this pan is going places by Emily P. '28

Two months abroad. One suitcase. And a girl whose favorite MIT alum is none other than American chef and food journalist J. Kenji López-Alt. The result? 4.61 pounds of questionably seasoned cast iron flying a total of 32 hours⁠01 a pit stop was made for an older brother’s graduation & a long overdue visit with the grandparents, thus the cumulative 32 hours to arrive at its final destination: Bordeaux, France. Coincidentally, it’s also where I, Emily Pan, am doing a MISTI!

When I began packing my suitcase about 5 hours before my flight, I had reached a semi-fugue state thanks to dorm-moving exhaustion and poor time management choices. I daydreamed of living a nomadic lifestyle in the distant future, owning nothing but the bare necessities so that I wouldn’t have to relive the detestable and harrowing event that is moving out (and also moving in). In the spirit of such, I decided to pack the things that I deemed essential to my lived experience, things that I would truly need everyday—which happens to include a 10” Lodge skillet and a Babish chef’s knife.

Some context. I am a part of Mince,⁠02 Massachusetts Institute of Culinary Experiences, otherwise known as MIT’s fine dining club (except it’s so much more than that!) I live in a cook-for-yourself dorm,⁠03 Burton-Conner an estimated 2/3rds of my doomscrolling content is food-related, and I am a proud owner of a small but growing cooking equipment collection, of which the aforementioned pan and knife are a part of. But besides being the most used items in my kitchen, my pan and knife also represent a philosophy that I’ve been trying to exercise: buy it for life.⁠04 oh hey, the Lodge cast iron is the first product listed on the <a href="https://buyitforlife.com/">buy it for life</a> website! And on<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-buy-for-life-wirecutter-products/"> NYT Wirecutter</a>!

It goes without saying that part of the practice is the purchase itself: you should buy quality items that can last a lifetime (or more) rather than quantities of disposable or easily damaged items. But I’d argue that it’s perhaps more important to use and maintain these purchases. 

The first seems like a given; except, more often than not, people tend not to use their nicer, more expensive items in an attempt to preserve them, which, for a lot of these things, completely defeats the purpose. And the truth is, so many of these ‘buy it for life’ products only get better with use: leather goods, instruments, quality denim, and of course, the humble cast iron. Use your nice things, everyone!!

The latter varies from item to item, but generally, if we want things to last for a long time, we need to maintain them. For my knife, this just means wiping it down after washing (to avoid rust) and the very occasional visit (like, only one time so far) to the Forge for a poorly executed whetstone sharpening. For my cast iron, it’s a bit of a different story.

I had watched about a dozen Youtube videos and read through 3 or 4 Reddit threads about cast iron maintenance before making my purchase this January. Here she was fresh out the box.

The humble Lodge 10-inch chef collection pre-seasoned skillet, basking in all her glory and beauty.

And here she was a week later…

This image haunts me. A crime scene.

I don’t blame any of my suitemates for this because I totally should have warned them about the one universally agreed upon no-no for cast irons: no soaking in the sink. It’s made of iron, it’s going to rust. Thus began the treacherous journey that is re-seasoning.

Crash course on cast irons: when you get a really thin layer of oil really hot, the fat molecules will start polymerizing to itself and to the pan. Multiple layers of the polymerized fat is what’s known as seasoning, and also what makes cast irons almost non-stick. That’s the basic science, also generally agreed upon. The details of how best to build and maintain a seasoning, however, is a rat’s nest of conflicting information that I don’t plan on going into. 

What I can say is, re-seasoning and maintaining my cast iron has felt a tiny bit like parenthood. It’s tedious, mechanically repetitive. Sometimes it feels like one step forward and then two steps back. There are nights where I’m exhausted and want to leave my pan in the sink for the next morning but nooooooo I have to wash it and dry it and oil it. Yet, watching it grow more and more non-stick has been so rewarding. I told my brother the day I was able to cook scrambled eggs without making a huge mess that I felt like I just watched my kid walk across the stage at graduation.

Flash forward to now, July 2026.⁠05 now is actually September 2026... My cast iron is 7,005 kilometers⁠06 4,353 miles from its birthplace of South Pittsburg, Tennessee. Alongside me, she’s been introduced to novel ingredients and recipes, some of French origins and others not. And also like me, though she sometimes has to work overtime, she also gets days off, like when there was that really bad heatwave and since the French don’t believe in air conditioning, experiments had to be put on pause and my diet consisted primarily of cold, refreshing salads. But anyways, I have cooked a variety of things in my cast iron, and I wanted to share some of them!

smash burger

I ate cheese burgers for my first three days in France. It was awesome.

ingredients

• lettuce
• ¼ onion
• tomato
• american cheese⁠07 so, this is not american cheese & I forgot what it was but it was good
• bread of choice
• 80/20 ground beef 

instructions

1. Slice tomatoes, set on a paper / kitchen towel, and salt lightly.
2. Slice onion thin, the thinner the better. 
3. Preheat pan on medium. Meanwhile, form balls of ground meat with hands. My 10-inch pan fits two patties at a time. Add oil / butter, wait for it to glimmer / sizzle, place patties, and smash! I used the bottom of a pot wrapped with foil.
4. In the space around the patties, add the onion. Salt everything.
5. Move onions around as needed, and when the onions reach desired jamminess, remove from pan. 
6. Simultaneously, keep an eye on the patties. Depending on how well you smashed them, they will take less or more time. Proper smash patties are really only cooked on one side for optimal crust. When it feels like they’ve got a crust, flip, add cheese, and cook only until the cheese starts to melt. Remove from pan.
7. Toast bread in leftover beef grease.
8. Assemble and enjoy!

chorizo pesto pasta

The French enjoy a variety of cured meats, which includes the semi-spicy chorizo I used here. In a stroke of pure brilliance,⁠08 in other words, I had nothing else in the pantry I added pesto to make this delicious pasta.

ingredients

• any store bought pasta

OR

• one egg
• eyeballed / vibes-based ½ cup of flour
• chorizo
• pesto
• (optional) a little butter

instructions

1. (optional) Make fresh pasta.
2. Bring water to boil. If using dried pasta, add pasta now. Also preheat a pan to medium low.
3. While water is heating up, chop chorizo into roughly ½ inch cubes. Add chorizo cubes to pan.
4. Chorizo fat will render. Stir occasionally to prevent burning. As the fat renders, the chorizo will get crispy but also tougher, so cook until desired doneness.
5. Add fresh pasta to boiling water when the chorizo is almost done.
6. Add cooked pasta to the chorizo pan, as well as a dollop of pesto. 
7. Stir pasta, chorizo, and pesto passive aggressively. Add pasta water as needed, until pesto and chorizo fat emulsifies.
8. Taste for salt and adjust with pasta water or pesto as needed
9. Cut heat, finish with a dab of (optional) butter, stir once more.
10. Plate and enjoy!

pinkslaw & chickpeas

I owe everything to the Internet Shaquille, my goat.⁠09 <a href="https://youtu.be/U9Y1Gsjj5iU?si=wPIkrNCkxZEcl0M5">why chickpeas</a>, but also <a href="https://youtu.be/5EU76q3Vf3Q?si=wxxrW8KOFm-uQGih">how chickpeas</a>

ingredients

• can of chickpeas (200g)
• quarter head of red cabbage
• 1 medium carrot or 2 small carrots
• ½ red onion
• 4 radishes I think
• fresh green herbs of choice (I used dill and carrot leaves)
• grateable cheese of choice (I used comté)
• lime / lemon
• olive oil
• honey / sugar

instructions

1. Make slaw ahead of time by adding thinly sliced not-yet-pink vegetables to a container alongside the juice of an entire lime / lemon, a big pinch o’ salt, and a smaller pinch of sugar / squeeze of honey. Toss together and let sit in the fridge for at least an hour.
2. When ready to eat, rinse and drain chickpeas, add to a flat microwaveable plate, and microwave for ~5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, preheat pan. Add a healthy dose of olive oil, and toss in freshly microwaved chickpeas. Add a pinch o’ salt and fry until golden or at desired crispiness. 
4. (optional) After cutting the heat, I also like to toss the chickpeas with some bouillon powder.
5. On the side, roughly chop herbs. 
6. Add ½ of now-indeed-pink slaw, chickpeas, and herbs to the bowl. Taste for salt / acidity levels, grate cheese on top.
7. Toss and enjoy!