Griswold Cast Iron – History, Value, Identify Guide | Hacker News Reader

Griswold Cast Iron – History, Value, Identify Guide

thepan-handler.com

31 pointsaxiomdata31655 comments

Crazy to see my very non-tech hobby talked about here on HN. I love vintage cast iron, with Griswold being my favorite. This is a great write-up for someone getting started in the hobby. Next level stuff once you're ready is to look into building your own electrolysis tank to safely and effectively clean and restore rusty/dirty pieces. There are several good FB groups on the topic, here's one: https://facebook.com/groups/ElectrolysisTanks

It's interesting, I love cast iron for the exact opposite reason: I find it to be very utilitarian and not demanding of my time like a hobby. Definitely have not had any need to build an electrolysis tank.

I did use a wire cup on my drill to smooth the surface of my $20 lodge pan a couple years after I got it, about 14 years ago. That was worth the 20 minutes extra effort (plus reseasoning)

I love my Lodge 10” skillet. Cook everything in it. Can’t beat natural non stick, no PFOAs to worry about, great heat retention, oven safe and induction compatible. Plus they’re indestructible and learning how to look after and season them was fun.

Agreed about the utilitarianism, but I could see getting really into it haha.

Electrolysis tank? Humbug! I use mostly cast iron utensils since I cook on a wood-burning stove. Most of the stuff was gathered from abandoned houses and as such often quite rusty. The solution here is no electrolysis tank but a rotary steel brush on a drill. Clean the thing until it no longer gives off dust, then shove it on the oven (can be done while preparing food since the oven gets hot anyway). Take it out after an hour or 2, brush off remaining crud, oil it and back in the oven for seasoning. Take it out after half an hour or so, wipe and simply start using it. As long as you use it and wipe/rinse it afterwards it will just get better.

Yeah, you'll have to pry my 120 year old Griswold from my cold, dead hands.

On a less emotional level: the way they were cast is night-and-day different from what's sold as cast iron today. The pores on my Griswold are an order of magnitude smaller than those on my Lodge (that I just haven't gotten around to throwing away because I never use). It's a much smoother surface, and therefore develops a very different - and much better - patina than the modern stuff can/does.

Edit: 120, not 220 years old.

Surely you mean 120-year-old or some other number? This article and others say Griswold started making cast iron cookware in the 1870s.

The Delorean was a fine automobile.

Sorry, I don’t know how I got that math wrong. You’re right, of course.

Quick tip for Lodge cast iron: use a wire brush attachment on a drill to polish the cook surface smooth, then cover in some type of fat.

I hit my current one with an angle grinder the day I bought it. I didn't try a wire brush, but judging by how rough it was, I'm unsure it would have removed enough material.

Either way, it makes cooking 20 times less frustrating.

I used a random orbital sander with 60 grit paper to take the pits out of my Lodge. You’re right about the frustration—I thought all of the talk about cast iron being nonstick was bullshit until I did that. Like night and day.

Stargazer Cast Iron makes cast-iron skillets with a machined cooking surface and a secondary handle. We got the 12" skillet recently. Much smoother than Lodge, and the 2nd handle makes a big difference.

https://stargazercastiron.com/

they only have skillets? no dutch oven? are they new?

Yes, launched via a kickstarter a few years ago. Their Youtube channel promises additional products soon.

Carbon steel pans also are much smoother… and at 20% of the price of the Stargazers.

At the other end of the spectrum, my carbon steel skillet is a little pricey, but it's pretty and made by a guy with a hammer.

    https://bluskilletironware.com/shop/7-fry-pan-cgk32-sjals-2nhb6-zl73y-68grf

Do you recommend a particular brand?

If you cook for a hobby there are plenty of great products in this thread but they aren’t commodity pans.

If you cook en masse / for a family then you’ve figured out that a stack of pans is a commodity worth having. I went with de Buyer carbon steel pans:

https://www.debuyer.com/en/454-steel-cooking

Their Black Iron pans are the thinnest and work best on gas.

The Mineral B pans are thicker and won’t warp as much on induction, where you really need to be flat bottomed no matter how hot the stove. The “beeswax” thing feels like bullshit but who cares.

Carbon steel is everything you want from a cast iron pan but without worrying that it will crack, much better heat distribution, and a fraction of the mass.

The heat distribution is really only better if you give it time to warm up evenly. They get hot quickly, so many people assume they’re ready to use but they won’t have yet heated evenly (except on induction, but that would apply for cast iron as well).

Cast iron takes way longer to heat up, so it too can achieve similar heat distribution - just in four times as long.

Thanks for sharing that link. Their prices seem very reasonable for family cooking! Also, continuer sans accepter on the cookie pop up made my day.

I’m a big fan of Samuel Groves carbon steel skillets. Absolute workhorses.

Carbon steel’s lighter than cast iron and usually polished when new. Once seasoned it’s seasoned there’s no problem cooking eggs or the like.

It’s just a little bit easier to live with which is why they’re so widely used by professionals.

Butterpat is another "new but like old" cast iron company: https://butterpatindustries.com/

I have some antique/vintage cast iron pans and I have some newly made pans from Field and they pretty much cook the same. Even that Lodge can be made to be nearly as good with some finishing work.

The most important thing people can do with their cast iron is to just use it regularly, and make sure to dry it well after washing. That's it.

I've done some reading into cast iron performance and everything I've encountered says there's no noticeable difference between the smooth surfaces of the old pans and the rougher new pans once they are well seasoned. The theory is that the residue that makes a pan non-stick adheres better to the rougher surface, negating any advantage a smooth surface would have.

I've never owned an old smooth pan (mostly due to the research above) but I've noticed that over time the original rough surface of my Lodge has largely smoothed out as it has become extra seasoned.

I had only my Lodge for maybe four years, and in all that time of being used three days or so a week, I never got it to build up the kind of patina I built up in no time on my Erie (I stripped it physically and chemically when I bought it then let it build up a patina anew). My Erie is also lighter.

Edit: see sibling comments about sanding down a Lodge to get better performance.

This has been my experience, my one old piece of Griswold is way more nonstick than my several pieces of lodge have ever gotten, no matter how much bacon I cook in them. Gonna try the wire bush on the lodge, couldn’t make it any worse!

I have lodge pans that are now almost 20 years old, well seasoned, and 90% smoother than when they were new. But they don't compare to some of the antique cast iron pans which have a mirror like finish, and are substantially less sticky. People who say there is no difference are flat out wrong. Ditch the reading and go buy a nice old pan and give it try! They aren't expensive.

I got a set of about 5 Griswold cast iron skillets somewhere (I don't remember where) for like $15 before cast iron pans became highly sought after. This was back when anodized aluminum was the highly valued pan material, and I was happy to tell everyone how great of a value cast iron was.

After many years, and after cast iron became more valued, I started to realize I didn't really like how heavy they were, how long it took to heat them, and how you had to be careful with them to prevent rust, which eventually started to form anyway. Or rather, I still liked them, but I hardly used them because I always reached for my stainless steel pans instead. If I wanted heat retention the 5-ply pans worked almost as well and were noticably lighter, and wouldn't rust.

So I gave my set of Griswold pans away to Goodwill. I didn't want to deal with selling them.

I kind of regret it now mostly because I did like the pans and I know how valued they are. But if I'm being honest with myself they'd probably just take up space and I'm not sure when I'd use them over my stainless pans.

Now that I think of it, they're probably the reason I bought my saute pans, because of the similarities in shape — pans that I've started thinking of exchanging for large skillets because the saute pans are more difficult to maneuver in.

If you're interested in old cast iron mostly because of the smoothness, look hard into carbon steel. You use the same seasoning methods, but it's smooth from the very start and somewhat lighter while still having great heat retention.

One caveat - of you're using induction heating you want to be sure you get thicker carbon steel at 3mm - some 2mm pans will apparently warp a bit and can become "spinners" with a not quite flat bottom surface.

one thing to keep in mind about new pans that are not as "smooth". That is entirely up to the casting medium, and if you want to you can simply clean the pan, sand it smooth then re-season. So a bit of work, but, much easier to go to a store than hunt for old cast iron at estate sales.

Absolutely - the bit of work actually makes a fair amount of sense if you're doing multiple pans and set up a good spot to work on it (and already have the power tools), but it also depends on where you are. Sanding down your cast iron is NOT something you want to do inside an apartment.

A decent carbon steel pan will probably set you back 2-2.5x the cost of cheap cast iron or half the cost of fancy pre-smoothed cast iron, and you can be doing things like flipping hash browns right away (not recommended in cast iron....)

Totally agree! I am living my best life because I have both cast iron and carbon steel plans, they are both great in their own ways.

I've got one of these from my Grandmother and I wish I had been smart enough to accept the lot of them. I get that newer ones with bigger pores can be "just as good" but this old pan seems to be on a different level IMO. I have some other "tech" pans that perform very well but if you cook it's also about emotion and this my old Griswold just makes some things taste way better cooking in it. (Plus a friend of mine borrowed it and on the way home scooped up a pheasant that he thought was dead and put it in the trunk. It turned out to be alive and made a hell of a scene and he had the Griswold right there which put the bird out of its misery in short order.) Pans with stories!

If you're into cast iron goods, allow me to share a youtube channel with you that has a lot of cast iron info as far as care, restoration, etc. It's a gentleman who goes by the name "The Mudbrooker", very humble individual, I hope this gets some eyes on his content.

[0] - The Mudbrooker's Guide to Cast Iron (16 video playlist) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QqXA8kWnT4&list=PLmvCznaMHK...

I love using modern teflon non-stick. It's so much easier to clean and handle than cast iron. Sure, it doesn't last as long, but who cares if I have to buy another one for $20 in 3 years? (That's how long mine has lasted so far.) For 90% of cooking it works amazingly well. No worries about seasoning, if someone accidentally uses soap on it or whatever. Life is too short to spend babying a pan. I use my cast iron for steaks and as a pizza steel, though the steaks don't compare to flame-grilled.

I hardly worry about the seasoning of my cast iron skillets. I cook eggs in my 8" cast iron skillet most of the days of the week. I've had these pans for decades. Someone accidentally using dish soap isn't going to take off the seasoning. Stripping off the seasoning is a lot more work than that. Just keep the tomato sauce out of them.

I usually clean stuck on food by throwing a bunch of salt in the pan with a little water. Just the right level of abrasion with a sponge. Dry and wipe down with some oil.

I find once well seasoned cooking tomatoes or other acidic foods once in a while does basically nothing to the seasoning. Just fry some bacon in it after.

> Sure, it doesn't last as long

It actually lasts forever, depending how you look at it

It'll only last your forever once it's in your lungs.

Soap is fine on a cast-iron pan. Despite what people always say about non-stick, I don't find cast-iron and teflon to be really comparable. The reason I'd use cast-iron is because I want steady, even heating, want to develop a fond (which is difficult in teflon), etc. But no matter how good the seasoning I put on cast iron it's always going to suck for eggs unless I use a ton of oil.

I have no trouble with fried eggs or an omelet in my cast iron. I use a tiny bit of ghee, but a small pat of butter would work fine too. We also make a Spanish tortilla in our cast iron. That sticks just a little bit at the end.

I learned recently that adding a tablespoon of water and covering the egg has helped immensely. The water lifts up the egg, steams under the cover and heats from all sides of the egg quick enough to avoid the egg adhering.

You don't need a tonne of oil, you need to make sure you don't add the oil until the pan is good and hot. Maybe a tbsp. And if you flip your eggs, you'll have to add a bit more oil before doing so.

Other (non-mandatory) egg-in-cast-iron advice: use a stainless steel fish flipper (very thin and flexible). For me, if I want the top a bit more cooked, I do the tbsp water + lid trick to finish it off.

When I was a young man, nearly 50 years ago, I worked as a trainee with a cook who did something somewhat similar. He would cook one side of the eggs in a small egg pan, and then slide them onto a large dark leaf of lettuce (romaine?) placed on the grill (a flat smooth affair, not a grate). The egg and the lettuce were then covered with a cheap pie tin -- the type one gets when buying a pie to take home from the restaurant.

I suspect the goal was to stop the bottom from over cooking (insulate it) and perhaps generate a bit of steam to help with setting the top of the eggs slightly. The goal was perfect sunny-side up eggs as best I recall. Seems like it would work just as well with all steps done in a cast iron pan?

Interesting - should certainly work just as well in cast iron!

Was the lettuce served with the egg as well, or just discarded? I could see either - as you say, providing just a bit of insulation and moisture to finish cooking the top without overcooking the bottom.

He just discarded it. It wasn't a fancy restaurant, though some of the cooks had fine dining experience.

Use butter not oil for eggs. It won’t stick.

Add butter to pan, let pan heat up, add eggs, turn off flame. Perfect eggs every time and it never sticks.

I love using modern cast iron. It's so much easier to clean and handle than teflon non-stick (I freely use metal scrubbers and utensils). Sure, I don't have to worry about ingesting forever chemicals in my body, but who cares if I have to buy another one for $3 in 20 years? (That's how long mine has lasted so far.) For 90% of cooking it works amazingly well. No worries about seasoning, if someone accidentally uses soap on it or whatever. Life is too short to spend babying a teflon pan with wooden and plastic utensils. I use my cast iron for everything.

> Life is too short to spend babying a pan.

Strangely enough, this is a good reason for preferring cast iron over Teflon! Cast iron is close to indestructible, whereas with PTFE or other non-stick coatings one is constantly worried about scratching.

> Sure, it doesn't last as long, but who cares if I have to buy another one for $20 in 3 years?

That's the main reason I own only cast iron. I like to buy things once and keep them forever. It's really not that much of a pain to use. I've never seasoned or otherwise serviced my cast iron in 8 years of use. It's heavy and a bit more tedious to clean without using soap. But I've never had to throw out or buy another pan, and it feels good to be using something you know will last for the rest of your life.

Given this data, the pan my grandmother gave me must have been made about the same time as she was. I wonder if it was handed down to her or picked up second hand?

I have a ~1930s Griswold, it's very nice, but my Field Skillet https://fieldcompany.com/ is better in every way. I use it every single day.

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