Cast iron love
Katherine Mansfield
When Courtney Gillespie and her husband, Huey, purchased their Scenery Hill home last year, Gillespie knew she wanted a cast iron skillet wall as the kitchen’s focal point. The wall is a conversation starter – and cupboard space saver.
Katherine Mansfield
Courtney Gillespie’s expansive cast iron skillet collection also includes several dutch ovens, in various sizes.
Katherine Mansfield
A hand-written Oven Fried Chicken by Courtney Gillespie’s grandmother rests atop a miniature cast iron collectible stove. One of Gillespie’s fondest memories is of Grandma Moore whipping up the recipe.
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Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Courtney Gillespie shows off a light blue dutch oven, part of her expansive cast iron skillet collection. She and her husband, Huey, remodeled their 150-year-old home in 2020, and Gillespie said the cast iron skillet wall is one her favorite features in the house.
Katherine Mansfield
Gillespie purchased this cast iron skillet in Tennessee. All of her cast iron is Lodge.
By Karen Mansfield
One morning each year – on Christmas Day – Karen Overcashier pulls out an exra-large cast iron skillet and hefts it atop the right front burner of her Frigidaire gas stove.
The skillet, part of a small family of cast ironware in Overcashier’s kitchen, belonged to her mother-in-law, Edna Overcashier, who used it to make chicken livers for an annual Christmas morning champagne brunch, a tradition that began in the 1960s.
Overcashier and her husband, Pete, of North Strabane Township, have carried on that holiday tradition, recreating the menu his mother lovingly prepared for family: chicken livers served over homemade English muffins baked by Pete and his brother, Scott, scrambled eggs, sausage, fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, and, of course, champagne.
“They’re delicious, but Mom started making the chicken livers because they were cheap, so you could buy a lot of them and they were an inexpensive way to feed a crowd,” said Pete.
Added Karen Overcashier, “I never thought I’d like them. Now, they’re my favorite meal of the year. And I only make them in Pete’s mom’s cast iron skillet.”
Since cast iron pans were first crafted for cookware in the early 1700s, they have become the beloved workhorse in many kitchens.
Often handed down generation after generation, the glossy metal skillets encompass, in a sense, a family’s culinary history.
Courtney Gillespie’s love affair with cast iron cookware began in the kitchen of her grandmother, Kathy Moore.
Gillespie loved watching Moore, now 81, dredge the chicken and drop it into the heavy black skillet.
“Four generations of us have been making that chicken recipe in a cast iron skillet,” said Gillespie, 29, of Scenery Hill. “My grandmother got it from her mother-in-law, my mom makes it, and I do, too.”
Gillespie’s father, Michael Korpus, made his own special dish when she was growing up: on Wednesdays, he whipped up hot dogs, potatoes and onions – a recipe, too, that dates back to Gillespie’s great-grandmother – mixed together and cooked in an oversized cast iron pan.
Gillespie has traveled to the Pigeon Forge, Tenn., Lodge Cast Iron factory store, and visited auctions and flea markets to purchase cast ironware that she adds to a collection that has grown over the years to include pizza pans, griddles, enameled skillets and Dutch ovens.
Her father, who worked as a helper with Red Barn Auction Co. as a youth and developed a passion for auctions, “was always looking for a cast iron skillet,” said Gillespie, noting the cast iron skillet her mother, Jodie, uses for the fried baked chicken was one her dad picked up at an auction.
Gillespie’s collection is comprised of Lodge ware – she doesn’t own any made by the other iconic cast iron producers, Griswold and Wagner.
Griswold Manufacturing Co., in fact, was founded in Erie in 1876, and for nearly a century was the leading American manufacturer of cast iron cookware.
Nearly 75 years ago, the Griswold family sold its stake in the company to its rival, Wagner Manufacturing, but Griswold cast iron products are still sought after by collectors and cooks.
“People want Griswolds. If you see a Griswold at a flea market, whoever is selling it is asking a lot for it, and people are willing to pay for them,” said Gillespie.
Wagner Manufacturing was founded by brothers Bernard and Milton Wagner in Sidney, Ohio, in 1891 as a cast iron cookware company, and four years later the company became one of the first to manufacture aluminum cookware. Like a Griswold, a rare Wagner piece can fetch as much as $1,500.
Lodge Cast Iron was founded in 1896 in South Pittsburg, and America’s largest cast iron cookware company is still run by family members and sells more than 140 items.
Fun fact: it takes about 2 ½ hours from start to finish to produce a Lodge skillet.
In 2002, Lodge introduced its first pre-seasoned cookware, and in 2005 it started producing enameled cast iron products.
Owners will tell you their cast iron skillets get better with seasoning and age.
And care.
Washing cast iron with dish soap is a cardinal sin.
Another rule is, don’t get cast ironware wet.
Water is iron’s enemy, and it leads to rust spots.
“My cousin Courtney called me last month, panicked, and said there was rust all over her skillet and I said, ‘Get out the steel wool, everything’s going to be fine,'” said Gillespie. “Cast iron will last you a lifetime. The more you fry or bake in it, the better it gets.”
Most of Overcashier’s cast iron skillets are hung on the wall above the stove.
Gillespie’s are stored on a cast iron wall her husband, Huey, built in the kitchen after the couple bought their 150-year-old home in 2020. He attached thick pieces of old barn wood onto a wall and screwed in metal bars, and then added hooks to hang pans from.
“I love this wall,” said Gillespie. “Trying to stack a lot of cast iron in your cupboard takes up a lot of room.”
Gillespie’s family camped often when she was growing up, and they cooked in cast ironware over the campfire – cowboy stew, mountain pies, grilled cheese sandwiches.
It’s the memories that cast iron skillets carry – the dinners cooked over open fires, the special recipes made once a year and the favorite dishes served at Sunday family dinners – that render them so valuable.
Jenn Claus of Irwin bakes a pineapple upside down recipe perfected by her late grandmother, Naomi Osborne, in a nine-inch cast iron skillet.
“Mom has Grandma’s and it will be passed down to me one day,” Claus said.
Findlay Township resident Eric McGrosky often uses a cast iron griddle once owned by his late brother, David, to make crepes.
“There’s something sentimental about cast iron. It’s trusty and reliable, and it’s got a nostalgic feel,” Gillespie said.
“I do feel a sense of connection to mine. There are some warm fuzzies about them.”