Its ability to handle high heat and open flames while maintaining even cooking is a game-changer for outdoor meals, from sauces to making even canned soups or chili feel upscale.
Yes, cast iron is ideal for making fond for pan sauces.
Making the Sauce
Because I want to encrust the bottom of the pan with a golden, crackly fond, I use a cast iron or heavy-gauge stainless steel skillet over high heat to maximize browning. Fond is created through sticking, so save your nonstick cookware for omelettes and eggs.
Foods that are highly acidic, such as tomatoes, citrus fruits, and vinegar-based dishes, should be avoided when cooking with cast iron. The acidity can cause the iron to leach into the food, resulting in a metallic taste.
Yes. Tomato sauce is okay to simmer for an hour in cast iron, as the acidic tomato content will not scratch or damage it. Acids are actually what make metal safe to cook with, but don't use boring pots and pans that are high-carbon steel or aluminum because they'll react with acid and create a lot of off flavors.
Folks are cautious about mixing cast iron and acidic ingredients for good reason. If your pan doesn't have a good base seasoning, you can run into trouble. To avoid stripping the seasoning, we recommend choosing a well-loved (read: well-seasoned) pan for recipes that call for tomatoes, citrus juices, or wine.
Tomato sauce is fine in the pan for shorter periods, but the acids in tomato could react with the aluminum if you tried to make a long-simmered tomato sauce in it. Better to use a stainless-steel or enameled pot for something like that.
Eggs fall into the category of sticky foods that are not ideal for cast iron skillets that haven't built up their seasoning yet. While cast iron can become non-stick with sufficient use over time, a newer skillet will almost certainly cause your eggs to stick to its porous surface.
All cast iron, whether natural or coated, has a much higher carbon concentration than other popular food-safe metals like stainless steel and aluminum. This means that natural cast iron is more susceptible to corrosion because when carbon combines with oxygen and water, rust forms.
Cast iron cookware's disadvantages include its heavy weight, the need for seasoning and maintenance, potential reaction with acidic foods, and lack of slickness for delicate cooking tasks.
Testing Acidic Ingredients in Cast Iron
THE RESULTS: Our tasters couldn't detect any metallic flavors in any of sauces after 15 minutes. But after 30 minutes, we noted a metallic taste in the sauces cooked in both cast-iron pans—and far more of it in the sauce from the unseasoned skillet.
Once your pan is pre-heated, add a little oil or fat. Then simply add your food! (Note: if you want to use butter, start with oil, and then add butter right before you add your food.)
You can cook chicken breasts in a cast iron skillet entirely on the stovetop. We recommend cooking over medium heat, and flipping every few minutes to ensure even cooking on both sides. Add barbecue sauce once the internal temperature reaches 155°F and cook and flip frequently until the sauce is slightly charred.
But a skillet has other uses, too, and it is considered to be one of the most versatile pieces of cookware in the kitchen. For example, a stainless steel skillet is great for searing meat, chicken, or fish, or for making simple pasta or pan sauces.
Rinsing your skillet with cold water while cleaning off rust will help prevent new rust from forming quickly. After scrubbing and rinsing your skillet, make sure you dry it thoroughly by heating it for a few minutes on the stovetop. Once dry, coat the skillet all over in a thin layer of seasoning oil.
Common cooking oils like olive oil will gradually produce seasoning, but won't be as effective as grapeseed oil. Canola, other vegetable oils, and shortening are a little better.
Acidic foods (unless you make it snappy)
Acidic foods (like tomato sauce, wine-braised meats, etc.) enter the red zone when they spend too much time cooking in the skillet.
Cooking with cast iron can increase iron intake, potentially benefiting iron-deficiency anemia. However, frying in cast iron can lead to the formation of trans fats. Teflon (PTFE) coating in nonstick cookware has raised health concerns due to the release of toxic gases and chemicals at normal cooking temperatures.
According to some of the world's best chefs, cast-iron pots and pans are durable, long-lasting, and make food taste better. We have ancient China to thank for cast-iron pans. In fact, the earliest cast-iron pieces were found in a cemetery in Shanxi, northern China, dating all the way back to the 8th century BC.
The takeaway? It's safe to cook tomato- and wine-based sauces in cast iron, but you should save the vinegary pan sauces for stainless-steel pans—or dilute the vinegar (or citrus) with water or stock.
Why do Scrambled Eggs Turn Green In a Cast Iron Skillet? This harmless but unappealing color change is the result of a chemical reaction between iron in the pan and sulfur in egg whites. Why do Boiled Eggs Turn Green?
Doesn't. You can do almost nothing to hurt a cast-iron pan itself. It can destroy your seasoning, though, and require you to "fix" it by thoroughly cleaning and re-seasoning it.
Acidic ingredients like tomatoes, lemons, and wine can be cooked in a well-seasoned cast iron pan for short amounts of time. You can sauté cherry tomatoes in cast iron, but don't try making a long-simmering tomato sauce.
Stock pots
A stock pot is considerably larger than a saucepan and will be a better solution for when you need to cook large amounts of liquids, such as a soup or a stew.