Quote:
Originally Posted by RJ
I'm cooking a pot roast as we speak in a Le Creuset 7 qt. enameled dutch oven. FMB thinks Le Creuset is overpriced and he may be right (I got this piece in a sales promotion) but this really is a remarkable piece of cookware. Even, consistent heat, very durable and cleans up easily.
I usually put tomatoes in a midwestern chili that I make in a regular cast iron dutch oven, haven't detected any metallic taste. Might be different with a marinara sauce, though. In chili the tomato flavor is surrounded by lots of other stuff.
If there is a World Market store in your area, I've seen some reasonably priced enameled cast iron there.
http://www.worldmarket.com/home/index.jsp |
Le Creuset is great, there's no doubt. But if you'd bought that dutch over outright you'd probably have spent $230. While Lodge is not as good, it is still very good, and at $50 for essentially the same thing comes out to be a superior product. At least that's my opinion.
And I'll add that Cooks Illustrated backs me up on that. They rated Le Creuset as the best performing cast iron, with 3 stars across the board, and "highly recommended." They rated Lodge, available at Wal-Mart and Target, with 3 stars across the board, and the "clear winner" because of the price difference. It was also rated as "highly recommended" above the Le Creuset.
Now, if I had the opportunity to get Le Creuset even at double the price of Lodge, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. But, I'll take a somewhat lesser product for a fraction of the cost and be happy.
You seriously should be able to buy a good enameled cast iron from Target or Wal-Mart for $50 or thereabouts.
All cast iron has even cooking. Heat absorption/retention quality is a trait of the metal because of its mass. I've used "really" cheap cast iron that had better and more consistent heating than $70 pans.
Plus, you gotta love that cast iron will literally outlive you. Every time I'm at a flea market or a garage sale I'm looking for cast iron. Not only will it last forever, the stuff that 50-60 years old usually has 50-60 years of seasoning on. That shit makes car batteries taste good.
For a pot roast, I would personally use a regular cast iron dutch oven, if it were available. Something like that with just a little braising liquid would help season a good piece of cast iron cookware.
Like I said before, if your cast iron is seasoned well at all, the light acidity from tomatoes wouldn't do anything, so that's probably why you've never tasted the difference. When I first got into cast iron I did a tomato salsa Santa Fe chili sort of thing with a brand new pan and could definitely sense the metallic taste. Now, I'd cook just about anything in my cast iron. The seasoning on them kicks ass.
I still use my cast iron a lot, but I've most recently gotten into using carbon steel pans. Fell in love with a carbon steel wok, and the cookware is sturdy as hell, cheap as it gets, and professional quality.