Cast Iron Recipes

Popcorn And A Movie

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:07:28 +0000

OK, listen up kids! I’m going to teach you how to make amazing popcorn at home, without any special hardware other than a 12” cast iron skillet. (Which you already have, right? RIGHT?!?)

You’ll need a lid for your skillet. Having a clear lid for your skillet makes many dishes easier to cook, so here are some options:

Lodge sells a lid made just for your skillet. You can buy it from my Manly Gear store by clicking the link up top.
You can buy a universal lid from most department stores.
You can measure your skillet and find a lid from something else that fits.

It turns out the lid from one of my Wife’s old non-stick cook pots fits the Lodge perfectly so we kept it when we tossed out the non-stick silliness.

In a pinch, you can improvise a lid with common household items like tin foil.

In addition to a pot with good thermal properties and a lid, you’ll need popcorn, popcorn salt, a high heat cooking oil and butter.

Popcorn is pretty self explanatory I think. The fresher it is, the better it will taste and the more reliably it will pop. Ideally it should be stored in an airtight container like a glass jar.

Popcorn salt differs from normal salt in that it is very fine, almost like flour. This fine texture allows it to stick to the popcorn better and be distributed more evenly. You can buy it at a store, or better yet, make it yourself. A little Manly Ingenuity will provide many possible ways to grind salt into a super fine powder. At home I use a mortar and pestle to grind sea salt or kosher salt (AKA “Real Salt”). You could also use a small blender like a Magic Bullet.

You’ll need a small amount of high heat cooking oil to put into the pan. The cooking oil acts as a heat conductor, allowing heat to be conducted to the popcorn kernels better. This oil will contribute some taste to the popcorn too. Coconut oil is the ideal oil for this, with grapeseed and peanut oil being good second choices. You can use canola oil if that’s all you have, but once you’ve used up your bottle of canola, please buy something else.

Real popcorn also requires real butter. Anything which claims to taste like butter, replace butter or otherwise imitate butter is probably poisonous, or at the very least blasphemous.

While spending the weekend at our cabin, my pregnant wife and I were experiencing some popcorn cravings so I made some in the cast iron skillet.

I’ll walk you through what I did so you can see how easy it is to make amazing popcorn pretty much anywhere.

We didn’t have a mortar and pestle or a blender so I put some salt in the bottom of the skillet and ground it up using the back of a spoon. I then dumped my homemade popcorn salt into a bowl for later. I considered grinding the salt between two rocks just to prove it could be done, but I was too hungry to be playing with rocks.

I put the skillet on the stove on medium heat, added a tablespoon of cooking oil and three popcorn kernels. These kernels are my thermometer, and when they all pop it’s a sign to add the rest of the popcorn. (I use about 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels per 2 people, your consumption may be different.)

It takes a few minutes for the skillet to get up to temperature so you can use this time to melt some butter. I used a couple of tablespoons because butter is awesome.

Improvised popcorn popper. Manly Ingenuity!

When my three kernels popped I put the rest of the kernels into the skillet and covered it. I had no lid so I used a baking sheet. I picked the skillet up and gave it a shake, then put it back on heat. I repeated this process every 5-10 seconds. Shaking the skillet agitates the popcorn kernels so they don’t burn and makes sure that the un-popped kernels all make it to the bottom so they can pop.

After 2-3 minutes all of the kernels had popped. It is smart to wait about 15 second after the last explosion before you take the cover off. I didn’t do this and a kernel popped right after I took the cover off, showering me with popcorn. It was funny, but not necessary.

I put the popcorn into a bowl, then drizzled some melted butter and sprinkled some salt over it. I stirred the popcorn, and repeated the butter and salt treatment until I had decreed that it was sufficiently buttered and salted.

It was amazing of course, and took less than 10 minutes start to finish.

As you can see, there is no need to buy a popcorn popper. If you already own one, you can give it to a homeless person because you don’t need to waste cupboard space on a silly piece of hardware that doesn’t do the job any better than your trusty 12” cast iron skillet.

A good bowl of popcorn calls for a good movie to watch it with. If you want to impress someone with your refined taste in movies, I have a few suggestions that are sure to please any crowd:

Army of Darkness
Hudson Hawk
Brain Smasher – A Love Story

If You Don’t Use a Cast Iron Skillet, The Robber Might Get Away

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 06:51:25 +0000

I just got this story from NBC’s web site. I put the parts that made me chuckle in Bold:

***

Hoping to score some quick cash, a robber got a beat down while trying to steal from a local fast food joint.

It was around 6:30 p.m. Sunday when the unidentified man walked into the Subway located along the 4000-block of Rt. 413 in Bristol Township, Pa., police say. He had just bought a bag of chips when he reached across the counter and into the open cash register, police say. Not ready to let the suspect get away with the money, a 70-year-old employee grabs the man from behind and tries to subdue him. This sets off a struggle between the suspect and the restaurant’s two employees.

Surveillance video from inside the restaurant shows the suspect throw the elderly employee headfirst into a food rack before making his was behind the counter. The suspect was quickly grabbed again — this time by the restaurant’s cashier. In the struggle, the man is able to grab a preparation knife from one of the counters and begins threatening the workers, police say.

Fighting back, the elderly staffer picks up a silver grill pan and begins beating the suspect in the hands and head.

After several blows, the workers were able to knock the knife away. Eventually, the suspect broke free, grabbed a couple hundred bucks from the register and stumbled out onto the street — leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

"Obviously, if this was a cast iron skillet, then this guy would be in our custody because he’d probably be in the hospital," Bristol Twp. Police Lt. Gaetano Sava, Jr. said.

Police K9 units did follow the trail for some time, but were unable to locate the man. Both workers suffered minor injuries in the fight, but are expected to be fine, police say. "Luckily, the only one hurt here was the person perpetrating the crime," Lt. Sava said. Investigators are asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect. He’s described as a black male standing between 5-foot 7-inches and 5-foot 10-inches tall. The suspect was last seen wearing a white shirt, blue jeans and bright white sneakers. He suffered several noticeable lacerations to his face and head in the scuffle, police say. Anyone who may recognize the man is asked to call 215.785.4040.

***

Unfortunately, because the feisty 70 year old Subway employee wasn’t armed with a real skillet, there are no pictures of the perp.

Don’t let this happen to you!

Easy Summer Ice Cream

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:46:48 +0000

I love Ice Cream in the summer time. It may come as a surprise to some of you that we have summer here in Northern Canada, but it’s true. (It’s also true that I came out of the house on a July morning a few years ago to find snow on my motorcycle, but snow in July has only happened twice in my lifetime.)

The outside temperature has been around 30C (86F for you metric-challenged people) and I’ve been feeling a hankering for some Ice Cream. However, I’m not feeling a hankering for Monocalcium Phosphate, Corn Starch, Soy Lecithin, Mono And Diglycerides, Cellulose Gum, Guar Gum, Polysorbate 80, or any other stuff that I cannot pronounce. (This was taken from the ingredient list of a box of ice cream)

So I started experimenting with some ice cream recipes that don’t require an ice cream maker.

My first experiment was Banana Ice Cream. Due to some miracle of food chemistry, if you peel some bananas, freeze them, then stick them in a blender or food processor, they will turn to the consistency of ice cream. It’s pretty neat, and you can add some stuff to it like Vanilla or Peanut butter for flavouring. I considered this experiment a success, with some caveats:

Make sure you use ripe bananas, as mine were a touch under-ripe and there was a bitter aftertaste.
This was hell on my blender. I’d recommend a food processor or heavy duty blender if you’re going to try this more than once.

My second experiment was a much bigger success. I got the idea from here: TheStoneSoup.com

You’ll need:

2 1/2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cup honey
splash of vanilla
Something to turn the whipping cream into whipped cream

Blend, beat or whip 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream until it turns into whipped cream. If you care, the recipe calls for “soft peaks”. I’m not sure how much it matters.
Heat 1/2 cup honey until it turns really runny. Stir the remaining cup of whipping cream into the honey, and splash in the vanilla. Mix this honey/cream/vanilla mixture into the whipped cream, then stick it in the freezer for at least four hours.

When it has frozen you will have some nummy honey/vanilla flavoured ice cream.

I have eaten almost the entire batch by myself in the last few days, so I need to go to the pool and work off some calories.

English Style Fish & Chips, Without the English.

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:45:35 +0000

I’ve never been to England. Since they no longer rule the known world and their food is mostly terrible there isn’t much reason for me to go. My Wife and Sister have both been there and keep talking about Pub Style Fish and Chips, which is apparently the only thing the English know how to cook well. (They do have great humor though. I love Top Gear.")

It wasn’t worth a 14 hour flight just to eat some Fish and Chips and see a clock with a funny name, so I decided to make me some English Fish & Chips at home.

I used this recipe for the Fish and Chips. http://www.food.com/recipe/Real-English-Fish-and-Chips-With-Yorkshire-Beer-Batter-183399

Potatoes, before and after the Santoku got to them.

I used a bottle of Rickards Ale for the beer batter, and Grapeseed Oil for a deep frying oil. Many people use Canola oil for deep frying, but I think Canola oil will kill you dead. Mark Bittman, one of my culinary hero’s, suggests that Grapeseed oil is the best neutral cooking oil, so that’s what I used.

You don’t need a deep fryer to deep fry stuff at home, you just need a 12” cast iron skillet. A cast iron skillet holds lots of food at once, and the tremendous thermal mass of the mighty cast iron skillet does a better job of sustaining deep fryer temperatures than an electric deep fryer. We have an electric deep fryer, and after making this meal we’ve decided to garage sale it.

The only tricky thing about deep frying this way is measuring temperature. A candy thermometer is the easiest way, but you can make do with a remote probe thermometer and some ingenuity. I prefer the ingenuity method personally.

Bubbles! Notice the paper clip holding the thermometer?

My wife made homemade tartar sauce to serve with the fish and the whole meal was amazing. I’ve even reconsidered visiting England.

If I could watch Top Gear being filmed live and eat some Pub Style Fish & Chips, it might be worth a trip.

Knife Sets are for Noobs.

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:49:16 +0000

(Part two of “Sometimes Things Need To Be Chopped In Two”. )

Did some door to door sales putz sell you a 37 piece knife set? Give it to someone you secretly dislike and give yourself a slap for being a sucker. Knife sets contain a bazillions knives you don’t need and likely don’t have the ones you do need.

These are the knives you need, in order of importance:

1) 10” chef’s knife. (or if you’re really cool, a 10” Japanese Gyuto, which translates to “Cow Sword”) This knife will be the one you use most. If you have little girly arms and can’t handle a 10” knife you may use an 8” chef’s knife or a 7” Santoku, but no smaller. You can chop more things with less effort using a larger knife and proper technique. There is almost nothing you cannot do with a 10” knife but try chopping a watermelon or pumpkin in half with a 5” knife and you’ll see, size does matter.

My Hattori Gyuto. Hand finished, imported directly from Japan. Amazing knife.

2) 10” Bread knife. A sharp chef’s knife actually does a better job of cutting bread than most serrated bread knives. Still, there are reasons to have a bread knife: Most people don’t have a sharp chef’s knife, and if you use your chef’s knife for everything it will need more frequent sharpening. So I recommend you get a serrated bread knife for your kitchen. Get a 10” because it does a better job on small loaves and is the only effective way to cut a big round artisanal loaf.

3) Paring knife. There are some delicate cutting tasks that can be done easier with a small paring knife, so you might as well have one.

4) Tard knife. Keep one of your large knives from your old set of knives and let guests use it. Since people don’t seem to know much about knives anymore, they do Dumb Things with them. Don’t let anyone do anything dumb with your good knives, give them the Tard Knife instead. If you primarily use a Japanese knife you can also use the Tard Knife for things that might chip it, like cutting things with bones,

5) Boning knife. If you have a beautiful Japanese knife and cut a lot of meat with bones, a boning knife might be a good thing to have so you don’t chip your thin Japanese blade.

There are many acceptable variations of this basic knife setup. For example, I don’t personally use a bread knife or a paring knife. I use my Gyuto for everything that lesser mortals use lesser knives for. I have several Tard Knives though, to keep other people (including my wife) from using my Gyuto. (And because I love finding good knifes for cheap – my knife rack keeps changing inventory.)

My wife uses a 10” Victorinox, a 7” Messermeister Santoku, a 10” Messermeister bread knife, a 5” Victorinox paring knife, and the 7” MAC knife I found at a thrift store for $1.

My Mom’s knife rack is pictured below, with a list of the knives she uses. In each of these cases 3-5 properly chosen knives covers all your kitchen cutting needs.

Keep it sharp.

As you use a knife it’s edge will wear and eventually require sharpening. If you start with a good quality knife and don’t do Dumb Things with it, it will last longer.

Using a glass cutting board is Dumb Thing #1. Only use wood or plastic cutting boards. Glass and ceramics are harder than the steel in your blade and will dull it in no time flat. I’d like to find whoever invented glass cutting boards and beat them.

Washing knives in a dishwasher is Dumb Thing #2. Putting your knives in a dishwasher will cause the knife to bump against other hard objects, ruining the edge. The heat is also hard on the handles.

Storing knives loosely in a drawer is Dumb Thing #3. Your knives should be stored so that the knife edges do not touch anything hard. A wooden knife block is OK, a magnetic knife rack is my favourite.

This is my Mom’s knife rack. I made the rack from a leftover piece of her hardwood flooring.

Knives from left to right – paring knife, Victorinox 10” chef’s knife, MAC 9” knife, Shiki 18cm Santoku, Victorinox 10” bread knife.

The 10” Chef’s knife and 9” MAC exist to save the Santoku from bones and harm, so they serve the function of the Tard Knife and Boning Knife.

To clean your knife, put a little dish soap on the blade to help lift the grease, rub it over both sides with your fingers, a plastic brush or a dish cloth. Then scrub it and rinse under running hot water. Don’t put it into the sink, and never let the edge bang against hard things like dishes or utensils.

I think sharpening a knife is an essential life skill. If I were Emperor there’d be a class in school entitled “Knife Sharpening 101”. It would replace a useless class, like Social Studies. I’d also have courses like “Marksmanship, Motorcycle Riding, Remedial Manliness, and Basic Cast Iron Cooking.”

I digress.

I like to sharpen my knives while watching TV. Watching TV is so mindless that I can barely stand it, but sharpening a knife helps make it a tolerable way to spend time.

There are a few options for people who don’t know how to sharpen their own knives. If you bought durable but inexpensive knives like Victorinox, you can take them to someone who will sharpen them on an electric grinder-thingy. This will bring them to a reasonable level of sharpness and wear off a lot more steel than is necessary. When the knife starts getting so thin that the blade shape is no longer correct, toss it out and buy a new one.

If you bought a more expensive knife like a Japanese knife or a Messermeister, you will not want to let some clown with an electric sharpening abomination touch your knife. Find someone who knows what they are doing and will hand sharpen it, This guy is one such person:

http://www.japaneseknifesharpening.com/

If you take care of your chef’s knife it should last 6 months to a year between sharpening.

Serrated knives can be thrown out when they get dull. Paring knives are easy to sharpen, but inexpensive to buy new ones too, so it’s your call whether to re-sharpen or dispose of them.

If you take my advice you’ll have better, more functional kitchen knives than 98.2% of all households.

If you don’t take my advice you’ll have dull knives, and I’ll laugh at you while a sabre-toothed tiger is chewing on your head.

Sometimes Things Need to be Chopped in Two

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:39:46 +0000

Which is why every man needs a few good knives. If you don’t have some good knives, it’s time for us to sit down and have a little chat.

The day that one of our great–to-the-nth power grandpappies discovered that he could cut something with a sharpened piece of rock or bone was a great moment in the history of man. Prior to that we were just chewy pink creatures with pathetic teeth or claws.
You’re kind of like a Twinkie with legs to this guy.

Fast forward 12 bazillion years. The ability to cut steel, wood, grass, cloth, rubber, paper, plastic, meat and potatoes is crucial to our modern existence.

Since carrying a knife and sharpening a knife have stopped being a part of our daily routine, (or a matter of personal survival) most of us have worse cutting technology in our houses than was common a few decades ago.

I feel it my manly duty to rectify that.

First, you need a good pocket knife. I use mine constantly for opening boxes, cutting steak, making marshmallow sticks, and fending off Zombies. I have even used it for cutting a Damsel in Distress free of a rope entangling her in a log jam. You can’t get much cooler than that…

My everyday pocket knife (left) and my dress pocket knife (titanium handled beauty on the right).

This isn’t a detailed discussion of pocket knifes, so I’ll leave it at this:

If you are a man and don’t have a pocket knife, get one and carry it always. I’ve even been known to wear my pocket knife clipped to my boxer’s when I’m at home. (Look for pictures in the next issue of GQ.)

This post is about kitchen knives though.

When I began cooking I noticed that most people have dozens of kitchen knives in their kitchen, all of which are duller than a banana. This is dumb. And tragic. And wasteful. Did I mention dumb?

Here’s what you need to know about knives.

1) Most knife brands you buy in a department store are crap. I’d spit on them but it would be a waste of saliva.
2) Most knife brands you encounter in kitchen stores are overpriced and badly designed.
3) Multi-piece knife sets are for noobs.
4) No matter how good your knife is, it will eventually need sharpening.

Knife brands:

The best value in kitchen knives for most purposes is Victorinox – the Swiss Army people. They are excellent quality and quite inexpensive.

Messermeister is a step up in price and has beautiful fit and finish. If you want classy looking knives, these are great.

If you’re willing to take good care of it and want the best cutting experience you can get, buy a Japanese chef’s knife. A good Japanese knife will make a European knife feel like a baseball bat.

Japanese knives require much more care than most of us are used to, so you’ll want to do some research before committing to one.

This place rocks for Japanese Knives: JapaneseChefsKnife.com. You can get a good quality Japanese knife starting at around $100, and they ship it to you in just a few days.

Overpriced and badly designed:

The knives you buy in the local department store have bad steel and bad blade designs. The knives you buy in kitchen specialty stores have better steel, but often still have bad blade designs, come in sets with knives you will never need, and cost too much for what you get.

One common feature of many expensive knives is the bolster. This is that thick piece of metal where the blade and handle meet. The bolster used to be a sign that the knife was forged. At one time, forged steel knives were stronger than stamped steel knives so people would look for the bolster as a sign of quality. This changed several decades ago, but many haven’t heard the news:

Good stamped knives now rival forged knives for strength.
Cheap stamped knives are now being made with bolsters.
Forged knives can be made without a bolster.
Bolsters make a knife harder to use and sharpen.

I don’t care whether a knife is stamped or forged, but I won’t buy a knife with a bolster.

All else being equal, thin bladed knives cut better than thick bladed ones. They are also lighter, which most people find feels better when wielding a large knife. Thick bladed knives are stronger, but if the steel is good quality blade strength will never be an issue in a kitchen knife.

I bought a knife in a thrift store for $1. It’s a MAC 7” filleting knife. Ugly as stink, but an excellent thin Japanese steel blade. I sharpened it, then my wife stole it from me.

I found a knife underneath a kitchen cabinet in a house we were remodelling. It’s a 6” Santoku looking-thing from a Japanese company I’ve never heard of. Judging from the age of the cabinet it was under it is 20+ years old. I sharpened it up and use it when I go camping, and my wife threatens to steal it too.

While at an estate sale in California I found a 9” Mac knife for $5. I sharpened it and gave it to my Mom. My Mom used to have a drawer full of knives that were all dull, and used to claim that she found large knives unwieldy. Now she uses the 9” Mac for almost everything. She even grips it properly, which I couldn’t get her to do with other knives.

These knives all have a few things in common. They were thin, light, bolsterless, and have excellent steel. I had sharpened them to razor sharpness. They were also ridiculously cheap.

The Victorinox and Messermeister knives I recommend are also bolsterless and have good steel. (Some Messermeister models have bolsters. Avoid them.)

My wife won’t take me to those home cookware parties anymore. When they bring out their overpriced, bolstered, thick bladed, dull knives and talk about great they are I boo and throw vegetables at the hostess. I would pit the no-name brand knife I found under my kitchen cabinet against one of these knives in a showdown.

Comparing my limited edition, hand finished Japanese Gyuto to a Kitchen Gadget Party knife is like comparing a light-sabre to a sharp pointy stick.

Since this post has gotten quite long, I’m going to split it in two.

Buns of Steel!

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:15:12 +0000

There is no organization that certifies Master’s of Cast Iron (or at least, none that I can speak about), but there is an organization called the “Iron Butt Association” that certifies Iron Butt Rides. An Iron Butt Ride is a motorcycle endurance ride. The minimum level for admission into the IBA is a “Saddlesore1000” , a ride of 1000 miles (1600 km) in 24 hours. I’ve been wanting to accomplish this for a long time, and decided to go for it this summer.

My Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird – capable of warp 9.7

A friend of mine and I left at 6:00 PM, drove 800+ km, grabbed some breakfast and a 15 minute nap, then drove back home. With stops for fuel, stretching, traffic slowdowns, road construction, rain, fog and wildlife, we made it home in just under 24 hours. It was a lot of fun.

Obviously there was no cooking involved on this trip, but we did need to keep our bodies fuelled up along with our bikes. While I normally advocate as much “real food” as possible, this was an occasion where manufactured food-like substances made more sense.

I consumed carb gels and electrolyte replacement drinks at every stop.
Consuming carbs stops your body from dumping tryptophan into your blood stream while you are exerting yourself. Tryptophan is a protein which tells your body it’s time for a nap.

I also took a bottle of Omega-3 capsule and popped several of those at every stop. I’m a believer in the magic of Omega-3’s. They improve mood, mental function, have anti-inflammatory effects, and even reduce the effects of PMS. Isn’t that magical?

After returning home I consumed protein shakes made with whey protein to help my body recover. Whey protein is also magical stuff. It is absorbed by your body more readily than any other source of protein, it has immune enhancing properties, and mitigates the mental and physical effects of stress.

I use two sources of whey protein regularly: Isagenix (Disclaimer, I sell Isagenix) and Biotest. I use a lot of manufactured food products from these two manufacturers to keep me going when I don’t have time to eat properly.

With proper gear and fuel for your body, an adventure like this goes from being completely un-possible to merely difficult. I recommend it to anyone… who’s insane.

Making Non-Stick Pans the Old School Way

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:12:05 +0000

Much has been written about seasoning cast iron cookware. Much nonsense, I mean. If you read a dozen articles about seasoning cast iron you will find each one gives different advice and a different explanation for why it works.

I found this article, which gives the best seasoning method I’ve used so far. (It does contains some inaccuracies in the chemistry of how a non-stick surface is formed.)

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/

before and after using Sheryl’s seasoning method

In a nutshell, the author advocates seasoning with flaxseed oil at a temperature higher than the oil’s smoke point, and using multiple coats to get a nice thick layer of polymerized fats.

She also makes an interesting observation about why using lard worked better for our grandparents than it does today. Lard used to have higher omega-3 content than it does today due to differences in pig’s diet’s 50 years ago.

Grass fed and free range animals have higher omega-3 content than grain and corn fed animals. As a species, we used to consume far more omega-3’s and less Omega-6’s, and the reduction of omega-3 and increase in omega-6 fats in our diet is one of the factors in many of our current health issues.

I’ve hinted at this in previous posts. When I talk about eating furry forest creatures, it’s not just metaphor. Wild game is a better source of omega-3 fats than meat raised in a feedlot. (It’s also a worse source of antibiotics and hormones, so if you crave antibiotics and hormones, wild game may not be for you.) When I freak out about eating margarine, it’s not just ‘cuz it tastes like poo, but also because it wreaks havoc on our omega-3 to omega-6 ratios.

I feel myself getting hulked up for a rant so I’m going to go drink some Bottle Caps, calm down, and get back to our regularly scheduled silliness:

One difficulty people have getting their cast iron cookware properly seasoned comes from our ideas about cleanliness.

Chances are our grandparents just wiped their cast iron skillet out with a cloth after cooking with it. Any micro-organisms that try to grow on their skillet would get a nasty surprise next mealtime when they put the skillet on the wood stove to preheat. They would have very rarely, if ever, had to re-season their cast iron cookware.

It doesn’t sit well with people of my generation or younger to not clean their cookware completely after every meal, but vigorous cleaning in hot soapy water can remove the layers of polymerized fats that form the seasoning of a cast iron skillet. Once properly seasoned, a cast iron pan can handle a certain amount of abuse like washing with soap or cooking with acidic foods, but we can only do that to the seasoning occasionally if we want it to stay happy.

This is what I do to balance what is best for the seasoning and best for my modern sense of cleanliness:

I wipe my skillet out with an paper towel while it is still warm after I cook with it.
If there is stuff stuck to it I scrape it off with a plastic scraper thingy (an old credit card would work fine)or scrub it with coarse salt.
If I get something gooey on it (like Zombie brains) I pour hot water into it and scrub it with a plastic bristled brush.
If I used water to clean it I put it on the stovetop or into the oven to dry.
When I’m finished cleaning it I wipe it with an lightly oiled paper towel and hang it up on my pot rack.

In summary, my cast iron seasoning advice is:

Season it initially using Sheryl Canter’s method
Use the bare minimum of cleaning necessary to get the skillet looking clean, black and shiny after every meal
Cook Nummy Furry Forest Creatures in it as often as you can

The Staff of Life, +5 to Sex Appeal

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:28:30 +0000

“Staff of Life” may sound like a magical item wielded by Nerdgeeks playing a Sword and Sorcery kind of game, but it is actually a pre-biblical term for bread. Bread does have nearly magical powers though.

Bread is the ultimate comfort food. It smells great, and can be eaten with any meal at any time of day. It is a crucial ingredient in such classic dishes as PBJ Sammiches, grilled cheese sammiches, french toast, bread pudding, cinnamon toast, and bread and water.

There is also some evidence that the smell of bread acts as an aphrodisiac.

Clearly any food that is this awesome needs to be in your arsenal of manly food.

You might think making bread is time consuming, messy, and tricky, but I’ve got you covered.

Here a recipe for a Ciabatta variation, called One-Minute Bread. It comes from Lifehack.org, and the author does such a good job of describing the process that even I couldn’t improve upon it..

One Minute Ciabatta Bread

This bread takes just a few minutes to mix, sits around getting yeasty and nummy for 8-12 hours, then gets tossed in the oven for 20-25 minutes. The author bakes his bread on a pizza stone or baking sheet but of course I make mine in a 12” cast iron skillet.

So if you know you’re going to have a guest over for supper, you can whip it up in the morning before you head to work, throw it in the oven when you get home and 25 minutes later your house will smell like fresh baked bread.

You might even get lucky. If you don’t, there’s always sammiches.

Bisquick is Not Food

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:46:02 +0000

I went camping this weekend with some friends and learned a few things that I felt important to pass on to my loyal readers.

I had a box of Bisquick in the pantry so I brought it along. Some dim memory from my childhood told me that Bisquick was camping food. Of course I used to eat mud pies, so childhood memories need to be taken with a grain of salt.

I tried to make pancakes according to the instructions on the box and the results were, well, sub-optimal. They looked like pancakes but tasted liked baking soda flavoured sponges. There was some Bisquick left over but I couldn’t think of what I could use it for except maybe killing ants so I tossed it. Next time I’ll mix the dry ingredients for Aunt Faith’s Pancakes and take it with me instead.

Making Bisquick pancakes and drinking water, wishing it was real pancakes and a Bottle Cap

To make the situation worse someone had bought ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter!” instead of butter. Well, guess what? I can believe it’s not butter! Gak!

I don’t cook with margarine or eat margarine voluntarily. It probably isn’t good for you (which I may discuss in another post) and it tastes like poo if you’re used to butter. Real men cook with butter!

I also learned that Bottle Caps are nummy. A Bottle Cap is an alcoholic beverage that is supposed to taste like a Root Beer candy. I rarely drink, and usually stop at one drink ‘cuz it makes my head feel funny. (That’s right folks, I write this stuff sober!) However, my sister-in-law made me a Bottle Cap, and another Bottle Cap, and then another Bottle Cap… and then I tried some Rickards Red Ale, and that was nummy too.. and the rest of the evening was very entertaining. In retrospect I should have had the Bottle Caps before eating the Bisquick pancakes.

So, to recap, we’ve learned that:

Bisquick is not food
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter is Poo
Bottle Caps are nummy

Which is enough education for one day I think.

Well, almost. You need to know how to make a Bottle Cap in case someone tries to feed you Bisquick pancakes and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Illegal” margarine.

Bottle Cap

1/2 oz Sour Puss® Raspberry Liqueur
1/2 oz Root Beer Schnapps
1 1/2 oz 7-Up® Soda
1/2 oz Margarita Mix

Mix the Sour Puss and Root Beer Schnapps together in a shot glass
Mix the 7-Up and margarita mix together in a highball glass
Drop the shot glass into the highball glass, and serve

You’ll notice the instructions call for you to place the shot glass into the larger glass before drinking. As near as I can figure this is to make it more entertaining for other people because you will look like a ‘tard when the shot glass hits you in the nose or splashes your face. With my hyper-intelligent brain I deduced that simply pouring the ingredients together yielded the same taste, minus looking like a tard.