In our house, we cook with cast iron almost every single night. We’ve been slowly adding cast iron pans and skillets to our collection, and we have so many that it’s all we cook with now. I love the Lodge cast iron brand, and that’s what I tend to buy. But any cast iron will do, and you can even find vintage ones. Cast iron lasts generation after generation, so if you do find a vintage one that’s just a bit rusted, Lodge sells a rust bar that will remove that and then you can use the pan again!
The one thing I struggled with is that these pans are large and so heavy! So we needed a good storage solution for them. I had this vintage cabinet in our kitchen that had an empty side on it. And that’s when we realized it would be strong enough to support holding cast iron, and still look good but be functional.
I picked up some really simple and affordable black hooks from walmart. Just head over to their cast iron pan section to make sure the hook will fit into the handle of your pan or skillet. Then we arranged our pans on the side of the cabinet, and nailed the hooks into place. We flip the cast iron pans around, and they hang flat on the hooks against the cabinet. Out of the way but easily accessible if we need one. This is a corner in our kitchen and because we live in a very old farmhouse, we lack closets. So I had picked up this vintage cabinet and it actually serves as one of our pantries. We already have a built in pantry in our cabinets but we needed a snack pantry. I have this one organized to the brim for easy grabbing so my husband and little can just grab a snack when they need one. It also stores all my baking ingredients and flour bin. It’s kind of my main squeeze in the kitchen.
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If you’re nervous about using and cooking in cast iron, don’t be! If you’re just starting out I highly suggest buying a 13″ cast iron pan as this will do the majority of what you need. With cast iron, you can bake with them, put them on your pellet grill, or even cook with them on your stovetop. We recently purchased the 15″ cast iron skillet and while we love it, it is HUGE and takes up major space. But it will be a nice pan when we’re cooking a huge meal for a large gathering.
We considering just building a large rack on the wall using pipe or something similar to store our cast iron pans but we just really don’t have the space in our kitchen. All of our wall space and filled and what wasn’t, just wasn’t functional for large cast iron pans to be hanging down from. As for my cast iron dutch oven, I just leave that one on my stove all the time.
I shared this Onion and Mushroom Smothered Pork Blade Steaks recipe and that one used one of our cast iron pans if you’re looking for a recipe to cook in them with!
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