You are an expert. I am not. When making chicken with pan sauce ie Marsala or piccata , I often use my wife’s ridiculously expensive staInless pan as I am afraid the wine will degrade my seasoning and it is larger. I always use a Lodge combo cooker when making sourdough boules . It is new and it is great. Interestingly the skillet although 10” weighs within a few grams of a 12”. I am unsure but believe the rougher surface, compared to the older might hold seasoning better. I regularly have to reseason my carbon steel pans and they’re very slick. I don’t want to dedicate the time to refurbish older pans. I am sort of contemplating a 14 or 15 skillet but I would likely only use it for larger meals when family visits. I currently use two pans for such occasions. I always cook with wine, sometimes I put it in the food.
It's really not that hard to maintain. Some folks get caught up on it and make a bigger deal out of it than it needs to be. Take a short straight edge like a 6" machinists rule with you to check the bottom for flatness. To clean and reseason, I use my 22" Weber kettle grill. Make a nice bed of coals, put the lid on and get it to a nice slow burn. Lay the pans directly on the coals, face down. Put the lid back on and let them burn clean. After they cool, wash and scrub with water and a brillow pad and rinse good. Then put the grill grate back on the grill, coat the pans in vegetable oil and put them back on the grill and put the lid on. Once they smoke off, pull, recoat with oil and repeat till you're happy with the seasoning. This is petty much how my Granny taught me. She used a wood heat stove to burn them off though and reseasoned in a wood cook stove at my Gran-granny's house. Same theory. Then, after you use them each time, wash and scrub them, coat with oil and put it in the oven at 400-425 for 20 min. You have to remember that the original use was constantly heated on a wood cook stove our grand parents never let get cold. They were constantly sitting on the top of that stove, covered in grease because no one really understood washing things back then. But the pan I fixed at the beach still needs some work but it's a lot better than it was. I wish I had a mill or even better, a surface grinder to fix it but I haven't been able to afford those kinds of tooling yet...
My Mother just gave this to me. It originally belonged to my Great Grandmother, then my Grandmother, Mother and now me. My mother doesn’t know how to use cast iron and washed this with soap and water, so I’ll have to redo it. No biggie. No idea who made it. The only marking it has that I can see is the 8 on the handle. Pretty cool.
That really doesn't look that bad. If say a salt scrub and a good smoke off with some oil would get it in ship shape!
The Wenzel pulling duty for some jambalaya tonight! It'd be on a camp stove if it hadn't been raining all day and I haven't gotten my BBQ shack built yet.
........ it's actually still in my car. Been meaning to order one for ages and I was walking through my local shops after work yesterday and a shop there had them on special. Once I work up the energy to put on pants and face the world I will get it out.
That looks neat! Does the #8 on it mean it's the diameter of a #8 frying pan or is it another measurement?
It a 3 and a sizing they use for these. The size is based on the liquid capacity (not sure what the pans are based on) and a 3 = @8 litres/8.5 quarts. They make them in sizes that range from .75 quarts to 75 quarts
Ahh ok. That's a pretty broad range. I think my Dutch oven is an 8qt. I honestly don't know. It's not marked and I've never measured it out.
New crepe pan on the bottom, just seasoned. Old well seasoned pan is on top. This one was bead blasted. I am not sure I like it but have not used it.
I obtained a 14” Lodge skillet today. I plan to use it when family comes for dinner. I can make plenty of chicken Marsala in it. I will also place or in the bottom of the oven to prevent burning bread on the bottom. Pizza might be another use.