In English, a frying pan is called a Dutch oven, because the first thick-walled cast-iron frying pans in England were inspired by the Dutch method of production in the seventeenth century. The Dutch pans were made with sand moulds and lent themselves well to mass production.
translated from a Dutch article in the NRC
The first ‘Dutch oven’ appears in the written English language in 1769. Back then, it could be anything from a cooking pot (on legs) to a primitive rectangular oven. Nowadays, when you ask for a Dutch oven, you get a cast-iron stew pot, a simmering pan, which is almost synonymous with Creuset but doesn’t have to be.
It’s crazy that the Dutch have hardly embraced and exploited this heritage. Yes, Dru, known for its stoves and fireplaces, made enamelled cast-iron pans, but the iron foundry closed in 1973 and it was not until 2016 that cast-iron pans were made on Dutch soil again. The fact that those Dru pans are still being offered second-hand does say something about the lifespan of a cast-iron frying pan.
A young entrepreneur, Mark Suurbier (36), found it remarkable that in the kitchenware world, sustainability was not yet such a theme and saw a revenue model in the ‘Dutch oven’. He went in search of an iron foundry and enamellers – which was not yet easy as they are dying crafts – and started producing COMBEKK pans in Doetinchem in 2016.
And it’s not just about the origin of the ‘Dutch oven’, but also the material. All pans are made of 100 per cent recycled steel. COMBEKK has previously used old train rails. Now there will be a series in which Amsterdammers will be able to find their cut-up or dredged-up bicycles.
Suurbier knows the power of a good story.”People also want to know where their food comes from and how sustainably it is produced,” he says. “So why wouldn’t they want to know where their pan comes from?”
And it’s not just about the origin of the ‘Dutch oven’, but also the material. All pans are made of 100 per cent recycled steel. COMBEKK has previously used old train rails. Now there will be a series in which Amsterdammers will be able to find their cut-up or dredged-up bicycles.
The bicycles come from Tradefrm, a company in Nieuwveen that buys up Amsterdam’s bicycle wrecks, dismantles them and sells them on. Bare steel frames are mixed with harder steel to create a mix that has just the right hardness for a cast iron pan.
That is not as unusual as it seems, because steel is eminently suitable for recycling and that is what happens a lot. But putting your old bicycle in a pan appeals to the imagination. It immediately turns an ordinary pan into a typically Dutch one.
When asked how many bicycles there are in a pan, Suurbier does not want to give a precise answer. Why not? He says it himself: consumers want to know what’s in their food, don’t they? Is it 90 per cent? Or rather 10? Or about a quarter? “That’s pretty close.” It corresponds to another sum: for the ‘Bike edition’ ten tons of (old) iron is melted, and three thousand kilos of bicycle frames.
Such a Dutch-made pan is not cheap, almost 200 euros for the model with a diameter of 28 centimetres. That also has to do with labour costs. “I found only four enamellers in the Netherlands,” says Suurbier. They have mastered the technique of enamelling the pan with a single layer. Other pans often have more layers, which, according to Suurbier, tend to ‘chip’, i.e. release bits of enamel.
What makes the COMBEKK pans special is that all models are also made with a built-in thermometer. Creuset and Staub, the big boys in cast iron pans, do not have that. Handy for when you have asked the butcher how long and at what temperature your leg of lamb should stew. And it also turns the pan into a real oven again.
