All right. We’re not usually into long, obnoxious introductory descriptions of recipes on the internet. So we won’t do that here. However, before we get to the recipe itself, we need to talk about conjuring up mind-blowingly delicious meals with cast iron cookware.*

Casting with Cast Iron

The magic of cooking with cast iron is widely discussed in the arcane literature, but the only two topics we recommend researching about this particular alloy are heating and seasoning. Master a couple of basic principles and you’re pretty much ready to rend the veil and start practicing.

Heating

Due to the alchemy–or maybe it’s just chemistry–of its composition, cast iron retains heat well but isn’t great at allowing the energy to spread. Heat the instrument slowly enough (based on its dimensions) that the surfaces you plan to cook with are evenly charged. If you set it on a cranked burner and walk away to do something else and then come back by a few minutes later and smell, like, huh? What is that–OH snap the thing is starting to–

That’s why it is important to understand your magic before you practice.

On the other hand, if you know what you’re doing, the cooking surface can get really nice and hot and ready to transmute fauna, flora, funga, minerals, or whatever you pulled out of that ancestral space pod that crash landed into the snow by the old oak tree.

If you’ve cast well, you can cook your shit for pretty much as you long as you need.

Seasoning

Remember: salt, water, caress/scrub, water, fat, heat, caress

The cast iron instrument–whether it be a standard eight-inch frying pan, a seven-quart monster dutch oven*, or a little useless single-egg–is a consequential chapter in your culinary grimoire, so you must treat it like a familiar. No slight intended on spatulas and spoons and the like; they serve very important process purposes and may probably themselves require precise attention to ensure that no one gets hurt.

The surface of the cast can be perfected, but it has not been done. Researchers unavailable for comment show that it is irrefutably possible to season your instrument to such a degree that flavor, utility, and durability are maximized, but that it requires an amount of patient dedication no one has been proven to muster.

You can do your best, though. We think it will probably be fine.*

Never use surfactants like detergents or soaps to clean your instrument. It’s going to be coarse sea salt, a little bit of water, something with which you will gently scrub, and fat and heat. Then you caress it again. That’s what purges the instrument, building its character, preparing it for another test.

When it’s still hot and you’ve got everything you want to eat out of it, including all desired deglazes*, hit the surface with water at the sink to dislodge as much of the refuse as possible. Take note of where your instrument’s surface is crusty.

Pour enough sea salt to cover your tracks, which you cover by caressing out all the crustiness you can find from the surface. Avoid scarring. If you must gak out a gnarly charred pimple or something, give it some elbow grease, but be careful because you don’t want to be the one who fucks up the seasoning on the surface.

Don’t rust your iron. When finished covering your tracks, load your instrument back onto the burner and add your little fat. Just enough to coat the surface, especially where there might have been some, uh, blemishes before. The fat is just beginning to smoke, so take it off the heat and swab a nice caress and get into all those nooks and crannies on the cooking surface. Dispose of whatever thing you used to execute the caress. Let the instrument cool as your seasoning blossoms.

You can repeat “Don’t rust your iron” to build additional seasoning as necessary, but you have to let the instrument cool a bit first.

Even a decently-crafted surface seasoning can hardgold sear a protein on the range or bubble the flavor for hours in oven.

Ingredients

beef chuck few kilos, based on instrument and design

small potatoes, halved; make it nice get the ones with the colors

a sixth of an onion, julienned

half a bag of baby carrots, drained

Garlic (just a little)

赤みそ 1 Tbsp.

EVOOOooo

Salt, pepper

(optional) some flour, whatever purpose

(optional additional ingredients are recommended, you know, for fun, but just make sure you prepare them to be merged into this particular echelon of the pure magic)

Directions

The only surface you’ll need for this is the one instrument you have, excluding utensils, the sink basin, clean fingers–you know, the regular sanitary kitchen stuff.

Use some fat to sear the hunk of meat on all sides. You want it to crisp dark without burning, but a little char is probably fine.

Unclump the 赤みそ into the juice.

Set the meat aside in a container that can catch the juice. While that corpulent roast sits there, heat more fat to shimmer in the instrument and then give the carrots, onions, and garlic a quick sautee.

Put your sautee aside because it’s waiting.

More fat in the pan. Shimmering hot. That’s when you add the halved small potatoes, cut-side down after seasoning with S+P.

Sear them potatoes to a crusty taupe, one side at least, and just crusty if purple, and set aside in a proper vessel like you so obediently did with the meat.

Anything else you want to add? We strongly recommend reconsidering the girth of your instrument with respect to number of extra things you think people eating this, including yourself, are going to appreciate. Put too much stuff in there, as the saying goes, and we’re looking at an overflow situation.

Mount all ingredients onto the instrument. Potatoes first, then sautee, then beefy. Pour the beefy drippings over the whole thing and cram it into a hot oven, but not too hot. 225-275.

Wait hours. Check a couple of times, especially early on, to make sure you’re not burning down the tower, because that is not what you want to do.

Temp it when you want. After a couple hours, you can probably eat it, but, if you wait, the flesh is fork-tender, which perhaps is desired.

When it’s edible, you have a dilemma. Stew or Gravy?

Stew is just use your juices. Gravy means separating the juices at the end and thickening with something like flour. Stew in a bowl, gravy on a plate.

Making mom proud.

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*Please note that Tati’s does not use any cast iron cookware because one of the dishwashers used soapy water to wash the chef’s prized, 48 year-old dutch oven.