Lately I’m realizing I learn best by doing. I was a pretty terrible stick shift driver for years (and years), until my husband and I traded cars for a month and I was forced to drive stick every day, for every preschool drop off and grocery run.
I’m a reader, and I tend to think I can learn everything by reading. My husband is a teacher at heart and he just wants to explain it all more and more clearly until I understand. But there’s just no substitute for doing.
All this to say, if you want to cook with cast iron but you don’t know how to do it, and everyone’s way of explaining it is stressing you out, and all the tutorials you read have different advice and you’re getting confused, then just start cooking. You might burn some food and some meals are going to get stuck and you may agonize over whether or not you’ve ruined the “season” of your pan, but in the end it will be fine and you’ll be a proficient cast iron chef.
Not an iron chef, I can’t help you there. Sorry.
Pictured above is the pseudo arroz con pollo I threw together without a recipe in my cast iron skillet tonight. I’m sure it’s far from authentic but it used up my chicken, chicken broth, and ripe tomatoes so it’s a win. Thanks to Blue Dasher Farm for the pastured chicken and thanks to my sister-in-law for my first cast iron pan all those years ago.
Oh, and today when I backed my manual transmission car out of my parking spot with the parking brake on, the guy getting into the car next to me might have taken issue with everything I’ve said about learning by doing. But I’m much better than I was.
