Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Tina Manley wrote: > > At 07:48 AM 7/25/2003 -0500, you wrote: > >Tina, > > > >I'll take the set. How will you ship the grandmother? :-) > > > >Sam Krneta > > Sam - > > The grandmother hasn't been around for quite awhile, but these pots will > last several more generations! I'd never give them up. After my house > burned to the ground in Kentucky, we found the cast iron skillets and pots > where they had fallen into the basement under the kitchen. I'm still using > them every day. You can start your own heirloom collection at any Cracker > Barrel. > > Tina > I get my cast iron pots here in Oregon for the past year at Kitchen Kaboodle, Sur la table, and Williams Sanoma even. The brand is usually "Lodge" the official suppler of the Boy Scouts of America. Turns out cast iron wear is a very outdoorsey thing. http://www.cast-iron-cookware.com/cast-iron-dutch-oven.html#offer I have 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 inch cast iron skillet's. Some of them are in the new pre seasoned type which are all black and the others you season yourself making it very much YOUR pot from the very beginning. They are heavy as hell. If you are worrying about your wrists straining try something else. The re seasoned ones I've got mixed feelings about. It's great not having to season and re season but the black finish looks a tad fakey. The pans and pots feel less like mine. But I get over it. I have 5 and 7 quart dutch ovens. I've gotten into the dutch oven concept and have them in a variety of materials and designs. Including terra-cotta clay. Those people were not dutch. Either were the Le Creuset folks whose ovens they like to refer to as "French Ovens." They do for the most part look just like Dutch ovens. The Italians made ovens just like that and call them "Italian ovens." They look just like dutch ovens! But the Le Creuset stuff is interesting because it is: 1. Made in France. 2. Cast Iron coated with porcelain enamel! The means you don't have to season it yourself or ever re season it. http://www.lecreuset.com/ They give you mixed signals as to if it is OK to make tomato sauce in a cast iron pot or not. Apparently the acids in the tomato sauce!? reacts against the cast iron unless the cast iron has been seasoned since before the last half of the previous millennium. Any sooner and it strips the seasoning right off. So you have to re season it again. And the tomato sauce has that familiar "cast iron" taste to it. You know that "cast iron" taste? Kind of ruins the meatballs. Enameled cast iron pots don't have this problem. You can make battery acid au gratin and let them simer over night and these pots take a lickin and keep on tickin. But i still like my regular cast iron pots. One reason is as Tina says if the house burns down these pots will be the only thing left. I kind of like that. Cant quite say that about a Leica! My other pots of a variety of materials would have gotten screwed up by the heat no doubt. The Scouts count the coals they put under an aluminium pot. These pots are way easier to transport to the Lake Wickaninnish Jamboree site that cast iron which takes 4 scounts to lift; Aluminium requiring two Scouts. One coal too many and you've got a melted pot. The the lid doesnt fit. Plus the aluminum counteracts badly with much of the food. Except tomato sauce. Yuppies spend big bucks on Copper pots and All Clad which doesnt cost that much less. Perhaps they assume the great chefs of Europe are using copper pots. Turns out the favorite pots among the great chefs of Europe are cast iron. Carbon steel is a close second. That's what woks are usually make of. http://www.widerview.com/castindx.html These pans are seasoned and washed only in water (not soap) just like the cast iron pots. The scouts don't even like to wash their pots in water. They just rub them down. "Water?!!!? And ruin the cast iron pot?!!?" For me this was the year of the pot. And pan. I think it's interesting and I learned much about ... stuff.. from doing it. I stocked my house with pots this year. Instead of getting all Serafino Zani I pretty much got each pot from a different company. Each a different concept in pots. This has made me learn a lot about pots. http://www.serafinozani.it/uk/karen.htm Oh and I got into the German company Berndes for more than one non stick stuff. They are the Leica of non stick. http://www.berndes.com/us But mainly i learned to stick to cast iron. Non stick is not so great at browning food like it should be. A cast iron properly seasoned pot will be pretty much non stick. But be best on flavour. Also an All Clad, or Serafino Zani, or Berndes pot which cost $100 in cast iron it would cost $25 or $30. About one third the price. $33.33 That's a pot which in copper could easeily cost $150! It's a low tech classic pot, the kind of pot which gets past down to later generations. If you buy that pot at a thrift store it would cost 3 to 5 dollars. And you'd know they didn't season their pot in vain! Has a Leicalike ring to it if you ask me. Mark Rabiner Portland, Oregon USA http://www.rabinergroup.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html