Latest news with #castiron
Fox News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
America's 'Cast Iron Cowboy' reveals why traditional skillets remain the ultimate cooking tool
Cooking is better when it's done in cast iron. Just ask "Cowboy" Kent Rollins, the New Mexico chuckwagon cook turned YouTube star and cookbook author who's become America's modern-day guardian of the old-school skillet. Rollins recently revealed his preference for cooking with cast iron in an interview with Fox News Digital ahead of his upcoming new TV series, "Cast Iron Cowboy." (See the video at the top of this article.) Filmed amid the rugged beauty of iconic ranches across the country, from the Bighorn Basin to the Ruby Mountains, the show is said to capture the American spirit on an open flame. "This is Mother Nature's kitchen," Rollins said. "We went from 101 degrees to 3 degrees in one episode." For Rollins, sometimes the oldest ways of cooking are still the best. Unlike Teflon or stainless steel, cast iron doesn't wear out, he said. Cast iron holds heat better than anything else and transitions seamlessly from stovetop to open flame, he added. "It's something that'll last for generations that you can hand down," Rollins said. "Nobody ever [writes] in the will, 'I'm gonna leave you my Teflon pans.' But people will fight over a cast-iron skillet." Rollins also believes cast iron offers an unexpected health boost: iron enrichment. "There was nobody ever anemic when I was growing up, when I was little and in school," Rollins said. "People will fight over a cast-iron skillet." "Nobody was low on iron because everybody cooked in cast iron. It is the best thing to cook with." Some home cooks shy away from cast iron, fearing it's too hard to clean. But Rollins said it's "the easiest thing to clean in the world" right after cooking with it. "All you have to do is just wipe out any excess grease that's left in there and then just take hot steaming water [to] pour on it," he said. "It'll clean itself instantly." With a little care – seasoning, drying and storing properly – cast iron can be maintained for decades, even generations, Rollins said. Cast-iron cooking, for him, is about tradition, community and honoring the land — the cowboy way. Raised in ranch country, Rollins said he remembers long days spent herding cattle, branding and baling hay, all culminating in a meal cooked outdoors. Cast iron remains an essential cooking tool for cowboys. "It is truly the best cooking vessel there is, not only just for frying, but you can put biscuits or cornbread in that cast-iron skillet, throw it in the oven and bake it, and it'll make the best stuff you ever see," Rollins said. "Cast Iron Cowboy" premieres on the Outdoor Channel in September. Prep time: 10 minutes Total time: 35 minutes 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup yellow cornmeal 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 large egg 1 cup milk ⅓ cup white sugar ⅓ cup unsalted butter melted 6 slices of cooked bacon chopped, reserve the grease 2 tablespoons Kent Rollins Roasted Hatch Green Chile or a 4-ounce can of diced green chilies 1. Indoors: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 2. In a mixing bowl, add the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Mix well. 3. Make a well in the bottom of the cornbread mixture and crack the egg. Whisk until smooth. Add the milk and stir, then add the melted butter and mix well. 4. Add the drained green chilis and bacon. Add half of the reserved bacon grease and mix well. 5. In a dutch oven, spread the remaining bacon grease to thoroughly grease the cast-iron surface. 6. Pour in the cornbread mixture and smack the dutch oven down on the counter a few times to get the batter set. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. This original recipe is owned by Kent Rollins and was shared with Fox News Digital.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Cowboy' Kent Rollins reveals value of cast-iron cooking
Kent Rollins, host of the popular "Cowboy Cooking" show on his YouTube channel and the upcoming TV series "Cast Iron Cowboy," tells Fox News Digital why he believes cooking with cast iron is better.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Cowboy' Kent Rollins reveals value of cast-iron cooking
Kent Rollins, host of the popular "Cowboy Cooking" show on his YouTube channel and the upcoming TV series "Cast Iron Cowboy," tells Fox News Digital why he believes cooking with cast iron is better.
CNET
14-07-2025
- General
- CNET
4 Foods That Can Damage Your Cast-Iron Skillet's Coating
Cast iron is one of the most reliable tools in any kitchen. It's built to last, holds heat like a champ, and only gets better with time -- if you treat it right. But even the most well-seasoned skillet has its limits. There are certain foods that can slowly strip away the nonstick coating you've worked hard to build, especially if you leave them in the pan for too long. Quick cooking won't do much harm, but simmer the wrong ingredients for an extended time and you could end up damaging the surface. If you love your cast iron and want to keep it in top shape for years to come, here are the foods you should avoid letting linger in the pan. To ensure we're not sabotaging our own pots and pans, I asked Eric Rowse, lead chef instructor of Culinary Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education, to share tips for using the cult-favorite cookware and which foods might cause permanent damage. To keep your cast iron slick, smooth and worthy of its place on the stovetop throne, here are four foods you should never cook in a cast-iron skillet 4 foods that can ruin cast-iron cookware According to Rowse, you can technically cook anything in cast iron -- even fish and eggs -- but some foods react poorly to cast iron if not done properly, leading to surface decay or food with a metallic taste. 1. Tomatoes It's OK to cook acidic foods such as tomatoes and vinegar in your cast-iron pan but letting them sit for long periods can eat away at the seasoning. istetiana/Getty Images "Highly acidic foods, such as tomato and tomato-based dishes, can be problematic on raw iron, poorly or underseasoned cast iron," Rowse says. "Cooking these foods in neglected cast iron can lead to a metallic taste in the food. If the pan is well seasoned and cleaned out after each use, it isn't a problem." To be safe, cook some bacon in your skillet afterward to give the seasoning extra protection. As a bonus, you'll have bacon on hand. What you don't want to do is leave the acidic food just sitting in the pan, which can eat away at the seasoning. 2. Vinegar Most BBQ sauces have a fair amount of vinegar that can damage your cast-iron cookware. CNET For the same reason as tomatoes, vinegar can eat away at a seasoned cast-iron skillet, sending you back to square one. Vinegar-based foods like adobo or Carolina-style barbecue sauce are good examples of acidic foods that shouldn't sit in a cast-iron pan for long. If you do use vinegar in a recipe and cook it in cast-iron, be sure to clean the pan immediately afterward with hot water and salt or a small dash of gentle dish soap. Read more: Clean Your Cast Iron Skillet Easily With This Common Kitchen Staple 3. Citrus Avoid cooking citrus-based sauces in your cast-iron cookware for long periods. Géza Bálint Ujvárosi/EyeEm/Getty Images While there may not be a ton of reasons to put citrus in a cast-iron skillet, certain recipes call for a fair amount of lemon or lime juice. A squeeze of lemon at the end probably won't destroy your cast-iron pan but don't let citrus juice simmer inside of it for long or your precious patina won't survive the night. 4. Wine-based sauces Red wine is great to add into stews and red meat dishes. fermate/Getty Images Cooking with wine is almost always a good idea. In fact, we have a list of recipes that thrive with a few ounces of red or white. But letting acid-heavy wine braise or simmer in a cast-iron pot or pan for too long could cause the slick patina to erode, leaving you with an unseasoned skillet that food will stick to. Can you cook eggs in cast iron? A properly seasoned cast-iron skillet can cook eggs without issue. Getty Images While they won't damage your pan, eggs are tricky to pan-fry without having a sticky mess to deal with after. Cast-iron cookware isn't as nonstick as chemically coated pans but it's still a fine candidate for scrambling or frying the morning staple. "I love cooking eggs in cast iron," Rowse told us. "I have a small 5-inch one that I cook fried eggs in. Cast iron is able to get super-hot, and precise control is harder because it retains heat for longer, and therefore it is more difficult to make small adjustments to the temperature." What about fish? I heat my prepared meals up in a skillet or air fryer if I'm home. David Watsky/CNET Likewise, many varieties of fish are flaky and tend to stick to surfaces if not managed properly. If your cast-iron's patina isn't properly slicked or is too hot when the fish goes down, you may end up scraping half of your halibut from the bottom of the pan. How to avoid a cast-iron cooking conundrum Properly seasoning your cast iron will keep foods such as fish and eggs from sticking. Tyler Lizenby/CNET First and foremost, you'll want to properly season so you can cook even the stickiest foods without worry. When cooking acidic foods in cast iron, avoid slow-braising or simmering on the stovetop for long periods. When the food is finished cooking, remove it and wash your cast-iron pan immediately with hot water, a drop of dish soap and a sprinkling of kitchen salt for extra stuck-on foods. And if you're not sure, choose an acid-safe piece of cookware like an enameled Dutch oven or stainless-steel skillet.
Times
10-07-2025
- General
- Times
It's time employers started catering properly for a lunch break
A couple of months ago for a magazine feature I visited Fresnoy-le-Grand in France, where they make Le Creuset pots, those incredibly heavy, expensive casserole dishes. I spent all day at the factory, speaking to various executives and workers, but the thing that really struck me was not the white-hot blast furnace making the cast iron but the lunch. The tour stopped and we all — factory manager, various directors, the photographer and I — traipsed into the company dining room, where we were presented with a chicken tagine (cooked in a Le Creuset of course), couscous, side dishes of vegetables, followed by a cheese board consisting of seven different cheeses, finished off with a Paris-Brest pudding, coffee and chocolates. Was this all laid on for my benefit, I asked, slightly embarrassed? I was told no: stopping for a hot lunch was just what they did. It is easy to have an Anglo-Saxon envy for the French insistence on long lunches, longer holidays and love of going on strike, which they somehow manage to enjoy alongside their remarkably high productivity levels. But I do wonder whether France's better GDP-per-worker, which the Office for National Statistics estimates as being between 9 per cent and 28 per cent higher than the UK's, is because of the country's frequent stoppages rather than despite them. Famously, on the French statute books, workers are banned from eating at their desks, a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance. It derives from an 1894 decree that outlawed lunch at work in an attempt to make workplaces more hygienic by ensuring that workers did not scoff their baguettes and saucisson on the factory floor. To this day, a minority of workers return home for lunch and certain French roads can be lethal at midday as people speed back for their break. This used to happen in the UK but has almost entirely died out. Last month in this column I mentioned a 1958 survey that suggested that 60 per cent of Britons returned home for lunch. Does anyone still do this? Robert Spratt, a doughty correspondent to the Times letters pages, says that in the 1950s, as a young banker, he could not eat a sandwich at work because there was no staff room or other place for him to consume a homemade lunch. As a result, he had to cycle the six miles home, eat his midday meal, and cycle six miles back within an hour. Which suggests that he was either a phenomenally quick cyclist or a very rapid eater. • Wake up and smell the coffee: working from home is here to stay Either way, it used to be the norm in Britain for workers to take an hour for a trip home, or to the pie shop or Savoy Grill, depending on your budget, and we need to bring this habit back. The meal itself is not the important aspect, although a cheese board with an oozing brie and delicate Chabichou du Poitou is not to be sniffed at; it is the enforced respite, the shutting of the laptop and stepping away from the Slack, Teams and Zoom. Estimates vary as to how much time the average British worker spends on lunch but it is not long. One study, undertaken by the catering company Sodexo, put it at a mere 22 minutes; a larger survey, undertaken by the rival caterer Compass in 2023, put it at 33 minutes. More importantly, too many of us are eating lunch al-desko, which is not only a crime against the English language but also a public health disaster. A study by University of Arizona researchers found that the average computer keyboard has 400 times more bacteria than the average lavatory seat. Admittedly, this is one of those shock facts that journalists adore: if we're being honest, most loo seats are cleaned more regularly than a keyboard. It is true, however, that too many of us grab a £4 meal deal from the supermarket, rush back to our desk and munch it while either deleting emails or reading LinkedIn posts, because it looks to your boss as though you are working. Only this week the food producer Gosh! Food published a survey suggesting that a mere 36 per cent of people took a lunch break every day. A proper breather can lead to greater levels of productivity, according to a large study undertaken by a team led by Zhanna Lyubykh of Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University, Canada. The duration of the break is not the important thing but the quality of it. Scrolling social media, they found, led to exhaustion; going outside in a green space boosted productivity. Most workers, however, take their lead from their boss, too many of whom either subscribe to Gordon Gekko's mantra that lunch is for wimps or performatively juggle typing and a tuna temaki at lunchtime. The solution? Mandate a lunch break. Seen Presents is a London events organiser, whose clients include Amazon and Netflix. A few months ago the bosses decided to formally block out 45 minutes in all employees' calendars for lunch with the message: 'Try and get away from your desk and see that sunshine. I know it's hard sometimes to get away, but it's good for you and your brain … even if it's just a quick walk around the block.' Natasha Broady, one of the directors, said that since they started the scheme staff morale had noticeably improved and productivity probably had as well. If Winston Churchill found time to lunch on sea kale, jugged hare and cherry tart during the Blitz without it diminishing his war effort, surely we can find time for 60 minutes to escape from calls and texts and messages and find solace in a Greggs steak bake or one of those new fancy £12 Pret salads. In our always-on work culture, lunch is the one time we should be allowed to press the pause button.
