A Lump of Iron from Shropshire… and Why I Love It

I’ve noticed over the last few years that cookware fashions have started to split into two quite different camps. On one side sit the increasingly technical pans. Multi-layered stainless steel, laser etched, ceramic coatings, all infused with things that sound faintly as though they came from a NASA laboratory, and boxes covered in diagrams explaining heat distribution patterns that make my poor little brain feel poorer and littler. And all done with the solemnity of a nuclear submarine manual.
 
And on the other side?
 
A lump of iron, possibly made in a shed in Shropshire. The first approach, although it appeals to another part of my nerdy self, doesn't grip me in the same emotional way as using a pan crafted out of iron using skills that have been passed through generations to create something that should last my lifetime and beyond.
 
You may recall, that a few years ago I wrote, at great length, about Netherton Foundry, a small British manufacturer producing spun iron cookware in South Shropshire. I first met Sue Currie from Netherton, well over a decade before that and, in a triumph of indecisiveness for which I am well known, it then took me about ten years to finally place our first order.
 
Since then, I’ve used their pans regularly and my love of them has only grown over these last six or seven years.
 

What I particularly like about Netherton is that they don’t really behave like a modern cookware company at all. They behave more like skilled craftspeople who accidentally found themselves in the cookware business. So for instance, their lead time, used to run to months and months. Mercifully that has now changed, thanks to a little 21st century administration, and is down to a few weeks!
 
Their frying pans are spun by hand from iron rather than cast from molten metal. That gives them a character quite different from traditional cast iron. They’re lighter, rather more responsive, whilst still retaining that lovely ability to produce proper caramelisation and flavour, that coated non-stick pans, simply never quite manage*.
 
And yes, before the you feel you know better, I’m going to pull rank here and tell you I do, I know modern non-stick coatings are vastly better than they once were, but we can’t escape the physics of the cooking process. We still sell plenty of them, but they are, by their nature, temporary things. An iron pan is rather different. It’s something you slowly build a relationship with, and over many, many years, with in fact the surface getting better the more you use it.
 
*nonstick coatings prevent food staying still…which is their purpose, of course! However, that means heat doesn’t travel into the food as fast, nor does the outer surface become sealed by the heat because food doesn’t stick. This means more juices and flavour exit the food and the caramelisation of sugars on the outside of the food doesn’t happen to the same degree…hence less flavour from that process and less flavour inside as well.
 
The first few weeks can require a little patience. There may be sticking. There may be language….some of it colourful? There may even be an unintended scrambled egg incident. But once the seasoning establishes itself, the pan develops that glorious dark patina that many prize so highly.
 
My Netherton 10inch (26cm) Frying Pan now fries eggs almost absurdly well, usually, and on the odd occasion that it doesn’t, I end up using my trusty ALL STAINLESS STEEL Kuhn Rikon fish slice to free the egg which had inexplicably decided to bond itself to the pan.  Whilst this might be something you don't want to hear, this is the occasional reality but the great benefit of iron pans, is that when you do have to unstick food, you can just go for it.  No coating to damage, no plastics to chomp through - just a little elbow grease and your pan will be ready to go every time.  

Whilst editing this newsletter, Paul reminded me that Netherton pans are equally suited for outdoor cooking, and are very happy being used and abused on a barbeque or an open campfire.  You can, should you feel so moved, even remove (and replace) the wooden handles if your barbecue technique is something that tends to attract the attention of the local fire brigade.
 
The other thing I admire about Netherton is their slightly stubborn commitment to doing things properly. Their pans are pre-seasoned with organic flax oil from Sussex. Try not to wash it off… a wipe round with a paper towel after use really is sufficient, far, far more often than you’d think. The oak handles come from a local sawmill just a few miles from the foundry. Even the rivets are specially made for them in the Black Country.
 
None of this makes the pans dramatically more efficient. It simply makes them feel honest, straightforward and, when it all goes tits up, the patina will restore itself with further use. They are pretty well bullet proof.
 
And, I increasingly think, honesty is what people are searching for (at least I hope so otherwise I’ve misjudged you) when you buy cookware now.
 
So, it’s not just “Will this cook?”, but:
 
•    Who made it?
•    Where was it made?
•    Will it last? Can I keep it for thirty or forty years?
•    Will it still be useful when fashions change yet again?
 
A Netherton pan answers all of those rather convincingly.
 
The range we carry includes their frying pans, baking domes, loaf tins and shallow casseroles, all of which have that same slightly old-world, built-to-outlive-us appearance that I find deeply satisfying to be peddling.