The Love Tool: A Favorite Cast Iron Pan
The Love Tool
The Chef: Jill Houk is a partner at Centered Chef Food Studios in Chicago. She is also a consulting chef for the Sara Lee Corporation.
The Love Tool: A 12-inch cast-iron skillet that belonged to her great-grandmother. It dates back to the 1920s.
Where You First Fell For It: When she was ten years old — more than three decades ago, but we’ll never tell — Houk began cooking at her mother’s side. She learned to cook with her great-grandmother’s cast-iron pan. Though they’d never met, Houk always heard that she bears a striking resemblance to her.
Jill Houk pumps cast-iron pans instead of dumbbells.
Today she loves her pan for a variety of reasons. “Cast iron holds a consistent temperature, and once you heat a cast-iron pan, it doesn’t have the ‘hot spots’ that other pans have, which promotes even cooking,” she says. “Plus it’s cheap!! A 10-inch skillet from Lodge — the best brand out there, IMO — costs only sixteen bucks. You simply cannot touch that with any other type of cookware.”
How You Use The Tool: “How don’t I use the tool?” she posits rhetorically. “Searing, braising, baking, and as self-defense. That sucker is HEAVY and can knock a kitchen intruder out cold.”
Do You Use It For Anything Besides Cooking?: Houk believes that the multi-functionality of cooking with cast iron is entirely underrated. “With cast iron, it’s easy to get in a workout while you cook,” she notes. “My pan weighs about seven pounds. A dozen curls with each arm and I’m buff! Just from flipping eggs.”
Hey Jill
Remember me from UserTech days? Lelia put me on to your website.
I have two cast iron skillets—a 6 inch and a 10 “. I had a 15” but it was overkill so I gave it to my sister with a large family.
I use my skillets almost every day. It is the ONLY way to make corn bread. Corn bread just does not taste right if not made in a cast iron skillet!
Congrats on you new endeavor. I hear you are on local TV. When will we see you on The Food Network??
Cheers