Hello, and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m glad you’ve joined me today to continue discussing the Smithey 11″ Deep Skillet.
Yesterday, we went over the specs of this beautiful pan–now, let’s see how it cooks! But first–and you knew this was coming–a quick story 🙂
Mr. Stone Soup and I just got back from a 4000 mile road trip that took us all over the western US. It was super hot and a little miserable at times, but we got to see lots of family, which was great fun and we also managed to find some pretty good food.
On the way home, we headed for La Posada, which is located in Winslow, AZ. La Posada is a total gem hidden in the middle of nowhere. It is an old, restored Harvey House. Harvey Houses were set up all over the western United States in the late 1800’s by Fred Harvey. His goal was to provide clean, wholesome places for railroad passengers to stay and eat when making the hot, dusty and sometimes dangerous trip through the western US. He employed women of “good character” as waitresses for the restaurants. They were known as “Harvey Girls,” and were immortalized by Judy Garland in a movie by the same name.
Many of these Harvey Houses have been reclaimed and restored or revitalized and are around today and available for travelers like The Stone Soup Cooks to stay at and to enjoy not only the excellent hospitality, but also some darned good food.
La Posada is an absolutely lovely example of a Harvey House that has been reclaimed and revitalized, and it boasts an excellent restaurant called The Turquoise Room. Mr. Stone Soup and I enjoyed several delicious meals there when we stayed earlier this month, including the bacon-wrapped filet, the “wild wild platter,” carnitas and bison short ribs. We had leftover meat from each of these meals, which the staff was kind enough to hold for us until we were ready to leave. I brought the meat home in our cooler and the evening after getting home, I made what I’m calling “leftover meat stew,” using my brand new Smithey 11″ Deep Skillet.
Now, let’s take another look at that skillet. Here it is right out of the box:
That satin finish is even more gorgeous in person.
And here’s a look at the bottom:
And here’s the lid:
The lid is made of tempered glass and has a stainless steel knob. The lid has its pros and cons. When cooking the leftover meat stew, I found that the knob actually stayed cool enough to handle for quite a while. I didn’t time it, but was surprised at how long I could handle it without grabbing a pot holder. Rest assured–it does eventually get too hot to handle, but it took a while.
The lid is rather light weight, but it fits snugly and securely, though obviously not as snugly as a cast iron lid. I love a cast iron lid, and they are wonderful for braising, baking, stewing and other things. It does, however, add a good deal of weight to the overall cooking vessel. For example, my Finex 12″ skillet weighs in at about 7 pounds. The cast iron lid that goes with it weighs a little over 4.5 pounds–that’s almost 12 pounds of skillet by the time you put them together, and that’s a lot of cast iron, folks. The tempered glass lid on the 11″ Deep weighs in at just over a pound, making the total weight of the 11″ Deep closer to 8 pounds total, which is much more manageable.
Overall, the only real drawback that I see about the glass lid is that it is only rated for up to 400* in the oven–and that may just be something that’s hard to remember until it’s too late. For example–I decided to make some sourdough bread this week and was going to use my new 11″ Deep until I fortunately remembered that sourdough needs to bake with a lid for the first 25 or so minutes and I bake my sourdough at 425*. Glad I remembered that little fact before it was too late. I’ll keep you all posted on this potential issue.
So–now let’s really start cooking, shall we?
True to The Stone Soup Cook style, the first time I used this pan, I went ahead and pushed it to the limit. I mean–everything’s better with bacon, right? So…first thing I did was saute pancetta…and…well…you’re not supposed to do that with brand new cast iron because it’ll take the seasoning off it.
OK–so I’m not so good at following directions, but I did figure it would be a good test of this skillet. If you recall from my earlier review of Smithey cast iron, I commented that one of the recipes I tried stripped the seasoning off it (after I’d had the skillet for a year and had maintained good seasoning habits on it during that time) and then I had some trouble getting the skillet to take new seasoning. I was actually curious to see what would happen with this one. [Interestingly, I am not the only person to run across this issue. I read a few reviews from customers who had this same issue on the Smithey website. Mind you–the reviews of Smithey products are overwhelmingly (and I do mean OVERWHELMINGLY) positive 5-star reviews. Of the very few complaints I saw, though, several were about finicky seasoning/sticking.]
The stew was delicious (and Mr. Stone Soup said it was even better the next day for lunch), but sautéing that pancetta in the new skillet did strip the seasoning right off it:
I was not surprised by this and, in fact, Smithey warns you right on the info card saying: “Bacon, in particular, can strip the seasoning from a new skillet, but you can easily build it back!” My goal is to see how easily I can build it back up, and how long it takes to get a really good, strong seasoning layer that will hold up to day-in, day-out cooking.
Tune in tomorrow to see how it’s going!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
p.s. I will be reporting more on the lid in future posts and I’ll also be reporting on the handle–so stay tuned!
