Like many guys my age that I know, I'd say I do eighty percent of the cooking in our household. As a result, I get to be picky about the tools I use. For instance, I only have two main (quality) knives (which I wrote about here).
For cookware over the years, I have used cheap aluminum, stainless steel, Teflon lined, you name it. For whatever reason, I never considered cast iron--it seemed totally impractical, like something from the 19th century that had no use in a modern kitchen.
Around the time we started attending full time the Traditional Latin Mass, I also "re-discovered" cast iron cookware as a potential option. It's the kind of stuff you'd find at an antique shop, or your grandmother's basement. But as I wrote in the post "What's Old Is New",
"Everything that goes around comes around--what's out today is en vogue next year. My prediction? Mid-century is going to make a comeback. IKEA will still have it's place among college students and transients. But somewhere, at some point, people are going to wake up in their white room white couch white bed clean dustless childless quiet modern home and experience a curious longing for the forgotten comfort of grandmother's delicate tea sets, grandfather's tan armchairs, the soft yellow glow of incandescent lightbulbs, and yes, maybe even the extravagant opportune of a mahogany China cabinet. But it won't be there anymore except in the most high end of antique shops."
I went on to relate this furniture trend to the traditional faith, a materialist analogy I think holds some merit:
"My prediction goes beyond furniture and housewares, beyond trends and tastes and kitchen renovations. When we hit the modern bottom, when the demons start to tip the scales and become too powerful, when the non-denominational particleboard gets wet and warped, when the trans-everything nonsense hits fever pitch...a few will start to pine for an ancient faith. They will go online to order and meetup; they will seek and they will not find (Jn 7:34) except in those pockets in which it has been preserved as the pearl of great price that it is, a soft glow of candles in stained glass windows in the darkness, shards of light reflecting off a gold monstrance in the sanctuary, the quiet ancient chant of plainsong beckoning behind thick solid wood doors. It will be exotic and intimidating, ethereal and forbidden, austere and arduous, foreign and yet completely familiar. The Faith of our fathers, the Faith handed down, the Faith communion that takes place in real time...it will be both old, and new."
When I started using cast iron in the kitchen, I quickly discovered it was superior in many ways to our arsenal of "modern" cookware and eventually threw all that away in favor of a 1 quart pot, a 2 quart pot, a dutch oven with lid (which doubles as a frying pan), and a single skillet. Here's a few things I love about it:
It never gets old.
I mean, it gets on in years, but you would never be able to tell. You could be using a cast iron pot from the civil war era and it would still function the same today.
Even, distributed heat
Because cast iron is so heavy and has high thermal mass, it doesn't tend to scorch. One thing I like is that I can turn off our electric stove and the food will continue to cook without me having to watch it, and will stay warm much longer than aluminum or stainless steel.
Supplemental iron
A fact often overlooked--cooking with cast iron supplies iron into your diet, which many of us need.
Induction compatible
This is a bonus win. I bought a $40 induction single burner on Amazon. It's amazing, but only works with certain types of limited pots--but that includes cast iron without exception! Induction cookers are popular in Europe--they are super efficient, as they heat by induction via magnetism. You can hold your hand on the surface of the cooker and it is cool to the touch. It is super fast too, so if you want to heat something up quickly without a microwave it takes about the same amount of time. And it keeps the kitchen cooler in the summer, since you're not heating by convection.
Takes abuse
Throw it in the oven. Scratch the hell out of it with a brillo pad. It can take it. It won't dent or deform. If it gets some rust from resting water, just polish in some lemon juice to remove it. This cookware will last not years, but generations. The very antithesis of a disposable product.
Well seasoned non-stick
Seasoning your cookware installs a ritualistic satisfaction in taking care of something to make it last. Just heat it up and periodically rub in some vegetable oil. Over time, the ensuing nonstick surface rivals teflon but never flakes off and doesn't require using special utensils.
Just as it would be hard to go back to what came before our transition to the Traditional Latin Mass, it would be hard to give up my cast iron cookware at this point and go back to a "modern" arsenal. I initially overlooked all these advantages of this old-school cookware for a long time, but glad I gave it a chance. If you're open to the things of yesteryear, I'd encourage you to as well!
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