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ROUSES.COM
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cast iron
I
t is the quintessential icon of the American kitchen: The cast iron
skillet. Durable, reliable, utilitarian and versatile, its shape and
image are instantly recognizable symbols of the hearth and heartland.
Cast iron pots and pans are timeless, tough and traditional. Their
heft is unapologetic. What other household item can stop a bullet,
anchor a canoe, stave off a wild animal attack, drive a railroad spike
and
fry a perfect egg?
Try that with one of those shiny, imported copper pans you’ve got
dangling like Christmas ornaments from your overhead pot-rack.
Cast iron skillets don’t dangle. They clatter. They bang. And when
the mojo is just right — they sizzle.
What proper Southern homestead has not at least once been
filled with the warm and comforting aroma of cornbread, bacon,
blueberry cobbler or fried catfish rising from that sturdy stovetop
companion?
They’re as suitable to a backwoods campfire as a six-burner Viking
range. They serve with equal stoicism the rich and the poor, black
and white, city dweller and country squire.
You can pony up $120 for a tinted Le Creuset Dutch oven at
Williams Sonoma, but you’ll get no lesser quality from a 40-year-
old basic black model from Sears for ten bucks at a garage sale.
That is, if you’re lucky enough to find somebody foolish enough to
sell one.
More often, cast iron cookware is passed through generations, like
family-crested china or monogrammed linens; the only difference
being that cast iron skillets are something you can actually use.
In fact, the manufacturers of cast iron pots and pans — the few
that remain — are operating under a terrible business plan: They’re
making a product that never needs repair or replacing.
Cast iron utensils are revered, even coveted when estates are settled,
and they last longer than any marriages into which they are gifted.
Like an old pair of shrimp boots or a collection of vinyl LPs, they’re
the sorts of curious objects that folks from around here inexplicably
make precious room for in their luggage
when they evacuate for a hurricane.
Which is superfluous, because neither flood
nor fire can destroy them.
Like the mousetrap, the teakettle and the
paper clip, the design and construction of
a cast iron skillet or Dutch oven cannot
be improved upon. Their pedigree is
unimpeachable. Cast iron skillets are not
trendy. They’re neither retro nor uber nor
meta nor anything that ends with “–ista.”
They’re stoic and unironic. They’re
the Reader’s Digest, Gary Cooper and
Louisville Slugger of kitchen cookware.
Cast iron pots can be so ubiquitous and
beloved as to be like part of the family, in
the same way that a pet is, for instance,
except they require more exquisite care.
What’s great about a cast iron skillet is that you don’t clean it — you
“season” it. That’s the term folks use.
You do this by vigorously rubbing salt, herbs, oils or various
combinations thereof into the iron. This prevents rust. Keeps the
moisture out. More importantly, it traps the magic in.
How sublime this process is: Every other article and brand of
cookware is cleaned by removing the food from it. To clean a cast
iron skillet, you actually rub more food into it.
In this way, cast iron cookware actually preserves the DNA of your
family’s greatest gatherings and celebrations over the decades, the
generations. Each time a cast iron skillet is used, some trace amount
of the meal will leach its way into the porous iron, forever sealed in
time and memory.
“Each time a Southern cook hefts a skillet to the stovetop, he or
she is not alone,” wrote John T. Edge, of the Southern Foodways
Alliance. “Trapped within the iron confines of these skillets and
stewpots are the scents and secrets of a family’s culinary history.”
John T. Edge knows from what he speaks. And like everything else
distinctly Southern, cast iron skillets cause storytellers to wax poetic
and mystic.
If you Google the term “Ode to a cast iron skillet,” you will get
several pages of testimonials online. Only a Grecian urn can top
that. But try making a decent Shrimp Creole in a Grecian urn and
see what happens.
• • •
Cast iron cookery’s lineage dates back to the Greeks and Romans
and such. Wikipedia tells us it has been traced back to China’s Han
Dynasty in 200 BC. And we know it’s what Shakespeare’s witches
used in “Macbeth” to boil and toil their troubles away.
And cast iron cookware had a good, long run for centuries,
eventually becoming the foremost and dominant accessory in
Southern kitchens in the 19
th
century but the crazy thing is, it
almost disappeared in the latter half of the 20
th
in all but the most
steadfastly traditional households.
It was the Era of Convenience, the 1960s
and ‘70s, when items like toaster ovens,
food processors and Teflon cookware were
introduced as saviors to the American
Kara Rouse
My cast iron skillet, which was given
to me by my grandmother, is my
most cherished wedding gift. It’s not
glamorous, like china or crystal. It’s
not displayed in a cabinet and case;
we keep it on the stove, because we
cook in it almost everyday. Cast iron is
the perfect wedding gift, because like
marriage, it just gets better. And with
love and attention, it will last a lifetime.