This time of year there’s a heap of cookin’ goin on around the ranch. Be needin’ lots of vittles to feed everybody comin’ from far and wide.
Near everywhere you look there’s cast iron pots heatin’ over the fire. Yep, we still use the old style, cast iron, heavyweight pots for our cookin’.
Lots of folks have moved on from cast iron, gravitatin’ to aluminum, stainless steel, or even that slippery stuff, Teflon. But there’s just somethin’ ‘bout the way food tastes from an old cast iron pot.
Maybe it’s ‘cause they ain’t easy to work with. Ya gotta take care of ‘em, maintain ‘em, season ‘em.
All the good ones start off with being seasoned. Heated real hot, then coated with lard or bacon fat (the real stuff, not that low cholesterol crap everybody uses nowadays!), then heated again for a long while.
Heatin’ it like that for a couple of hours tempers the metal, and gives a tough coating that resists the bad stuff.
And, it weeds out the inferior product. If it’s gonna crack, it’ll crack during the tempering, instead of when it’s bein’ used for somethin’ important.
Seasonin’ makes certain your fat don’t end up in the fire, dontcha know.
Properly seasoned, a cast iron pot has a non-stick surface that no modern substitute coating can match.
The best cast iron pots have been around for years, seasoned and re-seasoned by repeated exposure to the heat of the fire. They just seem to get tougher and tougher each time.
Well seasoned cast iron pots have a unique ability to retain and disburse heat. They even out the hot spots, keepin’ things from getting’ outta hand.
Yep, they’re heavy. But that’s ‘cause they have a decent amount of substance to them. Substance that keeps ‘em from bending any time the heat is applied. Substance that keeps ‘em solid even when they’ve been banged around a bit.
That kind of dependability and durability makes those old cast iron pots highly valued by people who know their stuff.
In this oldtimer’s view, we need more cast iron type people than all these Teflon-types tryin’ to run things into the ground.
By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter. --- Confusius
