John Truex and Jason Connelly are two cousins from Tennessee with an interest in design and locally-sourced recyclable materials. In 2010, they formed Borough Furnace, a company that fabricates cast iron cookware from scrap such as old household radiators. Their designs include two hand-cast cooking pans: a 9.5” frying skillet, and a 11.5” braising skillet, all made with a careful dedication to heirloom quality craftsmanship. Despite having a great prototype and interest from several chefs and foodies, they couldn’t find a foundry in the United States that would work with them. And since the majority of new cast iron pans are fabricated in India and Chine these days, the boys were left to create their own foundry if they were ever going to start manufacturing. They built their first furnace from steel dairy cans salvaged from the scrapyard and dubbed it the”Skilletron.” Then, in order to expand they turned to Kickstarter, creating a few smaller iron pieces exclusively for the campaign. In a few short weeks they surpassed their funding goal of $7,000 and are now taking pre-orders for their first run of production. They have since moved their operations to Syracuse, NY and John has put a rising career in furniture design in New York on hold to get fully behind their expanding business. Food writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, from the popular website Serious Eats, was so impressed at what he saw that he wrote to the boys at Borough Furnace and asked to test the pans. “They performed excellently in a sear test with pan-seared steaks and at one-third of an inch of solid cast iron, the bottoms retain a massive amount of heat–more than any of the widely available commercial skillet on the market. This means that with ample preheating time, you can drop a couple of steaks in there with a minimal drop in temperature, leading to faster, harder sears, and less overcooking in the center.” As anyone who’s owned a cast iron pan knows, they need to be seasoned before use, but Borough Furnace skillets come pre-seasoned with lard or flaxseed oil.
