Gravy
Why I Love Cast Iron So Much
I am very lucky to come from a family that could cook.
And when I say they could cook, you know what I mean: they could cook well, with flavor and depth. They cooked good food you enjoyed eating.
(Well, except that time with my dad’s infamous sprout meatloaf, but that’s another story.)
Exceptional cooking (and baking) was part of my Grandmother Kelly’s core identity. And, lord, could she make a phenomenal Southern red-eye gravy. It had the most beautiful presentation of a real “red-eye” in the serving bowl. It was a kind of magic that I recognized at the time but never truly appreciated how special it was until I started looking at red-eye gravy recipes and their accompanying photographs. Seriously, apparently, nobody has ever made red-eye gravy quite so special as Paule did: a red oval shimmering in the palest gold liquid that would shatter into hundreds of red and gold spheres at the moment the spoon would break the surface. She knew though. She’d always place it on the table and glance at me, knowingly.
My other grandmother was an excellent cook as well, and let me tell you, you’d live for the day for a beef roast being served at her house. It would always be served with all the fixings: potatoes, carrots, onions, rutabaga (big nope for me on that one), green beans, rolls, and halves of peaches (or pears) with a little dollop of tart Duke’s mayonnaise and shredded cheddar cheese on top.
“No leftovers, Louis,” Mama Jeanne would say to my husband in her peculiar Massachusetts/Alabama blended accent as she’d pile little bits of everything on his plate.
But it was the gravy that was the star of the show. And she’d share the love, willingly giving you her recipe and telling you it wasn’t anything special. Looking at it, I’d guess you’d agree.
I remember when I first started cooking out on my own that I learned there was a difference between her recipe and what I tried from a cookbook: there was no good gravy comes from a couple of tablespoons of drippings. You best be using all the drippings for your gravy or nobody’s coming back for seconds.
Even so, nobody could figure out what made Mama Jeanne’s gravy so amazing and ours, well, so ordinary.
It wasn’t until after she passed that we figured it out — her cast iron pan.
The first time my mom (or was it my aunt?) made a beef roast and the accompanying gravy using the same cast iron pan Mama Jeanne would always use, it was obvious. Who would have ever guessed that cast iron cookware was part of the recipe?!
After that, we all had to get cast iron to start cooking with. And, damn, but there was a real difference.
We tested it, too, with green beans even. My husband made two batches of sauteed green beans: one in cast iron and one in stainless steel. He used canned, using the same brand, spicing them up the same with the same amount of olive oil. He served them up separately, and I wasn’t the wiser on which pan he used for which.
I could tell the difference immediately and with confidence! The cast-iron batch had a certain je ne sais quoi. To my mind, and to my family’s, cast iron is that secret ingredient you’ve been looking for.
It’s heavy, but it cooks evenly, nonstick when well-seasoned, (you can re-season it any time it’s needed), economical, and it adds a certain flavor that I can only attribute to the iron itself.
Plus, cast iron and cooking, both, remind me of my grandmothers just doing everyday tasks so well. That is the gravy of life.
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