Equipment Review: Best Carbon-Steel Skillets (Can This One Pan Do It All?) & Our Testing Winner

Byamazingfoodstv


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Full testing details and ranking chart:

What if one pan could do everything the best traditional stainless-steel, cast-iron, and nonstick pans can do—and, in some cases, even do it a little better?

We tested 8 carbon-steel skillets to find the best one:
Matfer Bourgeat Black Steel Round Frying Pan, 11 7/8″
Blu Skillet Ironware 13″ Fry Pan
Mauviel M’steel Round Fry Pan, Steel Handle 12.5″
Turk Heavy Steel Frying Pan 11″
De Buyer Mineral B Frypan, 12.6″
Paderno World Cuisine Heavy Duty Polished Carbon Steel Frying Pan, 12 1/2″
Lodge 12″ Seasoned Steel Skillet
Vollrath 12 1/2″ Carbon Steel Fry Pan

Are Carbon-Steel Knives Worth It? Watch now:

Are You Using the Best Cutting Board? Watch now:

Even if you’ve never heard of a carbon-steel skillet, you’ve almost certainly eaten a meal made in one. Restaurant chefs use these pans for all kinds of tasks, from searing steak to sautéing onions to cooking eggs. French omelet and crêpe pans are made of carbon steel, as are the woks used in Chinese restaurants. Even Julia Child had a few carbon-steel pieces alongside her familiar rows of copper cookware. In European home kitchens, these pans are hugely popular. Somehow, though, despite their prevalence in restaurants, they’ve never really caught on with home cooks in the United States. Given their reputation for being as great at browning as they are at keeping delicate foods from sticking, we wondered if it was time that changed.

We bought seven carbon-steel skillets, all as close as possible to our preferred sizeof 12 inches for a primary skillet, priced from $39.95 to $79.95. For fun we also threw in a $230 hand-forged version made in Oregon. Bearing in mind carbon steel’s multipurpose promise, we decided on a range of recipes for our testing: frying eggs, turning out cheese omelets, pan-searing steaks, and baking the traditional French upside-down apple dessert known as tarte Tatin, which begins on the stove and moves to the oven. Along the way we’d evaluate the skillets’ shape, weight, handle comfort, and maneuverability. Washing the pans after every test would let us judge how easy they were to clean and maintain. Our key question: Could this one type of pan actually make owning the other skillets we’ve always had in our arsenal—stainless-steel tri-ply, cast-iron, and nonstick—more of an option than a necessity?

ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.

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45 Comments

  18. Have the stoves in the United States are electric and carbon steel warps on electric. That’s probably why they haven’t really taken off here. I have a carbon steel walk with a rounded bottom due to my electric stove. Makes it very hard when your pot spins.

  25. Ok. I’ve made a life altering decision. I’m going to buy one great carbon steel pan and maybe one new decent non stick and be rid of all the rest with the exception of my cast iron. I should be good for the rest of my life with pans. One can pile up too many pans and lids.

  27. You can use dish soap with cast iron and carbon steel. That idea is leftover from when soap used to have lye in it. Detergent shouldn't be able to remove covalently bonded molecules from a pan.

    Don't put it in the dishwasher though! Dishwasher tablets are far more corrosive.

  33. I read multiple reviews on Amazon of the Matfor Bourgeat Black Steel Round Frying Pan. All said it warped. Not a problem if using a gas burner stove. A real problem for electric stoves with flat surfaces, such as glass.

  37. I love cast iron, every time I go to a place that sells it I have to look at it even though I really dont need anymore …bought a debuyer omelet pan and fell in love with it….it does eggs better than cast iron imo, though nothing beats cast iron corn bread …the downside is carbon steel will lose its seasoning easier with tomato sauces etc…so I use it for browning meats and breakfast foods …I now also have a matfer 11-7/8 pan for my big skillet use, much easier to maneuver than a 12 inch cast iron skillet …here is a tip, you can also season these pans in the oven, I would keep the temp no higher than 400 degrees….a gas burner stove does a great job getting the sides seasoned too

  40. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong my pan seems to be perfectly seasoned but yet everything sticks to it. My cast iron is great nothing sticks. I’m throwing my carbon steel out. Total waste of money

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