My husband makes his famous chili in our cast iron and I think it tastes better than it ever has! His is more the Cincy style, no beans, just ground beef, water, tomato sauce, and a LOT of spices! He serves it over spaghetti noodles with oyster crackers. Browning meat in the cast iron is awesome because you can use forks and scrape the heck out of the pan and it never scratches/ruins the surface. So great.

Cornbread.

Also pineapple upside down cake.

i LOVE the cast iron, i try and cook everything in it. Basically anything and everything other than omelets. It is definitely my dessert island kitchen tool. I especially like a blackened fish filet, "deep frying" fish and chips, caramelizing brussel sprouts, carrots, burgers, steaks. I use it for anything I want to leave a mark on. To the extent I bake, I even bake in it. Cornbread in the skillet! So rustic! Upside down fruit cakes. Tarte tatin. I love its ability to be over high heat on the stove top and then into the broiler and it cleans up soooo nicely. Soak it in some warm water and then scrub it with a damp towel and some coarse salt. Really, it makes me wonder why I own anything else in my kitchen.

I love making a dutch baby on Sunday Morning in my cast iron skillet.

Hm.. I thought acids & cast iron don't mix.

.. in regards to the chili using tomatoes. It may make the pan rust.

The wife and I use our cast iron skillet so often, I forgot that there was anything else. Cast iron is great for breakfast - start with bacon to generate some grease, use a mix of that and olive oil to fry up potato cubes and brown the mushroom slices, then cook your eggs in the good stuff that's left.

As the author says, we always brown things on our skillet before slow cooking in the oven. Caramelized onions are great. The only things we do on the oven top off the skillet are sauces in a saucier, pasta and soup in a pot, steaming in a steamer and liquids with a stewish consistency in a large Creuset. Of course we use specialty stuff like a double boiler for chocolate and custards.

Great, now I'm hungry.

Hamburgers in a cast iron pan are amazing!!! They get a great crust.

I use mine for just about everything now, but the things that I think of off the top of my head are:

Fried eggs
Fried polenta
Grilled cheese sandwich
Sausage
Pancakes

It is the best cake pan ever. I use it all the time for French yogurt cakes, upside down cakes, etc. Also for just everything else. The cat has decided it's the home of all food and tries to make a beeline for it whenever she sees it.

Here is a link to a great cast iron discussion in:

Cooking Issues — The French Culinary Institute's Tech'N Stuff Blog

http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/02/16/heavy-metal-the-science-of-cast-iron-cooking/

Cast iron skillets are GREAT and as we that use them know, the older they get, the better they get! If you are EVER at a garage sale and see a Griswold cast iron buy it immediately! They are highly prized!

~MaggieB
http://www.cookbookclub101.com/

pizza!

Roast chicken is delicious in the cast iron skillet. I have a post on my site where I made Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc roast chicken in the cast iron skillet. It was fantastic.

~mj

http://www.merrygourmet.com

Irish soda bread will diversify what you can make in your new cast iron skillet. It is a no fuss bread with no yeast, and super easy to make. Enjoy your new purchase!

@rasmugirl People say not to mix cast iron with acids because it'll ruin the finish or it'll make the food taste metallic but I make tomato based dishes in mine all the time and never have any issues. It might get you more iron in your diet, but I doubt it'll hurt you.

If you like crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside has browns, you will be in heaven when you make them in your cast iron skillet. Makes are super crust on anything! Enjoy!

Cast iron pizza!

I make my Sunday banana bread in mine. I love round, rather than the loaf shape and it is sooooo easy!

my mom used to brown hominy in bacon grease until it was really crispy, then coat with leftover spaghetti sauce & throw some shredded cheese on top. man ... that was good eatin'. and i'm serious.

How about those Dutch Babies (big pancakes) that were posted last week.

I always make pizza in it. Also any veggies get browned before going into the oven to roast. Roasts work well too.

Look Alton Brown's method of cooking a steak. Better than any piece of meat off a grill or from a home broiler without question. Also fried chicken is one of my favorites. There is a big difference between shallow/pan fried chicken and it's deep fried cousin and if you've never had it give it a try. Not the easiest thing to perfect though.

I like it for recipes that start on the stove and end up in the oven. I get good cast iron info and recipes from a blog i follow called Derek on Cast Iron: www.derekoncastiron.com. The recipes have tons of information, including pictures, and I feel more confident cooking when I can see pictures. (This guy seems to have a wacky sense of humor, and I like that, too, when I'm cooking.)

One last thing. So many cast iron recipes seem to involve meat and grease and fat - all good stuff - but this site includes vegetarian recipes also, and lately I'm leaning in that direction. One more last thing: after months of successful frying in my pan, something went wrong and I ended up with little brown rust spots. This site gave me directions for fixing that problem.

Wow, so many great suggestions! Thank you all so much, I can't wait to get cooking!

I do not understand the question. The question is what are the best things to not cook in an iron skillet (I use my cast iron for everything).

I make cornbread, oven pancakes, roast potatoes, but probably one of my favorite uses is as a panini-maker. Just heat two cast iron skillets, put your sandwich in one, press with the other and voila - homemade panini press. And my mother once broke up a fight, using a tiny cast iron skillet (not to hit anyone but to indicate she meant business if they didn't stop their fist fight), so she left it to me in her will as the 'heirloom skillet'! Who knew cast iron was SO versatile?! g!

Chocolate chip cookies. Simply amazing. Scoop some ice cream on top and serve it at the table. Mmmm.

bacon

The cast iron is great for anything that can go from stove top to oven also.

This weekend, I sauteed leeks, mushrooms, onion, garlic, capers, and spinach. I turned off the heat after they were done, and left them in the skillet. Then mixed together eggs, sour cream, milk, shredded gruyere, shredded swiss, salt and pepper and poured it on top of the sauteed vegetables. I popped the whole thing in the oven at 350 for 30 min and it was delicious! It was like making a quiche as a casserole instead. I hate taking the time to make the dough.

Wow, such lovely ideas. :). To add my two-cents, here is the link of Skillet Banana Bread with Walnuts & Pecans I made couple of days ago -

http://siri-corner.blogspot.com/2010/08/skillet-banana-bread.html

Best,
Siri