Why Cast Iron

Some of my earliest and happiest memories take place on the Piankatank River in Virginia. It’s a lesser-known estuary of the Chesapeake Bay and my grandparents had a home there, perched on a bluff, salt grayed and modern for the time when it was built. My Mom’s father, Poppy, traveled the world for the tobacco giant he worked for (back when cigs were health food), but he loved nothing more than getting up before dawn and going fishing with the local watermen. I remember it, because I slept in my grandparents’ room on a cot sometimes when the house was packed, and the shock of an alarm clock ringing out in the dark was real.

Scattered through these memories like punctuation are cast iron skillets, because that was where the bacon crisped in the morning and the fish fried at the end of the day. Sometimes they were fish Poppy brought home in a cooler, sometimes dinner was a small spot or perch I reeled out of the water myself, proudly, after sweaty hours swinging my legs off the side of the dock with no see’ums stealth bombing my sunburnt shoulders. After I lovingly swaddled my catch in a dish towel (my Nana tolerated this ritual and always managed to coax the fish away from me) Poppy would clean it on the long dock, tossing the guts into the water and then hosing away the scales. Before dinner he would go out to the garage, where an entire wall by the tool bench was hung with iron skillets of various sizes; there, he would select the appropriate one and then stride into the kitchen twirling that skillet in his hand like a boss.

I still relish the sound and smell of butter foaming and popping in an iron skillet, because butter foams and pops in an iron skillet in a very distinctive way, if you listen—more vigorously, more decisively. And when freshly caught fish, dredged lightly in cornmeal, is laid into foaming butter in an iron skillet it crisps in a way it can’t crisp in any other kind of pan. That’s not a scientifically proven statement but I stand by it.

During college, I pilfered a 9-inch cast iron skillet from my parents’ garage while I was home on a break. It seemed abandoned, so I claimed it. It already had a perfect, smooth black season to it and quickly became my favorite pan, following me to New York City and remaining my preferred vessel for making frittatas, skillet cornbread, and our current weeknight hack, an absurdly lazy version of Deb Perelman’s pizza beans.

That little skillet was joined by a larger, hefty 12-inch beast, which I bought in my 20’s while working as a professional cook. I seasoned it myself—a process that took a little patience but not as much as you might think—and it went from gunmetal gray to deep black and only improved with time. Sometimes I would even lug it along with me on jobs if I wasn’t sure about the client’s cookware situation; it felt like a security blanket. In the present day, it is my preferred place to sear steaks and make a big batch of bacon, or crisp brussels sprouts. All the meals we’ve cooked in those skillets have somehow left their imprints which will enhance now and future meals.

Saveur, in their most recent Top 100 issue, listed “The Great American Cast Iron Revival” as #24—but cast iron never actually went away. It was just joined, over the decades, by countless other products and their marketing clamor. I cook with many types of pans and love them all for different reasons. Copper I admire for its quick heating and conductivity—and if I’m honest, its prettiness. Stainless steel is plain but dependable, and I cherish my All-Clad collection, amassed mostly as wedding gifts. I have a small stable of Le Creuset pots, their colorful enamels somewhat dulled with the patina of cooking. Nothing is better for a languid braise. Nonstick pans? I mostly avoid them except for making omelets. But my cast iron skillets are the real workhorses, the Budweiser Clydesdales of the bunch: kind of clunky but handsome, solid, and all-American.

There are several reasons, nostalgia aside, why cast iron so good. Number one is browning and crisping power: steaks and fish and chicken skins get a really terrific sear in a cast iron skillet, and I would swear that they also pick up some undefinable boost in flavor. The thicker material of cast iron pans takes a little bit longer to heat up (unlike copper), but the heat inhabits the pan for longer, making them practical (and charming) for stove-to-table. Also: it sounds nerdy, but I find that the Lodge skillets I own (which may actually qualify as antiques by now) have a really ideal bottom-to-side ratio, which means they have enough depth for making fried chicken or cornbread but aren’t so high-sided that food begins to steam in their depths. The pan’s material can actually give your food an extra dose of iron, too, especially when the food cooked within it has some measure of acidity. And then there’s the surface. Once you get the pan seasoned and start using it regularly, its cooking surface is smooth and darn near non-stick. More on that below.

The options for cast iron cookware are varied these days, and most companies now offer pre-seasoned pots and pans. Lodge, the company that’s been at it since 1896, still makes the old-fashioned footed camp stove that allows you to cook directly over a fire—plus more streamlined configurations for the modern stovetop. Some other, newer, brands include F. Smithey Ironware Co., and Butter Pat, out of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Try your luck at a local thrift store or antiques store, too—you may strike black gold.

What is seasoning? Simply: seasoning is the process of coating the metal with a protective seal made of hardened oils. Bare cast iron has a natural topography of microscopic gullies and hillocks, and you want to fill all of that in and create a smooth plain so food can release during cooking. For the initial seasoning (which you may never need to do thanks to pre-seasoned products on the market today), cookware must be coated with oil and baked in the oven for an hour or so; Lodge has a nifty guide to this. The best oils, according to food scientist Harold McGee, are soy oil and corn oil because they are conducive to “polymerizing”. I use grapeseed oil for maintenance, since it also fits the bill, and is also a neutral oil that withstands high heat. You should never use oil with a low smoke point, such as extra virgin olive oil. Oils high in saturated fat, such as animal fats and coconut oil, are also not so great for seasoning or maintenance (but are totally fine for cooking).

Maintaining your cast iron automatically becomes easier the more frequently you use your cookware. This is because it won’t sit there and become rusty from neglect, and also because you are adding to its seasoning layer by cooking. Do not be afraid to wash it, either. My basic rule of thumb is to use the gentlest degree of cleaning needed but exert a little more force as the cleanup requires. Sometimes you can get away with simply wiping out the pan. Most often, I use gentle dish liquid like Seventh Generation (which I use at all times anyway) and a soft, natural-bristled brush rather than metal scouring pads. If you get stuck-on food particles in the pan, rubbing in some kosher salt is also a safe way to remove the gunk, but you can also use a metal scrubber if the job calls for it. Beware of leaving your pan soaking in the sink—the resulting rust rings are not fun. After cooking and cleaning, I heat up my pan on the stove and then rub a thin layer of oil (usually grapeseed but the others mentioned above work) on the surface and allow it to cool before putting it away. You can get away with not doing this every time, but definitely do it if you’ve cooked something acidic or have put your pan through a vigorous scrubbing.

What should you cook with your cast iron? Anything! Some people say to avoid cooking acidic foods in there, but it’s ok once you have built up a good surface—just make sure you rub some oil onto the clean, warm pan after cooking, say, tomatoes or lemony chicken in it. Also, a tip if you’re using the skillet in the oven: invest in a silicone handle cover. I can’t tell you how many times I have grabbed a searing hot handle with my bare hands without thinking beforehand—ouch!

Here are some cast iron recipe ideas from around the internet:

Edna Lewis skillet cornbread (note: I use my 9-inch skillet with this. The recipe says 10-inch. Either is fine)

Shakshuka

Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza

Breakfast Hash

Extra-Billowy Dutch Baby

Skillet Berry Crisp

Cast-Iron Chocolate Chip Cookie

…And here is our beloved pizza bean recipe—it’s brutally simple, it’s vegetarian, and we usually plunk down the skillet onto the table along with lots of garlic bread, and then just dive in.

Cheese pull for the win

Lazy Pizza Beans

Ingredients:

• 2 cans large white beans (such as cannellini or gigante beans), drained

• 1 jar Rao’s marinara or tomato basil sauce (other brands work, Rao’s is just our favorite! Not sponsored!)

• Pinch of salt

• 8-oz fresh mozzarella or more as needed, thinly sliced (we use around half of one of those big balls of mozz found everywhere in NYC)

• Optional: fresh basil for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Put beans into a 9-inch or 10-inch skillet. Pour in half a bottle of Rao’s sauce and add more as needed—you want the tops of the beans to still be visible. Stir in just a pinch of salt. Put in oven and bake for about 15 minutes, then cover the top with mozzarella and put on the top shelf of the oven and cook until it’s bubbling and the mozzarella has begun to brown. Scatter torn or sliced basil over the top, if using.

Garlic Bread:

People have their opinions, but here’s mine: Melt some butter and crush a bunch of garlic cloves (I use a microplane zester)—around 4 garlic cloves per 4 tablespoons butter. Stir and season with a pinch of salt. Now slice a baguette or long Italian loaf into 4-inch or so segments, then slice these in half lengthwise. Spread the cut sides liberally with garlic butter then toast in the oven while the pizza beans are cooking.

Poppy’s skillets - the O.G.s

The Hamover

The star of my childhood Christmases was a ham I refused to eat. I’m not talking about the honey-baked variety or the pineapple-and-maraschino studded roasts that beckon from soft-focus holiday ads. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, they’re just not real hams. They’re not Virginia hams—a regional specialty that people who have lived in certain parts of the state know well.

The ham I speak of is a country ham that has undergone a months-long curing and smoking process and, if done properly, is a smoky, nutty, salty delicacy that gets sliced paper thin and practically melts on the tongue. In my opinion—and my opinion is not unique—the best way to enjoy it is to bake heaps of small buttermilk biscuits, cut them in half crossways, spread each side thick with butter, then lay either a thin slice or minced shards of ham in between the biscuit halves, and make yourself a delightful little sandwich. Or two. Or five dozen.

This type of ham is a form of charcuterie dating back to 17th century Virginia, when English newcomers found that hogs thrived in the pine and poplar forests where they could shelter from the summer sun and fatten themselves on acorns in the fall. Later, Virginia pigs enjoyed a diet of peanuts long before they became a popular American snack (tangent: peanuts are native to South America but zigzagged across the globe and reached North America via slave ships from Africa—as did many of the finest “Southern” ingredients). In the Virginia Tidewater, country ham quickly became a staple not only because of its deliciousness, but because pigs were plentiful, and curing and smoking the well-padded hind legs was a way to preserve the meat year-round. Similarly iconic hams from Parma, Italy and Serrano, Spain are close cousins, though they bear the distinctive marks of regional terroir and technique.

When I was growing up, Virginia country hams were commonly referred to as Smithfield hams, after the town near the Chesapeake Bay that was long the epicenter of ham production in Virginia. Unfortunately, the megacorporation that now bears that name was purchased by overseas investors and became infamous for environmental and safety issues. The best hams now come from family producers that have stayed small and adhered to traditional techniques. Edwards makes a very fine ham, as does Nancy “The Ham Lady” Newsom in Kentucky (yes, neighboring states make wonderful country hams, as well).

My father worshiped at the altar of the Virginia ham and mail-ordered one every year, several months in advance of Christmas. It would arrive at our home in Alexandria in a handsome cloth sack, artisanally mummified, its skin stretched taut and maroonish. But because Dad always had to take things a step further, he would embark on an additional ripening period himself. In our basement.

A quick side tour of this basement, which even now, years after my father’s passing, remains a strange, chaotic shrine to him. The house is old, and its sublevel was always meant to be an unfinished space that is home to the furnace and washing machine and other mechanics. The concrete floor becomes a riverbed every time it rains, and there’s no stopping it, so you just go with it and step over the waters. The ceiling was once crisscrossed with a network of asbestos-lined pipes, but when in the 80’s the city of Alexandria mandated expensive remediation, Dad donned an N95 mask and ripped out the friable asbestos casings with his own hands (no he was not a professional contractor—he was an ad man).

Apart from the nuts and bolts of the basement, it has a back room that was and still is a cabinet of curiosities of all things Dad: gym, art studio, wine cellar, time capsule. The first thing you see is a weight machine and a treadmill, on which he used to take leisurely strolls while watching 60 Minutes and sipping a glass of wine, a pair of beat-up leather topsiders on his feet. Staring out from behind the workout equipment is a ginormous, 80’s era photograph of himself that was presented upon his retirement; it still makes me jump every time I walk in there. Opposite the workout equipment is an analog TV propped up on a long, paint splattered workbench strewn with crusty brushes and tubes of paint, canvases and colonial-era nails and leaking cans of mineral spirits.

But of all the rare and imperfect gems that basement holds, its crown jewel is the wine cellar: a space of barely 50 square feet that contains multitudes. Wine was one of Dad’s many hobbies, and soon after we moved into the house he enclosed the back quadrant with drywall to create a hermetically sealed, climate controlled chamber lined with wooden racks, laid with threadbare oriental rugs, and lit with a brass chandelier. A deep and mysterious recess in the rear brick wall—one of those quirks of old houses—was put into service as “The Port Hole” and stored bottles of vintage port for friends. At one point, while browsing in a French flea market, Dad stumbled upon what just might have been the original lock to the Bastille—a baronial oak and iron contraption with a key the size of fireplace poker. He bought it for nothing, lugged the hefty rig home in his suitcase, and mounted it onto the cellar’s aluminum Home Depot entry door, which he painted a high-gloss crimson. He built the room 100% by himself, and it was his man cave extraordinaire. Over the years he collected wine and oenological paraphernalia: antique corkscrews and silver wine tasters, decanters and framed posters from his friend Mark’s wine bar, Willi’s, in Paris. Wooden wine crates piled up outside the door like cubist snowdrifts and no doubt made a cozy nesting spot for several generations of mice. For additional ambience he wired speakers down there that usually blasted classical music but which in August of 1997, while I happened to be visiting, delivered the unforgettable news that Princess Diana had been killed.

From the ceiling near the Port Hole hung an ancient iron “S” with a wicked sharp point; this was the ham hook. The wine cellar apparently provided the ideal environment for a ham to age, and so it did, each year for several months. As it mellowed, it lazily dripped an oily, iridescent fluid onto the floor, adding to the general patina of the room. And whatever mass the ham lost in moisture it more than replaced in mold. A marbled moldscape of fuzzy white, blue, and green grew on the exterior, cloaking the ham thickly. Sometimes, while hosting playdates, I would lead an unsuspecting friend down for a tour of the musty and mood-lit basement: through clanking pipes, past retired Halloween props and the realistic rubber rat that Mom placed among wine racks for kicks, and ending with a flourish at the ghoulish ham swaying on its hook. No one ever believed me that it was destined to be consumed.

But consumed it was, every December, after an intense soaking and scrubbing in the slop sink of our laundry room. I can’t vouch that any part of the process, or in fact anything about the basement, would pass health inspection, but after a day or two the ham would ascend spotless into the kitchen above after going a few rounds with a wire brush.

The ham cleaned up pretty nicely, and after more soaking, boiling, and a final baking, it was ready for showtime at our Christmas day open house, sliced with a surgically sharp carving knife on a silver platter with a host of flaky biscuits waiting to envelope it. I never could bring myself to eat any, as its sordid basement past was burned in my mind’s eye. I hung back slyly as the grownups clustered around the sideboard, cramming ham slices into biscuits, loading up plates of seconds, washing it all down with wine as they chatted and laughed excitedly. I thought to myself as I watched them: “Oh, you have noooo idea.”  

But it was I who had no idea. No idea that some of the best things are touched and shaped by time and mold and rot. That while the grownups really were digging the ham, they were mostly in it for the company. I got it years later, when removed from Virginia and—maybe sentimental, maybe curious—began incorporating ham biscuits into my own family’s Christmas tradition. At first, I bought it sliced to order from the excellent and sorely missed Stinky cheese shop, where you could get different kinds of ham carved by the pound. Later, I started mail-ordering entire hams that were larger than any of my babies at birth (which is saying something). We had to have a few people over to help eat the ham, and those few people became more, and the vibe really got quite merry because the thing about eating salty ham is that it makes you thirsty, and then you drink whatever is in your hand to slake the thirst, then eat more ham, refill the glass, and so on. Our friend Tim coined the term for what happens the next day: a Hamover.

A few years ago, I think it was the year Dad died, we reluctantly let this tradition slide because, honestly, it just felt too overwhelming; quiet and order were the balm that was needed in the holiday leadup. We stopped ordering a whole ham because there would be no one to help us eat it, and our home was empty of the familiar briny, primal scent of the ham soaking and simmering on the stove: a smell, it took me many years to realize, I had always connected with the holidays. This year, in our small merry pod, we will probably make a batch of sausage rolls: a tradition from my husband, Ben’s English family. They’re a delicious substitute, but they’re not quite the same.

It’s common to talk about 2020 in terms of things we’ve lost, and it’s true we’ve lost so much—some of it irreplaceable. But I also like to remind myself of what we have gained, and for me it’s a deepened appreciation for those things that were so easy to take for granted before: hugging our parents, laughing around a close table, seeing each other’s smiles, having enough people over to make nice work of a Virginia ham until all that remains is the hock and the promise of a big batch of smoky split pea soup on new year’s day. May 2021 be the year we can enjoy those things once again with renewed gratitude. May 2021 bring the Hamover back.