If you only ever buy one pan for Southern cooking, make it a cast-iron skillet. Mine was my mama's before it was mine, and it will go to one of my children after me.
Folks are nervous of cast iron and I understand why. It looks like something you could ruin. You really cannot. Here is everything I actually do.
Getting it hot first
This is the whole secret and most people skip it. Put the empty skillet in the oven while it preheats, or on the burner a good five minutes before anything goes in. Batter hitting a cold pan sits and steams. Batter hitting a hot, greased pan starts crisping the moment it lands. That is where the crust comes from.
You can taste the difference straight away in Oven-Fried Cornbread. Same batter, cold pan versus hot pan, and they come out like two different recipes.
Cleaning it
Hot water, a stiff brush, and dry it on the burner so no water sits in it. That is it. No soaking, no dishwasher, and no scrubbing off the black. The black is the seasoning and it is what you have been building all these years.
If something has really stuck, coarse salt and a little oil will lift it without taking the seasoning with it.
What I actually cook in mine
Cornbread, obviously. Mighty Good Cornbread is the one I make most weeks. But the pan earns its keep well beyond that. Biscuits crowded up together so their sides stay soft. Biscuits and Gravy on a Saturday morning. Cobbler, bubbling at the edges where it meets the iron.
And if your biscuits come out a touch plain, a spoonful of Sweet Biscuit Glaze takes two minutes and fixes it entirely.
One last thing
A skillet that looks a bit rough has been used, and a pan that has been used is worth more than a pretty one on a shelf. Do not baby it. Cook in it.
There are two dozen more skillet recipes on the site, all free to read. Go and find one for supper tonight.
