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Iron skillets are cast in memory
By Jim Auchmutey

It's as old-fashioned as an anvil, and almost as heavy. Properly used over the years, it becomes fire-blackened like an ironsmith's tool. And like those tools, it can, in the right hands, be used to create works of art.

Cast iron is to Southern cooking what an accent is to Southern talking. It's hard to imagine one without the other. Without cast-iron pots and skillets, there would be no properly pan-fried chicken, no crispy-crusted corn bread, no slow-simmering gumbo or burbling Brunswick stew.

No wonder so many Southern marriages have started with a white dress and a black skillet. "The first gift a bride used to get was her granny's skillet," remembers food writer Eugene Walter, who grew up in Depression Mobile, Ala.

But as nonstick cookware conquered the market after World War II, cast iron lost its appeal for millions of homemakers. In the age of Teflon, something so heavy and primitive came to be seen as (shudder) inconvenient.

"About the only place you could find cast iron in the '70s was in a hardware store," says Hugh Rushing of the Cookware Manufacturers Association, a trade group in Birmingham, Ala. "It was usually in the back with the rat traps, covered in dust."

The good news is that cast iron has staged something of a comeback in sales and interest. The trend started in the mid-'80s with the popularity of Cajun blackened foods, and it hasn't let up.

The reason is simple, says Paul Prudhomme, the New Orleans chef, who wouldn't dream of blackening a redfish in anything but a black skillet.

"Things just taste better in cast iron. It's seems to pick up some of the flavor of what you cooked before, which is good for gumbos. When you cook with cast iron, you're cooking with memory."

Bacon and eggs sizzle in an iron skillet. (Photo by Rich Mahan.)

  • Iron skillets have left a mark on the South's palette.
  • Caring for your skillet.
  • Recipes for iron-clad stomachs.
  • Cast in iron: Just the facts.
  • Return to Vittles

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