My cooking skills are minimal, but with persistence I've learned to prepare a small repertoire of basic foodstuffs. I can put together a passable omelet, can hash-brown potatoes to that just-so texture and color (it requires more butter and patience than skill), and can fry fresh walleye fillets that will leave you shouting hoarsely for more. I can cook those things, moreover, on an open campfire. But only on cast iron. Take away my old black skillet and I'm forced to live on peanut-butter sandwiches and Spaghetti-Os.
Like a lot of people, I used to think of cooking kits as utensils. As such they were nuisances that had to be cleaned periodically and lugged everywhere I went on camping trips. I wanted them light and compact as possible, with components that fit neatly inside one another until they made a package as tight and small as the telescoping drinking cup I received for Christmas when I joined the Cub Scouts.
Only thing was, I couldn't cook worth beans. I blamed it on a privileged upbringing (Mom did most of the cooking) and got in the habit of feasting in restaurants before and after my expeditions. In the bush I lived on trail mix, jerky, and Dinty-Moore beef stew.
Then somewhere along the line--over a late breakfast, I think, in an underheated apartment in Marquette, Michigan--I discovered the ease and elegance of cooking on cast iron and my life was changed.
It's hard to mess up a meal in a cast-iron skillet. Iron distributes heat more slowly and evenly than aluminum or copper or stainless steel and is therefore more forgiving than those tempestuous, fast-heating materials. Iron seems most at home over open fires, balanced nicely on three well-chosen stones, but works as well on a charcoal grill or a propane stove. Drop a slab of butter into a well-heated iron skillet and it sizzles in a satisfying way, sliding on its own liquid trail to the downhill side, gathering in a golden, molten pool. No mad, manic spattering--it sizzles serenely, like the difference between a fire of split oak and one of pine kindling. Crack an egg on the sturdy lip of the skillet, and the white spreads over the hot butter without anger or alarm, without sticking to the pan, without burning at the edges, without breaking at the yolk when a spatula is slipped beneath for that critical flip to the sunny side.
I like the fact that iron skillets are made pretty much the same way they were made 100 years ago, in pretty much the same style. They're numbered, like fish hooks and framing nails, following a code of uniformity. My favorite is #6, measuring 9 3/8 inches across--just right for fried potatoes for two, or hash browns, eggs, and bacon for one.
Admittedly, iron skillets are heavy, take up precious space, are heavy, lack style, are heavy, tend to get grungy with long use, and are heavy. Did I mention they're heavy? My #6 weighs more than my sleeping bag and spare canoe paddle combined, weighs more than a week's supply of trail-mix or a three-day ration of Dinty-Moore, weighs more than my fly rod and fishing vest, weighs more than the collected short stories of Wallace Stegner (in hardcover). I accept that. On portages I make an extra trip. Around camp I rest longer to make up for the all that additional work, and spend the surplus time daydreaming about 12-inch brook trout simmering in sauce normande.