Hoenig - The Lodge cast iron cookbook : a treasury of timeless, delicious recipes

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

F irst and foremost, we want to offer heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the contributors who made this book possible. They include chefs, cooking school teachers and culinary educators, cooking show hosts, food writers, culinary bloggers, cookbook authors, National Cornbread Cook-off winners, the International Dutch Oven Society, Terlingua chili cook-off participants, and home cooks (including Lodge family members and employees, past and present) from all over the country and even Australia. When we came calling, asking whether they might be interested in contributing a recipe to this project, almost without exception the response was a ringing Yes! That unhesitating generosity, coupled with the culinary creativity of the individual recipes and the personal connection many of these contributors have to cast iron (please be sure to read A Cast Iron Memory and Crazy for Cast Iron stories youll find sprinkled throughout the book for their anecdotes), has made working on this book an unparalleled pleasure.

A great big shout-out needs to go to Carolyn Kellermann-Millhiser, a great-granddaughter of our companys founder, Joseph Lodge, and Barbara Clepper, who assisted us in the selection of recipes from A Skillet Full of Traditional Southern Lodge Cast Iron Recipes & Memories cookbook.

Wed also like to offer a heaping helping of thanks to our friends (more like cousins) at Martha White, who work with Lodge to make the National Cornbread Cook-off one of the premier contests in the country.

We also want to thank the team at Oxmoor House for making this project possible.

welcome to our familys table

M y great-great-grandfather Joseph Lodge would have difficulty recognizing the company he founded in 1896, with the brand presence of Lodge Cast Iron having grown to world-wide stature. We proudly continue the tradition of being a family-owned cookware manufacturer in the tiny town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee. That tradition also extends to our employees, many of whom are descendants of the original employees at Lodge.

Emerging from that familial bond is an intrinsic belief that every skillet, Dutch oven, griddle, serving piece, and grill pan should be as welcome on your familys table as it is on ours.

Our familys table stretches across generations to parents preparing countless meals for their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ofttimes using the same handed-down skillet, a moving reminder of our cookwares legacy of versatility and durability.

The table includes hundreds of thousands of camp cooking devotees attending competitions and enjoying delicious recipes that defy the senses; Scout leaders assisting youngsters earning cooking merit badges; nine-year-old 4-Hers toting skillets to the main stage to compete in a cornbread cook-off during South Pittsburgs annual National Cornbread Festival; Japanese cooks preparing fabulous cuisine; restaurant chefs the world over utilizing countless cooking techniques to prepare appetizers, entres, and desserts; and cooking show hosts with the popularity of rock stars and Oscar winners crafting an endless array of recipes with Lodge Cast Iron.

The Lodge Cast Iron family knows no boundaries. Our table is as rich in heritage as it is in flavor, and youre as welcome to the table today as folks were at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

With great appreciation for friends and customers for more than a century, and from every member of our family table to yours, we say, bon apptit, yall!

H. Lee Riddle
Great-great-grandson of Joseph Lodge
New Product Development Manager for Lodge Cast Iron
February 2012

LODGE CAST IRON: A SONG FOR A COOKS SOUL

A sk any devotee of Lodge about their favorite cookware, and you will hear a constant refrain: Cookware fads may come and go, but cast iron cookware is forever.

There are countless verses to support their claim.

In 1896, Englishman Joseph Lodge selected the tiny town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, to be home to his foundry, and today it continues to produce cast iron skillets, Dutch ovens, griddles, kettles, and grill pans. Cast iron pots and kettles became popular in the seventh and eighth centuries, with cooks the world over singing praises about their versatility and durability.

The primary quality that inspires the devotion of Lodge fans is the heat-seeking nature of cast iron, a fact known and appreciated by everyone from George Washingtons mother, Mary Ball Washington, who valued her cast iron cookware so much that its mentioned in her will; to Lewis and Clark, who brought the cookware with them on their expedition of discovery; to twenty-first-century cooks who use it to bake, sear, broil, saut, fry, braise, and stir-fry meals on their stove-tops, in their ovens, and over campfires.

Tennessee is known for many things: frontiersman Davy Crockett, the Jack Daniels Distillery, Elvis Presley, and Nashville, Americas Music City. As the sole domestic manufacturer of cast iron cookware and the oldest family-owned cookware company in the United States, Lodge shares the stage with many of our states luminaries; however, the universal acclaim for our cast iron cookware and its historical connection with our nations past arguably places us as the soul of American cooking (Thank you, thank you very much).

{ first verse }
COMMITMENT TO QUALITY

Throughout the twentieth century, Lodge survived the development of numerous new metals for several enduring reasons: Cast iron is not only a superior conductor of heat, but it also heats slowly and evenly and retains heat longer than any other cookware. In addition, cast iron cookware resists scorching and burning, and it cooks food evenlytreasured attributes when frying or searing.

Not all cast iron cookware is created equal. In recent years, several brands of inferior imported cast iron cookware have entered the market. While the price might have initially been attractive, customers have come back to Lodge, their enthusiasm for our cookware backed by the stringent quality control of the Lodge foundry. Maintaining foundry traditions established centuries earlier and using a privately held metal formula that was developed just for cookware, each piece of Lodge Cast Iron is created by pouring molten iron into individual sand molds. Lodge metal chemistry is monitored with every pour, a standard not found in any other cast iron foundry in the world. Our exacting quality control produces cookware with legendary cooking performance that becomes better generation after generation.

{ second verse }
COMMITMENT TO INNOVATION

Time moves forward. Technological advances bring about new products, and Lodge has kept apace with competition by updating, improving, and expanding the performance and use of its cast iron cookware.

For centuries, cast iron required a process called seasoning to create the much-revered easy-release, or natural nonstick, cooking surface. Early in this new century Lodge broke with cast iron cookware convention and introduced its Logic Series, with foundry seasoning, winning the Good Housekeeping Good Buy Award in 2003. Logic quickly transformed Lodge from a regional cookware manufacturer to a performer on the national stage, with cooks of all ages rediscovering the prized cooking principles of cast iron.