Cast Iron Cooking

Cooking with cast iron cookware has been around for centuries. Cast iron gave people the ability to cook food in cookware that could withstand the heat from being on stoves and directly in fires.

In China cast iron cookware was being made as early as 513 B.C. However, the European countries would take many centuries to follow suit and discover how to create their own cast iron cookware. 

Cast iron cookware was first made around 1100 A.D. in Europe, it was made by pouring molten iron into a sand mold. Most of the first cooking pots made of cast iron had three legs on them so that they could be used to cook food over an open fire. To keep food warm sometimes ashes from the fire would be spread across the lid of the cast iron pot or dutch oven.

Photo taken at Shockley's Old Timey Days 2012

Cast iron pieces became known as heirloom pieces as they were expensive and so valuable to home life throughout the centuries. Many times cast iron cookware was even placed in wills to determine who these valuable items would go to.

Cast iron cookware is still created today, the choices of skillets, pots, pans, dutch ovens, camp cookware, and more is a great variety that many of those that created those original pieces centuries ago would have ever dreamed of seeing.