Cookin' With Coal

Sixkids wrote:Thanks Randy! You sound like an old pro at the cast as well!
How are you at figuring out my computer that actually hates me? Every time I try to post a picture on this site it reminds me not to post ones that I don't own!!! (I'm sure it probably tells everyone that!! ) Then it won't post any of mine anyway!! So you would think it could just skip the step of telling me to use my own pictures since it doesn't plan to use any of them anyway!!

I grew up with cast iron, and since I was the oldest and had to do the dishes every night, I got to learn how to care for them. I have a ton of cast iron...some old and some new. Like you said, the old stuff is soooo much better than the new. While I was driving down south through Tennessee, I saw a billboard for Lodge's factory outlet...hmmm, I said. Well long story short, I left there with enough cast iron I could feel the difference in how the SUV drove. Some of their pieces said factory seconds...I could not see anything wrong with it.

Carol, when trying to upload the photos, are you saving them to your computer hard drive or trying to upload directly from your camera? On this forum, it likes the photos to be uploaded from your hard drive best.

Randy

Sixkids wrote:Humm, I also just read that cleaning the oven is a thing of the past with a coal / wood cook range!

Eight years now using the oven for all our baking, for nine months of the year. I have not yet had to clean it. Couple of times I've had to clean boil-overs from the cookie sheet that we always keep in the oven just to catch any drips/runs.

I think part of the reason the oven stays clean is, the cooking heat comes from the oven walls. With the walls not being cooler than the oven's air temps, baking grease/fumes don't condense on it like they do with modern electric/gas ovens.

See, I told you you'd like cookin' with coal.

Paul

Was cleaning out the closet next to the range and organizing my stove info and notes.

I came across a copy of Glenwood's three page info on the features of the Sunny model ranges. The ones in the pictures are a couple of years newer than mine, but everything, except the oven thermometer and the oven "trapdoor" to clean the flues under the oven, is the same.

Paul

Sixkids wrote:If you leave the sauce sit in the cast it will tend to eat the seasoning as it is acidic in nature. If you empty the pot right after cooking and give it a good rinse it will probably work better.

I've left my spaghetti sauce in the pot and put it in the frig for the next day. I don't usually do that though. My dutch oven I use olive oil on - I also don't season like you in the oven. I do mine on top of the stove, and run a lot hotter than 400. Better to have an outside stove. It makes a lot of smoke. I get the pot hot enough so that I'm just under the flash point of the oil. Kind of a tricky temp to work at.. That's why outside is a lot easier. Going over doesn't matter and if I get flames then I don't worry and just cool the pot down so its not burning. I pour out that oil though and add fresh if that happens. Might even wipe out with a paper towel. Careful though, many burned hands have happened.. I make sure all the surfaces get good and hot and let it stay hot for a bit. No real time frame there, I just watch. All the while working oil in... Then I let it cool. The first stages of cooling you have to watch as the pot will absorb more oil, you have to make sure the surfaces keep nice oil on them. Once it cools enough so that the pot stops absorbing, then I just let it cool to room temperature. Then clean out all burned oil, usually with a paper towel. I'll then wipe down with clean oil to store.

The new cast iron has a rougher surface than the old ones. But I just take an angle grinder and run up to about 400 grit and smooth them out nice. Then season like the old pans and I find they work just fine. I picked up one old fry pan in the woods hiking one day, It was rusted and pitted. Pits weren't too deep though, so the angle grinder came out, and I flattened the whole bottom and took it from there. The wire brush is a real good one for just surface rust and other kinds of crud surfaces. But if you have to do more serious material removal, the angle grinder is your friend.

My good cast iron fry pans for eggs have really smooth bottoms, a really nice butter-based seasoning, and I don't have to use a bit of salt - they are as non-sticky as any Teflon coated pan, in fact less sticky... But those you really have to be careful with. They are only used with eggs.

dj

Yes, I believe that there are possibly as many different ways to season cast iron as there are different manufacturers of cast iron pans themselves! It's nice to know that there are so many people out there enjoying their cast iron no matter how they season it, or don't, and if they use plain cast iron or the enameled version. Cast iron pans do seem to compliment cast iron stoves.

Nice find Paul! Thank you for allowing us to see it along with you. I, for one, found it VERY interesting. It seems harder and harder to find literature on the older stoves. I can't seem to find anything about the Fairmount cooking ranges, let alone our Royal model.
So I am happy to see the information from other companies such as yours. Thank you!

And you are SO RIGHT, I am going to LOVE cooking on this stove! Do you have a painted stove surface? I opted for a machined top to be able, (if I choose to), to cook directly on the top without worry of paint in the food! ... Don't know that I ever will, but the option is still there...

Randy, right from the hard drive of my laptop. The SD cards upload it to the Laptop, mostly via the SD port, but a few were uploaded wirelessly from the SD card, as the camera was taking the pictures, via an eyecard. But all of the ones I attempted to upload to the site were on the hard drive of my computer
And it's best to keep me out of places that are offering cast iron for sale! It's almost as bad as my addiction to things made out of wood!!

Figured I'd throw my cast's in here--& YEP I DO ues them

Nice! Looks like you enjoy using yours as well!

Carole,

Do you have one of these water boilers ? Sometimes called a laundry boiler too. If your really going off the grid, they heat a lot of water.
Here's a nice copper example on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/antique-copper-boiler-/26 ... 3cdca74942

The girl friend's mother used one for all their canning. It even has the wire rack to hold the canning jars off the bottom and to lift them in and out. It was offered to us a few years back when her father sold the house. It was a galvanized one and so pin-holed with rust from sitting in the basement, that there would have been more solder then steel in it to stop all those leaks !

If you notice, they all have a common shape. They were designed to sit over the opening in a coal range made by taking out the cover plates over the firebox and the "T" support plate between them. Then the entire bottom of the boiler was exposed to the firebox to heat the water more quickly.

Paul

Anyone know if the rumor about Chinese made cast iron dutch ovens/pots/etc having high lead content is true? Are they safe to use?

Yes Paul I do happen to have one. We have my grandmothers copper boiler.
I do love my Bosch front loader with the wool cycle however for doing up the Civil War clothes! I would probably be willing to try doing the clothes that way ...maybe once! I also have a metal piece that was my great grandfather's that fits on the end of a broom stick that you use to push up and down on the clothes to wash them.... and we USE to have a wringer washer also. Sold it one day when I was a lot younger
My grandmother always said that you need to hang your whites out in the winter and to let them freeze as it gets them really white. I would assume that there might be a more scientific reason, if they did turn more white ...perhaps the sun beating down on clothes with frozen drops of water might have magnification of the suns rays? I DO have a Amish clothes line to be attached to one of our buildings or trees to get it up high enough. Just have to convince my 19 year old to climb a tree this summer ..and to remember to hand him the clothesline thingy before he climbs up the tree! It shouldn't be a real probablem since he is an outdoor hunter / trapper kind of guy!

PJT wrote:Anyone know if the rumor about Chinese made cast iron dutch ovens/pots/etc having high lead content is true? Are they safe to use?

Pete,

I've heard of that problem with Chinese made kids toys, but not the enameled pots.

Besides, how would any lead get through a tough layer of fused-on glass enamel ? This one I just bought is very well sealed. It would take some doing to chip off this enamel.

Paul

The cast iron pans, etc. made in China by unknown companies would be questionable. Those made by Camp Chef I would trust. Lodge also has some made in China and I would probably trust their company as well. Do you know the name of the company? If it was an unknown just stamped Made in China, then I, myself, would probably pass it by. But, I like to err on the side of caution, and probably would tend to use another of my pans because I would always be questioning its safety. So to me the couple dollars for a different one of known origin, or company, would be worth it over time.

I was thinking more of the dutch ovens in plain non coated cast iron marketed by places like Coleman and sold through Wmart....

Thanks for the replies!

Sixkids wrote:Yes Paul I do happen to have one. We have my grandmothers copper boiler.
I do love my Bosch front loader with the wool cycle however for doing up the Civil War clothes! I would probably be willing to try doing the clothes that way ...maybe once! I also have a metal piece that was my great grandfather's that fits on the end of a broom stick that you use to push up and down on the clothes to wash them.... and we USE to have a wringer washer also. Sold it one day when I was a lot younger
My grandmother always said that you need to hang your whites out in the winter and to let them freeze as it gets them really white. I would assume that there might be a more scientific reason, if they did turn more white ...perhaps the sun beating down on clothes with frozen drops of water might have magnification of the suns rays? I DO have a Amish clothes line to be attached to one of our buildings or trees to get it up high enough. Just have to convince my 19 year old to climb a tree this summer ..and to remember to hand him the clothesline thingy before he climbs up the tree! It shouldn't be a real probablem since he is an outdoor hunter / trapper kind of guy!

There were a lot of those type things still here when I bought this old place. Including some stove covers from whatever range they had. No other range parts, but the shovel-a-day hot water coal stove is still here. I was going to hook it back up in the basement to keep the pipes from freezing in case of a long power outage, . . . until I read on here it's not good to run them when they aren't hooked to a water supply.

I thought that cone shaped "washer on a stick' was part of a butter churn, until my Father saw it and explained how his grandmother used one. I think it's out in the shed with the clamp-on-the-wash tube hand crank wringer. The wringer is one of the wooden framed ones with white, rubber covered rollers and nickel plated hardware. Even had the galvanized wash tube too, but the kids wore that out using it as a wading pool when they were little.

Paul

We have square galvanized wash tubs and the round enameled ones that sit on a stand. I take after my late father who grew up during the depression and thus saved everything ... 'just in case'! Now, our family is the kind you see walking through a museum with the kids pointing and saying , "...we have one of those ...and one of those ...and three of .... "
I tell my kids, without savers like me there wouldn't be any museums!! (We do throw out more than most hoarders though!)
We enjoy visiting open-air museums where sometimes our children, (with their mouths closed - thank heavens), sometimes know more than the presenters!! Most of the time we compare notes after leaving and allow the presenters to 'tell all' without our imput.