Matza Greg - One Pan to Rule Them All: 100 Cast-Iron Skillet Recipes for Indoors and Out

Good Books is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation. Visit our website at www.goodbooks.com. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. Cover design by Laura Klynstra Print ISBN: 978-1-68099-130-7 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68099-141-3 Printed in China Table of Contents What Makes a Cast-Iron Skillet So Lovable? Lets face it. If your kitchen had just one pan, one single tool to accomplish any cooking concoction of which you dare to dream, it should be a pretty awesome one, right? The chosen one, the golden child, the king of the ring, the one true pan to rule them all! It should be a cast-iron skillet! Cast iron has been used for cooking since the Han Dynasty in China. Thats more than 2,000 years of skillet cornbread! Well, perhaps not cornbread specifically, but you get the idea.

Cast-iron cookware is a proven hero, never goes out of style, and cannot be destroyed, despite how you feel about yourself as a home cook. Now that youve given in to our hype and acquired a skillet of this magic material, heres a pat on the back in the form of our top eleven reasons why youve made an incredibly good decision: 1. It is virtually indestructible. When cooking with a nonstick pan, youre advised not to use metal implements. Heck, sometimes youre even told not to use a wooden spoon! What gives? Free the spatula! This skillet will not scratch, so you can use any type of cooking utensil. Throw away the worries with cast iron.

But I need a nonstick surface, you say? Once a skillet is properly seasoned, the skillet becomes nonstick. And that nonstick gets non-stickier the more you use it. Ta-da! 2. It can be used on any heat source. Unless youre trying to cook in a small forge in the garage, cast iron cannot be destroyed. It can go from a gas or electric stovetop to the oven and back again without skipping a beat.

Even over the campfire, you ask? Absolutely. In fact, weve dedicated a whole chapter to outdoor cookin! 3. It retains heat like no other cooking vessel. Keeping food warm ahead of a meal no longer requires a low-temperature oven or flame. Has Thanksgiving prep got your kitchen in a tornado-like state? At least your andouille cornbread dressing is nice and toasty at the table instead of taking up valuable oven room. Freedom! 4.

In a word: Browning. Have you ever heard the now ubiquitous phrase, Golden, brown, and delicious or GBD? Thats one of the hallmarks of cast-iron cooking. Since youll experience consistent heat on every surface, your steaks will have that to-die-for sear, your crispy hash browns will rival any greasy spoon, and your pineapple upside-down cake will have that luscious sheen youve only seen on television. 5. Its very, very talented. This book will show you how to saut, shallow fry, deep fry, sear, bake, braise, stew, and even boil all in one piece of hardware.

Specialized kitchens use seven different devices for what you can accomplish with just one cast-iron dream machine. Shes the best multitasker money can buy. Speaking of which... 6. Its cheap. Your first cast-iron skillet will set you back about $20, compared to an acceptable entrylevel, aluminum-clad saut pan at $100.

Since you can use cast iron to do everything mentioned in #5 above, you might have a single vessel in your arsenal, but youll be able to produce myriad dishes for less than half the cost of a night out at the movies! OK, you still have to buy ingredients, but you get the point! 7. It provides a bit of a workout. Cast-iron cooking is terrific exercise. The skillet is heavy; moving it from stovetop to oven can work the biceps, deltoids, and, depending on where your oven is, the glutes. We kid, but the truth is you hardly ever have to move the skillet during cooking, and accidental tipping of the pan is almost impossible. It does get hot, and keeps heat well.

Always wear a shirt, especially when frying! 8. Cleanup is a piece of cake. (Before you even ask, of course you can bake a cake in a cast-iron skillet.) If your dish doesnt simply slide out of the pan and bits of food are left behind, they will easily lift off. In the case of particularly sticky fare, a bit of stiff brush action, water, and wiping will usually do the trick. Over time and use, a coating (a.k.a. 9. 9.

Its low fat. As mentioned above, with repeated use cast iron will develop a coating that acts like the (ahem, inferior) nonstick coating of nonstick pans. This means that over time youll use less oil to cook. In some cases you may not even need oil at all to obtain a perfect sear, flawless stir-fries, or no-mess scrambles. 10. It gives you superpowers.

Studies have shown that cast-iron cooking has a cool benefit of adding the iron you need directly into the dishes you cook. Thats right! This book can help increase your immunity and give you energy! 11. Its the gift that keeps on giving. Cast-iron cookware has been known to pass between generations of family cooks. You are the beneficiary of the work your grandmother did in her cast-iron skillet. Your kids gain from years of seasoning in your kitchen, and so on down the road.

It may just be the perfect wedding gift. The longer a cast-iron skillet remains in use, the more soul it gives to the latest dish. Every dish that is cooked in a well-loved cast-iron skillet owes a bit of its spirit and depth to every dish that came before. Be a good person. Cook in cast iron. A Simple Skillet-Buying Guide For once, the phrase, You get what you pay for, works in your favor.

When it comes to cast-iron skillets, the simple, inexpensive ones are the best. Still, there are a few questions to ask yourself before your purchase: Where can I buy a cast-iron skillet? This list may be surprising. Over the last two decades, cooking at home has exploded, hopefully only figuratively, due to TV cooking programs and food-related competition shows. Everyone seems to be getting into the cooking supply game. Rural lifestyle retailers Specialty retailers Outdoor lifestyle retailers Value retailers Hardware retailers Homeware retailers Kitchen supply retailers Department retailers Online mega-retailers Enameled versus Non-enameled When shopping for a cast-iron pan, you may run into several models with white and/or colored enamel on them. If the enamel is only on the outside of the pan, it wont impact the cooking.