Black Cast Iron Skillet

The essential tool of every southern cook is the black Iron skillet. It is not just any iron skillet you buy. It must be a seasoned iron skillet – one that has been oiled properly and baked until it is black, not the new gray of one that has just been bought. It is the thing that holds the kitchen together.

Somewhere along the way I lost mine. Don’t ask me how it happened. Somewhere along the way it just disappeared. If my ghost, Mr. George, could cook, I’d accuse him. Anyway, last spring on the yard sale that goes from Meridian, Mississippi on Hwy 14 to a far flung part of Kentucky, I found a well seasoned skillet in Cuba, Alabama. I always try to go on the part of the trail that comes through our region of rural Southwest Alabama. I can usually manage only one afternoon on Mother’s Day weekend. So I do the part of the trail that is in our own backyard.

I never fail to find useful things. Some art pieces of art or photography. I have found just the piece of pressed glass that I am looking for. Of all the things I have found, the seasoned iron skillet has to be the prize. Just in the past week some of the ways I have used it include: Making my cornbread for the Easter dressing, making a pineapple upside down cake, browning bacon, toasting a grilled cheese sandwich and sauteing vegetables to go in the same Easter dressing. How’s that for versatility?

Most people don’t have dressing for Easter, They reserve it for cold weather holidays. My family doesn’t feel that way. We don’t have to have a turkey or chicken being served to want dressing as a side dish. Ours is so full of vegetables that it counts as a vegetable dish. Don’t’ tell because nobody has realized it yet. My friend Patsy Sumrall taught me to finely mince the vegetables and sauté them in butter. Another friend taught me to put bell peeper in with the celery and onions for more depth of flavor. I put the vegetables in the food processor, so that they aren’t great big hunks. By the time they are tender before they are put in the dressing, then are baked in the dressing, they disappear, just leaving flavor.

I know there is a question in your mind about the broth. I have found the Swanson canned variety to be delicious. I know about all the people who simmer their own for hours, and they are welcome to do it. I buy the neat little cans and dump it right in. Some things like an iron skillet that can cook the vegetables over low heat in butter while I read on the porch, are essential to the process. Simmering chicken stock is not when there are good canned varieties.

It might be Easter without the dressing, but it wouldn’t be a Southern kitchen without my iron skillet.