Need advise on buying a LARGE cast iron skillet for frying crappie, have heard there is a difference in some of the manufactures, which ones are best and where is a good place to purchase these?
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Need advise on buying a LARGE cast iron skillet for frying crappie, have heard there is a difference in some of the manufactures, which ones are best and where is a good place to purchase these?
tlowery643,
Try: The Pan Man: Specializing in Griswold and Wagner Ware Cast Iron Cookware and Cast Iron Cooking Utensils
1perchjerker
There will probably be several opinions on different brands. Lodge is one of the better ones. Check out Amazon.com for prices. I bought a new 20 quart dutch oven with lid & fry basket for $50 a couple of years ago, $20 cheaper than anywhere locally. How big are you looking for?
Amazon.com: cast iron frying pan
http://www.bayouclassicdepot.com/cast_iron_skillet.htm
WOW! This is the one I bought, it has doubled in price in 2 years. I also got the free shipping so it was a good deal.
Amazon.com: Bayou Classic 7420 20-Quart Cast Iron Dutch Oven with Dutch Oven Lid and Perforated Aluminum Basket: Patio, Lawn & Garden
I delivered a 7 gal gumbo cast iron pot the other day to a guy. He asked was it heavy? I said nah it only weighed 60 pounds!:eek: I was drooling over that sucker.
it came from Bayou Classics.
IL'm all for a Fry Daddy Electric fryer or a Fry Pappy. But nothing like frying them in a cast iron on the bank
Thanks for the info and I like the looks of the 20 Qt Dutch oven with basket, may look into that....
Hit fle markets and yard sales. I have found major deals on cast iron this way. everything from a #20 dutch oven for $10.00 to a 30" skilet for only $5.00. it takes some looking but they are out there.
also check out Cook 'N Camp
YZ
If you can find a Birmingham Iron Works cast iron skillet, you will have found the best.
Tom
If U have a bass pro nearby they are havin their big spring ding sale starting this weekend & goin for 2 weeks on most sales, they carry lodge may find a sale.
Most of the old hardware stores sell a good selection of cast iron cookware. They need to be "seasoned" properly first. We really like the GrandPappy electric fryer for quick fish meals at home.:)
Someone finally said the right word...."Seasoned". You can do it yourself, or, in certain instances, buy them that way. Most people selling cast in a yard sale fall into one of 2 classes. 1. They never learned how to season and cook with one (80%) and 2. They are getting too fraile to lift it on and off the stove.
You can look at one and tell if the person that owns it knows about cast. I have 3 skillets (one was my great grandmothers, one was grammys and one was my moms) and all 3 cook like they were just bought and seasoned. They are the worlds first Non-stick cook ware and, to me, are the best.
Now to the meat of the situation. Look for smoothness. Lots of cheaper cast is rough and had forge marks. This will cause hot spots with the metal being thinner or thicker in places. The smoother the better. If it looks like it was poured into the mold, then dumped out and put on the shelf, save your money and walk away. You may spend more on quality, but, you get a good one and your grandkids will love you for it.
Dusty
The Lodge variety on Amazon.com look good, too, and are preseasoned. They have a fry basket that you can order extra. The 9 quart dutch oven and basket which fits it really looks nice.
Having said that, I inherited all my cast iron except for a dutch oven that I bought from a really small country store at Crumrod, Ark.
Tip: Pre-seasoned or not, once that baby is seasoned well, you never expose it to dish washing detergent. Hot water only. The detergent will remove the seasoning and all you have is the cast iron surface. Food will stick to it.
Always wipe it dry after you wash it and then spray some oil (Pam or others) onto the surface, then wipe that smooth with a dry paper towel.
Its ready to cook again.
Griswald cast iron is the best and smoothest I have found . I was given all the Griswald pieces that I have except for some i found at the trash dump sitting on the compactor.
someone help me with 192667115?????????
Seasoning tip for cast iron cookware... and I believe I read here on CDC. Coat the cookware with shortening, then, instead of smoking yourself out of the house by heating it up in the oven - use a gas grill outdoors. Crank the grill up on high, put the pan on the rack, close the lid, and come back to turn it off when smoke starts pouring out of it.
let it cool, then rinse with hot water. dry immediately with paper towel, then coat with veg oil (spray-on works, but any veg oil will do).
Once it's seasoned - like mentioned above, keep the dish detergent away!
If you get stuff stuck to the pan, heat it up on the burner, toss in s little water to de-glaze it, and scrape well with a flat-tipped metal spatula. Speaking of spatula's, steer clear of plastic ones and only use ones that are flat on the end. over time, using a flat spatula will help make even the ridged surface of a cheap skillet smooth as silk.
For fish-fries, I like to deep fry, and that's where the dutch oven comes into play!
... I banned him for life, and deleted all his posts. If I missed one, report it, and I'll get it off asap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Crappie 2
Got a few of his buddies, too (other multiple number user ID spammers) :p
... cp :cool:
I was wondering wht the heck that was all about. so that long number is the name of a spammer and Big Crappie 2 was looking for help?Quote:
Originally Posted by crappiepappy
... that's pretty much it.Quote:
Originally Posted by joejv4
We get hit with these mass mailer spambot programs, every now & then. They're usually pretty easy to spot, as their User ID is in a foreign language, a nonsensical jumble of letters, an Advertisement title, or a series of numbers. The programs can register as a member, but don't provide any "personal" data. The mods catch some of them, before they can even post once ... but, occasionally some do get in and activate. Only a Supermod can ban them, and remove their posts ... but, all mods can delete/close their posts, on their respective forums. ALL members can "report" these posts, when they see them, and are encouraged to do so ;) as it alerts the moderators to their presence.
... cp :cool:
Did you know cast iron was the cookware of our settlers. It was drug across this land from teh East coast to the west coast.
I have been cooking on cast for a long time. ITs all I use camping. Its kid proof. The best place to find affordable cookware is garage sales. I dont care if its completely covered in rust, it can be brought back to life.
The first thing to do with new cast is toss it into the campfire and get that sucker red hot. That will cook off any rust, burn off any impurities, and restore the metal. Pull it out, and cover it with Crisco. Let cool. Cook and enjoy.
Cast is great becasue the metal is pourous, flavors stay in the steel. Hence why you dont use soap. Teh soap will stay in teh metal and you may get the hersey two step after the next meal. To clean a cast cookware, put it back on teh stove, add some water and boil the food off. Use a green scratch pad or metal spatula if you must, provided it doesn't ahve any soap on it. Careful the water will be hot, boiling. My method is simple. I cook, and clean teh skillet/ dutch oven last. Empty the sink of all other dishes. Put the cast on the stove, add water and bring it to a rolling boil, use a hot pad and draint he water into the sink, add cool water and scrap off any remiainig food. Then place the cast on the stove and warm it up. Once all teh water has dried, turn off the burner and let it cool a mintue or two. Use Crisco and a paper towel, spread teh crisco over the entire sureface, top bottom, back, insdie, outside etc. As the cast cools it draws the oil into the pours and seasons it. The oil from cooking also gets drawn into the pours and add flavor to each meal. Everything you cook will add flavor. If your pan becomes sticky, you dont have enough oil in it.
If your cast is properly seasoned you can get the black soot from a campfire off the bottom with a paper towel.
I have made a ton of things in my dutch oven, from donuts to pizza. Yep, pizza. Kids love it on campouts. Pizza for dinner, cobler for desert after a night hike, and donuts for breakfast. All cooked in a 12" dutch oven.
i bought all my cast iron from lodge mfgs. i see you live in ga. in commerce ga they have a store and it a little cheaper there. thats all i use for cooking inside or outside.
For a quickie 'non stick' solution, put a hand full of table salt in your cast iron skillet. Take a paper towel and scour it with the salt. Good for one, maybe two, no stick cookins.
I just finished sanding, cleaning and seasoning an PB 8 quart cast iron bean pot I picked up at a yard sale last week. I followed the directions of the previous posters. It looks really good...and when I get a chance, I am going to slow cook a big pot of pintos in it on a gas cooker. Thanks for posting the seasoning techniques.
before you do i would give it a good reseasoning again. after you reseason it fry some bacon, it'll help with the seasoning.Quote:
Originally Posted by poppop
Your welcome!Quote:
Originally Posted by poppop
Bacon never hurts and adds a ton of flavor. When I cook bacon and eggs for breakfast I toss the bacon in the skillet, turn the stove on high/medium. Cook the bacon, take it out and turn the burner to med/low, add two eggs and cook them. take the eggs out and turn the burner off. Clean up- drain the grease/scrap it off if you let it cool too long, then use a paper towel to remove the rest. The skillet is good to go next time.
If you have bacon low in fat, lean bacon, add some olive oil to the pan so the bacon doesn't stick and you can leave that for the eggs, and follow the same clean up instructions.
the whole key to cast is keeping a good layer of oil/fat on the cooking surface. Niether will go racid.
My wife prefers to cook venison meatloaf in the skillet/dutch oven, a lot less mess to clean up compared to a glass cooking utensil.
will do guys...I have an #12 dutch oven also...been planning to try me a vension meatloaf in it...thanks a lot...
Couple more things to cook in cast iron.
This past weekend we took a bunch of kids of divorced famies out fishing to some privately owned strip mines. Not only did I show them how to fillet fresh fish, I let them fillet the fish as well. We caught a mess of Bass and Bluegill. I brough two cast iron skillets and two dutch ovens.
We cooked the fish in the skillets and made dutch oven cobbler for dessert. Plus we had a water melon and cooked up some corn on the cob over charcoal. To fry up the fish we washed it in clean water after filleting it, dried the fillets, dipped them in milk, dipped them in shore lunch batter. I half filled each cast iron skillet with oil and heated it up. We dropped the fish in slowely so the hot oil wouldn't burn us. Let the fish cook and pulled it out, set it on a plate with a paper towel to suck up some of the remaining grease. Layer by layer we added more fish and paper towels until we cooked it all. There wasn't any fish left.
As for the Dutch oven cobbler, its really more of a dump cake. Put in 2 cans of your favorite pie filling, two boxes of your favorite cake mix, and pour one can of 7up over the top. If you have a 12" dutch oven place your dutch oven on top of 9 burning coals and place 15 coals on top, spread them around evenly. Let it cook for 20 minutes and check it. Should take about 20-30 minutes to cook. Longer if the coals have passed thier prime. The best dutch oven to use for coals had the littel feet on the bottom and the lip on the lid. The feet help balance it on the coals, and the lip keeps the coals and ash out of the food. As for the best cobbler, there are some instant favorites. Chocolate cake and apples or cherry pie filling is a great combo.
Clean up for the fish is simple, dump the oil and run a paper towl around to clean up the remianing oil.
Clean up for the dutch oven requires boiling the water as outlined in a previous post. Some use aluminum foil to help ease claenup, however you tend to burn the bottom and they dont make foil big enough to seal the bottom so some juice always seeps apst and burns in the bottom of the dutch oven. Actually makes clean up harder.
Let me know when your ready for dutch oven pizza, bubble up pizza. We did a lot of cooking in our cast iron while camping witht he Boy Scouts. You can even make some killer donuts in cast. Add a little cake frosting and sprinkles and it wil become an instant favorite.
Then again for breakfast we prefer Breakfast Burritos. Let me know if your insterested.
All of these are kid favorites. Some us are just bigger kids than others. :D
Thanks for the Dutch oven cobbler recipe, I needed that as I was wondering how many charcoal briquettes’ to put on my Dutch oven for peach cobbler. My wife and I put on two family cookouts each year at my cabin in the mountains. One at Memorial Day, with the traditional pig shoulders and bbq chicken on a cooker. That one worked out really well, we fed 53 relatives this year. The second one at Labor Day weekend this year will be a Poor Man’s Supper. This is actually the first year for a poor man’s supper.
Everything or as much as possible will be cooked with cast iron.. the pintos slow cooked all day with a big pork chop for seasoning in a cast iron bean pot on a gas single burner cooker, fried taters and onions, fried hog jowls, fried cabbage all in a cast iron skillet, corn bread flitters/hoe cakes in a cast iron griddle, and peach cobbler in a cast iron dutch oven. And then we will have cole slaw, home made chow chow, minced vadalia onions, homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers and finally ICE COLD milk to wash it all down.
One question I do have thought....about the briquettes you put around the Dutch oven. Is this calling for a cooking time of 20-30 minutes with a cold Dutch oven? Thanks again for all the help.
Sounds like a great meal.
cold dutch oven, and the briquette go under the oven (ground, coals, dutchoven). Like a sandwich.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanr3
thanks