Sunday, November 1, 2009
Sunny Side Up
I get emails from people telling me they love their cast iron but they still use some foo-foo "non-stick" pan for eggs.
Why?
I'm frying an egg in an old Wagner Ware Pie Logo #3 to show how slick these can be even when they are not completely seasoned. As you can see the skillet is more of a greyish brown color than jet black but it works just fine.
I used a half tablespoon of butter, could have used less and had the same results. Very little prodding is needed to get the egg swirling around in the pan. After removing the chunk of egg shell.
Use your iron more often and it will be as nonstick as you could hope for.
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22 comments:
I just cleaned and seasoned two of my #8 wagner pans.Ones is a 1058a and the other is just marked a 10 1/2 inch skillet.Both pans were cleaned and seasoned at the same time but the older 1058a skillet doesn't stick at all when the other sticks alittle.notice anything like this before?Also I would like to know out of all of your cast iron skillets who makes the lightest #8?Thanks
That was a great video.
Earlier tonight, I suggested to Kathy that we have breakfast for dinner. Bacon and omelets. I used my grandmother's little skillet (7 or 8"), using butter just like you. They come out so perfect that I think she'd be proud.
I can't imagine insulting perfectly good eggs with teflon.
Gregg:
I am Inspired. I just put the first seasoning on my Griswold #6 (small logo) last night. It was the first "old iron" I have ever had and was going to wait until I had a few weeks of seasoning to try eggs but I will use it this weekend for sure!
JD
Anon #1 - Yes I have noticed that the older iron (the 1058a is older than the skillet with the size marking) is slicker. Some people think I'm nuts but I know what I see.
Lightest usually equals oldest. Erie, Sidney and Wapaks seem to be among the lightweights of the skillet world.
Rick - Strong work!
Anon #2 - Go for it. Every time you use it it'll get a little better.
Great post-I am guilty of using a non-stick pan instead of my trusty cast iron one when cooking eggs, but that's all changed now!
Oh, and great tune-now how about some Soggy Bottom boys!
Here I sit, with my morning coffee,almost mesmerized as I patiently and happily watch Greg fry an egg, to the lovely strains of one of my favorite tunes.
Who needs transcendental meditation or Tai Chi when they've got this? :-)
Gregg:
The pan handled the eggs like a pro. The teflon pan may have to find another home.
JD
Andrew - You know the album
Becky - Thanks
Doesn't Tai Chi make the exploding Paula Dean CI?
JD - Cool, park that skillet on the stove, use it a lot, and it'll really start to work well in short order.
Butter? Hmmph. I just fry bacon in my Wapak, then cook the eggs in the bacon grease. Just like my grandmother did when I grew up. (and "baste" the tops of the eggs with the grease while they're cooking). Who needs butter?
Hey
Thanks to this post, I just fried my first egg in my cast iron skillet-fantastic (and it probably didn't hurt that they were fried in bacon drippings!)
I could see it working with a sunny-side-up egg, but what about scrambled eggs, when the butter underneath gets essentially whipped into the eggs themselves, and you no longer have that lovely lake of butter to gingerly cook on top of?
Meira, Check back in a couple days and I'll do another video with scrambled eggs.
Scrambled eggs do require a well seasoned pan.
Help!!
It's not making eggs in the skillet that baffles me, it's preparing bacon! For some reason, (prolly PEBCAK) I always kill bacon in my cast iron skillets. And these are good, well seasoned ones too, handed down thru the generations. I try to cook on low, nothing works! Ack!
Thank you. Love your blog :)
I have a problem with my cast iron pan. I find that if I try to cook eggs there are some black specks or if I run a paper towel on the pan, there is some black on the towel. I mainly use the pan to cook steaks or deep fry and afterward I run it under hot water and scrub with a sponge until the water runs clear. Is it just that I am not cleaning it well? Should I be using a mild soap solution or scrubbing harder?
Thanks for the Mother Maybelle. Oh and all the info too.
I just found this blog and I like it. I am a big fan of cast iron cookware. But isn't the point of teflon cookware so that you don't have to drown your eggs in butter or bacon fat?
For those of us who want to switch to cast iron for health reasons, what would you suggest we use in place of a rubber spatula, which can leach chemicals into our foods when exposes to high heat. Can you use metal utensils with cast iron? I would imagine that's what they used in the olden days...
Lisa - Wood or stainless are fine.
Sean - Originally they pimped PFTE coatings (like Teflon) purely for their nonstick properties. Once the low fat craze hit they emphasized using less fat for cooking.
Given some of the nasty stuff used to make Teflon and recent reports of it "off gassing" when used in cooking I stay away from it.
Smeds -Thanks
zaweats - Heat the cleaned pan in your oven to 500 degrees. Leave it in there for 30 minutes and then wipe it with some oil. It sounds like your seasoning isn't hard enough if it is flaking off.
Anon - Bacon has a lot of sugar which likes to stick.
Want to try a restaurant trick? Put your bacon on a sheet pan and bake it at 425 until it is as crisp as you like it. It comes out perfect and nice and straight too.
I can't believe I just watched an egg fry and I don't get to eat or serve it.
Just found your blog from a post on Serious Eats. I have two cast iron skillets that are always on my stove. I also inherited a treasure trove upon my Dad's passing. I use them for everything from smoke chip holders on my gas grill to heat reflectors in my electric oven (for reflecting heat back onto the top of a pizza).
Two questions, what is your opinion on enameled cast iron, alla LaCrueset? Have you ever used steel skillets?
climbhighak - You hooked me with your Pho article.
I like enameled cast iron for long slow cooking with acidic ingredients. IMHO it is not well suited to high heat applications.
I've used both carbon and stainless steel skillets and like them both for certain things. I actually find really old cast iron feels and behaves like carbon steel.
I recently ran across your post and enjoy it for several reasons. I also have a collection of inherited cast iron utensils (pictured on my blog). And I ALSO used to live in the wilderness, albeit the extreme Northeast (North Woods on the Canadian border).
I tried to send my readers to your site by way of a link to your homepage, but MySpace won't permit me to do so, issuing a 'Warning' that your site is a 'spamming site'. What the hell are they talking about?
DocChuck - I don't know what they are talking about re: spamming.
If my gmail account was being used for spam I'm sure Google would whack it pretty quickly.
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