55 Easy and Delicious Cast Iron Skillet Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the best food to cook in a cast iron skillet? ›

We love to make roasted or sautéd veggies when we're first using a skillet, or if we have an older skillet that needs some love. Just toss your veggies in olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and start cooking!

Best Overall: Victoria 10-Inch Cast Iron Skillet

It is hard to beat the "gold standard" Lodge pan, but the Victoria skillet performed just as well and was even a bit more refined. The pour spouts are wider and deeper than the Lodge, so there were no drips when we poured oil from the pan.

You can generally use whatever oil you prefer, as long as the cooking temperature is below the smoke point of the oil. Olive oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, and grapeseed oil are all great multipurpose cooking oils—you can use them for everything from sautéing to baking.

While cast iron can become non-stick with sufficient use over time, a newer skillet will almost certainly cause your eggs to stick to its porous surface. And that'll turn into one messy cleanup! But once your skillet is reliably non-stick, cast iron skillet eggs will become your new go-to for weekend brunches.

Cast iron pans can leach a sizeable amount of iron into your food, exceeding dietary intake in some cases. Acidic foods will contribute to much more leaching while an old, heavily-seasoned pan will leach much less iron than a newer one.

When selecting a seasoning oil, you want one that's high in polyunsaturated fats and has a high ratio of polyunsaturated fat to monounsaturated fat. Among common cooking oils, grapeseed oil and sunflower oil stand out for their high polyunsaturated fat content and desirable ratio of polyunsaturated to saturated fat.

For the best results, make sure to keep your cast iron pan seasoned, and preheat the skillet for a few minutes before you add any food to it. This allows the pan to heat evenly and prevents most food from sticking. Add fat as needed.

Yes, you can season the pans for frying, sautéing, or baking in cast iron cookware like pans, pots, or skillets with butter, but it's not the right choice to season it for the first time. Butter immediately starts to smoke when added to a heated pan because cast iron can withstand a lot of heat.

Do you wash a cast iron skillet? ›

Start the process soon after cooking to prevent any food remnants from getting stuck as the pan cools. While your pan is still warm, take it to the sink and wash it with a drop of dish soap. (Yes, despite popular belief, a little soap is fine if you remember to re-season your cast-iron skillet as needed.

Cooking with Carbon Steel Pans

And because it's more conductive than cast iron, it heats more evenly, with fewer hot spots. But even with that, it is still capable of reaching temperatures high enough to thoroughly sear a steak, and can likewise be used on the stovetop and in the oven.

Pre-Heat Your Skillet

To ensure even heating, gradually pre-heat the cast iron skillet on a similar-sized burner. Since cast iron holds heat, it's not necessary to use a heat setting above medium. These steps help prevent food from sticking. Don't forget to use a hot handle mitt!

Cast iron works best for browning, sautéing, baking, and frying but should be avoiding when boiling and simmering. Meats, vegetables, and baked goods work really well in cast iron but acidic foods like tomatoes should be limited.

There's nothing dangerous about cooking in cast iron pans. With just a bit of care they are long-lasting, nearly non-stick cooking utensils…they can last for generations. Some claims are made that cooking in cast iron adds iron to your food.

Compared with non-iron cookware, such as Teflon or glass dishes, cooking in cast iron can increase the dietary iron content of our food by up to 16%. However, how much iron actually leaches into our food depends on what we cook and how we cook it.