Your Best Pan Belongs Outside
I know what you are thinking. Cast iron is for the stovetop. Cornbread, steaks, eggs, the usual. But the best thing I ever did for my grilling was start bringing my cast iron skillet outside and using it on the grill. The combination of live fire and cast iron opens up a whole category of cooking that neither one can do alone.
Why It Works
A grill gets hotter than any home stovetop. Most kitchen burners max out around 500 to 600 degrees at the pan surface. A charcoal grill with a cast iron skillet directly on the coals can push 700 degrees or higher. That kind of heat produces a sear that is not physically possible in your kitchen.
Cast iron also holds heat better than any other cookware material. When you put a cold steak on a thin stainless pan, the temperature drops and the steak steams instead of searing. Cast iron barely flinches. The temperature stays high, the sear is immediate, and the crust forms in seconds.
What to Cook
Smash burgers: This is the number one reason to put cast iron on the grill. Press a ball of ground beef onto a screaming hot skillet, let the edges go crispy, flip once. The Maillard reaction at 700 degrees produces a crust that no kitchen setup can match.
Reverse-sear steaks: Smoke a thick ribeye on the cool side of your grill until it hits 115 degrees internal, then sear it on a preheated cast iron for 45 seconds per side. The combination of smoke flavor from the indirect cook and the insane crust from the cast iron sear is the best steak you will ever make. I am not exaggerating.
Fajita vegetables: Peppers and onions cooked in a cast iron on the grill get actual char and caramelization, not the limp, steamed result you get from most grill baskets.
Bacon: Cooking bacon on cast iron on the grill keeps the grease smell outside and the smoke adds a layer of flavor. Plus the bacon fat that renders into the skillet is seasoning your pan for the next cook.
Grilled cheese: Yes, really. A grilled cheese sandwich cooked on cast iron over charcoal has a smoky, toasted quality that you cannot get indoors. Try it once and you will never go back.
How to Do It
Place your cast iron directly on the grill grate over the hot coals. Let it preheat for 10 to 15 minutes with the lid closed. Test it with a drop of water. If the water immediately vaporizes, you are ready. If it just sizzles and sits, give it more time.
Add a thin coat of high-smoke-point oil (avocado or canola) right before the food goes on. Do not oil it during the preheat or it will smoke like crazy and set off every alarm in a three-block radius.
Hog Humor Note
Your indoor smoke detector is the real reason to cook with cast iron outside. The kind of searing heat that produces a restaurant-quality crust also produces the kind of smoke that makes your smoke detector think the house is on fire. Take it outside. Problem solved. Better food. Fewer domestic incidents.
Care After Grilling
Let the skillet cool on the grill. Do not run cold water over a hot cast iron pan or it can crack. Once it is cool enough to handle, wipe it out, give it a thin coat of oil, and store it. That is the whole routine. The more you use cast iron on the grill, the better the seasoning gets, and the better everything tastes.
