
Home cooks and hallowed chefs share their secrets for cast-iron cooking.
BUY A STEAK, BUILD A FIRE, AND BEGIN
There are certain things in life that just go together. Eggs and bacon. Blue jeans and t-shirts. Dogs and humans. And, of course, campfires and a cast-iron pan. To Denver chef (and bona fide meat master) Justin Brunson, this is a universal truth, learned over a lifetime of cooking meat over an open flame. ““There’s just something so primal and raw about it—almost romantic.”
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A POLARIZING CAKE FIT FOR CAST IRON
We know it well: the glistening rings of canned pineapple, the candy-red maraschino cherries, all placed like a mosaic pattern. Upside-down cake has been a ubiquitous presence at parties and potlucks since the middle of the last century. Rooted in little more than butter, brown sugar, and tropical fruit, the charmingly retro dessert also has deep ties to cast iron.
COOKING A STEAK, THE NEW YORK WAY
John Tesar got his first taste of a perfectly cooked steak at the age of 10 in an old-school American chophouse in Kew Gardens, Queens. “One Friday night, he took the family out to dinner, and to this day, I’ll never forget the taste of a steak done under a broiler like that. The aggressive heat, the melting fat, the smell of it all . . . It was romantic. It changed my life.”