How the heck do I write a blog about cast iron pans that hasn't already been written? There are so many benefits to using cast iron (including but not limited to: the way they hold temperature, the versatility, the sustainability, etc.). I have several pans that are all 70 to 100 years old. They have lived through wars, depression/recession, that one dress picture that broke the internet and everything in-between. When I cook on these, I get to think about how once another family lived off of the food created within and I get to honor that by continuing to use this to make food for my family. So here is the story of my chicken fryer.
About 2 months ago I saw an add for 4 cast iron pans all needing some TLC. There was another 10" pan, an egg pan (which we will definitely talk about later) and a chicken fryer w/ lid. I snapped them up because I have never seen a chicken fryer for sale, be it new or old. The lady who sold it to me was in her 60s and she told me that from the time she was very little, this was the pan that her mother had used to fry chicken in and that she thought her mom easily fried over 1000 chickens in it. Her mother was older and no longer cooking, so these were no longer in use so she decided it was time for a new home.
The first thing I wanted to do was identify the fryer. There are a bunch of resources for this online and I quickly came to learn that this was from a foundry called "Chicago Hardware Foundry" and was most likely made in the 1940s. The lid is really interesting because the raised ridges in the center are actually used to help return moisture that evaporates back into the cooking surface, effectively basting while the lid is on. You will also notice a lip around the edge of the bottom. Heat rings on cast iron pans are made to keep that heat under the surface the best it can. Some pans don't have these and some have it offset from the edge.
There was a large build up of seasoning, so I decided to strip it down using a lye bath. Lye breaks down the organic material on the surface of the pan and takes it back to the bare metal. At the time of writing this, I have not seasoned it because that involves taking my oven up high and it's already warm in my house so my wife likes to remind me that I don't need to make it any hotter. The picture above shows just how smooth the inside is, which speaks to the amount of use it has had.
So that's my chicken fryer. I have been piling up recipes to try once it's seasoned and I am excited to share that once I have found something I like.
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