Cast iron is an essential in many kitchens, but do you need bare cast iron, enameled cast iron, or both? What are the differences, and what is each best for? Let's take a closer look and see what we find out.
What Is Cast Iron?
According to Britannica.com:
Cast iron is an alloy of iron that contains 2 to 4 percent carbon, along with varying amounts of silicon and manganese and traces of impurities such as sulfur and phosphorus.
Cast iron is a simple metal with many different uses, cookware being one of the most popular. It's one of the oldest cookware materials known, with evidence of its use found as early as the third century A.D. in China.
The high percentage of carbon in cast iron makes it brittle, which is why cast iron pans are so thick: the thickness helps prevent cracking. The thickness combined with the density makes cast iron cookware heavy, but these also improve cast iron's heating.
Today, cast iron cookware can be found in two varieties: bare (seasoned) and enameled. We'll look at the features of both and discuss what each type is best for.
Is Cast Iron Good for Cooking?
Cast iron excels at some cooking methods, but it's not great for everything.
Cast iron has excellent heat retention--that is, once hot, it holds onto heat for a very long time. It has the longest heat retention of all cookware materials. High heat retention makes cast iron excellent for searing, deep frying, and braising--all cooking methods that do best with great heat retention.
The issue with high heat retention is that it means slow response time to temperature change. When cookware is slow to respond to heat changes, it can mean overcooked food, particularly heat-sensitive food like eggs and fish. It's also not great for more delicate foods like candies and sauces.
Cast iron heats slowly and unevenly. This is due to both its density and its chemical structure, which is rough and uneven, as shown here:
Magnified view of cast iron: it's rough and uneven.
Once heated through, cast iron works fine, but always give your cast iron pan at least five minutes of preheating before you start cooking in it.
As we mentioned, cast iron is also heavy, so it's not a good choice for people with ergonomic issues. And some people dislike having to deal with seasoning bare cast iron, although it's really not hard to do.
Finally, bare/seasoned cast iron and enameled cast iron pots are good for different things, which we'll talk more about below.
Even with its drawbacks, many people love cast iron and use it for almost everything. It's a good choice for most daily cooking tasks, it's easy to care for, and it lasts forever. As with all cookware, if you use it regularly you learn to work around its shortcomings.
Bare Cast Iron
Bare, seasoned cast iron is one of the great workhorses of the kitchen and is great for many tasks. Here's a look at the basic features and important things to know about it.
Bare, seasoned cast iron is best for skillets.
Features
Bare cast iron--also called seasoned cast iron because it requires seasoning to prevent rusting--has no coating. It's black, or will become black with seasoning and use. It's dense and heavy, which, as we already said, makes it durable and gives it its excellent heat retention.
Cast iron can be brittle, especially when new, so you have to be careful handling it and heating it. After heating several times, the iron "tempers" a bit and becomes less brittle--so the older your cast iron is and the more you use it, the less likely it will crack (though it can still happen).
Aside from being brittle, cast iron is extremely durable. A pan that costs less than $40 can last for a really, really long time. There are many stories about people using their grandmother's cast iron, or even their great-grandmother's cast iron, and about finding rusty cast iron pans in junk heaps and restoring them to like-new condition.
Bare cast iron isn't great for acidic foods like tomato sauces, vinegars, and citrus-based dishes. The acids can eat away at the seasoning, which can add a metallic flavor to your food and destroy the seasoning, requiring you to re-season the pan.
Most bare cast iron brands are inexpensive, but there are some artisanal brands that range into the hundreds of dollars. Since all cast iron has nearly identical heating properties (depending primarily on thickness), when you buy expensive cast iron, you're paying for a smoother cooking surface and (usually) a traditional forging method. Inexpensive brands--like Lodge and pretty much everything made in China--are shipped with a roughish cooking surface due to the cheaper manufacturing methods--but it fills in and becomes smooth with seasoning and use.
Artisanal cast iron can also have fancier features--fancier handles, for example--but if you're patient with the cooking surface and don't mind a utilitarian look, there's no reason to spend a small fortune on bare cast iron. $30-$40 will get you a pan that will last for decades, and probably even centuries.
About Seasoning
Because cast iron rusts quite easily, it needs to be seasoned in order to work as cookware. Seasoning is a process of "baking" oil onto the surface of cast iron at high heat (heat above the smoke point of the oil). The high heat turns the oil into a polymer that bonds with the cast iron to form a protective coating. This coating is also very slippery, similar to PTFE nonstick cookware, but without the health hazards, and it gets better with time rather than wearing out in just a few years (or less) of use.
Many brands of cast iron come pre-seasoned, but this seasoning usually isn't great, so expect to season your new pan before use, even if it comes pre-seasoned. (This is true for all brands, regardless of how much you pay,) There are many excellent articles and videos online about seasoning cast iron, so we won't go into detail here. It can be a little tricky to get it right the first time, but it's a simple process that, once figured out, is easy to do.
Caring for Bare Cast Iron
Cast iron chain metal scrubber.
Bare cast iron is simple to care for. Once seasoned, it cleans up easily, but if you do have gunk to scrape off, you can do so with whatever tools you have and it won't harm the cast iron. If you scrub too hard, you may remove some of the seasoning, and need to re-season. You can buy cast iron brushes and cast iron chain metal scrubbers that can help with cleaning, or you can just use a standard sponge, abrasive sponge, or dish rag.
Contrary to popular opinion, you can--and should--use soap on seasoned cast iron. The soap won't ruin the seasoning, and will (of course) result in a cleaner pan.
One thing you shouldn't do is let cast iron soak, because this can cause rusting. And you should dry cast iron thoroughly after every wash and apply a thin coat of cooking oil to the surface. This helps prevent rusting and also helps protect the seasoning.
Always dry your cast iron thoroughly after cleaning and apply a thin coat of cooking oil. This protects the seasoning and prevents rusting.
Cooking with Seasoned Cast Iron
Well pre-heated cast iron is the key to a finely seared steak.
Seasoned cast iron is best for frying, deep frying, and searing--anything that uses cooking oil rather than liquids. Liquids, especially acidic liquids like tomato sauce or vinegar- and citrus-based sauces, can eat away at seasoning. This won't ruin your pan, but may add a metallic flavor to your food and result in a pan needing to be re-seasoned. If you don't want to re-season, then restrict your seasoned cast iron to cooking that uses cooking oils, or fatty foods that produce their own cooking oils (hamburgers, for example).
You also see bare cast iron woks and Dutch ovens (more on these in a minute).
Cast iron withstands high heat, so there are no heat restrictions on cast iron, unless you have a pan with a glass lid or plastic handle (try to avoid these).
Seasoned Dutch ovens aren't great for a lot of kitchen uses, but they do have their place: they're an excellent choice for baking bread, and because they're black, they won't get discolored by the high oven temps required to get the crust and crumb bread bakers are looking for. They're also good for camping, also because the campfire or grill won't discolor them.
Many traditional cooking methods use seasoned cast iron for everything--stews, soups, baked beans, spaghetti, and much more--so don't be afraid to use your seasoned Dutch oven for anything. Just be prepared to re-season it as necessary if you do.
One other great feature of seasoned cast iron is that you can use metal utensils. Though metal utensils get a bad rap, they're really the best tools for cooking with because they're durable and work better than plastic or wood. So if you're a fan of metal utensils, don't be afraid to use them on your seasoned cast iron.
Bare, seasoned cast iron is best for skillets or other pans used for dry heat cooking (e.g., frying). They aren't great for liquid cooking (e.g., braising, soups, and stews).