Food & Wine USA - (02)February 2021

104 FEBRUARY 2021

BACKSTORY

GO TO YOUR KITCHEN, flip over your cast-iron skillet,

and see what secrets the bottom reveals. Each maker

employs a different system of letters and numbers

to identify the line and size, and the code 10SK—the

Lodge 12-inch skillet—has been stamped into more

pans than any other on earth. The fifth-generation,

family-owned company sold 4 million skillets in

2020 alone, maintaining its standing as the top-

selling cookware product across the industry. CEO

Mike Otterman works a shift on the factory floor

or store each month, right there in South Pittsburg,

Tennessee, where Joseph Lodge opened Blacklock

Foundry in 1896. “We are in a town of 3,200, and we

will never move,” Otterman says. That commitment

to tradition is ironclad. The only design alterations

Lodge has made over the past 125 years have been

adding an assist handle on skillets larger than 8

inches in 1998 and seasoning them starting in 2002.

That’s not to say the company is stuck in the past.

For instance, the 2019 launch of the Blacklock line

pays homage to the original foundry that burned

down in 1910 (it reopened as Lodge Cast Iron that

same year) while featuring a proprietary recipe of

triple-seasoned iron that is thinner and lighter than

its classic counterpart. The annual Made in America

series 10.25-inch skillets have been cast with the

American flag (2018) and bald eagles (2019) on the

underside. The 2020 edition featured Rosie the Riv-

eter to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th

Amendment, which gave women the right to vote,

and it might be Otterman’s favorite. When he takes

that shift in the packing department, he personally

hefts 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of iron alongside a

predominantly female workforce who does this

every day. “Everybody who works here has a really

firm handshake,” he says. —KAT KINSMAN

“Once you cook on cast iron, that’s

all you ever cook on. There’s no

going back.” —MIKE OTTERMAN,

CEO OF LODGE CAST IRON

Iron

Clad

BY THE NUMBERS

50M

Pounds of cast-iron

products Lodge

makes per year

125

Years Lodge has

been in business,

first as Blacklock

Foundry, then as

Lodge Cast Iron

72

Percentage of

women in the

workforce on the

Lodge packing line

2,800°F

Temperature at

which the metal is

heated to melt it

before it is poured

into sand molds

700°F

Temperature at

which Lodge sea-

sons its skillets

20

Percentage of

profits that go to

employees via

profit sharing and

401(k)s

Lodge pans, which

are sand-cast and

therefore one of a

kind, are measured

by the diameter of

the bottom ring,

not the top. That’s

why Lodge’s

12-inch skillet has

the code 10SK

stamped on the

bottom.

CRACK THE CODE

photography by GREG DUPREE

FOOD STYLING: TORIE COX, PROP STYLING: CLAIRE SPOLLEN