Cooking with Cast Iron

Cast Iron can vary considerably in price. You can pay as little as £15 for a basic raw cast iron skillet up to a couple of hundred for a Le Creuset pot which is made from pig iron and coated with a very durable, coloured, enamel glaze.

Cast Iron is strong and sturdy and can handle a lot of abuse. To damage these pans you really need to hurl it at something very hard or expose a very cold pan to an extreme heat to crack it.
They are often made of one piece of metal which means the handles can get hot but then a proteective handle holder will allow one to handle a pan. The construction means they heat up evenly and retain the heat far longer than any other material giving an unbeatable cooking performace.

Health Benefits
Using cast iron also imparts iron to you cooking which benefits any person with a low to normal iron in their blood so there is health value in cooking with cast iron.
Lastly it is very versitile. You can cook almost anything on cast iron. Pies, pizza's, vegetables, meats, breads and welsh cakes!

Seasoning
Cast iron has only one drawback, its requires care. Food will stick to any bare metal therefore it requires a seasoning all over it. A thin layer is applied and then the pot is placed in a hot oven above the smoking point of the oil used. This polymerises the oil turning it from a liquid to a solid and that surface becomes a heathly non-stick made from edible oils. Enamelled Cast Iron like Le Cresuet does not require this as you do not cook on the bare cast iron. Some raw cast iron pans like Victor Castware now come pre-seasoned and this can be re-seasoned when ever its required.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us.