BLACK IRON DUDE

“Black Iron Dude”, like so many other Bloggers, have inspired entertained, lept to the sky with stardom and fizzled into the faded memories of our life. The Black Iron Dude and I have a common interest of cast iron cookware. These cooking utensils are sturdy, cheap, heat retaining, non-stick and practically indestructible. We like to call our cast iron utensils ‘Black Iron” We have two black iron skillets on standby at all times on our stove. We use them almost everyday. I have one skillet that dates back to the 20’s that gets daily use. The thing about ‘Black Iron’ is once you get one functioning piece of cooking history, you want to collect more. The nice thing about Black Iron is they can be very affordable if you are ready to do a little work.

Flea markets, E-Bay, and possibly your basement will produce a rusty old skillet. It is now your job to re-store it to its prime. This is an easy task if you have the inclination and a few common house hold items. This skillet was picked up at a local flea market. As you can see it is rusty and has years of grease and grime. We are going to use an electrolysis bath to remove the gunk from this pan. Once the pan is clean we will immediately re-season to prevent rust.

An old ice chest or any plastic tub will hold our electrically charged cleansing bath.
An old bbq grill or piece of conductive metal, plastic (non conductive) piece, Sodium Carbonate (dish soap) and a battery charger are the items you will need. I am now going to send you to Black Iron Dude for the full instructions.

Now wasn't that easy. It is pretty remarkable how well this method works. It sounds a little scary running a current through water. Be brave and do not be tempted to lick the pan while the battery charger is on. The pan was seasoned and now we have a beautiful pan that will last another life time. The Black Iron Dude dated this pan from the 30’s. The quality is superior to any pan manufactured today. The only problem now is to locate another cast iron project.

TITO & CAST IRON

Tito is the local barber in Rodeo, California. He is a great fisherman, He cuts our hair and can also dance like Michael Jackson on the dance floor. Tito knows everybody in town and is a local hero. These shots were stolen from the Crab Feed at the 'Crockett Bass Club'.

What does that have to with cast iron? Not a lot! Check out my new pot. It is huge.

BLACK IRON

There is a permanent spot on the Chilebrown stove for a cast iron skillet. The cast iron skillet has seen hundreds of slices of bacon. It has shared and participated on countless meat adventures. If it could only talk! The Mad Meat Genius kitchen has several dozen different cast iron vessels. Skillets, fryers, dutch ovens, and even muffin pans. Once you have seasoned a skillet, it becomes virtually non-stick. It literally becomes your friend. Huh?

The majority of my cast iron collection is 20 years old or younger. After reading Black Iron Dude, I realized there is a whole community of people that collect and use these utensils. He mentioned the virtues of a vintage pan. The older pans will heat up faster and remain hotter. They are made of a different quality of iron before 1960. They are a little lighter and have a smoother cooking surface. I was already hooked on cast iron, so I needed to find one of these vintage pans.

It was not hard to find. E-bay came to the rescue. There was a pan that was rusted and just looked lonely. It just needed a good bath and a loving home. It was purchased for the grand total of 10 dollars. A soaking in a water/vinegar solution and a good scrubbing rinsed away years of neglect. The next step was to re-season. Bacon is the perfect food to aid in the seasoning of the pan. I now have a vintage cast iron skillet. With the markings on the bottom of the pan, we were able to determine that this pan was made sometime between 1910-1920. This pan will be put into service for another 100 years. Yeah!

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