8 Foods You Should Never Try To Cook In A Cast Iron Skillet

8 Foods You Should Never Try To Cook In A Cast Iron Skillet

The cast iron skillet has a well-deserved reputation for being a workhorse in the kitchen. As demonstrated by the fact that cast iron skillets are frequently handed down through generations of home cooks, this appliance is both fairly priced and startlingly resilient. A well-seasoned cast iron pan can be used to cook almost anything, according to Tiffany Swan, a trained chef, food scientist, and the creator of Salt + Sage's recipes. This is another advantage of the cast iron skillet.

There are, without a doubt, dishes that aren't a good fit for this specific sort of pan, so that "almost" is doing some heavy duty. This list of eight dishes to avoid was submitted by a group of experienced chefs and food scientists who were asked to share the things that they would never cook with cast iron.

Tomato Sauce

The majority of the chefs we consulted agreed that acidic dishes don't work well with cast iron that hasn't been enameled, and they identified tomato sauce as an excellent example of an acidic dish that can damage cast iron. "The acidity found in tomatoes is high enough to release the iron from the cast iron," said culinary scientist and author Bryan Quoc Le. According to Le, tomatoes naturally contain a significant amount of citric acid (up to 9% of their total weight), and because cast iron is bare and not alloyed with chromium, it will continue to oxidize and lose surface iron when used with tomato-based foods.

Foods with wine-based sauces, such as Coq Au Vin or Chicken Piccata

Chicken piccata (breaded chicken cooked in lemon sauce) is another example of an acidic meal that might react to cast iron. It does best in a pan with an enamel surface that won't affect the flavor of the final product. The lemon can remove iron from the pan by itself (much as tomato acid can). And when you use white wine to deglaze the pan, as many chicken piccata recipes call for, another issue occurs.

Jeff Carter, the executive chef of Dancing Bear Appalachian Café in Townsend, Tennessee, advised against using cast iron when preparing chicken piccata if you intend to produce the sauce by deglazing the pan with wine. Your white wine deglazing sauce will acquire an unpleasant flavor from the cast iron as it releases flavors or seasonings. Never use acidic liquids like wine or vinegar to deglaze a cast iron pan; instead, use stock or water.

Coq au vin is comparable. According to professional chef and culinary educator Micole Rondinone, deglazing a cast iron skillet with wine is not a good idea, thus it makes sense that any "wine-heavy stews, sauces, or braises" also don't thrive in cast iron. Coq au vin, a dish that combines slow-braised chicken in wine with mushrooms, pork lardons, and vegetables, could suffer from the acidity of the wine stealing the iron taste from the skillet. For wine braises, stick with a deep enameled pan or a Dutch oven.

Adobo

Adobo, "a traditional Filipino dish where meat or seafood is marinated in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and other spices," shouldn't be cooked in a cast iron skillet, primarily due to the vinegar, claims chef Kevin Truong of Fil N' Viet in Austin, Texas. According to Truong, the meal will have a metallic flavor due to the high acidity of the adobo from the vinegar. Cooking a vinegar-based sauce in cast iron "may also imply you would have to re-season your cast iron pan" because of the vinegar's high acidity, he continued.

Brothy Beans

It will "strip the pan of that great patina and remove the beautiful seasoning that you have acquired," according to Gee Cuyugan, head chef of Mercat a la Planxa in Chicago, to boil and simmer broth, water, or other liquids in a seasoned cast iron skillet. Cook your brothy dishes in stainless steel or enameled pots if you'd want to avoid the time-consuming procedure of re-seasoning your skillet.

 

Caramel

Cast iron skillets are a bad choice for producing caramel sauce since most people don't scrub their pans with soap properly after each use (as thorough cleaning can destroy the pan's seasoning). If you're preparing your own caramel sauce, keep in mind that caramel can easily absorb flavors.

Carter forewarned that the flavor or seasoning from your cast iron will be drawn into the caramel sauce, making your dessert taste like the items you've previously cooked in it.

 

Flaky Fish

Cast iron doesn't conduct heat very well compared to nonstick pans and other lighter-weight cookware. Chef Kai Chase of Los Angeles avoids cast iron for preparing delicate, flaky fish like cod, sea bass, flounder, and salmon because of this.

 

As opposed to its nonstick counterpart, cast iron is a poor heat conductor, making delicate seafood like salmon or flounder difficult to cook in it. "A cast iron skillet can't accomplish that while cooking a salmon filet; you need a pan that enables good heat transmission so the fish doesn't stick and break apart when you try to flip it."

 

Crepes

You must be able to rapidly and easily tilt the pan when making crepes so that the batter or egg may readily cover the pan's surface. In a large cast iron pan, that's particularly challenging, according to Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook author Lisa Steele. "They're too heavy for me to lift with one hand and tilt to flip the food, and I would imagine most people would agree. Generally speaking, cast iron is great for cooking because it holds heat so well, but because crepes are so thin, this can also result in overcooking or over-browning.

 

Omelets

Egg-based foods, such as fried eggs and omelets, are frequently challenging to cook right in cast iron, according to chef/instructor Stephen Chavez of the Institute of Culinary Education, who is speaking on the topic of delicate meals.

 

Omelets don't make sense in cast iron, Steele concurred. No matter how much butter or oil is used, eggs generally adhere to cast iron pans, she said. The two significantly superior options for omelets are a sturdy steel pan and an enameled skillet. Moreover, you need a pan with sloping edges that is extremely shallow so you can slide your spatula under to flip and/or fold the sides. Yet, using a heavy cast iron pan to repeatedly lift it to turn an omelet would be exceedingly taxing.

Source: huffpost