Cooking: High Quality Cookware

Cast iron is a great material for cookware. If you handle it properly it will last you a lifetime (and longer!). The only exception when it’s time to get rid of your cast iron cookware is when it has cracks, but it’s difficult for cast iron to crack, so I think that won’t happen to you (I’ll tell you later what pretty much the one thing is that can make your cast iron cookware crack and how to avoid it).

First step: Seasoning! Now this is what many people dread. The seasoning (also known as curing). Yes, it is a bit of work, but then you’ll have a great piece of cookware for life. I think it’s less work to take good care of your cookware than having to buy a new piece of cookware every couple of years.
Basically what you do is you put oil, grease or shortening in your pan, griddle or dutch oven and spread it all over the inner surface. Then you bake it so that the oil can get inside the tiny pores that are in the cast iron material. Another way to season your cast iron cookware is to put it on the stove, heat it up and then put oil in it while it’s still hot and on the heating stove. Spread the oil all over the surface and let it cool down and lightly wipe of excess oil with a paper towel.

Once it’s properly seasoned you should not boil water in it - because the boiling water might wash off some of the oil particles that are in the surface and thus damage the seasoning.

If the seasoning ever gets damaged, what you have to do is to clean the whole thing thoroughly, wipe it dry and then re-season it. If you don’t do that the cast iron cookware might begin to rust, and you surely don’t want that to happen.

Another big nono is to pour cold water in a hot skilled - the temperature difference might be too much for the iron and might cause it to crack.

Preheat before you cook. The best way to tell if your cast iron cookware is properly preheated is to drop some water inside - if it sizzles and then vaporizes it’s perfect. Otherwise it’s either not hot enough (and the water won’t sizzle and vaporize but simply bubble) or it’s too hot - in which case the water would vaporize right away.

Oh, yes, and one more thing: use potholders! Otherwise you might burn your hands badly.

How To Clean Cast Iron Cookware
It’s best to clean it right away with warm water and soap, just scrape away a bit on it and then wipe it dry and put it on a heated burner so that it’s really dry. You should never soak it in water or leave soapy water in it as this might wear down the seasoning.

How To Store Cast Iron Cookware
It’s always best to make sure it is stored in a dry place. I’d also suggest you take the lid of, cause if air has a high humidity moisture can build up - and moisture means rust. If you want to be totally sure or know you are not going to use your cast iron cookware for a long time just put some paper towels inside or even better some of these salt-packages that absorb moisture.

What To Do When Cast Iron Cookware Rusts?
Usually you don’t need to throw it away - you just have to fix it, which means to scour the rusty areas with steel wool until all traces of rust are gone. Then Wash it throughly, let it dry and reseason it.

If you use too much oil to season your cast iron cookware then it might gum up when heated. What you do then is to scrape of some of the seasoning and then reseason it more carefully.

If your food gets a metallic taste, or turns dark, it either means that your pan has not been well seasoned, or you are leaving food in it well after it is cooked. So, do not store food (particularly acidic food) in cast iron cookware, as the acid in the food will break down the seasoning.

 

 Cast Iron Cookware Maintenance [4:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

There are different kinds of high quality cookware materials:

Stainless steel
Stainless steel is generally the most versatile and durable material for cookware. It’s the most popular kind of cookware among chefs because you can get really good quality for a reasonable price.
Downside of stainless steel is that it conducts heat not very good - thus stainless steel cookware should have a copper core.

Copper
Specially gourmet cooks go for copper when they have to cook foods at exact temperatures. Copper is the best choice in this case because there is no better conductor of heat. You can cook at exactly the temperature you want, e.g. you can cook at 78 degrees celsius if you wanted to. Great for frying and sauteing.
Downsides of copper are high price and the fact that copper reacts with food when heated and thus needs special coating (most of the time stainless steel).

Aluminium
Great heat conducter (almost as good as copper) and it’s cheap and strong and durable.
But it reacts with acidic foods and thus should generally have a coating to prevent leakage or taste alterations (this is specially true for spinach).

Non-Stick
Non-Stick cookware is great because it allows for low fat cooking and is easy to clean.
Downsides is that non-stick cookware doesn’t last very long and has to be maintained carefully.

Cast Iron
Cast iron cookware is kind of a special case. It needs to be conditioned before using it because it will otherwise react with certain kinds of acidic foods and absorb the flavors of the food. (There’s a special kind of cast iron that doesn’t need conditioning - enameled cast iron cookware. A hard procelain enamel coating protects the cast iron from the food and vice versa.) The advantages of cast iron are that it provides even heating at high cooking temperatures and retains the heat excellently. One downside of this material though is that it heats up slowly.
Cast iron cookware is excellent for baking, browning and frying foods.

Anodized Aluminum
Anodized aluminum cookware has all the advantages of normal aluminum (except for the low price) but makes up for some of regular aluminums disadvantages. A chemical process makes aluminum much more durable and gives it a kind of non-stick surface and also prevents leakage of toxic substances into the food. It really is kind of the cheap version of stainless steel. Can be great for roasters, Dutch ovens, stockpots and saute pans.
However, you’ll have to handwash it because dishwashers might damage the surface. You also should not use steel wool or other aggressive scrubbing tools or corrosive detergents.
Another problem can be that because of it’s dark color it can be hard to observe the food - sometimes you’ll have to judge your food by it’s color and that might be difficult with anodized aluminum if you don’t have optimal lighting.

Glass
Glass cookware is a good choice if you use your microwave a lot. While most of the times it’s used for baking, there is also stovetop glass cookware available (it usually needs special handling though). Foods sticking to glass cookware is pretty unusual because glass is in itself already a non-stick material.
Disadvantages are that it’s heavy weight, and it’s heat distribution (not evenly) and that it’s not easy to handle. Glass is a very save cooking material, I have never heard of negative health effects from glass cookware.

Ceramic
Ceramic cookware has very similar characteristics to glass cookware (and can also be used for microwave cooking and is pretty non-sticky) but retains the heat better than usual glass cookware, distributes heat very evenly and is oftentimes also non-sticky. Oftentimes it’s used to make creme brulee, flan and custard.
Unglazed ceramics like terra cotta have are kind of spongy (that means they have lots of tiny little wholes inside) and thus can make the food a little juice, because the surface of the cookware add moisture in the form of steam to the food.
One thing that you have to be very cautious of when purchasing unglazed ceramic cookware is that the clay doesn’t contain lead.
Ceramic cookware might brake if you don’t handle it careful - but it’s also pretty cheap generally.

Cast iron cookware is not just for your grandmother anymore. Cookware manufacturers have researched and developed cast iron cookware for decades and have improved a lot on what cast iron used to be fifty years ago.
Cast iron cookware is still great for comfort foods, but there’s much more than that to it.

Let’s look at the “new and improved” cast iron cookware first:

Enameled Cast Iron Cookware has a porcelain enamel coating covering the surface. As with all coatings this makes cleaning a lot easier since the coating is much less sticky than the old school cast iron cookware. In terms of health that’s also an added benefit, because you will be able to cook and fry with much less oil. You don’t need to go through a whole seasoning or conditioning process with enameled cast iron cookware neither - it’s ready to use right out of the box. And one of the main drawbacks of cast iron cookware in my opinion (that it absorbs the taste of the foods that it has cooked previously and thus might alter the taste of the foods that you will cook next time) is non-existend with enameled cast iron cookware - no taste absorption!

Now let’s do it the old school way: I still love a good piece of tradition cast iron cookware. It’s kind of like with jeans or high quality Japanese lacquerware - the older it gets and the more you use it, the better it gets!
First when you get a traditional cast iron pan, skillet, casserole or griddle then you have to season it (another word used for seasoning is curing). You’ll have to rub some grease or shortening into the cast iron and bake the whole thing in the oven. Cast iron has lots of pores and these pores fill up with oils. With time a natural non-stick surface develops and you will be able to cook without any oil whatsoever! It’s kind of built-in oil. (But don’t worry - it doesn’t taste like old, greasy oil! The pores are so tiny that only the pure oil can get in there).

 

 Cast Iron Cookware [3:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download