We have had a cast iron skillet in our cupboard for about 10 years. We had never used it until this morning when I baked some corn bread in it.
Neither Kandie nor I grew up with families that regularly used cast iron cookware. This particular skillet was a gift from a Southern friend who couldn't believe we didn't have one. So then we had one, but we didn't use it. Honestly, it kind of intimidated me - I mean you have to season it (whatever that means), and then it's this big heavy thing and it takes forever to get hot and you don't wash it because then you would have to season it again (again, season?)? Huh?
Last year my sister gave me a great book about baking bread called Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza
. It's a terrific book about baking basic breads. It gave me a lot of insight into what I was doing, even though I had been baking bread for probably 25 years. Anyway, the author recommends baking bread in a cast iron Dutch oven. So that's what I do most of the time now for my basic breads.
Some time last year, I stumbled across this article about a social entrepreneur who was working on the problem of anemia in Cambodia. Apparently qabout 10% of the American population is anemic, but about 44% of the Cambodian population is anemic. As the article notes, "At the same time, about 70% of Cambodians live on less than $1 a day, pushing iron supplements (or red meat) far out of reach." Sound familiar?
The etnrepreneur, a Ph.D. student named Chris Charles realized if you cooked with a block of iron in your food, the food would absorb some of the iron, creating health benefits that eliminated anemia. To get the villagers to use the technique, he molded the iron into the shape of a good luck fish:
I think it's a pretty amazing design solution. "Thus far, the Lucky Fish team has found that cooking with the fish leads to a 92% compliance rate, effectively curbing the effects of anemia."
The article I read is here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1673101/this-iron-fish-offers-relief-from-anemia
Chris has started a charity to promote the concept - The Lucky Iron Fish.
Cooking with cast iron suddenly seemed like a good idea to me, since I've cut red meat back signficantly from my diet. And with a house full of ladies, it seemed like a little extra iron in the diet wouldn't hurt. So I seasoned the skillet yesterday (actually really simple - you just coat it with some sort of fat and bake it in the oven for an hour) and today we had our first serving from it. Corn bread, with a side of iron.
Neither Kandie nor I grew up with families that regularly used cast iron cookware. This particular skillet was a gift from a Southern friend who couldn't believe we didn't have one. So then we had one, but we didn't use it. Honestly, it kind of intimidated me - I mean you have to season it (whatever that means), and then it's this big heavy thing and it takes forever to get hot and you don't wash it because then you would have to season it again (again, season?)? Huh?
Last year my sister gave me a great book about baking bread called Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza
. It's a terrific book about baking basic breads. It gave me a lot of insight into what I was doing, even though I had been baking bread for probably 25 years. Anyway, the author recommends baking bread in a cast iron Dutch oven. So that's what I do most of the time now for my basic breads.Some time last year, I stumbled across this article about a social entrepreneur who was working on the problem of anemia in Cambodia. Apparently qabout 10% of the American population is anemic, but about 44% of the Cambodian population is anemic. As the article notes, "At the same time, about 70% of Cambodians live on less than $1 a day, pushing iron supplements (or red meat) far out of reach." Sound familiar?
The etnrepreneur, a Ph.D. student named Chris Charles realized if you cooked with a block of iron in your food, the food would absorb some of the iron, creating health benefits that eliminated anemia. To get the villagers to use the technique, he molded the iron into the shape of a good luck fish:
I think it's a pretty amazing design solution. "Thus far, the Lucky Fish team has found that cooking with the fish leads to a 92% compliance rate, effectively curbing the effects of anemia."
The article I read is here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1673101/this-iron-fish-offers-relief-from-anemia
Chris has started a charity to promote the concept - The Lucky Iron Fish.
Cooking with cast iron suddenly seemed like a good idea to me, since I've cut red meat back signficantly from my diet. And with a house full of ladies, it seemed like a little extra iron in the diet wouldn't hurt. So I seasoned the skillet yesterday (actually really simple - you just coat it with some sort of fat and bake it in the oven for an hour) and today we had our first serving from it. Corn bread, with a side of iron.
A very innovative concept, and probably something more Americans should adopt. Using a cast iron skillet would be especially helpful to moms and dads cooking for young children who are low in iron but are "picky" eaters who consume too few iron containing foods.
ReplyDelete