The weird thing is that the smooth cast iron I was gifted is a “Copco” which is apparently a Danish brand that made mostly enamelware, but did some cast iron as well.
Unless Danish green sand is also fine…
I’m betting it was some sort of polishing finishing stage in production that got eliminated in recent decades.
Cast iron foundries US or otherwise originally clustered where the sand was best. Whether the thing they were known for was cookware or tiny statues of viking axe murderers. Apparently Scandinavia was one of the few places in Europe with that sweet sweet sand. And some brands there were well enough known to open foundries based in the US (in an around the great lakes where there are lots of skandies). Also apparently Poland was super good at cast iron. But the large amount of land in the US with access to good ass sand round abouts the Midwest accounts for the prevalence of good cast iron cookware in the US vs Europe. We just had a lot of capacity to do it well, where as Europe had Denmark and a couple bits of Norway.
I’ve a lot of family in Ireland. And for a couple decades Cast Iron has been the thing to get while traveling about . Over there it costs more per piece than french copper, apparently. When the folks come over here its one of the things they’re looking to ship back. All I hear from them on the subject is “the cast iron at home is crap from Norway/Denmarl blah blah blah blah”. I don’t know what they’re complaining about. What little I’ve had occasion to use is better than lodge. It is pricey though.
I used to work in an iron foundry, specifically I did quality control on green sand. There is a lot you can change in your sand process alone that can alter the finish and crystal size in gray iron casting. I am extremely skeptical of claims that nothing has changed in 100 years when 4 or 5 generations of steel workers have passed and some of the manufacturing materials available on the market are significantly different.
If the finish bothered me that much I’d grind on it a bit with a silicon-carbide wheel. But it’s not worth the 20 minutes of my time when I can already bake cornbread and frittatas in mine without sticking. Sure something like Finex makes a much slicker pan than Lodge (at only 10x the price), but none of the glass lids I have fit a Finex. It’s not hard to find a random lid to fit an ordinary round skillet.
I did use it at max temp on my BBQ side burner many times.
Yeah, that’s OK. I just got a new one.
I didn’t mean to sound like I was complaining in my first post. The Lodge skillet served me very well for years and they aren’t that expensive. Le Creuset I ship back when it breaks; Lodge, I don’t mind replacing every so often.
I make pasta sauce in my skillet. Fight me.
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