook a 9 course meal with a disposible pie plate and a match! This is what makes this whole kitchen adventure so exciting! Like Julia always said, Bon Appetit! Sun Jan 15 15:11:45 -0800 2006 1505172 0 Sherri