The Criteria: What to Look for in a Cast Iron Skillet
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Our longtime favorite 10-inch cast iron skillet from Lodge took the cake once more: it heated quickly, seared like a dream, and won&#;t break the bank. We also liked the lightweight Lancaster No. 8, which was easy on the wrists and cooked everything up beautifully.
Cast iron skillets are a polarizing piece of kitchen gear: Chefs and foodies geek out over them, while some home cooks fear them. (&#;The maintenance!&#;) As a former restaurant cook and longtime home cook, I think both positions are a little extreme.
Cast iron skillets are some of the simplest pieces of kitchen equipment. They&#;re pans cast out of an alloy of iron, carbon, and silicon that are sanded and sometimes pre-seasoned. Sure, like most gear, the design and price tag vary depending on the manufacturer but, at their core, cast iron skillets are just a big honkin&#; piece of metal. No cladding, no nonstick coating&#;just a solid pan that retains heat really well. They&#;re also super versatile, equally excellent at searing (whether it&#;s a T-bone steak or a slab of cauliflower), baking up a mean cornbread with crunchy, caramelized edges, or shallow frying a batch of buttermilk-brined chicken. Because they&#;re tough as nails, you can even throw them on the grill or over a fire pit.
Options abound: pricey and cheap, smooth-surfaced or pebbled, big and small. But much of what makes a great cast iron skillet comes down to a cook&#;s preferences. To find the best ones for cookware geeks and the cast iron-trepidatious alike, I tested 11 cast iron skillets.
The Winners, at a Glance
You just can&#;t beat this cast iron skillet that&#;s been a longtime Serious Eats favorite. It sears superbly and has hovered around $25 to $30 for time immemorial. If you&#;re new to cast iron, this no-frills, durable skillet is a solid choice to start with.
The 10-inch Lancaster weighs just over four pounds, so it&#;s easy on the wrists and heats up fast. It seared steak superbly, turned out evenly golden cornbread, and produced perfect pan-fried eggs that slid right off the surface. This is a gorgeous piece of metal that&#;ll impress seasoned (heh) cast iron skillet users and new-to-the-pan cooks alike.
An ode to simplicity, this dark gray skillet is elegant and lightweight but still sturdy. It doesn&#;t have pour spouts, but the flared sides helped funnel liquids out neatly.
Calling this budget doesn&#;t seem super fair, since it&#;s only a few bucks less than the Lodge, but hey, it is a steal. The curved handle made it easy to move and the surface heated up steadily and quickly.
If you want the benefits of cast iron without the maintenance, an enameled cast iron skillet is a good option. The enamel makes the skillet more nonstick than uncoated cast iron (and it doesn&#;t need to be seasoned), but it still has good heat retention. In our test of enameled cast iron skillets, this spacious offering from Le Creuset emerged as a winner for its excellent searing and maneuverability.
The Tests
Serious Eats / Grace Kelly
Throughout testing, I used our winning enameled cast iron skillet from Le Creuset as a control.
What We Learned
Which Size Cast Iron Skillet Was Best?
A 10- to 10.25-inch skillet will serve most people well&#;it&#;s the perfect size for frying up some eggs, flipping a few pancakes, or searing steaks. It&#;s what we reviewed in the past and what I stuck to in this update. That said if you&#;re looking for a slightly larger skillet, all of our winners are available in bigger versions. A 12-inch skillet, for example, is large enough for a family of four or for more substantial servings.
Seasoning and Surface Texture Wasn't Super Important
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Both polished and pebbled surfaces alike released foods, like fried eggs, easily.
Serious Eats / Grace Kelly
One interesting difference between old-school and new-school cast iron skillets is the color and texture of the pans. Newcomers like Lancaster and Smithey make brassy pans with smooth, shiny surfaces, while Lodge and Victoria sell black skillets with a grainy texture.
The pan&#;s color reflects its seasoning: The darker it is, the more seasoned it is. (Seasoning is a buildup of polymerized fat, which creates a nonstick surface.) The brass-colored pans I tested (from Lancaster, Stargazer, and Smithey) were pre-seasoned, just perhaps not quite as much as the pitch-black Lodge and Victoria. That said, the Lancaster and Stargazer were still quite nonstick&#;even fried eggs released easily.
&#;All new Lancaster Cast Iron pans come with two coats of seasoning and are ready to use right out of the box,&#; says Mark Longenecker, co-founder of Lancaster. &#;The seasoning on the pan is what gives the cast iron skillet the beautiful copper or bronze hue. Once you begin cooking on your skillet, you&#;ll notice the color begin to change as your seasoning builds. In time, the color will darken until you have a beautiful black patina.&#;
Pan texture is a matter of manufacturer preference. Lodge&#;s pans, for example, tend to be pebbly while newcomers like Lancaster and Field Company sell polished skillets inspired by cast iron pans of yore.
&#;When we think of modern-day cast iron, we often think of heavy or rough pans that are challenging to clean and are relatively slow to heat up and cool down. This has not always been the case,&#; says Longenecker. &#;High-quality antique cast iron was once made to be lightweight and smooth. Smooth and lightweight cast iron is not only easier to handle, especially when filled with food, but it is also easier to clean, responds more quickly to heat, and will still have all the amazing benefits of cast iron, such as durability and heat retention. To achieve a smoother and lightweight feel we have incorporated several extra steps including our tumbling process.&#;
Tumbling sounds just like its name: Skillets are placed in a rotating drum filled with pieces of metal and as the drum turns it smooths out lumps and bumps, resulting in a polished pan.
So, today, you have brands like Lancaster that sell slightly less seasoned, smooth skillets and others, like Lodge, that sell heavily seasoned, rougher skillets; both styles released foods well in my tests, so it&#;s more a matter of personal preference (and price, since smoother skillets tend to be more expensive).
A note: The more heavily seasoned pans from Lodge and Victoria were a whole lot smokier when I first used them; they released a potent smell (akin to a hot airport tarmac), but it dissipated after a few uses.
Cast Iron Was (and Is) Durable
Yes, it is safe to use metal utensils on cast iron!.
Serious Eats / Grace Kelly
Cast iron skillets are sometimes misunderstood. I&#;ve known people who refuse to buy one because they think they&#;re too high-maintenance and yet others who have balked when they see me using a metal spatula to squish and scrape smashed burgers on my favorite dual-handled Lodge skillet.
To all of them, I say: It&#;s going to be okay.
Cast iron is an incredibly forgiving material; unlike PTFE-coated nonstick pans, you can safely use a hardy metal turner without ruining the surface. And while it&#;s true you need to thoroughly dry a cast iron pan after washing (yes, you can wash it with plain old dish soap and a sponge) and give it a swipe of oil, it&#;ll maybe add 30 seconds to your dish-cleaning routine. And if it does get a bit of rust, it&#;s not a big deal: Just grab some steel wool and give the rusted areas a hardy scouring with soap and warm water. Rinse, dry, and oil, and your skillet is good to go.
Heat Conduction Varied, But Didn&#;t Matter Much
While interesting, measuring heat conduction didn't really tell us much other than that the skillets all heated up quickly.
Serious Eats / Grace Kelly
While it&#;s true that cast iron isn&#;t a great conductor, I still wanted to get a feel for how quickly the skillets heated up. The answer: fast. Five saw an average temperature increase of 34% after one minute, while the Lodge Cast Iron Skillet -10.25 inch went up by a whopping 53.4%. The Smithey No.10 Skillet and the Smithey No.10 Chef Skillet were the slowest, increasing by 18% and 13.6%, respectively, in the first minute. That said, all of the pans did a good job searing steak and baking cornbread, so while interesting to observe, heat conduction wasn&#;t an indicator of performance.
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