Adventures and misadventures with a cast iron skillet

The holiday season is over and all the gifted items are put away at our household — well almost.

It’s also below freezing here in Iowa and we are spending a lot of time indoors which leaves plenty of time for cooking — ironic as we are also trying to get back on the exercise bandwagon.

One of our favorite gifts this season was a cast iron skillet. I can’t believe we’ve been married five years and have never had one!

This skillet is amazing. Ten inches of heavy, black metal waiting to infuse my dishes with delicious goodness.

Unfortunately I’ve already partially ruined it — no surprise there — but I’m confident we can still make this thing work.

Lesson #1 — DO NOT leave your cast iron skillet soaking in the kitchen sink overnight. It only took us two uses to make this mistake.

Our skillet came pre-seasoned so it was ready to go. So we (and by “we” I mean JT, I was at workout class) popped it on the stove and got to work on the simplest steak recipe we could find. The ribeye’s were delicious! Of course they were homegrown from Spencer Farm’s so how could they not be?

With one success under our belt we quickly started planning our second dish. Hello Skillet Bacon Mac’ n Cheese.

As you can tell from the photo this dish was also a success. Warning: this dish is not workout or diet plan approved.

You will literally have several pots in the fire when making this. And I would suggest using a larger cast iron skillet if you have one, because inevitably the creamy cheese sauce will run down the side of your skillet. And then you will be tempted to soak your skillet to get that cheese off — BAD IDEA.

So we left the skillet soaking overnight. And into the next day, at which point a coworker mentioned you can’t soak cast iron or it will rust, oops.

I rushed home to dump out the water and check the damage. Half of the seasoning was off of bottom of the skillet – good thing I got there when I did!

A little oil and a dry towel made it somewhat better, so all was not lost. But we’ll be taking extra special care of this skillet from now on, including reading the care tips of the Lodge website. Were those there before?

Do you have an amazing cast iron skillet recipes we should try?