News : Iowa's Largest Frying pan the site for an old fashioned Cowboy Breakfast

If you decided to host the countryside for breakfast, how big of a skillet do you need? Probably a 9' X 14' 3" one...just so people know where to find you! And if you DID decide to use the largest skillet in Iowa, how much could it hold? It would hold about 44 dozen eggs, or 176 pounds of ham, or 88 pounds of bacon laid out inside.

All of this talk about breakfast foods it begs another question. "Which came first? The skillet or the eggs?" The eggs.

Brandon's Annual Cowboy Breakfast is an annual event that began in June of 2000. The community had a goal to build a community center. Each year the community held a spring and fall breakfast to meet this goal. With all of the hard work of frying bacon, cracking and scrambling eggs, slicing potatoes and lugging cast iron cooking equipment to the site, the small community of Brandon raised enough money to build their new community center.

Completed in 2007 the Cowboy Breakfast continues to this day and now you can enjoy your food inside. This unique concept is something you won't find in many places, except a campground perhaps. But as a fundraiser? What a great idea!

You'll often see traffic diverting off the interstate to find the skillet, You'll see children scrambling out of their SUVs to stretch their legs and climb into the monster-sized skillet for pictures.

The large skillet was created four years later. Inspired by those first Cowboy Breakfasts, Brandon's Denton Casting Company, oversaw the building of Iowa's largest skillet. Courtesy of roughly 41 hours of volunteer labor the skillet was created. The iron shop is located in Brandon's old school building, so it didn't have far to travel. The company even made miniature promotional skillets to remind tourists of their stop. (you can see one of those in the photos)

Construction of the skillet took roughly 41 hours of volunteer labor to create the piece of art. Modeled after a 10-inch cast iron frying pan, the large skillet has an 8 foot base and is 9 feet 3 inches at the rim. The five-foot handle brings the total length to 14 feet 3 inches. When completed, the frying pan tipped the scales at a whopping 1,020 pounds.

The first menu has only switched out the bacon for ham but has continued to serve all of the same goodness. Cooked over open fires, the community now serves scrambled eggs, pancakes, fried potatoes, sausage, biscuits, sausage gravy, ham and cowboy coffee. The profit from the original breakfasts went directly toward building the Community Center and today it's used to keep the building running.

This year the area residents gathered to begin cooking for the breakfast early last Sunday morning. The group fed 875 hungry cowboy types from around the area. All there to enjoy some great food and fellowship with neighbors...and all left with a full belly and a smile on their face.

---Editor's note: Brandon's skillet falls four feet short of being the largest in the country. That record is held by the Lodge Cast Iron Company which brags that they have the "World's Largest Cast Iron Skillet" at 18'. Their skillet is housed in a museum in South Pittsburgh, Tennesee.