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Cast Iron Kettle - Tradition And Value In One
Cast iron kettles have been around for well over a hundred years. During the period of the 1880’s to the 1920’s, people used cast iron kettles to heat water for hot beverages like tea and coffee. Cast iron kettles were cast from a mould and showed good thermal qualities. Unlike today's modern counterpart, these kettles were heated on top of a stove or other open heat source.
Cast iron as a material is preferred by many cookware manufacturers, for many reasons. To begin with, cast iron is non-toxic. Secondly, it has excellent heat retention and diffusion properties. And lastly, cast iron is easily molded into different shapes. Judging by these properties it would certainly seem to be the ideal materialto use for the production of kettles.
However, there are also downsides to using cast iron for the manufacture of kettles. The main thing that users of a cast iron kettle complain about is the difficulty of cleaning it. Because it is manufactured from iron, it does have a tendency to rust. However, cleaning rust from the inside of cast iron kettles is not as difficult as you may at first think.
There exists a wrongly held belief among users of cast iron tea kettles that they should never use dish soap when cleaning rust from the inside of a cast iron kettle. However, the truth is that there is no better cleaning agent to use than dish soap. Make sure that the dish soap is diluted with ample water though, especially if you are using a particularly strong agent.
After thoroughly washing away the soap suds from the inside of your kettle, you need to take a small piece of cotton cloth and dampen it. Scatter a tablespoon of coarse salt into the bottom of the kettle, together with a small amount of olive oil, then rubg the rusted areas with the wet cloth.
Prices for a good quality cast iron kettle start as low as $20 or so. As always, you need to get the best quality that you can afford in order to make that investment in a product that could last you a lifetime.