I was in my forties before I knew that people didn’t call pots and pans “kettles”. Embarrassingly, I was writing a book with a cook as a hero and my editor gently pointed out to me that kettles are used for tea. Sometimes they’re used for things like rendering fat during the butchering process or making soap. They are not used in everyday cooking. That was news to me because I grew up cooking in kettles.
One of my favorites was the mush kettle, which was a one quart aluminum “pot” (as some people call it) with a handle. We cooked oatmeal, cream of wheat and Malto-Meal in the mush kettle. It was all mush. According to my husband, it’s actually hot cereal. Right.
The mush kettle wasn’t the only specialized kettle we had. There was also the rice kettle and the stew kettle, both stainless steal and the perfect size for the stated purposes. Sometimes we used the stew kettle for other things, such as soaking beans, but it was always the stew kettle. Oddly we didn’t have cast iron kettles, even though we had cast iron everything. Cast iron kettles are, of course, called Dutch ovens.
Speaking of cast iron, we had a lot of perfectly seasoned frying pans. (Occasionally called skillets in my house, but not
often.) We had enough of them that I think I took four when I moved out and no one seemed to notice. Yes, we used soap in our frying pans, but only after meat was cooked in them. If there was no meat, it was a wipe-clean situation. If we washed them in water, we put them on the stove to dry, hopefully remembering to stay nearby so as not to wonder about that nasty hot metal odor permeating house a few minutes later. If the pan was not red hot, there’d be a quick application of Crisco on a rag if mom or dad were in charge, and no Crisco if my brother or I were in charge . I still have my pans. They’re still perfectly seasoned and I use soap. I haven’t turned one red hot by forgetting it in the drying process in a long time, and have finally reached the level of maturity where I do wipe them with Crisco after washing.
Long story short, I occasionally use soap in my 100-year old cast iron and I still cook in kettles. Do you?