Get behind us soap! Today we are discussing Big Black Skillets but, of course, are not experts so don't @ us. After we discover the worst thing that could possibly happen, we get into some metallurgy before chatting with Special Guest Michele Norris about these kitchen tools and her recent projects. Rust rings, resurrections and hot oil massage all get their air time as we dismantle alien stereotypes and work through rough patches.
Your Mama's Kitchen hosted by Michele Norris
Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think about Race and Identity by Michele Norris
The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir by Michele Norris
Matthew's Now but Wow! - Better Living Through Birding, Christian Cooper
Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:00
Hi. I'm Matthew.
Molly 0:04
And I'm Molly.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:05
And this is spilled milk the show where we cook something delicious. Eat it all, and you can't have any. Today
Molly 0:10
we are talking about cast iron skillets. And this episode was suggested by our guest who will join us in a minute. And you know this name, I guarantee you do listener, the name of our guest is Michelle Norris.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:26
Yep, we are very excited to welcome Michelle to the show. And also, we know that this is an area where people have opinions about cast iron, which are the best How do you wash them? How do you season them? Like, should you should you cook everything with them? We're not going to wade into those debates. I mean, we are a little bit okay. I like we are going to wait into those debates. But we know that we're not experts on this topic.
Molly 0:50
Yeah, neither of us, you know, are more than, you know, cast iron hobbyists. Yeah, sure. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:57
mean, we do have some we do Sure we do. We are not going to talk about Enameled Cast Iron today. So this is not the look Rosae episode. In fact, when when our guests, Michelle suggested this topic, she actually phrased it as big black skillet. So that is so fantastic. To watch. I'd reply to it, just to make sure that means a cast iron skillet, right.
Molly 1:17
Well, anyway, okay, before Michelle joins us, let's do our let's do our things. Let's go down memory lane.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:24
Okay, so I want to talk about my dad's cast iron skillet, which I now own a little later. So I do remember like there was always a 10 inch cast iron skillet pretty much always kind of on the stove ready ready for use or soaking from its previous use in in my parents kitchen, then like for myself, I remember two different times when I went out and got a new cast iron skillet and I did buy new I didn't thrifted although I certainly could have one was for making skillet cornbread when I read John thorns skillet cornbread assay. And so I went out and got an eight inch cast iron skillet that I pretty much mostly use for skillet cornbread. And then getting a second 10 inch skillet so I could make two pan pizzas at the same time. Fantastic.
Molly 2:07
How about you? My parents always had at least one cast iron skillet, they probably had more than that. But what I remember noticing or what? I don't remember seeing them cook with it. Although I'm sure they did. Maybe I just didn't pay attention. But what I remember is like reaching into the drawer where my parents kept all the the skillets and the lids, and I just remember as a child remarking on how heavy these units were, compared to the other skillets like I think that when I was a kid, especially in the house, we lived until I was 13. I think my parents had pretty like inexpensive you know, ordinary like t fall kind of cookware. As I recall. I think I just
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:53
bought a t fall eight inch like non disposable plastic skillet. Yeah.
Molly 2:58
So anyway, as you can imagine, like the cast iron skillet was notably heavy, especially for a kid who's like, whoa. My dad also had one of those cast iron pancake skillets with like the little circular in dents.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:17
Yeah, making a picture of it in the agenda. I recognize this thing immediately. I've never used one myself. Did you ever cook with it? You
Molly 3:23
know, I think I brought my dad's back to Seattle with me maybe at some point because my mom never used it after my dad died. It was like his thing making pancakes and I think I didn't really get it. Like it was so charming. When he made pancakes. It was the it was the one that has seven circular indents in it. So he made pancakes that were maybe like two and a half inches in diameter. He would flip them with a butter knife.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:54
Sharp. That's
Molly 3:57
regular. You can't fit a regular spatula in there. I think I tried it. I don't know why I didn't stick with it. It seems quite like lovely and tidy.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:07
It does and like how many pancakes are you are you realistically going to make like in a skillet that doesn't have indentations like three right I feel
Molly 4:14
like I can usually really only manage to before things start getting stuck together. And I hate that.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:20
Oh yeah, like when you flip it. I know this isn't the pancake episode. But like but this is our show. We can talk about whatever we want. Like when you flip a pancake and like the gooey side like gets up on one of the other cakes the worst and then you weren't a thing that can happen grape
Molly 4:33
the batter off the other there but then yeah, you know it's there. And then you have to go like wash the spatula to get the raw batter anyway, it's like such a pain. Life is so hard.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:46
Let's stick to waffles.
Molly 4:47
Matthew, I do want to tell you about a formative cast iron experience as I had. So when I was in college, I spent at least at least two summers ers living at my Aunt Tina's house because I was at Stanford. So in the South Bay Area and she lived in the North Bay in Marin. She lived alone at that point her she had an empty nest. And I would go spend the summers there. And this was when I worked at Whole Foods in Mill Valley, California. Tina had one of the had like a white enamel sink. Sure. I remember I used one of her cast iron skillets then I put it in the sink, ran water in it and left it overnight. And the next day, I remember her. You were awakened by a shriek. Right? I remember her displeasure when she lifted the cast iron skillet and under it on her sink was a ring of rust and I'm kind of surprised that she wasn't even more mad than she was. I mean, I think it was quite difficult to get rid of that rust stain. Anyway, Word to the wise I mean I've never forgotten since that you don't leave cast iron in in the sink and you don't leave it wet anywhere
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:08
that brings back another cast iron memory for me which I think I put later on the agenda somewhere but one time Cylons w i took me a minute to remember her sister in law, the show Wendy got like a like a thrift store or a state sale of cast iron skillet that was like seriously fucked up like rusty, crusty like nasty, edgy, edgy, like, gave it to me and set and said, Can you fix this? And I'm like, I can Google. So so I don't even remember how I did it. Like I'm sure like it involved like Barkeepers friend and maybe some sort of like corrosive soaking thing. Anyway, like, I totally stripped everything off and re seasoned it and it looked amazing. And like, I've never it was like, you know, one of the few manly things I've ever done. Not that not that anyone can't see isn't a cast iron skillet, but it felt like it had like a masculine tinge to it. And, and it was very satisfying.
Molly 7:02
I thought you were gonna say for a minute there that you did all this work. And then silence who took it home and used it and like, left it in the sink overnight like I did. Anyway, but silence w is too smart for
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:14
that tomorrow. I know she took it to your aunt's house and left it in her six. She wasn't good about foul her own sin. Perfect.
Molly 7:20
Let's talk about what this stuff is because I feel like cast iron is one of those phrases that I have said for my entire life because I heard my parents say it and I have no idea what it actually means.
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:33
Okay, I didn't know either. I mean, I know what it looks like. But like what is cast iron as opposed to other kinds of iron? I don't know. Should we like wait for our guests so I can so we can like make her listen to us talk about metallurgy for 20 minutes.
Molly 7:45
Uh, do you want to talk about metallurgy in front of Michele Norris? No, that makes you feel masculine?
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:50
No. Okay. So cast iron is iron with a carbon content more than 2% and silicon content between one and 3%? As as I'm sure you know. Oh, yes. Okay. Compared to so steel, for example, is also is also a, a iron and carbon alloy. But it has less carbon than cast iron well under 2%. So what does that mean? What is what happens when you put a bunch of carbon into your iron? Well, it has a much, much lower melting temperature than than pure iron. And that makes it easier to cast with. So if you're a black
Molly 8:30
has a much lower melting temperature than pure. Yeah, so let
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:33
me let's let's go over that. So okay, so cast iron has a melting temperature of about 1200 Celsius, okay, steel melts at 1425 Celsius or higher, depending on the type of steel and pure iron melted over 1500 Celsius. Oh, so if you're a blacksmith, which which I know you are, at least like in your in your writing studio. Do you have any like smithing tools. Do you have a forge? Well, I've
Molly 8:57
got an anvil. Got an anvil. Of course.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:59
You got it for your Coyote and Roadrunner fanfic for inspiration.
Molly 9:06
I actually have it rigged up on like cables, just outside the window so I can just watch it fall whenever I want. Like
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:12
when intruders come to the door, that's right. Can I tell you something that happened last night I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that the light was on in the living room and like I do not know how we left the light on in the living room. This has never happened before but like I'm still kind of convinced that like there's like a prowler somewhere in the house who turned the light on and didn't do anything else in the night. It was kind of scary. Wow
Molly 9:37
No, I totally get that when you when something is like out and out of the ordinary and you really don't know how you allow that to happen. Right? Although
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:45
I've got to say it was less scary then times when I have left the light on in the bathroom and then close the bathroom door. Even though I knew I did it did it like I saw the light on under the door. It was like you know either so went in there and I'm gonna walk it on them pooping or there's like an intruder, even though I knew 100% sure neither of these those things was. Okay, so back to metallurgy. So, if you're a blacksmith, it's much easier to melt cast iron at 1200 than to melt pure iron at 1500. Like it may not sound like a huge difference, but it is. And so you can cast a pan or a cookware or whatever out of cast iron much more easily.
Molly 10:27
And so what is casting? Let's define casting,
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:30
it's pouring the iron into a mold, okay, like the mold in the past like it's often been like sand or sandstone. Hmm. Probably these days it's like another type of metal that's like rubbed with with, you know, grease so it doesn't stick question.
Molly 10:45
Yeah. Why? Why do we use for instance cast iron instead of using I don't know steel or something, something that has a lower melting point than iron steel. Yeah, steel
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:57
has a lower melting point. I mean, we there are, there are like pans made of carbon steel, like Sure. We have knives that were sent to us by a sponsor once. Yeah, carbon carbon steel knives. Carbon Steel has some advantages over cast iron, but also some disadvantages. Okay, so let's talk about the upsides and downsides of cast iron. Cast iron is really cheap to produce. And it's very durable, unless you drop it on a cement floor because it's very brittle. So it has to be made thick, so that it so that it doesn't crack easily. You can't make like a really thin pan out of cast iron like you can with aluminum. Okay, so that means that it's heavy also. Okay, yeah. So like, like carbon steel, by comparison is you can make it thinner and lighter, but it's more expensive to produce because steel is more expensive to make
Molly 11:46
is one of them. Better at conducting heat, really
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:50
like copper and aluminum are the best at conducting heat. So cast iron is kind of mediocre at conducting heat in the sense that like a cast iron skillet isn't going to heat as evenly as like an aluminum skillet. Although often people think it does. It's not like a huge difference. But if you do like a hotspot test, why
Molly 12:09
do we reach for a cast iron skillet when making say pan pizza?
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:14
Oh, that's a really good question. So you know, it's got good, really good heat retention, I think is one of the big things. There's there's a difference between like conductivity and retention. So like you heat up a cast iron, like a cast iron skillet, like it's going to stay hot for a long time. It's like kind of resistant to changes in temperature. And so that is going to like it's makes it really good at giving things a good crust. And also the dark color also helps.
Molly 12:40
That's right. That's right. Okay, so, Matthew, you've been teasing the word metallurgy. Oh, yeah. And I think it's time that I think we can go into metallurgy. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:51
so I can't believe like this is this is episode 651. I can't believe it took us this many episodes to end up on the Wikipedia page for history of ferrous metallurgy. This is scandalous that it's taken this long. So cast iron goes back to the Iron Age, which started around the 15th century BCE. But there isn't really much evidence of cast iron cookware until around the third century CE II in China. So before that, it was it was used for other things. I'm
Molly 13:19
just fascinated by how long humans have been like melting working metal, right? Metal it, I mean, that requires some sophisticated technologies to like control the heat to hold the hot metal to handle it and like it's wild to
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:38
figure out what or is and how to get the metal out of the or right
Molly 13:42
I don't even know what or is like, you're
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:45
talking if it was up to us, like you know if, if we were in charge if we were cave people and we are in charge of like finding or and making metal like it's not going to happen. We'd like get a rock and try and like first of all, like we try and put the rock in a pot to melt it. But there wouldn't be a pot because we hadn't invented metal yet. The best
Molly 14:03
I can do is just play around with these ideas. Like when playing Catan Exactly. Yes. Yeah. It's really like reading
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:10
trading wheat for lumber or something. Right. I said lumber Blum.
Molly 14:19
I usually just call them logs. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:21
so here's the thing that blew my mind. And I'm being serious. I was like, okay, cast iron. skillets like this seems like an old school kind of thing. Probably these have been around for centuries. They have not but cast iron cookware has been around since the third century CE II skill. It is a pretty new concept.
Molly 14:42
The skill it's is skill. It
Unknown Speaker 14:43
is skill. It's
Molly 14:44
is skill. It's a skill is the skill. It is a new concept. Okay, so Wait, does this have something to do with like, the surfaces that we cook on or the ways we exactly
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:56
yeah, so if you think about old school cookware like Take about like a walk it goes into like, you know, a stove that has like an indentation to hold a pan with a round bottom and just has like a source of fire coming out of it. Okay, if you think about like a Dutch oven that has legs that's meant to go over a fire in a hearth. These were the most common cooking methods for centuries and Dutch
Molly 15:19
oven used to have legs. Oh, yeah. And like,
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:22
Have you ever heard of heard of cast iron pan called a spider? No, I don't. Okay, well, this is like an old fashioned word for a cast iron pan. It's called a spider because they used to have legs so they could go over a fire. Ah, okay.
Molly 15:33
And so yeah, what a walk have been used at some point like on some sort of a like a ring over a fire. Yeah, absolutely. Because surely they didn't have like gas Rangers back then with like, holes in nowhere.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:47
I think you'd have like a table with a hole in it that you would put put, you know, the fire would be under the table and you would put the walk into the hole. Okay, the idea of like, like, everybody's gonna have a pan that's used for cooking on a stove that has a flat surface. That's it like end of the 19th century like early 20th century thing that is shockingly recent, isn't it? Yeah, like wow, so it's our the one part that I couldn't kind of kind of couldn't figure out is there are ancient skillets like in like the Museum of Natural History or something. There's there's like, I saw a picture on Wikipedia of like a skillet from from the like, the second century that looked pretty much just like a modern skillet, but they certainly were not a common thing that people would have in their homes, like until the 20th century,
Molly 16:32
because people were doing like more hearth
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:33
cooking you will do more harm. Yeah, or or like roasting things on Spitz.
Molly 16:39
Oh, I forgot about roasting. Yes. On spits. Yeah, yeah, it happens in a hearth, yes. Or no, it above a hearth? Absolutely within a hearth. So okay, you know, you've mentioned a couple of times already the brand lodge but they're not the only one right there's there's lot lodges the big one, Lodge
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:57
is kind of the only one at this point. So there has been a lot of consolidation in the in the cast iron skillet industry. So my skillet that was like my family cast iron skillet that that I now own is Wagner were Sydney and that was like, from from a merger of Wagner and Sydney that happened in like the 20s. I think something like that. Hold
Molly 17:21
on. Is there a way so I have I have at least one Wagner skillet upstairs. In my kitchen, is there a way for me to figure out how old it is? Yes. On anything on it?
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:33
There is. So first off, it might just have the year on the bottom. Okay, mine is the year has always been sitting there. And I never noticed it until yesterday. But if it doesn't, they keep changing. They kept changing the logo. And so I found it very easy to just Google up a page where it's like, what is your Wagner logo look look like? Well, it was made between these years. Okay. And so sometimes the range is pretty big, but some of them are some of the ranges are pretty small. Okay, like apparently, if you're like, has like a pie slice on it, then then it was made during a very, like slim number of years. You
Molly 18:06
know, if you were to find these at like an estate sale or garage sale or whatever, like do these like Fetch, fetch a pretty penny or make it
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:15
really they fetch? They they fetch it? Like I think I think you know, there there are there are probably like more desirable items like just that were like rarer for some reason. They're more desirable items. Yes. Such as diamonds, gold nuggets, pretty very desirable or
Molly 18:32
coats, maybe, depending on how the wind is blowing,
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:36
like old old transformers still in their original boxes. Yeah, this is my retirement portfolio. It's those four things. So, you know, but you can you can get like a used vintage cast iron skillet for like not much more than than a brand new large skillet and a lot of cases there are a lot of them out there.
Molly 18:57
And would you want to like if you had a choice, if I were like, here's, you know, some cash, you can have a vintage Wagner or you can have a New Lodge, what would make you choose one or the other? Would
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:09
the lodge be like a ski lodge liquid form with all the trimmings, a chalet? Yeah, if I could have a chalet or a frying pan, I would take the chalet. Okay, because it probably come with a frying pan. Yeah. And and probably like a caretaker like Jack Nicholson. And maybe maybe some scary twins Molly, baby watch the shining, even though I don't like scary movies. It was good.
Molly 19:31
You know, it would probably come with I don't know maybe with like an internal intercom system. Oh, wait, they didn't have an intercom. It just had a radio out.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:40
Right. But no, I want my chalet to have an intercom system. That seems like would be really fun.
Molly 19:46
Yeah, I think that if it didn't, I would choose the skillet. Right?
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:52
Yeah, there you go. You get your priorities straight. Okay. So I think like obviously you can find people who will say that the vintage stuff is better or like particular vintage brands are better because the the iron was like sanded more smoothly or was like a, you know, different formulation of iron or different handle shape or whatever. For me it mostly comes down to like, do I want a pan that comes with a story or not? Because like, I think they're gonna cook pretty much the same and like they last forever unless you drop them on a cement floor. So like, I guess, here's the thing. So, like the historical brands like Wagner and Grizz Wald no longer exists, they got like, you know, went out of business or got bought by lodge long ago. There are some like modern high end brands like Stargazer like, you know, there have been cast iron Kickstarters like, you know, that look that look pretty, like often like the the design like the sort of industrial design of it is a big reason to that people are interested in it. But I feel like the basic lodge 10 or 12 inch skillet is kind of a marvelous product, like a magical product, kind of,
Molly 21:00
it's amazing how inexpensive it is. Yeah, so
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:04
now the price now is about $40 for 10 inch skillet, I think, like I bought one a while back so I could make two pan pizzas at once. And I think it was $25 back then. So not an expensive pan and it could easily last 100 years. Yes. And be better you know at its job 100 years from now than the day you buy it. And like can you think of anything else like that?
Molly 21:29
Not that you can pay 40 bucks 40 bucks for I mean a book but a book even a book is gonna start to you know, like degrade. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:41
like the language you use it? I mean, yes. Like you're gonna you're gonna realize what the problematic aspects of the book are that you somehow completely missed we
Molly 21:50
noticed like actually you don't really want to read Little House on the Prairie loud right? Your children Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:56
you like I started to get what what what's the problematic aspect of the life changing Magic of Tidying Up like why is that the book that came? You might want to fold your shirts in two instead of three.
Molly 22:11
Yeah, I mean, well, you know, threes are maybe odd numbers are going to go out and even numbers will be in That's
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:18
right. Yeah, no, in the future odd numbers are going to be totally out. Yeah.
Molly 22:22
Even numbers are the new millennial pink.
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:25
That's right. septuplets out octuplets in acept Octo mom is gonna be the coolest mom, Steptoe mom, total outcast.
Molly 22:35
Okay. All right. So
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:36
as you're here, this goes back to your question about whether whether whether you want to chalet or a or a lot as users shilling 207 wrote on Reddit quote, as far as brands go, Lodge is the Toyota Camry of cast iron, it does the job. It's reliable, it's affordable, and it's readily readily available. There are other brands with smoother finishes, features and prices. But at the end of the day, they're all just cast iron.
Molly 22:59
Okay, all right. So so so is lodge an old company.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:03
It is It was founded in 1896 by Joseph lodge in South Pittsburg, Tennessee. And I feel a little weird, like, because I don't like to romanticize this sort of thing in general. But as far as I can tell, like it has not been stealthily absorbed into a huge corporation, and it still manufactures its product in at like two factories in Tennessee, that wow, a lot of people in a couple of small towns in Tennessee, if
Molly 23:28
that is indeed the case that I feel like that's a real rarity in America, the American economy.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:35
It does seem like it is it is cool that that like lodge hasn't been ruined in some way like so that you cannot actually even get a good cast iron pan. So yeah, I mean, it's still it's still very good. Okay,
Molly 23:48
Matthew, our guest is about to arrive.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:52
Right let's let's bring in Michelle Norris and see what she has to say about cast iron.
Molly 24:07
You probably know the name Michelle Norris from NPR is all things considered where she was a co host for a decade. She's interviewed world leaders, Nobel laureates, Oscar winners, American presidents, influential newsmakers, and even astronauts in outer space. Now she is talking with us. But there's much more to say about her today. She is a National Opinion columnist for the Washington Post. She's also the author of the 2011 memoir, The Grace of Silence, and of our hidden conversations, what Americans really think about race and identity, published by Simon and Schuster. This past January. Our hidden conversations grows out of the race card project, which Michelle started in 2010, inviting people to submit comments on their experience of race in the United States in just six words on top of all of that, Misha is the host of the audible original podcast your mama's kitchen in which she talks with celebrities like Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Obama, Matthew Broderick and Judy Blume about how their earliest culinary experiences helped to shape their lives. She is an avid and adventurous home cook, who comes from a long line of great cooks herself.
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:21
Michelle, welcome to spilled milk. Hello, hello. It's great to be with you. First of all, you begin each episode of your podcast with the prompt. Tell me about your mama's kitchen. And you're renowned for your work as an interviewer. So why why is this question important? And what kinds of conversations does it open up? Oh,
Speaker 1 25:39
it opens up delicious conversations. And the thing is, we ask everyone the same question. And the conversation goes in a completely different direction that is x depending on who they are and where they came from. I mean, that's that's the beauty of it. It's something that started when I was hosting at NPR, you understand this? You talk to people all the time, you guys are great interviewers, you know the drill that when you first talk to people, you have to get a little bit level from them in an NPR, the standard question was, what do you have for breakfast? Sure, yes,
Molly 26:08
yes.
Speaker 1 26:09
You know, people don't eat a lot for breakfast. So the answers were usually too short. They would say yogurt, they would say toast, they would say nothing. They would say coffee Mollywood. Yeah, for breakfast.
Molly 26:17
I had granola and banana and plain yogurt. Okay, so
Speaker 1 26:21
a little bit longer, but not long enough to really good, good levels. And my voice is so deep and smoky that they usually had to get people to talk long enough that they could match my levels. Sure. And so I started to ask different questions. Do you use paper or plastic when you go to the grocery store? And then that was outdated? Because you know that when you use a plastic anymore? Or I would ask Tell me about your first summer job? Would you do for fun on a Saturday night? I would come up with a different questions. But the question that is at the heart of the podcast was the magic question. Because if I asked people tell me about your mama's kitchen, they would just go someplace, it was like rendering a pot. They just got comfortable. They got wistful, they talked a lot so much so that we'd have to like kind of rein them back in. Okay. Okay. Now now it's, you know, it's time for us to actually, you know, talk about this thing that's in Congress right now that we need to discuss. And I always thought that it would be a great way to kickstart conversations on a podcast than when we found this perfect partnership with higher ground. We were off to the races. And it's it's been it's been really fun during these conversations, and we learned something new. The other thing is we've talked to people who've done lots and lots of interviews. You know, Michelle Obama has written two books done a hundreds of interviews, but we learned something new. We talked to her, because I'm so glad
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:41
I'm so glad on this show that we don't have to move into talking about something that's going on in Congress next.
Molly 27:48
Well, so when when we were first emailing with you about coming on the show, you suggested so often we suggest, you know, a half dozen or so topics to a potential guest. You suggested cast iron skillets. And I was wondering what brought that to mind.
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:04
I think you actually wrote big black skillet.
Speaker 1 28:08
Well, I had a few I mentioned, I think toast was one of them a waffles. And that eating a lot of carbohydrates. We're not talking about toast because that would be my death to run out of the studio and get really gnarly talking about toast because I love toast I always have since I was a kid toast is underrated. Oh, but I thought about a big black skillet because it's the logo or your mama's kitchen but also it's just such a it's a key element in my own kitchen. When I think about my mama's kitchen I think about the big black skillet and then she also had a little a smaller skillet for if you were just making like a single egg or something like that. It's just food tastes different when it's cooked in a skillet. Yeah, it just does. So
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:52
well. I wanted to ask like what what cast iron skillets do you have in your kitchen and also like do you feel like you cook differently or that it feels different when you're when you're cooking with cast iron? Absolutely.
Speaker 1 29:03
I have a couple of cast iron skillets I have I have one that I am ashamed to say is rusted out that I need to clean that I just need to go back and take care of we
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:13
were talking about how much fun it is like how satisfying it is to do that like you know when you finally get around to stripping it off and re season again It feels so good.
Speaker 1 29:21
But it takes time. Oh you have to have a lot of patience and there's a whole you know you can get lost on Instagram there's a whole community of people who look for old skillets because some people believe that the older skillets are better than the newer skillets that they did something different to the iron that they use or something that they they cook differently they look for the markings on the back and you know you can find like 100 year old skillets to right kind of I'm
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:47
laughing because I'm about to introduce you to an old skillet.
Speaker 1 29:51
Okay, I almost brought my skillet in which you know should I have carried it into in today. But I have a couple them so I have the old you know rusty one that is that is in a box and it Need to take care of. I have the one that came that I've been carrying around with me for forever, basically since my since my dad died. And then I have a fairly newer model, which in I think there is something to it that they are different. It's not as heavy. It's it's large. So it's, you know, it's a great one. And then I have a couple of smaller ones, like I have a smaller skillet that we use, which looks like a little pot almost, that we use when we barbecue and sometimes we'll put just barbecue sauce on it and it can sit right on the barbecue. Sometimes we'll do some other sauce. butter melts differently in a skillet. Yeah, it just is more viscous. You know, on the other side of that, so sometimes, you know, I'll use that and then somewhere and I was I was going to try to find this. I have this thing that someone gave me which is skillet like but it has little you make cornbread in it so the corn bread looks like little ears of corn. Oh,
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:56
chords deadpan. Yes. We've talked about this. We love these.
Speaker 1 31:00
So I don't I have made cornbread many times in a skillet, but I haven't I haven't you know when I'm sorry. I'm gonna say this on the air because the person who gave it to me might actually Oh, no, but I haven't actually used the corn stick pan. But but it's it's somewhere but you appreciate now. Yes. Yes, I do.
Molly 31:16
So when do you reach for a cast iron skillet as opposed to any other skillet you might have?
Speaker 1 31:23
I like to do fried fish in a cast iron skillet?
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:28
Oh, yes.
Speaker 1 31:29
You know, some people use a Dutch oven. I just like a cast iron frying and a cast iron skillet is different, which is much different and I think safer because it holds the oil at a certain temperature. So I for if I'm frying something I will admit I don't fry chicken as much as I used to. And you can snatch my soul sister license. I found a very good supplier of fried chicken. And my mom and my late mother in law would back me up on this because this chicken is so good. It comes from a little market here in Washington DC. And it's so good that my mother even said why would you fried chicken anymore? Are you gonna reveal the name? It's called broad branch market. Okay, and it's the woman who makes the chicken. Learn how to make chicken. I want to get the story right at Tracy is going to write her own story at some point. But she was in a sorority, I think it was in North Carolina and she got to know the woman in the sorority who made the fried chicken in the kitchen and she got like the secret recipe for some of them. So this she can put a scald on that chicken and it's seasoned well. And then some days at Broadbent market, the person who was the crossing guard for the school nearby, who is you know, an older black gentleman. He's going back in there making the fried chicken whatever the fried chicken that comes from this little market in this precious little silver pallet like you would never expect them to have. knock your socks off fried chicken. They're fried chicken is amazing. And I've served it to many people in my house and they asked did you make this fried chicken and I pause for a minute
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:01
I got to do something in the kitchen. I'll be do I want to be struck
Speaker 1 33:03
by lightning today. And so I don't I know I don't lie I usually just kept to it. Right. But when I fried fish, I still fry fish. Occasionally I will reach for the cast iron skillet, I like to do a spatchcock chicken. In a cast iron skillet that works really well. You can use cast iron skillet, if you're frying on, which is dangerous. And I don't recommend this to everybody. You have to have a certain skill level and a lot of confidence to do this. But my husband is from Baltimore. And he makes fantastic crabcakes cakes. And if we're not using the airfryer which is a way to make a crab cake and take some of the oil out. I mean, I know that people feel some kind of way about air fryers. I'm on Team airfryer I actually like your fryers. And just just to establish that we have started making occasionally crab cakes in the air fryer just to take the oil content out. But if you're frying crab cakes and you don't want your house and everything in your house to smell like Maryland, yes just yell like yes, you know four days. We will sometimes fry the crab cakes on the grill outside and fry them and grapeseed oil in a heavy cast iron skillet.
Matthew Amster-Burton 34:13
Okay grill.
Molly 34:14
Oh, that's fantastic. But we've also used
Speaker 1 34:17
the cast iron skillet on the grill. And another way if you turn if you invert the pan, yes, and you can you can put a nice little scald on. If you're planning to cook a flank steak and you want it to cook quickly, but then you want to take down the temperature someplace else works well on a tomahawk. If you want to do that works well. Again, if you want to kind of sear one side of a spatchcock bird, and then move it you know, off to the side. If you're doing something like a flank state and you want to do fajitas you can do your tortillas on an inverted skillet. So there are lots of ways that I
Matthew Amster-Burton 34:56
didn't even think about fajitas were you know, of course, like Molly and I were going to talk later about like what We like to cook in cast iron. I didn't even think about fajitas like so important
Speaker 1 35:03
kind of perfect way to heat them up. You know, just just boop boop boop all right there.
Matthew Amster-Burton 35:06
Okay, so can we do like like a, you know, two minute mini episode of your podcast? Because when I think of my mama's kitchen, I think of this cast iron pan. Right? Oh, she's
Unknown Speaker 35:16
a beauty, isn't it?
Matthew Amster-Burton 35:17
So yeah, no now, but
Unknown Speaker 35:19
what does it say on the bottom?
Matthew Amster-Burton 35:20
That's what I didn't know at all. Until we started researching for this episode. I had never really thought about it. So it says Wagner were Sydney. And there's a date that you can't totally read. But it's from the early to mid 50s. And this pan, I asked my mom about it. And she's like, like Matthew, finally you're asking me something about family history. I thought you don't care about that. And she had this pan was purchased by my grandfather, who was not a very nice person, but an excellent home cook. And he would have bought it sometime in the early to mid 50s gave it to my dad. My dad then moved in with my mom in the early 60s in New York. And this became their cast iron skillet. It was always sitting on the stove when I was a kid. Now it belongs to me and I don't think it's ever been received. And I think this is the original seasoning.
Unknown Speaker 36:09
And so you don't put sauce. You don't put soap on that right. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 36:12
don't put soap on it. But I will I will like run water in it. And like you know, scrub it with a very gentle scrubber. But like yeah, if it wasn't for this episode, like this would have still been just like a mystery pan that I would have guessed was from the 70s Wow, isn't that amazing?
Molly 36:26
That's so cool. Matthew. It occurs to me I didn't even I could have brought my my my kitchen is above me right now. And I could have brought down my cast iron skillets. But I have I think both of mine are Wagner too, which I hadn't even thought about do
Speaker 1 36:42
you have a Dutch oven also, because a cast iron dutch oven is also a good thing. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 36:45
have a look krusei enameled, Dutch Dutch
Speaker 1 36:48
I do too. But a cast iron dutch oven is you know, it's a little bit different.
Molly 36:53
I have a good friend who does a fair amount of baking on camping trips in a large cast iron dutch oven like in the coals that you can like put coals on the
Speaker 1 37:05
layer, you can literally put them around that and you can almost create if you if you put the lid on right also you can create like a convection. You know, you can get kind of a little circular thing going. I love the story of that skillet.
Matthew Amster-Burton 37:18
Yeah, I genuinely did not know this before yesterday. All right. So Michelle, how do you season a cast iron pan like that one that you're gonna have to strip down? Like, how are you going to re season it?
Speaker 1 37:27
Well, I often just get a big piece of salt, pork or fat back. Yeah. And just let it cook low and slow. I know that a lot of people use flaxseed oil.
Matthew Amster-Burton 37:39
Yeah, we're going to talk about that. Molly and I like there's some pros and cons to that for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1 37:44
well, I mean, you know, you want I guess you science of this, you want unsaturated fat, probably the fat, the fats that are not good for you. Like you don't want to use olive oil. You know, I you might be able to use grapeseed oil like wheat fry the crabcakes in the grill out bat, we use grapeseed oil for that because it can take such high heat. And that's MCT oil is a little bit better for you. But I would probably use a piece of fat back. Yeah, that sounds great. And just you know, let it cook low and slow and moving around. And then I'd probably make two or three rounds of bacon. Yeah. And that like heavy slab bacon just to keep and then you know, wash it in between. You say that you're pretty careful about scrubbing yours. I'm not so careful. going in there and really, you know, playing it out.
Speaker 2 38:28
It's not kosher salt. No, no salt. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.
Speaker 1 38:38
It's like that Mariah Carey song. A No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just doing COVID I thought this is a good time to we cooked in the kitchen all together as a family, college kids all came home. And I gave the kids a tutorial on how to take care of a skillet because I figured that, you know, just like you inherited the skillet, they they'd get my skillets at some point. And we went through that you know about how to clean a skillet and then how to oil it afterwards. And now for the oil that I use after I've rendered the skillet. Some people use olive oil for that. And I don't I know, you know, I would use a canola oil or sunflower oil or something that and you don't need a whole lot of it. There's also a debate after you clean a skillet whether you should heat it and I think that depends on how high the scald was. You know, whether if I'm doing fried fish, and there's just a lot of that What's the word for that schmo DS or whatever let's just make one up you know, whatever the the stuff from fried fish for sure. Yeah, you know if you need to really get in there you might want to heat that up and also just because it's fish so you don't want the next thing that you that you cook to have that kind of
Matthew Amster-Burton 39:54
flavor. It's interesting that like there's so much like controversy with like, you know, how do you how do you season cat So tired. How do you? How do you preserve it? Like, can you so bought it, that sort of thing? And like you wrote a book about race in America, and I feel like this. This is like a controversial topic in its own right. So how you can't escape controversy.
Speaker 1 40:12
But the interesting thing about race in America is we often cook the same way. Absolutely. You know, that's one of the things that I love about food is that, you know, it's one of the things we have in common. I will say this, have you ever heard of cast iron that I spent a lot of time in Massachusetts and in particular, on the beautiful island of Martha's Vineyard, I actually now live there five months of the year. Wow. And my kids have gone off to college. And it's it's basically how I was able to finish the book was to break away from the mainland and go up there and like holed up in my basement and finish, launch a podcast and finish a book. But there is a beautiful agricultural fair there. And I'm I hail from Minnesota. So I love a good country fair. I love state fairs. I love eating food on a stick. I love eating my way through a fair and they have an agricultural fair up there. And I mentioned this, because part of the fair, one of the biggest contests one of the biggest draws at the fair two things, the oyster shucking contest, because one of the things people don't recognize about Martha's Vineyard, they think it's placed where presidents and fans people hang out. It's, it's an agrarian Island. It's an island of farms. And that's, you know, if you if you live there, that's that's the culture, farmers and fishermen. So there's the oyster shucking contest, and then there is the skillet toss.
Matthew Amster-Burton 41:29
I have heard it, I didn't know this was a Martha's Vineyard thing. But I have heard of a skillet toss deadly.
Speaker 1 41:34
It's a thing and the same woman one, year after year after year after year. And it's kind of like a discus throw. You know, there's a whole thing and they're really good at it. And when I first heard about this, because we've been going there for like, since the kids were little, I always thought I don't know if we want to go there on the day of the skillet toss because what if they're not skilled, right? Yeah, skill it quick. You know, it winds up like off course and hitting somebody in the head. But the people who they take it seriously, they train for it, you know, and they use big, heavy you know how big a skillet is, right how heavy a skillet is.
Matthew Amster-Burton 42:09
I want to I want to, like hear a planet money episode about like the insurance underwriting for this. Yeah.
Molly 42:21
Well, I wondered. So, you know, going back to talking about your podcast, I wondered, do you have any dream guests for your mama's kitchen? Oh,
Speaker 1 42:31
I have a long list of dream guests. I want to talk to Dolly Parton. Rach, yes. I saw a picture of her on the interwebs. You know, on somewhere, I think it's probably Instagram of a 13 year old Dolly Parton. And it just tickled my imagination. You know, and I just wanted to know what what was life like in that kitchen? Where are they singing? They are obviously we're cooking. What kind of wisdom? Did she stop up? I would love to talk to Dolly Parton. There are a few other people that that we'd love to bring on the show. I mentioned Mariah Carey. For my son's sake. My son loves Mariah Carey. And I'd love to, and I've learned so much about her because of him. And she actually she cooks. She had a you know, an interesting life coming up. So she is definitely on my list out there that you know, we haven't talked to athletes yet this season, I'd love to talk to someone like Jana Santika Dupo i hope i pronounced his name correctly. But you know, he is Nigerian grew up in Greece. I've fusion, you know, I want to know about about his family. Another athlete, Lewis Hamilton, who is British, who recently has talked about changing his name, in part to honor his mom. So I'd love to talk to him. And then there's a long list of cooks, you know, that I'd love to talk to. And then I'm hoping that over time, you know, I'm praying that we have season 234 You know who you never know. But I hope that occasionally we would reach in and talk to people who are not so well known. Like there's someone I know whose mom was in the green book. Yeah. And I'd love to talk to him because he said that growing up, he would be peeling potatoes, and they lived in Memphis. And because a lot of people who were part of the Civil Rights Movement moved through Memphis, but also a lot of big entertainers. And they couldn't stay in hotels, and they couldn't eat. So they were always eating at his mom's kitchen. And so it's a way to talk about his mom's kitchen, but help people understand history. Yeah, at the same time, you know, I think that that would be interesting. And then that would be fantastic. Yeah. So I could go on and on. And I mean, the list is quite long of people that we'd love to talk to. But the proof of concept is there that almost you know, anyone we choose to talk to, I'd love to talk to Stevie Wonder ya know about his Mama's kitchen. I'd love to talk to usher about his homies, you know, should we just go on I hope you're listening. Maybe it's fun. Like I do a little bit of booking here,
Matthew Amster-Burton 45:02
right I listened to you know, I listen to a couple of episodes of of your podcast the last couple of days and which I enjoyed very much like, you know, I pulled it up and I was like, Oh, you had to have Brian Terry on we had Brian Terry on I bet we have a lot of guests in common. And then I looked at the other guests like note that the only one but we would like to have all of the rest of your
Speaker 1 45:19
wasn't that Bryant Terry when he had his mother conjuring his grandmother at the end singing at the stove. Yes. Oh, my goodness, that took me out.
Molly 45:31
I'm so excited for our listeners to to get to enjoy more episodes of your podcast. I hope that that they have already found it. Yeah, but if they haven't now, they will link
Matthew Amster-Burton 45:42
to it in the show notes.
Unknown Speaker 45:43
Thank you. Thank you.
Matthew Amster-Burton 45:44
Can you tell us a little bit about your new book? And is there anything else you would like to plug? Sure, sure.
Speaker 1 45:49
Well, before I plug the new book, as of course, I will do that. I will also let people know that if they listen to the podcast that we also want to hear more about their Mama's kitchen. So we're telling them that if they send us a voice memo at YMK, at higher ground productions.com their voice and their story might be included because I'd love to hear other people's memories, recipes, what tastes like home to them, what they remember about their mamas This is the show was in some way, a big a big fat love letter to the people who raised us. And it's interesting because I started doing the podcast, in part because I spent so much time examining race in America through my work at the race car project. And through the book that I wrote about our hidden conversations. And so many of the stories that we discuss on your mama's kitchen wind up being about identity. You know, it's it's interesting how these two things are linked. And the book, in many ways, is like a family scrapbook. It's a collection of six word stories that allowed me to understand America in a very unique way. Because when I'm covering race, I'm usually covering some big seismic thing. But when I put the basket on the table and said, Tell me your thoughts on race and six words, what people served up was much more intimate, and much more personal, and in some ways ricocheted off the news, but was really about their families, and their lives, and how their workplace is changing, and their memories. And often a lament, I wish I had befriended that student, when our schools were first integrating or, you know, America feels different to me. And I'm not happy about that. And I haven't figured out where else I can say that. So it's, it's been an interesting way to explore America through six word stories.
Matthew Amster-Burton 47:32
Yeah, I thought like the, there's, there's the cliche about how like, you know, constraints, cause creativity and like that that six word constraint is so incredibly effective in that context. Because like, if you just said to someone like, I don't know, you talked about this in the book, but if you just said to someone, like, you know, talk to me about race, they would either say, like, I don't want to talk about that, or would say, you know, something stilted. That is what, you know, what they think someone expects them to say. But when you have to express it in six words, that's a real opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1 48:03
I think one of the things that helped also, I didn't say, tell me about racism, I said, Tell me about race. Yeah. And it didn't say, tell me about what makes you angry, or makes you afraid. I mean, it just was blank. So you decide how you want to talk about it. And a lot of people talked about things that don't concern, skin color, or hair texture, but just, you know, are about identity. That's why the subtitle of the book is our hidden conversations when Americans really think about race and identity. Because some people talked about having an accent or having red hair, or being in the military, or, you know, something that was about identity that didn't have to do with race. And I was surprised to how much food was a part of that, how the kitchen is often where things happened, you know, where people figured things out or where they argued or where things you know, where they had epiphanies, how often people talked about the grocery store, and until I was done with a manuscript, and going through and reading very carefully through the manuscript, line by line looking for the misplaced comma, you know, all the things that you want to find before it goes to press, I realized the word grocery store keeps coming up. I never saw the grocery stores are racialized, spaced beyond you know, how some communities had them in some communities didn't you know, like food deserts, but a lot of stuff goes down to crush restore, you know, that make people feel some kind of way that they that they want to, they want to writing about it. Oh, fantastic.
Molly 49:20
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us about not just cast iron skillets but all the many really rich and powerful things that you're working on. Thank you. Thank you. Now
Speaker 1 49:34
you've got me figuring out I feel like this evening when I go home and fix dinner that I need to pull out one of the skillets and expect to use Well, excellent. It's been great talking to you. Thanks, Matthew. Thanks, Molly.
Molly 49:48
Oh, that was delightful. Fantastic. Okay, so I have to admit when you guys were talking about seasoning cast iron, I really wished that we had already talked about it like before she came on, so that I can We've gotten educated a little bit, it's not too late, because she was saying all those things about like, you want to use saturated fat. Can you please just give me like a little primer? You know, if you buy a large skillet, what do you need to do? Okay, so
Matthew Amster-Burton 50:14
first off, like I put this on the agenda, and I laughed at what you added, because I said, Molly and I are old enough to remember when you couldn't buy pre seasoned cast iron pans, and they arrived Gray, and you had to season them. And this changed in 2002.
Molly 50:27
And now the whole world doesn't know anything about seasoning cast iron pans, and
Matthew Amster-Burton 50:30
right but also, but then Molly said, I don't remember this.
Molly 50:34
I'm not older. I'm only three years younger than you. But I remember that. But
Matthew Amster-Burton 50:38
yeah, so Do you remember anything from 2002? Or is it possible that like, that was your year of alien abduction?
Molly 50:44
Well, that was the year my dad died. So I mean, I was down by aliens. I'm
Matthew Amster-Burton 50:49
sorry. No, he's
Molly 50:51
Yeah, to be fair, he didn't die till December. And he and it all happened very quickly. So before that, I was abducted by aliens. And that's where I write for most of the year.
Matthew Amster-Burton 50:59
Wow, it feels like they've returned you just in time. They?
Molly 51:02
They did. Yeah. They're very compassionate. That's true. Yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 51:05
Okay. Do you remember anything that aliens did? Or is it like a whole like a real blank? It's
Molly 51:11
a real blank although they did I think that that was the year that us that Sleater Kinney came out with one beat and they did let
Matthew Amster-Burton 51:18
the sounds right. Oh, yes. They still like really caring, thoughtful Aliens. Aliens
Molly 51:23
really have gotten such a bad rap in sci fi, but they're really nice. And they have good taste in music. And they they they understand death. Did
Matthew Amster-Burton 51:34
they did they like blow up any major American cities with big lasers while like on their way back to return you? Nope.
Molly 51:40
No cut again. That's not something aliens really do.
Matthew Amster-Burton 51:44
Okay. All right. That's good to know. You know, you're always you're a writer. You write books. You're always looking for your next book. I think I've got an idea. Oh,
Molly 51:51
okay, Matthew. But can we wait and talk about it when the show's over?
Matthew Amster-Burton 51:55
Oh, yeah. I mean, the idea is just you should write about your alien abduction. Okay. Okay. So it even if you get a pre season cast iron pan, it's still best to season it at home. It's not it doesn't have like a thick coating of seasoning yet and what
Molly 52:07
does this mean for those who who have been living under a rock where there's no cast iron so
Matthew Amster-Burton 52:12
if you take like this cast iron pan that I'm holding up that all of our listeners can see because it's a video podcast now you can see it in your mind you know, a cast iron pan it's a big black skillet as our as our guests in the natural color of it is kind of gray. So if you if you like took steel wool and and scrubbed it down, you would have a gray metal pan that is not very good for cooking because it sticks to stuff. And so a cast iron pan needs to build up like a natural nonstick coating that is made of polymerize oil. Ooh, polymerize oil just means oil that has like been like heated enough that it that it like kind of bonds with itself and forms kind of a plasticky solid Okay, and so when you feel when you rub your hand over the surface of a season cast iron pan, that's what you're feeling is like oil that isn't isn't like sticky and greasy anymore. It's like literally formed into like a natural plastic. Have
Molly 53:03
you ever hit a patch? Or encountered as a cast iron skillet that has like a sticky patch on? Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 53:10
for sure. That that's that is like, when some oil that's like a thick chunk of polymerize oil that isn't thin enough.
Molly 53:19
So let's you need to scrub that off.
Matthew Amster-Burton 53:21
Yeah, like, I mean, Will anything bad happened to your food? No, but it's but it's like gross and it could smoke. Okay,
Molly 53:27
and is that is the same thing true of like rough patches on a season skill?
Matthew Amster-Burton 53:33
Or is that actually like rough patches are gonna kind of work themselves out.
Molly 53:37
So we don't need to stress out about those. Yeah, like if you and I hit a rough patch,
Matthew Amster-Burton 53:41
we don't need to stress it'll work itself out. We don't need to talk about it.
Molly 53:44
Great. That's perfect. That Yep. Which is why we're not married. Exactly. Okay, go on.
Matthew Amster-Burton 53:52
Okay, so So Michelle talked about like how she seizes seasons a cast iron pan. There are a lot of different methods that like all work because like it all you like Scott kind of get the process started and then you just cook with it with oil and the coating gets better and better. What I do is like I wipe the whole pan with a very thin layer of refined oil like a canola oil or soybean oil really thin like rub it on and then use a dry paper towel to rub it back off. And
Molly 54:20
would this be like like Western vegetable oil? Totally, yes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 54:23
Okay. And then bake it for 30 minutes at 450 and do that like two or three more times?
Molly 54:29
And then you're done. And so you mentioned that you don't think this skillet that that so the skillet you've got there the old family skeleton? You don't think it's ever been re season? I
Matthew Amster-Burton 54:39
don't think so. At least not since I was a child. I
Molly 54:42
never wash my cast iron skillets with soap. Don't worry, Michelle. I don't but I do the thing where you put in some kosher salt and scrub at it with a paper towel and sometimes I have taken like the back of the scrubby part of a sponge without soap on it and scrubbed stuff in there, and sometimes it feels like the the seasoning gets a bit dull. Does that mean that I need to re season it?
Matthew Amster-Burton 55:07
No, it just means you need to keep cooking with it.
Molly 55:09
And so how do I know if my cast iron pan is well seasoned? Like, can you tell by looking at it? Or is it more a function you can kind
Matthew Amster-Burton 55:18
of tell by looking at it, but it's more it's more a function like if stuff isn't sticking to it, you're fine. Okay, and like I'm glad you mentioned this because this is the thing I hadn't thought of like something that I have noticed about cast iron that I think is just a thing about cast iron is unlike other cookware, it never gets completely clean in the sense that like if I took this skillet right now, which again I'm holding up for listeners to see like this is clean I washed it yesterday but if I took a wet paper towel and really like dragged it around the inner corner it would pick up a little bit of like dark iron particles and or you know maybe a little bit of like burned food that didn't come out of it. This is not a bad thing. It's just how the pan works. It's not a health hazard. It's not a problem for cooking. Sure,
Molly 56:01
you know and you're you're getting like the the visible crusties out of there like when
Matthew Amster-Burton 56:07
do you remember the word that Michelle used? Oh, she Modi's maybe smoothies, maybe smoothies? Yeah, you got to get the smoothies out of there. Yeah.
Molly 56:16
When I cook so what I cook most regularly in my cast iron skillets actually other than pizza, yeah. What I cook most regularly is just like burgers like smackers, basically. And yeah, if you if you leave them undisturbed, as you do with any meat that you're trying to get for, like two or three days, leave it leave it undisturbed in the skillet, it flips over really nicely and cleanly. Yeah, so I guess that is a sign of a good, a well seasoned skillet, but there's always like smote ease in I always have to scrub at it a little bit. But it's so much easier to clean really, I would say then, for instance, like
Matthew Amster-Burton 56:54
a stainless steel pan, of course. Yeah, it's never gonna be like as nonstick as like a brand new Teflon pan. And that's not really like the function it's supposed to serve. It's going to be like kind of medium to medium high level of nonstick and just kind of just stay that way and like continue to get better or at least not get worse like Teflon pans always do.
Molly 57:17
We touched on this briefly with Michelle but I remember seeing once in a like one of a friend of the show Kenji Lopez alt YouTube videos where he talked about after he cooks in a walk which is carbon steel, we shouldn't clear not cast iron
Matthew Amster-Burton 57:34
there are cast iron walks but but most carbon steel Yeah,
Molly 57:37
he you know, rinses it out with hot water scrubs off any stuff. And then he takes a little bit of like vegetable oil, puts it in there rubs it around with a paper towel and then wipes it out with a dry paper towel. Is this something we should be doing with cast iron as well,
Matthew Amster-Burton 57:52
what I usually do, I usually don't do that. I usually just I want to make sure it's totally dry before I put it away. So I will usually like after I wipe it out, put it on like burner on medium heat for five minutes. And then and then just turn off the burner and let it sit. Okay, that seems to work fine. I think I think a lot of these things like you know, even if there is a best way, the best way probably isn't that much better than like the second, third, fourth and fifth best ways people have been cooking with these pants for a long time. And we're not you know, we're not going to like suddenly like fine find like a revolutionary technique. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Maybe I'm small minded.
Molly 58:29
I do what Kenji suggested both with my walk and also often with my cast iron skillets unless they look particularly like lovely and shiny. After I'm finished cleaning them, sometimes I feel like they look a little bit more sort of dull or I worry that I've gotten rid of some of the good coding. And then I do the thing with just a little bit of oil and I don't know if it does anything and I really don't want anybody to correct me. No, but
Matthew Amster-Burton 58:57
I mean if it feels fine to do it like to like, you know, rub rub a little oil, a little hot oil massage for your pan. Like I'm not gonna tell you not to do that. Are you kidding?
Molly 59:07
So, Matthew Yeah, I talked about cooking smash burgers in mind. We've talked about pan pizza. What else do you do with your cast iron skillet?
Matthew Amster-Burton 59:16
If I'm going to cook a steak, which usually I'm going to do only if I'm making a steak salad because that's that's where I'm at in life steak wise. I do love a steak salad obviously I'm gonna cook a steak and a cast iron pan Are you kidding? Like aside from like, you know it's it like is a good utensil for cooking a steak but also like a steak sizzling away in a in a cast iron pan just looks cool.
Molly 59:37
Oh, I thought you were gonna stay a say a steaks sizzling away and a stainless steel pan that feels wrong.
Matthew Amster-Burton 59:42
No, that would be fine too. But like fine, you know like in a cast iron pan with like some sort of like fat you know vaporizing off it looks great fish, especially if I'm going for a crispy skin. Like I mentioned I have my cornbread skillet like the eight inch that really mostly gets used for skillet cornbread hashbrown ones or potato hash. Gotta go cast iron.
Molly 1:00:02
Yeah. Michelle mentioned that she sometimes warms up barbecue sauce in a little cast iron saucepan. Yeah. And I was thinking about that because barbecue sauce is pretty acidic, right? Like, to what degree do we need to worry about cooking acidic things in a well seasoned cast iron?
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:00:19
Yeah, that's a really good question. So as far as I can tell, having done a little bit like enough research on this to be dangerous, if your pan is well seasoned, and you're not going to be cooking this for a really long time, it's going to be fine. You know, you don't want to like cook a bunch of tomatoes for two hours on a cast iron pan that you bought last week new at the store, but like it's got a good coating on it. You've had it for you know, you've been cooking on it for months or years and you're gonna like make make a tomato sauce or red wine stew or something and it's gonna be fine.
Molly 1:00:53
Yeah, okay. Wow. Okay, well, we've covered a lot of territory. There was so much to say about cast iron I think
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:01:00
I think we're gonna hear from people who are going to tell us all the things we left out about cast iron it's a thing people really like get attached to yes, even though it's not it's naturally nonstick people still stick to it.
Molly 1:01:15
Okay, Matthew, do you have a now but wow this week? I sure do.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:01:27
Mine Abbott WoW is a book that came out last year called Better Living Through birding by Christian Cooper. Have you read it? I
Molly 1:01:33
saw this book and in the peek pics section. Okay, Seattle Public Library. I have not read it though. And I
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:01:39
read it when it came out and just totally forgot to now but while it even though I thought it was really good. So Christian Cooper is the guy who is the victim of the Birding while black incident in Central Park a couple of years ago that you probably remember. And he is a super interesting person, a really good writer, a professional writer, and also just has a knack for explaining why you might love birds, even if you're not sure you love birds yet. So like, you know, this is a book about his experience, a memoir, a book about race in America, but it is really primarily a book about birds and like, you know why birds were so important to him growing up as a black gay kid in America. And just like why birds are so special in general. And one of the birds that got Christian Cooper into birding was the black billed Magpie as a kid and that was my bird that got me into birding.
Molly 1:02:35
I don't know if I knew that about you. Yeah, I wouldn't look it up right now.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:02:39
When? Yeah, it was when? When Watson I went to Calgary and yeah, it's like one of my favorite things that's ever happened while we were traveling, we had trouble getting into our Airbnb, which you know, is very frustrating thing. And we were like on you know, standing on the sidewalk in front of this apartment building, trying to call the owner like using Skype because we were in Canada. And while Laurie is like, trying to talk to the owner of this of this apartment, the most beautiful bird I've ever seen lands in the yard behind her. And I'm like, like, you have to see this like, you know, this iridescent like blue and black and white bird with a ridiculously long tail. And like I've never seen a bird like this before in my life and probably never will again, you have to look at this right now. And then of course, we almost immediately learned that this is the most common bird in Calgary it is their equivalent of a crow there are past they're everywhere. And they're the most beautiful bird in the world with the possible exception of the common Kingfisher, but they're they're tied Okay, so the other thing is that Christian Cooper last year has a sick six episode nature documentary series come out where he travels the country introducing you to beaks of the week. He I don't think he uses that term but I would and I haven't watched it yet Watson and I are planning to watch it soon is called extraordinary birder and it's streaming on multiple platforms. Great.
Molly 1:04:00
Okay. Well, our producer is Abbey circuit tele you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts you can chat with other spilled milk listeners are probably say a lot of stuff that we didn't say about cast iron skillet at everything spilled milk.reddit.com
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:04:18
Oh, I was I was gonna say what are people who are really into cast iron called I just googled the word skillet heads and there's a book called skillet heads a guide to collecting and restoring cast iron cookware. So hi, God, I'm gonna say spell it heads. But I mean, probably some of them are more into Dutch ovens. Anyway, until next time, thank you for listening to spilled milk. We're just a couple of Modi's stick into the inside of your ears. Oh, you said Modi's wasn't Modi's
Molly 1:04:43
I thought it was smoking.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:04:44
Was it smoking? Oh, these
Molly 1:04:45
are smoking.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:04:45
I thought she said she Modi's we may have to go to the tape on this one.
Molly 1:04:49
Wow. Okay, well, we're whatever. We're sticking to your skillet.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:04:52
We're sticking to your ears. Oh, because we're, we're this no, we're Yeah, no, you might, you might pick up your skillet and find us sticking to it. And don't don't use soap to wash us out just to kind of nudge us until we move on our own accord. The longest closing joke in show history. I'm Matthew Amster-Burton.
Molly 1:05:08
I'm Molly Weissenberg.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:05:16
Which comes first, is it the smoothness or do you become smoothed out?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai