I had great difficulty in learning how to cook with cast iron, due to my idea that seasoning was done before cooking. I also had give up on my idea of “low fat” cooking.

Once I became more liberal with using oil, the cast iron worked very well. I find it best to use a metal spatula, a nylon spatula just doesn’t work as well.

I love the fact that my cast iron pans cook so evenly, and they are easy to clean. If something sticks, I use either a single edged razor blade, or even better, the top of a pull-tab cat food or sardine can. This sharp metal blade lets me scrape off stuck food without scrubbing away all of the seasoning. And if I overheat the pan, and burn off the seasoning, then I will often deep fry tortilla chips in order to reestablish the seasoning.

I am glad that I no longer need to replace my non-stick skillet every few years! I expect that I will never need to replace my cast iron pans! 3 years ago

So I pulled the cast-iron pan out of the cupboard yesterday afternoon, seasoned it, and got it ready for dinner. I was planning on making butterflied sirloin with blue cheese in the middle, so I made our favourite blue cheese potato salad and some steamed asparagus to go along with it. And then, ten minutes before dinner time, I started cooking the steak.

Basically, it’s cook 3 minutes on one side, 3 minutes on the other, and 3 minutes to rest. Now the book said “Don’t be afraid of smoke. Smoke is normal.” So when it really started smoking at 2m10s, I thought not much of it. But I should have, because it was decidedly more charred than I was expecting. I did it a little closer to 2m30s on the other side, and that worked better. So overall, I’d say the steak was 3 stars out of 5 in quality: it was good, but a little overdone in parts. Then again, nothing exploded the first time I used the pan, so I think I can now go forward and make different things with it in the hope that I will be more successful in the future. Which was kind of the point! 4 years ago

I got a cast-iron skillet as a wedding present – something that I particularly insisted on adding to the registry – but I haven’t cooked anything with it yet. I’m just so worried that I’m not going to “feed” it properly or that I’m going to ruin the pan or whatever I cook it in. I think I need a support group. Either that or a book all about cast-iron cookware, or maybe just some good advice. In any event: this will happen by our anniversary. It’s just ridiculous, being scared of a pan. 5 years ago

I made some great salmon patties in it. Tasty! 5 years ago

I’ve cooked with the skillet, and I like the feel of it. I need to keep using it so that the seasoning process continues. I can’t wait for it to be “done”! 6 years ago

I got the skillet out for browning some ground beef yesterday afternoon. I made sure to put plenty of oil in the bottom. That made a difference.

It is going to be hard to remember not to use soap when cleaning this and then to dry it after washing with hot water so it doesn’t rust.

I’m looking forward to it getting truly seasoned! 6 years ago

I didn’t wash it with soap. I knew not to do that because of one direction on the tag that came with the pan. Here are a few more things I can consider. 6 years ago

I had this on my wish list, and I got it! It has been seasoned, but just to be sure, I fried some bacon in it. I then made an omelette. Quite a bit still stuck to the bottom. I thought I used plenty of oil…I think it’s going to be a little bit of a different mindset using this over a Teflon-type pan. 6 years ago