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Cast Iron Eggs

Bushman5 said:
if you have a newer pan, i recomend sanding the crap out of the inside with wet and dry sandpaper. The goal is to have as SMOOOOOOOTH of a surface as possible. Power tools are your friend.......

get it smooth, clean it well, THEN season it.
Click to expand...
Exactly ! The new crap from Lodge and the rest is...ummmm. CRAP. It's a good casting with good material but they didn't finish the damn job !
Just like the gun companies never finish the job before bluing :mad: any more.
Polish that unit until you can see yourself in it:eek: and then season it up.

Lodge used to offer them done that way for an additional charge.
The old Griswold/Iron mountains and Wagners came that way outa the box.
Made in America. Old school.
Pre Amurkastan.:yawn:
 
Bushman5 said:
if you have a newer pan, i recomend sanding the crap out of the inside with wet and dry sandpaper. The goal is to have as SMOOOOOOOTH of a surface as possible. Power tools are your friend.......

get it smooth, clean it well, THEN season it.
Click to expand...

While I haven't tried this, I have older (100 yrs.+) iron skillets that are smooth as glass and will cook eggs without sticking, and newer ones that are rougher and won't.
 
I love my cast iron jaffle iron too (sandwich iron )
Baked beans, egg and bacon .... mmmmmmmm
 
I agree with the smooth bottom. I have my Grandmother's iron skillet and it is well cured smooth and as slippery as teflon.
 
I dunno, guys, mine don't stick, even the newer rough Lodges. They stick until well seasoned (the seasoning that Lodge tells you to do isn't enough). I also DID NOT get their pre-coated stuff, I got the uncoated and seasoned it myself. I season with lard, not vegetable oil, and that seems to work best. Lodge used to have an answer on their seasoning FAQ about what the best seasoning method was, and their answer was to fry a pound of bacon in it every day for a month.

Another trick I found is that cast iron does not like high heat. I used to get a lot of sticking until I started heating it up on medium heat. It still gets plenty hot, but not extremely hot, and things stick less.
 
Interstingly, I think lodge actually uses metal shot to "sand blast" the surface of their new pans to get that dimpled effect. Never made sense to me.

I have a smooth Wagner skillet that seemed to work best, but I think I ruined the seasoning by cooking it to high.

p.s. Success this morning with fried eggs: heated pan on medium for about 8 minutes until it just started to hint at smoking. Used peanut oil and a little butter to coat. Put eggs in the pan and did not touch 'em until they were set, then flipped. Worked well.

Still need to work on the scrambled variety.
 
One can never have too much bacon. Yum. Your arteries are going to harden to the point of the cast iron itself, but that's a small price to pay.
 
Threads no good without pics eh !

PA200004.jpg
 
Smooth Bottom, Rough Bottom, its all the same if you put enough oil or grease in the pan. Dont just lightly oil it, but actually liberally pour that oil in the pan. I would say 2mm depth of oil (bacon grease is prefered) and your fried eggs will just float right off the pan and onto the plate.

Scrabled eggs is another story. I dont really like "Dirty" eggs in cast iron. They just dont have that appetizing presentation.
 
I've experienced the least sticking when I get the pan moderately hot (as Rotte described), pour in the scrambled eggs, and let them cook as long as possible before turning/stirring. The more quickly I start to turn/stir the more grease gets absorbed by the egg mixture and the more sticking I encounter.

DancesWithKnives

[By the way, the Lodge guy with whom I spoke made a point similar to oilSlick's. He said that if you polish the bottom of the pan you often find that you will need to use more grease. Most stoves or other cooking surfaces aren't perfectly level and the grease will tend to run to one side of the pan and pool. If you are using a small volume of grease, that can leave other areas of the cooking surface inadequately greased. He said Lodge's tests showed that the rougher surface would hold grease in place better and require significantly less to be used for a successful result. I use a fair amount either way so I can't really comment on what he told me.]
 
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Bushman5 said:
if you have a newer pan, i recomend sanding the crap out of the inside with wet and dry sandpaper. The goal is to have as SMOOOOOOOTH of a surface as possible. Power tools are your friend.......

get it smooth, clean it well, THEN season it.
Click to expand...
Ditto!
Bizarre coincidence this thread, i sanded and re-seasoned a frying pan yesterday!
Sandpaper is your friend for sure!lol!
I have 5 iron frying pans, bought 4 i the last 6 months.
In my experience the supposedly pre-seasoned pans sold in stores don't work very well, at least until you sand and reseason them.

But maybe the high-end pre-seasoned pans are better?

Mostly i use my little 4inch diameter pan for breakfast omelettes.
The rest get only occasional use.
 
Rotte, start cooking a lot of potatos in your skillet for awhile. Potatos are full of starch and will stick to the bottom of the skillet at first. Use a METAL spatula only on your skillet and scrape the burnt/stuck potato off of the bottom when done. Don't over scrape...just enough to get the big stuff off so the bottom is smooth. This starchy potato that sticks will start to build up carbon deposits in the micro holes of your skillet and eventually it will glaze over with a nice thin carbon build up. Carbon is God's natural teflon.

You've got a seasoned skillet but it has no carbon build up. That is why when people use soap on another person's cast iron they get so ticked off...it isn't about the seasoning (which can easily be fixed) it is the undoing of all the years of carbon build up that makes it work so well.

Once you get a nice carbon coating you'll start enjoying a teflon like experience with your cast iron. You're learning...keep the heat down on cast. It takes a while to build up heat but it doesn't cool down as fast as modern pans. Patience and practice is needed here.
 
udtjim said:
Cast Iron eggs?:D That's the kind we got in the Navy.
Click to expand...

There were several times that we were aboard ship to practice insertions, and thought the chow was pretty good. But then, you'd have to know what the Marine Corps considered food back then.
 
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