Review of "300 YEARS OF Kitchen Collectibles"

300 Years of Kitchen Collectibles by Linda Campbell Franklin is an extremely handy book to have if you are into collecting cast iron kitchenware or any other item for the kitchen. I refer to this book as the encyclopedia. At 896 pages long, 300 Years would seem to cover everything!

There are not enough pictures in 300 Years, very few in fact. Mostly what you get is a brief description for most items and maybe a drawing here and there with a few photographs thrown in. While this doesn't seem like much it in fact is quite comprehensive and requires a lot of reading to match things. A tremendous amount of research went into the compilation of this material I'm sure!

This book contains a very nice section on cast iron muffin pans with pictures of most of them. The muffin pan section goes way beyond just Griswold and Wagner pans, which I find extremely helpful! You may run across an odd piece of unmarked cast iron, as I have, when I bought a muffin pan for my wife and then found it was actually worth about $45 and is collectible. The photographs that are included are excellent.

300 Years also includes lots of fraud or reproduction alerts to help the novice collector keep from being taken advantage of. There are also old recipes included along with old advertising stuff, measuring conversions, history, definitions, and a whole host of other things. The bibliography is extremely impressive and can lead you to a lot of other collecting books that might be more in line with your specialty of collecting.

If you are interested in collecting items for the kitchen, then this book is indispensable! If you are a cast iron collector, then you probably will be disappointed in this book, although I use it all the time because it goes beyond the basic Griswold and Wagner collecting. I like this book and recommend it highly.

New Cleaning Tool for Cast Iron

I have found a great new tool for cleaning my cast iron. A brush! Not just any brush but a Lysol Flexi Brush. I found this brush at Wal-Mart for around $3 in the cleaning supplies section. The brush is meant for the bathroom but who cares, if it works for other applications why not use it. This simple brush has gotten my #10 Lodge skillet from my posts "Why Cast Iron Cookware?" and "Why Older Cast Iron Cookware?" the cleanest it has been in quite some time without hurting the seasoning, the grease and cooked on stuff is gone.

This brush is far superior to the Lodge or Williams-Sonoma brush for cast iron. First of all the Lysol brush is made of plastic not wood like the other brushes so when I want to clean it I can just pop it into the dish washer. The Lysol brush has much stiffer bristles then the Lodge or Williams-Sonoma brushes and will even work on rust. The Lysol brush doesn't have a wooden handle that will break off.

The Lysol Flexi Brush is plastic without a handle, you grip it around the brush. There are slots in the sides of the brush that squeeze together when you grip it, hence the flexi. I have found this flexi system much easier and more comfortable to use than any other brush. I didn't get any hand cramping as I normally do with the other brushes.

I was going to add a link to the brush somewhere on the web but I can't find one. Go to your local Wal-Mart or other retailer that sells Lysol products and get yourself one of these brushes because you won't be disappointed.

Cracked Cast Iron Pans!

What to do with a cracked cast iron pot or pan? First of all don't use it to cook with! I've been told that a cracked pan can explode. Do I know that a cracked pan can explode, no I don't. I imagine though that it can. What I think would happen is that water or moisture would get into the crack and expand into steam when heated and break the pan apart.

Technically would the pan explode, probably not but if full of oil and whatever you are cooking you could end up with quite a mess. Just as likely to happen is that you would get burned by splattered hot food or oil. So please don't use that cracked pan for safety sake.

If it is an old pan that you adore or has been handed down to you from your grandmother or some other cherished relative and you just can't get rid of it. Hang it on the wall of your kitchen as artwork. Old cast iron is wonderful as a decoration and you can tell people that it is Americana art.

If the pan is not so old, or not so cherished or not even a family heirloom then by all means recycle it. Don't throw it out, it can be recycled and cast iron is the original recycled item dating back hundreds of years. Don't use that cracked pan for cooking but use it for artwork or recycle it.

What is Cast Iron Cookware Made Of?

There are four basic types of cast iron; white iron, gray iron, ductile iron and malleable iron.

White cast iron is characterized by the prevalence of carbides, impacting; high compressive strength, hardness and good resistance to wear.

Gray cast iron is characterized with graphite in the microstructure, giving; good machinability and good resistance to wear and galling.


Ductile cast iron is gray iron with small amounts of magnesium and cesium which nodulates the graphite,  resulting in; high strength and high ductility. Very similar to malleable cast iron but pieces can be cast larger. Ductile cast iron is the newest form of cast iron and is also called nodular cast iron.

Malleable cast iron is white cast iron heat-treated to improve ductility. Malleable cast iron is more like mild steel but is limited in the size that things can be cast because it starts with white cast iron.

Not being an expert in metals or metallurgy I will now try to describe some of these terms.

Ductility is the irons ability to withstand bending or twisting pressure without fracture, while malleability being very similar to ductility is the irons ability to deform when compressed and not fracture. Galling is the irons ability to not form a lumpy surface e.g. when welding. Nodulates refers to the graphite in the iron forming round balls instead of flakes which helps to prevent cracks because of greater distance between balls as opposed to flakes.

What does all this mean? I don't know. But cast iron cookware is made from gray cast iron according to everything I've read and it is fairly easy to obtain this information online. There is no such thing as black iron. But my cookware is black you say. Yes it is, from the carbon formed from the grease or oil used to season it.

The only way to tell what kind of iron is used to make something is to break it. Once the iron item is broken then you look at the break to see what color it is. If the break is white you have white cast iron, if the break is gray you have gray cast iron.  Another way I know that cast iron cookware is made of gray cast iron, I've received enough broken pieces to be able to look at enough cast iron cracks to tell you they really are gray.

Now all these so called experts who use the term black iron are just plain wrong. One of the experts who helped to form one of the largest cast iron collecting groups and has written the bible on cast iron collecting, references "Principles of Metal Casting" and "Casting and Forming Process in Manufacturing" in the bibliography of the bible, this guy calls it black iron within the bible. How can this be? I don't think he actually picked up either of the books he cited to make his work appear more impressive.

Another of these experts and co founder of the same large cast iron collectors group is supposedly an educated (he has a doctorate and works for a prestigious university) man, he calls it black iron. This guy even refers to himself as the Black Iron Dude. If he were a black man it might be O.K. to call yourself the Black Iron Dude, but he isn't a black man, he is referring again incorrectly to what cast iron cookware is made of.

Enough ranting on my part but I think you should at least try to get your terminology correct. Get the terminology correct especially if you are a noted national voice or so called expert in the field. If you are out there educating others you should be giving them the correct information.

Seasoning Cast Iron - My Way UPDATE

Seasoning Cast Iron - My Way UPDATE

In my studies of seasoning and cleaning cast iron I have some new information to impart here about what I've learned with a little closer scrutiny of my techniques.

1. I said in my earlier post that you could probably use less time for seasoning than I was using and the answer is yes indeed you can use less time as I'm now down to one hour and getting the same results.

2. If you leave the Crisco on the stove top to melt for too long then you will get a sticky seasoning when you are done and this is not the desirable results at all. So keep the melting temperature of the Crisco low and take it off the burner as soon as it is melted.

3. Do not leave the cast iron for more than 5 minutes before wiping off the excess Crisco as this will cause streaking and again this is not an ideal look for the finished product.

Hope these new suggestions improve your finished showpiece cast iron cookware.

#10 MARIETTA PA Skillet

My personal collection; those pans I intend to hold onto, while very small so far is also getting quite diverse. I find great beauty in all kinds of cast iron cookware and I don't limit myself to just Griswold. Although Griswold is considered the best(more on that in a later blog), I find it rather snobbish to collect only Griswold but to each his or her own.

Wine drinkers(another snobbish group & I used to be one of them) don't usually limited themselves to just one kind of wine, they try different vineyards, different wineries, different vintages, different grape varieties and so forth. I can just hear the Griswold collector doing the same; why I have Erie pans, diamond logos, slant logos, block logos and even some small logos, I am still looking for a Selden and Griswold pan. But you haven't tried different vineyards or different wineries, you may have achieved different vintages and different grape varieties but you are still lacking.

I found this pan a #10 Marietta PA Skillet and I think it is quite lovely. It has a rather rough cast handle with a "10" on it. The casting of the cooking surface is surprisingly smooth when you consider how rough the handle looks and how rough the bottom is. The bottom reads "MARIETTA PA" at the top and "10 IN" at the bottom. I find this interesting that it is labeled 10 inch because it is nearly 13 inches at the top which is the general measuring place for a pan and it is over 11 1/2 inches at the bottom. The bottom has an inset heat ring, a large gate mark and two points on the bottom and another on the handle that are nice and round and stick out; probably risers for the casting process.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of this pan as much as I enjoy having it in my collection. It really needs to be cleaned, you know what they say the dentist has the worst teeth in town. Probably an old pan as I don't know a lot about Marietta Pa Cast Iron but another indication of age is the one pour spout which is for right handed people.

Tasty & Juicy Low Fat Hamburgers

There is always a problem with cooking low fat hamburgers; they come out dry and with very little taste! Well this recipe solves those problems, these burgers have plenty of taste and they come out juicy as well!

Tasty & Juicy Low Fat Hamburgers

1 1/4 pounds of 90% lean ground beef (that's right 90% lean)

4 ounces finely chopped fresh white button mushrooms (I suppose a 4 oz can of mushrooms can be used in a pinch)

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Much healthier fat! Not nearly as much fat as using 80% hamburger which is used for most hamburgers)

1 teaspoon refrigerated crushed red peppers   (optional but not for me)

Mix it all together will in a large bowl. Form into 5 large patties and grill in a stove top grill pan such as the one pictured from my etsy or ecrater store. I will be listing a larger grill  pan in the near future.

Serve with your favorite condiments on a multigrain or whole wheat bun.

Suggestions for toppings: cheese, sprouts, onions, lettuce, tomato, pickles, relish, muffuletta or anything else you can think of.