Honestly, I am not the audience for this book. So for me, it came across as a bit scattered and confusing. THAT SAID: It is actually a great book for most home cooks and/or libraries. I could see this book being used a lot in a public library collection or as a gift with a few cast iron skillets.

I have always been raised around cast iron cooking, so for me this was a no brainer. This is a great collection of new recipes to challenge the most experienced cast iron cook, but also a nice primer for those new to the art. Which, by the way, this is totally an art. For the unexperienced, this can be intimidating. One good thing is that the beginning has tips and advice on cast iron cooking, the benefits, how to use them, seasoning, the proper way to clean them (which is a religion), skills one needs to do it well. Some will find that starting out there is a learning curve. This provides the information to get someone well on their way. Everything I am saying comes from one who has a lot of skill in this area. If you are a novice cook the recipes could possibly feel a little overwhelming. That is a fair warning. Another benefit though is that the recipes are able to fit many different eating plans and lifestyles.

Thank you for a cookbook I am glad to add to my collection and share with others. Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the honor of reading this ARC.

TLDR: Good cookbook for teaching you how to maintain - and restore if need be - cast iron cookware and lots of great recipes to boot!

I recently got an old, well-seasoned cast iron skillet after years of trying to find a decent new one. Around the same time, this cookbook became available for review on Netgalley. Good timing! I'm not new to cooking with cast iron cookware. In fact, I grew up in a household that cooked everything in cast iron, but I <i>still</i> learned from this book. I've heard the "don't use soap, it'll ruin the seasoning" mantra for decades, but the author explains why this isn't the case with modern soaps. Just in case you do mess up the seasoning, though, this book has you covered.

The recipes are appetizing and range from really easy to quite ambitious. When you think of cast iron cookery, you may think of heavy, mostly Southern cooking such as biscuits & gravy and fried everything. This book has some classics like that - and teaches you how to do them well - but also some lighter fare. Yum!

Recipes: 10
Text: 7

I am looking at the ARC and so the awkward sentences, typos, and other artifacts that grate as I read may have been cleared up. If not then I have to say that Ms Vaserfirer is a better cook than writer and Quarto editors did not help her to make the text smooth and error free.

But buy the book anyway. There is a lot of info on choosing, using, and caring for cast iron cookware. (Someone along the way decided that the abbreviation "CI" is ok in the text. I don't agree.) There's a nice discussion of ironware brands, and a great deal of information on how different cooking methods – like baking – translate into cast iron cookery.

The recipes are very nice. They are drawn from a range of ethnic and regional cuisines and there are some exciting pantry staples to make from scratch. I'm looking forward to trying the unsmoked bacon that mimics smoky bacon through the use of smoked salt and sweet paprika. There are recipes for American-style Italian sweet sausage and homemade tortillas, among others.

As you can imagine, many of these recipes can be made without using cast iron ware, but I thought it was an interesting idea that one could equip a kitchen with a microwave with convection oven, an Instant Pot and a few cast iron skillets, and never have to buy any other cookware. I might give it a try next time I go on a long-term assignment.

Cooking for only two people can be challenging. I enjoy leftovers, but I hate the dishes. If I can make a delicious, filling meal with one pan, I’m all for it!

My first experience with cast iron cooking didn’t go so well, because I was so accustomed to cooking with nonstick pans. I ended up throwing the pan away because the chicken I tried to cook melded to it! I've since learned to thoroughly preheat my pan first! Because cast iron cooking can seem a little fussy at first, the first forty pages provide information on preparing, using, maintaining, and storing your cast iron pan.

Not Your Mother's Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook More Than 150 Recipes for One-Pan Meals for Any Time of the Day features a wide variety of dishes, from quick meals to meals suited for company. There are recipes for the Southern comfort food I typically associate with cast iron cooking, but there are also dishes inspired from a variety of ethnic cuisines. In a quick flip-through, I saw recipes with Korean, Indian, Mexican, Japanese, French, Spanish, Chinese, Middle Eastern, North African, and Mediterranean origins. I am most excited to try CI Skillet Bibimbap (cover), Saag Paneer, Pork, Shiitake & Water Chestnut Lettuce Wraps, and Chicken & Couscous with Pine Nuts, Golden Raisins & Moroccan Spices.

The recommended skillet size and cooking method are noted at the top of each recipe, which I found extremely helpful. I usually pick recipes based on photographs, so I was disappointed that there weren't more photos. The full-page pictures that were included were mouthwatering. I recommend this cookbook to anyone looking to step up their cast iron cooking game.

The author blogs at Hungry Cravings.

This is a new first for me, a review about a cookbook.

I am not one who is adventurous when it comes to food. I like pub fare, the meat and potatoes stuff. My bathroom scale is well equated with my tastes in food. But this is not just a cook book. It’s a book about cast iron skillets and the recipes that work well in them. Lucy introduces us to the Cast Iron Skillet, traditionally used in our grandmother's day (if you’re as old as I am, then in your mother's day as well). My wife has one her mom gave her. We never used it much except to make home fries/hash brown potatoes. I knew it had to be seasoned, and the book talks about how to season the skillet. Lucy also writes about the history of the cast iron skillet, how it is casted, what to look for when shopping for a pan, especially those flea markets. The skillets also come in many sizes, from 3 inches to 20 inch and every size in-between. They are types, such as chef skillets, deep skillets, divided skillets, wedge skillets, small square skillets and large square skillets. She also gives us many tips and techniques.

So, how's the food?? A cast iron skillet can be used to prepare just about any dish. Lucy published 150 recipes of all shapes, sizes, meals and ingrediencies’. I did not try them all, and to be truthful, there is only about 15 recipes that I would try, and I got three made so far, omelets, corn bread and egg battered pork chops. If I delay this review any longer, I will add a couple more. Everything I tried came out well and no complaints were heard around the table.

I did receive an ARC in exchange for a review.

I have 3 cast iron skillets and they will be in use. Loved this book.
I would recommend this book. It's full of information.

Filled with tips on using, cleaning, and seasoning cast iron pans and even the different ways to cook in one, from sauteing to poaching, the guide at the front of the book is helpful for even the greenest of beginners. Wherever you are in your culinary skill, this book can teach you something new and exciting.

The recipes are categorized in an easy-to-follow method of breakfasts (from savory eggs to sweet dutch babies and pancakes, and even an elevated bacon recipe), starters and snacks (such as mozzarella-stuffed arancini, candied nuts with spices, and potstickers), mouth-watering mains (chicken-fried chicken biscuit sandwiches, mushroom and herb-stuffed pork chops, perfect seared sea scallops, shrimp etouffee, veal saltimbocca, mussels and chorizo in saffron broth, and garlic-rubbed tomato melts), elegant side dishes (asparagus with brown butter, orange, and herbs; charred broccoli with lemon and pine nuts; sausage and herb cornbread dressing; loaded crispy smashed potatoes; elotes; risotto milanese with peas and prosciutto; southern fried okra), and sweets and bakes ( funnel cakes, two kinds of cornbread, pear tarte tatin, and a free-from apple pie).

The ingredients in these recipes are sometimes highly specialized and a bit overly specific, when a simpler substitution would be just as functional. However, the title sort of belies the author’s preference for fancier fare than our mothers presumably made.

The recipes include a wide cultural variety, from all-American hot wings, to Southern biscuits and sausage gravy, to Chinese flaky green onion pancakes, homemade Mexican chorizo, Middle Eastern shakshuka, Jewish latkes, beef dang myun, and French frisee aux lardons.

I am very much looking forward to cooking my way through this entire book, from elegant or easy dinners for my family, to fun new cultural foods for my friends, as well as traditional favorites with a new twist. And with the cleaning tips, meal clean up will be much simpler.

Last year I have decided to introduce cast iron skillets to my kitchen. When I came across this cookbook from the publisher, I was very excited and went ahead to obtain a review copy and see what it offers.

The first 20% of the book is extremely helpful and informational to any newbies to using cast iron cookwares. Abundance of tips and knowledge on using and caring for the cookwares as they are more tricky to use than the regular non-stick or ceramic cookwares. While online sources sometimes are confusing and even conflicting, this cookbook provides everything cast iron users need to know in one stop.

The recipes, mostly, are simple enough but there are still a good number of them that are not for quick, daily meals. Lack of pictures is another issue, to me, because pictures of the final products make cookbooks attractive besides the mouth-watering recipes. The great varieties of recipes (118 of them altogether,) however, do compensate the scarcities of photos. And I wish the recipes provide prep and cook time because this minor information would help readers to plan ahead without reading all the text to guess the time estimation.

The cookbook provides recipes for 6 major categories:
1- Eggs and Breakfast
2- Starters and Snacks
3- Main courses
4- Sides
5- Sweets and Bakes
6- Spices and Sauces

Most recipes are meat dishes so vegetarians might have to use this cookbook creatively by combining different recipes together and tweaking around to make it perfect for them.

There are some surprises in this cookbook and would make a great collection of recipes to cast iron users (with some cooking experiences for example) but by no means a Cooking 101 crash course for those who is new to cooking. In terms of contents, tips and information, this is a solid and useful cookbook.

I think I liked the idea of this book more than the reality.

My fiance and I are interested in minimizing our kitchen so this book felt like an ideal guide to single dish cooking but I was put off by the lack of options for those who eat minimal amount of meat and only moderate starches.

As a guide to technique I'd recommend this piece, but id encourage those with specific dietary interests to look elsewhere.

My husband and I cook daily with our cast iron pans and love them, so I was quite interested in this new cookbook. It ended up not really being any help at all to me, but will be very valuable to some readers.

The beginning of the book goes into extreme detail about cast iron pans, as of course it should. If you are new to cast iron cooking, this book will give you the information you need beyond the basic seasoning advice you get online. It tells you how to properly sear foods, cook a variety of ways, clean your pan (though I still will never get on board with the modern advice of using dish soap regularly on them) and so on. If you are new to cooking in general or cast iron cooking in particular and want to really understand the science of great cast iron cooking, this will be quite helpful.

From there, the book goes into recipes for breakfast, snacks, main courses, sides and desserts. Here, the book was virtually useless for me but would be great for your average American eater (lots of meat, wheat, conventional foods) who wants dishes that are slightly frou-frou. These aren't simple dishes, but more along the lines of special occasion ones for the most part, and some of them are certainly more for folks of a certain taste in food (seared tongue anyone?). We are a gluten free household and I cook mostly vegetarian, and the VAST majority of the recipes weren't anything I could serve. Almost every breakfast recipe involved flour, even the omelet (which contained no vegetables). The recipes were very meat-centric and heavy on the fat. There were not a lot of vegetable dishes (no main dishes were vegetarian except I think the spaghetti fritatta, which also contained no vegetables) and the ones there were tended to be either unappetizing to me or too "junky" -- like the swiss chard dish that called for a cup of heavy cream.

There were few photos and there is no nutritional information.

Health-minded cooks of different walks of life are likely to object to it for different reasons. Paleo folks will dislike the abundance of recipes that call for wheat flour and canola oil. Vegans and vegetarians will dislike the almost exclusive use of meat and dairy. Dieters will dislike the calorie-rich tendency of most of the dishes. Run of the mill health nuts like myself will raise an eyebrow at ingredients like MSG, too.

I also would have liked instructions for how to just cook really well in a cast iron pan with ultimate basic recipes. For instance, there's a trick to cooking fantastic mushrooms in cast iron. Things like mushrooms (or frozen shrimp) release a lot of water and it's easy to end up with mushy, bland ones. What I've taught my kids is to get a cast iron pan really hot and then add the mushrooms, season well with salt, pepper and garlic, stir them constantly and let them start to release all their juices. Quickly pour the juices into a bowl next to the pan and then let just them start to brown on all sides, stirring constantly. Toss in some butter and quickly move them all through it to coat (or a splash of wine if you don't do butter), with the heat still nice and high so everything burns off fast and you get that wonderful browned flavor on all sides, and then pour the cooking liquid back in just to quickly deglaze the pan and get all the wonderful pan flavors up into the mushrooms. Remove with the sauce and serve with your favorite side. I have a lot of super simple recipes like those for cast iron that I've taught my kids and they are my favorite types, not the type with lots of ingredients that just happen to be cooked in a cast iron pan.

In any case, this is a great guide and a fair cookbook for readers who fit the target demographic.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

Think cast iron skillets are dated and out-of-style? Think again. This heavy cookware is enjoying a surge of popularity and there are dozens of reasons. You can learn everything you need to know about cast iron cooking – history, pros and cons, care and upkeep, and most importantly, how to cook delicious dishes, in Lucy Vaserfirer’s book Not Your Mother's Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook:More Than 150 Recipes for One-Pan Meals for Any Time of the Day. Vaserfirer’s expertise shows through in this cookbook, and there are dozens of recipes that will appeal to almost everyone.

Many think of cast iron as the pans to use when cooking old southern dishes, but Vaserfirer has included dishes from all over the world. Her recipe for CI Skillet Bibimbap has already become a favorite, as well as her version of Shakshuka. We loved the Corn Fry Cakes with Jalapeño-Maple Butter as well as the Bacon-Wrapped Pork Filet and Egg Battered Pork Chops. Everyone loves Home Fries, and Vaserfirer’s version is fabulous. Always looking for good vegetable dishes, Skillet-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts, Shallots & Bacon is luscious.


This excellent cookbook includes several recipes for homemade seasoning salts – much better than the commercial brands - as well as sauces like Chipotle Dipping Sauce and Charred Tomato Sauce. Every one tried so far has been great.

The one drawback to this cookbook is that there aren’t very many photographs of the dishes. The included photographs are nice, but there simply aren’t pictures of every dish, which there should be.

After reading and testing the recipes in this book on my own family, I’m in love with cast iron and use it constantly. Yes, it’s heavy, but that’s one of the reasons food cooks so well in it. You wouldn’t take your expensive cookware camping, but cast iron is virtually indestructible and can be used on your stovetop as well as your campfire.

Although there are dozens of good cast iron cookbooks out there, this will most likely become the favorite. It has everything you need to know, and is highly recommended.


Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

I'm new to cast iron skillets. Having a detailed explanation on size, how to cook and bake and how to clean was very helpful in tips. I'm a vegetarian so most of the recipes I would never cook. The funny thing is my mom would like this book better than me.

Really wanted to read this, but it was not in a format I could open with my computer (which isn't the easiest way to read even if I could open it). Please consider offering review copies that are compatible with Kindle for those of us with less-than-perfect eyesight.

This is the perfect book to go with the cast iron skillet I got for Christmas. I love all the recipes and can’t wait to try them.

I absolutely LOVE this cookbook! I recently got married and got a cast iron skillet and had no idea how many recipes you could make in one! I am looking forward to delving into many of these recipes for years to come!

Having owned a cast iron skillet for years but not used it much, it was a joy to be able to pick my way through this book sampling some fabulous recipes. It is well written with clear instructions though I would have preferred more pictures but that does not detract from the quality of the book. Definitely a book that should come with every skillet.

This cookbook offers more than 150 one pan meals for your Iron Skillet. The book is divided into six sections: breakfast, snacks and starters, main, sides, sweets, spices and sauces. She starts with the history of the cast iron skillet, collection information, recommended brands, types and usages, cooking terms, and how to clean and season your skillet. Examples of recipes included are Dutch Babies, stuffed French toast, biscuts and sausage gravy, spicy carnival corn, hot wings, potato latkes, chicken with lemon and green olives, seared duck breast, herb stuffed pork chops, seared trout, shrimp etouffee, chicken piccata, coconut shrimp with mango sauce, onion straws, flour tortillas, cornbread, almond tea cakes, and pineapple upside down cake.

My husband and I just received a cast iron skillet for our wedding. We had no clue where to begin and how to take care of this expensive kitchen tool. We tried one recipe and then retired our cast iron. This cookbook has made me decide to bring the cast iron out of retirement. So excited to try all the recipes and read about the care of a cast iron skillet.

I thought there were some excellent recipes in Not Your Mother's Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook. I love that there is an entire chapter devoted completely to breakfast, my favorite meal of the day. There are some traditional recipes, but the book is also filled with modern day dishes that would make any foodie salivate. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys cooking and wants to try some new and innovative dishes in their home kitchen.