Several months ago, I read a series of articles about flashlights by Ben Brooks, a blogger whose posts I enjoy. His article convinced me that my iPhone flashlight may not be as useful as I once imagined. I decided to buy a dedicated flashlight and see.
Last year we were given old Dutch ovens. I knew absolutely nothing about cast iron cooking and so, naturally, I turned to the internet for advice. Generally, the internet serves me well for subjects I’m unfamiliar with. Things did not go well for the cast iron, however. I’ve learned, by trial and error, how to use and care for cast iron. If you’re willing to relearn some care and cleaning habits, you’ll be able to enjoy some amazing cookware!
If you’ve never used cast iron, like me, here are a few things to know.
Cast iron cookware has been used for a long time, and for good reasons. They’re inexpensive to buy, last for generations, you can use them on almost any heating surface, get better (i.e. slicker) with use, are versatile, handle high heats, and work extremely well. Cast iron retains heat really well, making it great for searing meats, or caramelizing vegetable (or anything else). Once seasoned (seasoning refers to the oil buildup that gets baked into the cookware, resulting in a smooth, non-stick coating) they are slicker than non-stick pans and don’t require bizarre chemicals to achieve that feature.
We started looking at cast iron skillets to use with our induction burner in the RV, which we can use on solar power. Our old non-stick pans were getting worn out, and we wanted a cheap and durable replacement.
Handling cast iron may require you to get a few things you don’t already have in your kitchen.
Our Dutch ovens were rusted and the seasoning was sticky and splotchy. It needed to be restored.
The internet has good information on the restoring process. Generally, goes like this:
Stripping old seasoning and rust can be really hard. Working with the pan when it’s hot can make old seasoning and gunk come off easier. It does, however, make it harder to handle the pan.
Here are some methods I tried. You’ll find videos and articles for each of these methods. I’ve listed them in order from best to worst:
Do what it takes. Get down to the metal. Then skip to Chapter 3, Seasoning.
Buy Lodge. They’ve been doing cast iron for years. Their cookware has the best factory seasoning. Worth it. Also, the Wirecutter agrees.
Even though Lodge preseasons their pans, I think you should season it a few more times before using it.
For skillets, we have 3 sizes. 10″, 12″, and 14″. I use the 10″ the most because it’s lighter, making it easier to use. It’s large enough for about 70% of the things that I cook. If you’re getting only one skillet, the 12″ is probably the way to go. I don’t like the size of the 14″ that much. It’s really heavy, but when you need size, you’ll be glad you have it.
For Dutch ovens, we have 12″ Lodge ovens that we were gifted. 12″ seems to be the most commonly recommended size of Dutch oven, and I’ve been happy with the size. We recently re-gifted one of our ovens. RV life mandates minimizing!
So, now that you have your new or stripped cookware, it’s time to season it. Some people will advocate that simply using the pan for cooking will season it. That’s true, but I think for beginners (like me) getting more seasoning on the pan to start will help.
Repeat as many times as you want to. I did mine 5-7 times before using for cooking.
After cooking certain foods, you may want to re-season the pan again and can follow this same process.
Oh boy. Now this is where things get dicey. I’ve found that the internets advice on cleaning is based on working with a well seasoned piece of cast iron. A well seasoned piece of cast iron can deal with abuse. A new or recently restored piece can not.
If you have a new or recently restored piece of cast iron:
I use a tiered approach to my cleaning.
If stuff is stuck on the pan after cooking, the first thing I do is:
If this process has sufficiently cleaned the pan. You are done. Wait for it to cool and then store.
For new pans, you may have some messy, sticky jobs to clean up. If food has cemented to the pan during the cooking process, the first pass method won’t be enough. However, you also don’t want to strip any seasoning.
If you have severely stuck food, and the first two approaches haven’t worked, you can try any of the methods used in the restoring process. I’d probably start with salt/sponge, then work up to steel wool or chain mail if needed. Be gentle to minimize the amount of seasoning you remove.
For a newer pan, I’d recommend doing a seasoning pass in the oven afterwards (see chapter 3).
The main thing to remember is keep things dry and exposed to air. For Dutch ovens, put some paper towel between the lid and pot so it can breathe inside the pot.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when cooking:
This looks like a lot of information. It may seem like it’s not worth bothering with cast iron. If you’re not interested in learning some new habits, then that is probably going to be true for you.
However if I was to describe how to cook and clean a normal pan, it would likely be pretty long too. It’s just a different process, but aside from the initial seasoning process it’s no lengthier or more difficult than a regular pan.
It seems like a rite of passage for full-time RVers to install solar on their RV. We’ve been running two 100watt panels as a portable ground setup, but we wanted something permanent and bigger.
There are so many good articles and videos about doing RV solar installs, so I won’t try to do a comprehensive report. Also, despite my intentions to document each step, I got so engaged in the project I forgot to take pictures.
Here’s what I bought for this project:
Here is what I had purchased previously that I was able to reuse:
One decision you have to make during the planning phase is whether to use flat mounted panels or install tiltable brackets. The tilt brackets require you to climb on your roof and set the tilt angle each time you park, although I’ve heard of one person who had motorized tilts on his panels.
I decided not to do tilt mounts based on something I read on an online forum. As I write this, the foolishness of relying on random forum opinions is settling in, and I’m wondering if I’ll regret the decision. The poster suggested that rather than installing tilt mounts and having to climb up your roof constantly, just buy an extra panel to offset the inefficiencies of a flat mount. I was sold on that idea.
Additionally, we still have our ground panels that we can tilt and angle to our hearts content to get some extra juice, if needed.
Before starting the plan, I needed to review the basic solar layout to help me determine what to buy. The basic structure of a solar system looks like this:
I already had a charge controller and battery monitoring kit, but I wanted to replace some parts. I wanted to replace my basic, 20amp auto fuses with auto resetting 40 amp versions. I also wanted to swap out the cables running from my charge controller to my battery. Previously, I’d used standard solid core 10AWG cables used for home electrical. I know that stranded cables are better, particularly for automotive uses so I picked up some higher quality, stranded cables to replace my existing wiring.
Since we already had a charge controller for our ground solar panels, I didn’t want to purchase another one. That meant I’d size the system based on the charge controller’s rating, which is 40 amps.
I already knew how much each panel would generate. On a sunny day, our 2 ground panels generate about 11-13 amps when they are optimally tilted. After some estimating, (er, sophisticated math) I figured each panel would produce around 5 amps max. I already had 2 panels, so I figured I’d get 6 more, brining our potential to about 40 amps (5 * 8).
Amazon screwed up my orders, and so I ended up getting an extra panel out of the deal, so we ended up with 7 new panels, 9 total with our existing ground panels. I diagramed my layout and discovered that by buying 2 sets of branch connectors, I could eliminate the need to buy a ton of Y connectors. Boom!
I’m guessing I wont get a full 5 amps per panel with them being flat mounted, so I doubt I’ll get a full 35amps with my 7 panels. However, I very well might approach tha number on sunny days, and having 7 panels may eliminate the need to use our ground panels every time we park. Time will tell.
So why have ground panels at all? Simple: we like parking in forested areas. We’ve been able to place the ground panels in full sun while our RV sits comfortably among the trees.
I spent an evening on the roof with a tape measure, getting a bunch of measurements which I drew on my iPad. I didn’t want to put the panels in areas where shade from an AC unit or anything else could land on the solar panels, so I decided to group the panels at the rear of the RV.
An additional consideration I took into account was position of the panels relative to the slide outs. I anticipate needing to do slideout or awning maintenance at some point, and don’t want to have solar panels in the way when I do that. I was able to keep my panels away from all slide outs and awnings.
Once the panels arrived, the first thing I did was lay them out on the roof and finalize the position I wanted them to be in. They fit great at the rear of the roof, as I planned, and still allowed me room to get to the front of the roof.
I watched the video from Gone with the Wynns and, since we also have a Fleetwood Bounder like they did, I took wiring inspiration from their video. They routed the wires behind the fridge, cabinets, and finally into the storage bin where the inverter lives.
I took this route as well, but wasn’t able to get the fridge out easily. My workaround was to have the wires enter the RV above the fridge, then simply route the wires down the side of the fridge, fairly close to the front of the fridge. There was a gap in the floor the fridge sits on, and I was able to route the wires alongside a heating duct under the oven and behind the kitchen cabinets.
Once I had the wires behind the cabinet drawers, I saw the backside of our outdoor TV. Using the speaker box as a reference point from both inside and outside the RV, I determined where to drill in order to access the storage box without damaging anything. A few drills later, I had successfully routed my cables into the final place.
I bought tons of wiring, and knew I’d need to cut wires to make the project work. I purchased some MC4 connectors so that I could add them to the ends of my cut cables. This worked out really well, and was quite simple. I followed the instructions in this video for reference.
Once the main wires were in place and connected to the charge controller, I hooked up the solar panels. I’d left them disonnected from the system wires so I didn’t risk a shock. I wired them in parallel since the panels were 12v each and my system was 12v. Parallel wiring maintains voltage, but increases capacity (for batteries) or output in amps (for panels).
The project took roughly 12 man hours to complete, which was spread out over a Friday evening and Saturday. My wife helped with some of the project, so I personally spent about 8 hours on the project.
Much to my surprise, the project was completed without a single problem. I was trying to think about any project I’ve ever done that went this smoothly, particularly at this scale, and I can’t think of one. I think this is the result of adequate planning.
We haven’t had the chance to test the panels in full sun. We finished them on an overcast day with smoke from forest fires adding additional coverage. So, for now, we’re plugged in to shore power at our family’s home. We’ll test production in a few days when we get out on the road again.