Video: Making Cast Iron Skillets The Old Fashioned Way Is Pretty Fun

Video: Making Cast Iron Skillets The Old Fashioned Way Is Pretty Fun

Anthony Bourdain has a new show of sorts that explores the craftsmanship of certain items and the people behind them and the first episode focuses on Borough Furnace, a small metal casting workshop that makes hand-crafted cast iron skillets. You see a bit of the process of how they turn recycled iron into cookware.

It’s cool to see how really old school ways of making pans still exist today. The show is obviously sponsored by The Balveine but if you ignore the product placement, you get to see some really fun shots of molten metal and sand blasting and more fire. You can check out Borough Furnace’s shop here.

Anthony Bourdain and The Balvenie visit Borough Furnace in Syracuse, New York, a metal casting workshop founded and operated by couple John Truex and Liz Seru in 2011. The skillets are handcrafted individually in small batches, using a traditional casting process that has been updated for environmental responsibility. One skillet takes approximately 6 to 7 hours from start to finish. John makes all of his own equipment. Each skillet is cast in a “skilletron,” a barrel-sized metal melting furnace that burns Waste Vegetable Oil at 2700°F to melt scrap iron. By using old fryer grease to fuel their furnace, they eliminate the massive energy consumption of a typical metal casting operation. They also only use recycled iron as source material.