Part eight cooking with grandma's castiron cookware

COOKING WITH GRANDMA’S CAST IRON COOKWARE A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT REFURBISHING AND USING CASTIRON BY LARRY & BETTY HARMON Part eight- storage, care and maintenance of the outside of cast iron In this final part of the Dutch oven series, the meat of our topic has been revealed right along through the series, a little at a time, out of necessity, in order to fully cover each area. So, let’s pull those little fragments together. INSIDE cast iron care, maintenance and storage. Simply put, oil it, and keep it oiled. Cooking oil of the type that you plan to cook with will work nicely. Some folks will fold up a few layers of paper towel, soaking them slightly in the oil and leave them inside the cast iron so that it is handy to rub it with. If this is your choice care must be exercised not to over saturate the towels as they will attract dust and so forth. OUTSIDE cast iron care is often done in one of two ways, lightly oiled or well smutted as it comes from the cook fire. Either way provides a quality rust resistant coating and it works well. However both ways will rub off onto anything that they touch. A carrying case , box or bag is in order. Heavy fabric shopping bags seem to work well for us. Some cast iron cookware can be quite collectable and fairly valuable, so keeping it in that “ready to use” condition is a natural concern. Learning how to determine the value and collectability of your cast iron is not difficult at all since there are so many on line resources out there on the internet. Here is a link to one such page that talks about the numbers on the cookware and how to read them.

Childhood memories BECAUSE OF A DAY THAT LIVED ON IN INFAMY Dad was in the US Navy at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. And, he was an E-7 First Class Aviation Metalsmith, teaching the Aviation Metalsmith trade to sailors, before they were deployed to the fleet. We were living in enlisted housing nearby the Naval Air Station Alameda close to Oakland California. I was too young to remember much at that time, but curiosity caused me to inquire of Mom & Dad in later years. It took awhile after the attack at Pearl Harbor, for us to go, but Dad was sent to Pearl Harbor right away and was stationed at Naval Air Station Ford Island. Probably because there were well over three hundred aircraft that were damaged or destroyed during the attack. It was only after it was decided by the war department that it was safe, that we were allowed to travel as dependents, to Honolulu on the Hospital ship USS Benevolence. My first early childhood memories was living in Enlisted Navy Housing and playing in and on the partially buried bomb shelters. Naturally this was a strictly forbidden activity, but ever so much fun. Even though down Inside the shelters was dark, dank and mostly skeery ! Made out of very thick concrete, the bomb shelters were shaped like a Quonset hut with rounded sides that we could scramble up quite readily. The Navy housing was always manicured and neat, but the nearby bomb shelters were always grown over, mostly I guess to hide them. The shelter nearest to our home was covered with wood rose vines that made a good hand hold when scrambling up to the top of the shelter. Once up on top of the large, long shelter, there was a long wood rose tunnel running full length down it. Now, unless you have been there, it would be hard to understand just what a wonderful play house this was. With sunlight filtering through the vines that had flowers that closed up at night, then opened up in daylight and seed pods that were shaped kind of like a wooden rose, it was colorful and nearly always had a gentle cool breeze flowing through it. This majestic hidden playhouse did have it’s downside though. Because it was a place that we weren’t supposed to be, we would at the first sign of adult activity, go quiet and still. All in all though, it was a pretty peaceful place to be. The concrete was cool to the touch and felt quite pleasant to lay down on, during the heat of the day. Lots of times I would go there by myself just to lay quietly on my back watching the wildlife that also thought it was a cool place to hang out. One day I awoke to Mom calling me, she was standing at the bottom of the shelter looking up when I peeked out. Yeah, I hadn’t fooled her by hiding then falling asleep, she knew just right where to find me, it was time to pull the “Santa brought it”, red wagon that I had wanted so badly, down to the Navy Exchange Commissary, one of my least favorite things to do. Now you would think that I would like to pull that wagon to the commissary since I probably pulled it a hundred miles all around the housing area while playing with the other kids ! Years later. While in the Navy myself, I always felt that it was a Honor to man the rail and salute as my current ship that I was stationed on passed Battleship row. It was quite a sight in the early years, even though there was no memorial, just rusting metal sticking up out of the harbor, with tiny droplets of oil coming to the surface, much like the remains of the Arizona was sobbing quietly in grief.

COOKING WITH GRANDMA'S CASTIRON part seven

COOKING WITH GRANDMA’S CAST IRON COOKWARE A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT REFURBISHING AND USING CASTIRON BY LARRY & BETTY HARMON Part seven- “I lost my cast iron’s seasoning trying something new, what now ? It is a quick fix that you can do readily after cleaning your cast iron cookware. It is just a simple matter of preheating the cookware, adding cooking oil and rubbing it down with a paper towel. Here is a look at the finished cookware ready to use. The easiest thing to do before putting up your cast iron up is to deep fry something in it then wipe it down with a clean dry paper towel. Your cookware will look like that in the video and be nearly ready for your next use. During our extended fishing trips Betty has a couple of tricks that make things easier and reduce the cost of multiple fish fry’s. Your cooking oil will have cornmeal and French fry bits in it and look a bit tired. One of the last things that we cook in the oil after the fish, while the oil is still at a good cooking temperature is sweet potato fries , French fries and onion rings, all together. You will be amazed at how the oil clears up ! Then it is time to strain the oil and store it until the next use. To strain the oil, Betty uses a cotton jelly strainer because it can withstand fairly hot oil, yet, strains well.

COOKING WITH GRANDMA’S CAST IRON COOKWARE PART SIX A EIGHT SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT REFURBISHING AND USING CASTIRON BY LARRY & BETTY HARMON Part six- “do I use a tripod, a campfire grille or on the ground ?” Most of the time your fuel source will dictate which method will work best for you. For example if you are cooking with live coals on the ground and your fuel source is foraged but un cut limb wood, the tripod will give you some good options. Because live coals vary in intensity rapidly, a tripod can give you the ability to adjust the proximity of the Dutch oven to the heat source quickly without removing it from the fire. You can raise and lower the oven by moving the “s” hook up or down the support chain. If the fire wood is limb length foraged fire wood, then it can be end fed into the existing bed of coals, then as it is pushed to the center of the circle, it will crowd the coals up into a more focused pile under the oven, at the same time that fuel is added. The tripod will give many options for suspending different types of cookware over the heat source.

PART FIVE of a EIGHT PART series COOKING WITH GRANMA'S CAST IRON

COOKING WITH GRANDMA’S CAST IRON COOKWARE A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT REFURBISHING AND USING CASTIRON BY LARRY & BETTY HARMON Part five- charcoal briquettes or campfire coals, your choice When the wagon trains were moving west as America was being settled, there weren’t any charcoal briquettes down at the corner convenience store, so everyone used hard wood or buffalo chips for cooking fuel. While cooking with coals from the campfire, using a grid works well for the bottom heat in a Dutch oven, but what about the top ? Most users put live coals up onto the Dutch oven top with a metal scoop or tongs. Live coals from the campfire are not tightly compacted like the charcoal briquettes are and must be replenished more often. While on the topic about wagon trains and live coals, I have been asked why the Dutch oven could be seen hanging from underneath the wagon at the back. It was a safe way to transport fire from one night camp to another. They would put a scoop of ashes in the oven, then a scoop of live coals topped with a scoop of ash and the lid put on. Because live coals tend to burn with a higher intensity they burn out quicker and need to be replenished more often, making temperature regulation somewhat more difficult. A long handle shovel makes handling live coals more comfortable because of the more intense heat. Betty and I like live coals for Dutch oven biscuits in the morning so we will add extra fuel to the campfire and shovel dirt over it to bank it up overnight. That newly added fuel will become charcoal overnight and you just pull the cover of dirt off to the side, shoveling the live coals as needed. As the dirt is removed the charcoal gets the air that is needed for combustion and begin to glow brightly immediately. Again, a long handle shovel is a handy thing.

COOKING WITH GRANDMA’S CAST IRON COOKWARE A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT REFURBISHING AND USING CASTIRON BY LARRY & BETTY HARMON Part four- cooking with cast iron, applying heat evenly to top and bottom Needing to apply heat to the top and the bottom at the same time is almost exclusively a Dutch oven thing. For example when coking corn dodgers, it is usually a cast iron frying pan that is used and the dodger is turned as needed with a fork or spatula. Here is a look at cooking corn dodgers over a campfire. Dutch oven cooking however seems to need a bit more heat on the bottom and a bit less on the top. Our rough rule of thumb for most recipes is about one fourth less coals on the top. Only time and experience will get it perfected to suit your old traditional family recipes. In this short video Betty is putting the corn bread batter in the pre heated Dutch oven. After adding the batter, the lid is put in place and the charcoal is put on the oven lid. The charcoal on the Dutch oven bottom is on a sheet of aluminum foil because we didn’t have a good dry layer of ash in our fire pit. We were having daily spring time showers and the foil directed the heat up to the Dutch oven instead of being wicked away by the damp ground. Though not quite done yet, here is our first peek at our corn bread. As you can see in these short videos it is a fairly simple process and the even distribution of heat makes for well browned and delicious campfire corn bread !

COOKING WITH GRANDMA’S CAST IRON COOKWARE A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT REFURBISHING AND USING CASTIRON BY LARRY & BETTY HARMON Part three- “Once the cast iron is ready how do I keep it that way ?” As a child here in these Ouachita mountain’s I discovered that there were some pretty cool secrets to be gleaned from a visit to Grandma’s kitchen. However this neat trick came from helping Granpa’ as we processed a couple of fattening hogs for the freezer. Grandpa deftly removed a couple of hog’s tails and handed them to me, saying that I should take them to Grandma’ who was preparing some of the hog’s finer cuts in the kitchen. When I asked if she was going to cook up the hog tails, she laughed out loud, put a small slice of fresh buttermilk pie on the table and said to me, “wash up and snack on this while I tell you a story.” Now, Grandma’s story was a trip back in time to life in the mountains between the two world wars when times was hard and life was a bit “catch as catch can”. The short of the story is that most mountaineer’s cabins had a pig tail on a string hanging from a nail up on the wall behind the old wood cook stove. After cleaning the cast iron, it was warmed on the stove and the pig tail which was almost all fat, would be rubbed all over it to keep it oiled up and rust free. He, he, now, there are ever so many reasons that we aren’t doing it that way now a’ day’s ! But the main principle of the story is the way to have your cast iron ready for it’s next outing. It just needs a light sheen of oil wiped on it while warm, using a paper towel. Then it is ready for storage. Yep, it is just that simple, pig tail not required !