Cast Iron Cookware and Cookware Sets

There are two kinds of cast-iron cookware made — bare cast-iron and enamel cast iron cookware. People today prefer to use enamel cast iron cookware for cooking and leave their bare cast-iron to age transform (eventually) into antique cast-iron cookware.

Enamel cast iron cookware doesn’t rust as easily as bare cast-iron cookware does, and is easier to clean. There are those who also believe that enamel cast iron cookware is healthier than bare-cast iron. Enamel cast iron cookware is basically bare-cast iron cookware with a protective glaze of vitreous enamel (also called porcelain enamel).

Many believe that enamel cast iron cookware can leech more iron into food than bare cast-iron cookware. Another main point about enamel cast iron cookware that you must always keep in mind is that it is about the most expensive cookware on the face of the planet. The process of making the enamel cookware is a lot more complicated than making many other kinds of cookware. Soap and water will ruin cast iron cookware, turning it incurably rusty.

Before you ever use your cast iron cookware, you need to be sure it’s correctly seasoned. If you receive cast iron cookware that is currently being used as cookware and has already been seasoned, then you can skip seasoning for now. It can’t hurt to at least be familiar with seasoning cast iron cookware.

At this stage, a little water is not going to harm the cast iron cookware. Another way to clean tough, stuck on food is to add a cup of water to the cast iron cookware, boil it for three minutes, dump the water (and, hopefully, the stuck on food), then let cool a bit and wipe with a thick cloth.

People love to collect stuff for the sake of collecting stuff we’ll never use, like antique cast-iron cookware. We might not know much about what a cast-iron cookware set in the past looked like if not for antique cast-iron cookware collectors. Antique cast-iron cookware is not just valuable – it’s also still useable, beautiful and tells more about our past than our grandparent’s stories often can.

A cast iron cookware set, properly taken care of, can not only be the last cookware set you would ever need, but your kids would ever need. But, if you’re going to plunk down that much money for cooking utensils, whether it’s bare cast-iron or porcelain cast-iron cookware, you want to get your money’s worth.

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