Cast from railway track

Railway track is not scrap in the ordinary sense. It is high carbon steel, rolled to a tight specification because it has to carry a train, and it is lifted and replaced on a schedule rather than when it fails. It is some of the best and most consistent metal in industrial circulation, and almost none of it goes anywhere interesting.

Combekk takes it and casts cookware from it. Their casserole is, in their own words, the very first hundred per cent recycled cast iron design casserole, and it is still poured in the Netherlands, where the company has worked since 2015. There is a limited edition cast from reclaimed prison bars, which is a fair measure of how seriously they take the sourcing. They are not buying scrap by the tonne. They go looking for particular steel with a known previous life.

A closed loop you can check

Recycled content is usually a number on a label with nothing behind it. This one has a paper trail. The material has a documented origin and a known composition, which is the difference between a sustainability claim and a specification.

It also makes a better pot. Cast iron wants carbon, and rail steel arrives with it, which is part of why these hold and release heat the way good cast iron should.

Combekk is precise about where the figure applies, and so are we: the hundred per cent is stated for the cast iron casseroles and for their recycled aluminium line. Across the rest of the range they say products are made from as many recycled materials as possible.

The thermometer in the lid

Several of the casseroles carry a thermometer set into the lid, reading through the centre. It sounds like a flourish and it is not, for one reason: the temperature inside a covered pot is the only number that matters to a braise, and it is the one number a domestic oven will lie to you about. A dial set to 160C is an average of a cycling element and a door that gets opened. The gauge in the lid tells you what the meat is actually sitting in.

Combekk works with the Dutch chef Sidney Schutte, who holds Michelin stars, on a collection under his name, and has produced an edition with the restaurant De Librije.

What we carry

The enamelled cast iron casseroles, in 4L and 6L.

In dark grey, plain or with the lid thermometer. And in the colours of the line our supplier still labels Railway, which Combekk now calls The Original: dark green and green at 4L and 6L, and a concrete grey at 6L.

Oven safe, at home on any hob including induction, and like every piece of enamelled cast iron ever made, ready to outlive the kitchen you bought it for.