[Video: Serious Eats Video]

"Of all of the more than 500 cookbooks I own, Fuchsia Dunlop is the author of whose cookbooks I own all of them."

Um, lemme try that again.

"Fuchsia Dunlop is the only cookbook author, of whose, in all of my 500+ collection of cookbooks, I own all."

Nope.

"I own more than 500 cookbooks. Fuchsia Dunlop is the only author whose entire output of books I fully own."

Still needs work. As you can see from my attempts at an intro, some revisions happen because they have to. Others happen because they can. Take, for instance, well...Fuchsia Dunlop's work. On my shelf is a copy of her 2001 book on Sichuan cooking, Land of Plenty. And now, as of very recently, also on my shelf is The Food of Sichuan, the fully revised 2019 edition of that same book.

Land of Plenty is an established classic—one we've extolled in the past—so why revise it? After nearly 20 years, Fuchsia has managed to go even deeper into Sichuan cooking, tinkering with her recipes, adding more than 70 new ones, and making changes that reflect the cuisine's evolution.

I've been cooking from the new edition for the past several weeks, ever since Fuchsia came to the Serious Eats test kitchen to film a series of videos about Sichuan cooking (the video above is just a teaser, so stay tuned for the full-length ones, which we'll be releasing in the coming weeks!). I can now say that she's managed to do a remarkable thing, which is to improve upon what was already a great work.

The book's new design is beautiful, lending it a visual authority that matches its contents, and it's absolutely packed from cover to cover with recipes I can't wait to cook. Diving into an entirely new cuisine at home (assuming you, like me, don't cook Sichuan food often) can be daunting, but one of the things that became clear to me when filming with Fuchsia is that with just a small number of key Sichuan ingredients, almost all of the recipes are easy and accessible.

The thing I have to figure out now is what to do with my old copy of Land of Plenty. I suppose I could give it to a friend, encouraging them to upgrade to the new edition if they like it and pay it forward by lending the copy to someone else. Or, if the high prices I'm seeing online are accurate, maybe I'll just keep it—another perk of such revisions is the discontinued copies take on an entirely new kind of value.

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Using a carbon steel Chinese cleaver to split beef short ribs between the bones; the knife can slice through meat but isn't intended to break through tough bones.[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

You know you've worked in a profession for a long time when you relearn something you used to know without initially realizing you used to know it. That happened to me a few weeks ago, when Fuchsia Dunlop spent the day in our test kitchen to shoot a few videos about Sichuan food and promote the revised edition of her masterful cookbook on the subject.

She brought her own knife, a carbon steel Chinese cleaver, and set to work finely shredding ginger, mincing garlic, and cutting beef tenderloin into paper-thin sheets. I watched, I marveled at her skill with the knife, and we talked about it—why she loves it, how versatile it is, how it needn't be limited to Chinese food.

It all seemed new to me. And then, slowly, I began to remember that it wasn't.

I am, or at least I had been, well aware of the virtues of the Chinese cleaver because I had used one every day for several months while working in a French restaurant about fifteen years ago. I loved that knife, but over time, I reached for it less and less as new knives entered my life. Fast-forward to my time working at Serious Eats, where more knives pass through my hands than I can keep track of (thanks in large part to the equipment reviews I write), and my brief relationship with the Chinese cleaver faded away. I’ve spent so much time in recent years debating the relative merits of Japanese and Western knives, which tends to be where the conversation is focused among knife enthusiasts in the United States, that I’d forgotten this third option and just how rightly it belongs in the running.

I went home that night after filming with Fuchsia and found my old cleaver at the bottom of my extra-knives drawer at home (yup, I have an entire kitchen drawer for the knives I don't use). There it was, the Dexter-Russell stainless steel cleaver that had at one point been in my palm nearly twelve hours a day, six days a week. It reclaimed its space on my cutting board and has been getting some overdue attention after years of neglect.

I also ordered a Chinese cleaver in carbon steel, a knife material I'm very fond of, and have been using it at work. (Carbon steel is more prone to rusting, but it is often easier to sharpen than stainless.) Sho, it turned out, was similarly inspired and grabbed a different carbon steel option, coincidentally from the same online knife merchant I used. Which is to say the Serious Eats culinary team has gone from zero Chinese cleavers in active use to several practically overnight.

The main question I've been left with is why I ever let this style of knife, called a caidao in China, fall out of use and then memory, given how good it is.

One thing to make clear about this type of Chinese cleaver is that it's not really a cleaver. In fact, calling it a "cleaver" is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, it's shaped like a cleaver, but in use, it has nothing in common with those thick, bone-crushing butchers' knives. (There is a thicker and heavier Chinese cleaver intended to break bones called a gudao, but that's a different knife.)

You wouldn't want to use one of these to hack through even the smallest bones; the blade is large, but it's thin and delicate. Instead, it should be used for the types of tasks you might reach for a Western chef's knife or Japanese santoku to do: dice, mince, and julienne vegetables; chop herbs; and slice boneless fish and meats, both raw and cooked.

A Chinese-style knife made in Vietnam; this is the one Sho bought.

The form of the Chinese-style knife takes some getting used to compared to Western and some Japanese knives—your hand is higher, the balance is different, and the blade has a minimal (and in some cases no) curve—but with practice, you can adjust to it. Eventually, it becomes clear how deft such a large knife can be.

You’re less likely to use certain cutting techniques that are common to Western-style knives, such as rock-chopping, where you seesaw the blade back and forth along its curvature while keeping constant contact with the cutting board; the Chinese cleaver doesn’t have enough of a curved blade for such back-and-forth rocking. And while it can be used to slice foods by drawing the blade along the food, it lends itself to push-cutting, where you come down on the food vertically using more of a chopping motion. (Chinese knife skills could fill a book of their own, though Fuchsia gives a brief discussion of the basic techniques in her book.)

One of the very best things, at least to my mind, about a Chinese cleaver is that it doubles as a bench scraper. If you've been a longtime Serious Eats reader, you know that we constantly recommend a bench scraper, such as this one from Oxo, to transfer prepped ingredients from the cutting board. Thanks to its large profile, the Chinese cleaver has more than enough real estate to scoop up a chopped onion and deliver it to its destination.

This doesn't fully replace the need for a bench scraper, since I wouldn't advise using the knife to scrape up stuck-on food bits from a dirty work surface, but it still offers much greater efficiency: Not having to put down a knife and pick up a bench scraper every time you need to transfer something ends up saving a lot of time in the long run.

The question now is whether this knife will reclaim its top position among my vast knife collection. I'm guessing it won't at work, if only because it might confuse readers to see a Chinese cleaver being used out of context with no explanation. Having the first comment on every recipe I write be, "What's the deal with that cleaver?" isn't really my goal. At home, though, I suspect my Chinese cleaver will be in the regular rotation from now on, not necessarily replacing my chef's knives, gyutos, and santokus, but rounding them out. Though who knows? Maybe it'll take over, and I'll eventually forget that all those other knives were once a part of my daily cooking ritual. Until I eventually rediscover them fifteen years later.

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By far the most difficult thing about cooking a Thanksgiving meal for a crowd is the logistics of getting all the food to the table at its proper serving temperature. With limited space in most home kitchens, it's a game of musical burners and oven space as serving dishes, pots, and pans rotate on and off the heat and in and out of the oven. The smarter we can be about how we manage our kitchen space, the easier it all becomes.

One of the most flexible components of the meal is the gravy. It needs to be hot and free of a skin on the surface, and there are many ways to accomplish that without tying up a stovetop burner that you'll definitely need for other things.

Here are some of our favorite ways to hold gravy in perfect serving condition while keeping it out of the way. Come along—it's time to climb aboard the gravy train and get gravy trained.

Gravy Training Option 1: Use an Insulated Carafe or Thermos

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

An insulated carafe, often casually referred to using the brand name Thermos even when made by different companies, has a vacuum built into its walls, helping keep hot liquids hot and cold liquids cold. As any coffee drinker who owns a vacuum-insulated travel mug knows, these things can keep fluids tongue-burningly hot for hours without any additional heat input.

To use one for gravy, simply take a few minutes to get your gravy piping hot on the stovetop, and, if you want, preheat the carafe by pouring some boiling water into it (you don't have to do this, but it'll give you a slight bump on heat-retention time). Then pour the gravy into the carafe, seal it, and set it aside until ready to serve.

Exactly how long your gravy will stay hot in there is difficult to say, since it can vary based on the brand of carafe and also how full it is (the less full the carafe, the faster the gravy will cool down), but you should be able to safely hold your gravy for at least a couple hours without a major loss in warmth.

Gravy Training Option 2: Hold It Using an Immersion Circulator

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

If you own an immersion circulator, you have the perfect device to hold mashed potatoes and gravy warm, no range required. Set the circulator anywhere between 150 and 165°F (65 to 75°C), then fill a mason jar, heatproof swing-top jar with a gasket, or a metal container like a bain-marie with the gravy and set it into the hot-water bath.

If you're using a sealed vessel like a mason jar, it can be fully submerged without any problem, but open-topped containers obviously can't sink below the water level; since the vessel will displace the water as it's submerged, you should lower it slowly, making sure there's no risk of water overflowing into your gravy.

Gravy in an open-topped container will be at risk of forming a skin. You can prevent this by pressing plastic wrap or a butter wrapper directly against the surface of the gravy.

Gravy Training Option 3: Make a Slow-Cooker Hot-Water Bath

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Even without an immersion circulator, you can still rig up a hot-water bath away from your stove if you own either a slow cooker or a multi-cooker like the Instant Pot. The idea is the same as for the immersion circulator, except you'll instead fill the cooker's vessel with water and heat it up (in a multi-cooker, this would be using the slow-cooker setting). Then lower your vessel of gravy into the hot-water bath and leave it until dinnertime.

Just as with the immersion circulator, any vessel that remains open will expose the gravy to air, which could cause a skin to form. Use plastic wrap or a butter wrapper directly against the gravy's surface to prevent this.

Gravy Training Option 4: Make a French Top

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Sasha recently wrote about his clever trick for turning a standard stovetop into what's known as a French top—a heated metal surface common to restaurants that maximize stovetop space better than individual burners do.

He does this by setting a baking steel or cast iron griddle over two burners. Obviously, this is not a burner-free way to hold your gravy, but as you can see in the above photo, by creating a flat heated slab, you can hold a few more pots and saucepans—including one full of gravy—than the two burners themselves could otherwise accommodate. And by adjusting the heat of each burner, you can make sure your gravy is on a spot that's just warm enough, but not so hot it'd risk scorching or over-reducing as it sits (still, it'd be a good idea to give it a stir every once in a while).

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[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

One of the weird side effects of living most of my life in New York City is that I'm deeply out of touch with significant aspects of the American experience. I know this in my bones: When I'm abroad and people ask where I'm from, my answer, instinctively, is not that I'm an American but that I'm a New Yorker.

One of the ways this manifests itself is through food. When I was a teenager, I did an Outward Bound trip in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. It was grueling: days upon days of off-trail backpacking, shooting a bearing with a map and compass, crawling on wet and muddy bellies through thickets of rhododendron so impenetrable, we took to calling them hell. We'd often hike nearly nonstop for 18 hours or more in search of a place to make camp.

Delirium set in during those late hours, after our flashlight batteries had died and our straining eyes saw things in the forest shadows that weren't there. Desperate talk of the foods we missed most would start around this time, too. The kids in my group all cried for Waffle House. I whined for dim sum. They had no idea what I was talking about, and I was just as perplexed by them.

This leads me to potato skins, a nationally adored bar snack common to suburban strip malls and TGI Fridays that, based on the handful of times I've eaten them, I've never found to be all that good. I know that smacks of the kind of elitism coastal urban dwellers like myself often get accused of, but I can just as easily argue that I have more clarity about a potato skin's shortcomings because my judgment isn't influenced by nostalgia.

I'll be direct: Traditional potato skins are no better than I'd expect oily russet jackets to be, which isn't all that good. Load 'em up, do what you want, but the fact remains that the underlying starchy tuber just isn't at its best like that. It's not as crispy on the outside, nor moist on the inside, as I want it to be. The results are even more disappointing with home-cook-targeted versions of the recipe that opt for the easier, oven-based method.

Of course, there are solutions—there's no reason a potato skin has to be mediocre. The first step is to treat potato skins like French fries by committing to deep-frying them. Beyond that, we need to rethink their form. I'm not against the long, canoe-like shape of a traditional potato skin, but cutting them the opposite way, into deeper cups, opens up a world of serving possibilities.

With a crunchy fried shell and ample cup, they take on new life. They can stand in for things like potato pancakes and blini to act as containers for sour cream or crème fraîche or a multitude of other cold fillings. Take that thought just one step further, and they can replace potato chips as scoops for dips and spreads. (See the linked recipes at the top and bottom of this article for just a few ideas.)

Deep-fried potato skins with pulled pork and cheddar.

The details, of course, are what matter most. Simply dropping a hollowed-out potato into a deep fryer won't get you all the way there, since what comes out is often either leathery or (a side effect of pursuing a crispier crunch) too darkly fried. I've been working on a better method, and here's what I've found.

Hot Potato

Deep-fried potato skins with crème fraîche and smoked salmon.

Most potato skins are made from russet potatoes, the same extra-starchy kind that are most often used for French fries, mashed potatoes, and baked potatoes. Russets (also known as Idaho potatoes) are the most common type in the United States, but that doesn't mean they're automatically the best for potato skins.

One of the biggest problems with using russets for potato skins is their extreme starchiness. It's perfect for French fries, yielding an airy and fluffy interior inside, and it makes lovely mashed potatoes for the same reason. But when left plain, the dryness of that high-starch, low-moisture flesh makes a russet one of the least pleasant potatoes to eat. That's why baked potatoes are best when absolutely saturated with butter, sour cream, and anything else that can mitigate the russet's natural texture.

Add to that a russet's inherently thin, papery skin—the supposed highlight of the dish—and things get even worse.

The standard treatment of potato skins tries to alleviate these problems with toppings like melted cheese and bacon bits. That all helps, but I don't think it does enough to save potato skins from themselves.

After rounds of side-by-side testing, I came to the conclusion that the first step to a better potato skin is to choose a different potato. Yukon Golds and other yellow varieties have more tender skins and a moist, waxy flesh that holds up on its own, even without the accoutrements. Because of that extra moisture, it can be difficult to get them crisp enough in the oven, but they can't withstand the mighty power of scalding oil.

By committing to deep-frying potato skins, we're free to use the right potato—a Yukon Gold—and get it as crispy as we want it.

Exploring Other Dimensions

Cutting the potatoes across their equators and scooping out the flesh makes cups that are better and more versatile than the more traditional canoe shape.

This story didn't start with potato skins. It started with a dish of potato "husks," served at a Brooklyn restaurant called Glasserie. A few of my colleagues had fallen in love with them and were eager for a Serious Eats version of the recipe.

Their excitement about these husks was due only partially to the fact that the skins had been deep-fried. That in itself was not the most innovative thing about them—deep-fried potato skins are not a new idea. What really made them special was their form: Instead of halving the potatoes lengthwise to make canoe-shaped vessels, the restaurant had cut them across their equators to form smaller, but deeper, potato cups.

Deep-fried potato skin cups make perfect scoops for dips like tzatziki.

This made them easier to pick up and eat as a finger food, and it allowed them to function as scoops, which is exactly how the restaurant intended them, selling them alongside a variety of spreads and dips. It's a clever change that pushes the potato skin into potato-chip territory, each piece just the right size for a single scoop. Try it with the more traditional potato-skin shape, and you're forced to either double-dip or finish off the remainder of your potato skin plain, which—as we all know—no one really wants.

Leveling off the bottoms of the cups helps them sit flat, which is useful if you want to serve a platter of pre-filled ones.

If you can find smaller potatoes—say, about five or six ounces (140 to 170 grams) each—that'll give you what I think is the perfect scoop size, but larger potatoes will work, too. This is true whether you use the skins as scoops or as pre-filled potato cups. If you do pre-fill them, you may want to consider slicing off just a bit of the bottom of each cup before you fry it, to make a level base for it to stand on without tipping over.

Frying Time

Double-frying the potatoes produces skins that are crispy and golden, yet still tender within.

The main thing I wanted to figure out for my recipe was how to get a potato cup with maximum outer crispness and maximum inner moisture. I played with a variety of methods: par-baking the potatoes before frying; using Kenji's French fry method of parboiling them in salted and acidulated water before double-frying them; scooping and frying them from raw, without any par-cooking method; and both single- and double-frying the cups.

Par-Cooking: On a Par With the From-Raw Approach?

Parboiling the potato skins in salted water with vinegar, which makes perfect French fries, did not make an appreciable difference in how the fried potato skins came out.

Before frying the potatoes, I first had to figure out whether par-cooking them was necessary. We know from Kenji's French fry experiments that parboiling French fries is an important step. I also figured that it might be easier to scoop the flesh from a par-cooked potato than from a raw one, so I added par-baking and microwaving to my list of methods to try.

My gut told me that the French fry method would be the best, given that I was essentially making a French-fried potato skin, but my testing didn't entirely support that. While I preferred the potatoes that were fried twice (as French fries are), I got just as good results from par-baking the potatoes (microwaving them works, too) as I did from parboiling them. And, since sending them on a quick trip to the oven or microwave is easier than setting up a salty and vinegary pot of water, that's what I settled on.

I was able to scoop and fry the potatoes from raw, but it was easier to scoop the ones that had grown more tender via a par-cooking step. Plus, I liked the rougher interior surface that I got from scooping out the cooked potatoes better than I liked the more perfectly flat and smooth interior I scraped away in the raw ones. Turns out, imperfection in the scooping step leads to a more interesting texture later.

Getting the Crispiest Shell

So far, I'd figured out that par-baking or microwaving the potatoes was the way to go, and I liked the results of double-frying more than single-frying. But I still wasn't getting the results I was after, which were potato skins crispy enough to justify the annoyance of deep-frying (let's be honest, deep-frying sucks). I sought my solution in a slurry of potato starch, into which I dipped each potato cup before frying.

The cups fried to crisp and crunchy shells, but, weirdly, they resisted browning, so each potato cup ended up with a white fried exterior. They also lacked an obvious potato character—clearly because potato starch is refined beyond the point of being recognizably potato-like in flavor.

At this point, Vicky, who was photographing all of my testing, asked why I didn't try using the scooped-out potato flesh to make the slurry. One of the dangers of being an expert is that when someone asks you a question you don't have an answer to, you're often tempted to pretend you do. I felt the urge to make something up ("Because you're saving that to make a side of mashed potatoes!"*). Instead, I admitted that I had no idea.

* Truth is, there's enough scooped-out flesh to make a slurry and a small side of mashed potatoes.

As it turned out, hers was the stroke of genius. A slurry made from the potato flesh is the ideal coating for a lacy and crispy coating on each potato cup that browns up beautifully, while looking and tasting like actual potato.

You can choose one of several ways to make the slurry. I found the easier way was to blend it with water, using an immersion blender, until it took on the consistency of applesauce—thick enough to lightly coat the potatoes, but not in an overly gloppy way. You could also do this in a countertop blender or food processor, or you could even mash the potatoes with a fork until you've formed a slurry (a few tiny lumps won't hurt).

One of the big side benefits of the slurry coating is that it crisps to a crunchy shell even faster than the plain potato does, helping to ensure that the final cup hasn't had every last ounce of inner moisture fried out of it. It truly does deliver the best of both worlds, a feat no oven-baked potato skin I've met could dream of.

Deep-fried potato skin cups, filled with melted raclette cheese and thinly sliced gherkins.

Serve the fried cups on a plate or tray alongside dips like hummus, tzatziki, baba ganoush, or thick Greek yogurt or labneh. Or fill them with something tasty, like pulled pork (melting some cheese on top, too), or a big, creamy dollop of crème fraîche or sour cream, topped with a slice of smoked salmon. Or, just melt a whole lot of cheese right in the center of each cup.

The ideas are endless. Fry up your own and go wild.

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A damaged nonstick coating is good for just about nothing. [Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

"What happened to this pan?" I asked my mother-in-law as I pulled a nonstick skillet from her kitchen drawer. It looked like it had a severe case of eczema, every inch of its Teflon skin scratched and flaking. "Oh, we cook our steaks in that, and Felix likes them well-done," she answered.

I held my tongue on the well-done part—there's no winning that argument—but I had to say something about the pan. She needed to get rid of it, right away. I eventually forced the issue by buying her a replacement, but it didn't take long before that one started breaking down, too.

There seems to be a grave misunderstanding among many home cooks about the role of nonstick cookware in the kitchen. The mere existence of cookware sets in which the inside of every piece is coated in Teflon is enough to prove the point. That's to say nothing of head-scratchers like anti-adhesive grill pans, stockpots, and, lord help us, woks. (Woks? Yes, woks!)

Broiling a steak to death on a withered nonstick surface is a bad idea; boiling water in a polytetrafluoroethylene-coated pot reaches a level of absurdity that's hard to match. I could make a far better case for a Teflon toilet. In fact, Skidz-Off Thrones may just be the idea that makes me rich.

I'm not here to try to convince you that your nonstick pans are going to kill you (though, based on some research, I wouldn't assume they're totally safe, either). I also have no desire to try to banish every last piece of nonstick cookware from your home. I have a few nonstick pans of my own, and no plans to change that. But there are very good reasons why we should all limit the number of nonstick pans we own and the frequency with which we use them.

What's Wrong With Nonstick Pans?

First, there are lingering questions about what effects nonstick chemicals have on our health and that of the environment. I won't dwell on those for long, though they are a concern. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), the fluoropolymer used to create Teflon coatings, and some of the chemicals used to manufacture it, have been linked with certain types of cancer, infertility, and other negative health outcomes. Some of them also persist indefinitely in the environment.

This doesn't mean cooking in nonstick pans at home is necessarily a direct threat to your or your family's health. The people most vulnerable seem to be those who have worked closely with the production and manufacture of the chemicals, and those who live near production facilities. These chemicals are also not limited to nonstick cookware—they've been used in everything from electrical wiring and pipes to microwave-popcorn bags and waterproof clothing—so eliminating all nonstick pans from your home won't really solve the problem.

On top of that, it's probably safe to say that nonstick coatings have improved over time and are less risky than they used to be, though one should not assume all dangers have been eradicated.

Beyond those health questions, the main point I want to make is that nonstick cookware is rarely your best choice from a culinary perspective. Most of the time, your food will come out better if you don't cook it in a nonstick pan.

Why is that? Because sticking isn't inherently bad. Often, it's exactly what we want, at least to a limited degree. Food that fuses to a pan and won't budge is a problem, but food that sticks just enough is often a good thing.

Note how the chicken skin adheres better to the stainless steel skillet than the nonstick one, which will lead to better and more complete browning.

Take two skin-on chicken breasts I cooked recently as an example. One I seared in a nonstick skillet, the other in a stainless steel one.

The first thing you'll notice is that the chicken in the stainless steel pan adhered more: As I pressed down on it to increase contact with the pan, the skin bonded to the pan, so that when I stopped pressing, it maintained that contact. This allowed more surface area of the skin to brown more fully. Once it was nicely crisped and a deep golden color, it detached with no trouble. The result: a pan-roasted chicken breast with perfectly crispy skin all over.

Viewing the chicken from the top side, it's easy to see how the stainless steel skillet browned the chicken from edge to edge in a way the nonstick pan simply couldn't.

Compare that with the chicken in the nonstick skillet. I'd pressed down while cooking it, but as soon as I released the pressure, the chicken would spring back up, leaving only a small portion of the skin in direct contact with the pan. This resulted in a pan-roasted breast that had only a couple square inches of truly crisp skin. There was more skin that was brown outside of that, but it was much softer to the touch than the skin from the sample cooked on stainless.

Even where the nonstick skillet did brown the chicken skin, it wasn't as crispy all over as the stainless-cooked sample was, demonstrated by how easy it was to pinch and lift the nonstick sample. (The stainless-cooked sample, at left, didn't pinch easily; the nonstick-cooked sample, at right, lifted and tore with little effort.)

Okay, you might say, but if I set a weight on top of the chicken in the nonstick pan, I'll get the contact I want along with the convenience of nonstick cookware, right? Perhaps, but you know what you won't get? The fond.

That's the French term for the layer of browned stuff that builds up on the bottom of a pan when you're roasting meats and vegetables, and what it amounts to is flavor. The fond is a necessary component for delicious pan sauces, stews, braises, and more, and nonstick cookware makes it virtually impossible to develop.

A good fond is one of the keys to a good pan sauce, and you won't develop one using nonstick.

When to Use Nonstick Pans

So, when should you use nonstick? I reserve mine almost exclusively for eggs, in particular dishes that require the eggs to be beaten first. That includes scrambled eggs, omelettes, Spanish tortillas, and frittatas. Fried eggs are easy to do on well-seasoned cast iron, but there's something about the broken yolks that make beaten eggs much trickier to work with.

If you do buy any nonstick cookware, I'd suggest limiting yourself to one eight-inch skillet, which is perfect for a classic three-egg French omelette, as well as a 10-inch skillet for larger crepes and such. If you have a lot of mouths to feed, a 12-inch nonstick skillet could come in handy, too.

Beyond that, I won't fault anyone for using nonstick to cook fish, especially delicate fish, like thin fillets of sole or flounder. With practice, though, even fish is easy to do in a cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless pan. Crepes, blini, and other pancakes are also made incredibly easy with nonstick, but, once again, cast iron and carbon steel are very good choices there.

If you're still not convinced, let me give you just one more reason to limit your use of nonstick cookware: your wallet. Unlike cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and copper cookware, which can all last more than a lifetime if cared for properly, nonstick cookware is inherently disposable.

Sure, there's a lot of budget nonstick cookware out there that may be appealing, but once that coating wears out—which will happen eventually, no matter how careful you are—the pan is garbage, forcing you to buy a replacement. Why would you build your cookware collection around a product like that?

All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.

[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

If you want to thank anyone for the Brussels sprout, thank the famed Flemish agro-physicist Dr. Hans Erdinwald, who in 1927 blasted a cabbage patch with his experimental gamma-ray shrinkage gun, zapping the large heads into the tiny baby cabbages we all know and love today.

I'm lying. But everything else from here on out is, I swear. By the end of this article, you'll know what Brussels sprouts really are, and all the main ways to prep them for cooking.

What Are Brussels Sprouts?

While the history lesson I opened with is false, it points to an underlying truth: If you've ever noticed that Brussels sprouts look like tiny cabbages, it's because, in a sense, they are. Both Brussels sprouts and cabbages are cultivars of the same plant species, Brassica oleracea, which has also been bred to produce broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale, collards, and more. In each case, a different part of the plant became exaggerated by artificially selecting for specific traits.

Broccoli and cauliflower, for instance, have pronounced edible flower heads. Kohlrabi, meanwhile, has a large and rotund fleshy stalk that's crisp and juicy. Cabbage and Brussels sprouts, on the other hand, are vegetative buds—in the case of cabbage, it's a terminal bud that grows at the end of the stalk, while Brussels sprouts are lateral (or axillary) buds that grow all around and along the length of the stalk, almost as if someone glued a bunch of green ping pong balls to a walking stick.

Understanding the anatomy of a Brussels sprout bud can help you figure out how to cut it into various forms for cooking. At the center of each sprout is a solid core that anchors all the tightly nested leaves together; this core is actually an embryonic shoot hidden within the bud. The leaves themselves act as a protective covering of that embryonic shoot. The entirety of the Brussels sprout—the whole dang bud—is edible.

For All Preparations: How to Trim Brussels Sprouts Efficiently

No matter how you're going to cook your Brussels sprouts, you'll want to trim them first. At the base of each sprout is the spot where it was originally connected to the plant. Unless you've just cut the sprouts off the stalk yourself, this area will have become dry and browned during storage. Using a chef's or paring knife, trim off the dried-out portion.

Inspect the outer leaves of each sprout as well. If they look dried, bruised, insect-damaged, or otherwise undesirable, remove them until you reach the more appealing leaves underneath. Because the base of each leaf connects to the core of the sprout, it's easiest to trim away the stem end just above the attachment points for the leaves you want to remove and discard. They'll often fall away on their own after that, or, if not, will be plucked off much more easily.

Divide your cutting tasks into batches so you can cruise through the prep more efficiently. Don't just work one sprout at a time from start-to-finish.

Sprouts are small, which usually means you'll be working with quite a few of them. Try to be efficient as you prep them: Do your work in phases, first trimming all the stem ends at once, then moving on to plucking off the outer leaves and cutting up the sprouts after that. Otherwise you'll find yourself picking up and putting down your knife and the sprouts over and over again as you prep each sprout from start to finish before moving on to the next one—not a good idea if you want to be done in time for dinner.

How to Leave the Brussels Sprouts Whole: Consider Making an "X"

Perhaps you want your Brussels sprouts whole. This often makes sense when blanching them, since they'd become more water-logged if cut, as that exposes the spaces between the leaves.

If so, it can help to carve a shallow "X" into the base of the core of each sprout using a paring knife. The core is the most solid part of the sprout, which means it cooks more slowly than the rest of the vegetable. By scoring it, you'll help heat penetrate into the core a little faster, potentially speeding up the overall cooking time and avoiding overcooked outer leaves.

How to Cut the Brussels Sprouts in Halves or Quarters

One of the most common ways to cut a Brussels sprout is in half or quarters. By doing so, you reduce the size of the sprouts, speeding up cooking. You also create a flat surface in the process (one flat surface for halved sprouts; two for quarters), which improves contact with the hot pan or baking sheet, allowing you to brown them more effectively.

Halved sprouts should simply be cut in two even hemispheres lengthwise through the core. If you were to make the mistake of cutting the sprouts longitudinally, you'd end up with the core entirely within one half, and loose leaf tops falling apart on the other. By cutting through the core, you'll hold the halved or quartered sprouts together.

Cutting quarters is as simple as cutting each half in half again. It ain't rocket science, folks.

How to Finely Shave Brussels Sprouts

For some preparations, like this salt-wilted Brussels sprout salad I developed a couple years ago, shaving the sprouts can provide an enjoyable texture with maximum surface area. You can do this with a chef's knife by cutting each sprout in half first (following the above directions), and then cross-cutting each half latitudinally into thin slivers. This will disconnect the slivers from the core, especially up towards the top of each sprout, helping them to separate into individual shavings.

You can also use a mandoline or handheld slicer to make the shavings. Be very careful, though, because Brussels sprouts are too small and round to be held by most of the safety grips that come with the slicing devices. You'll likely have to hold each one in your bare fingers, stem-side up, and it doesn't take much to accidentally roll a sprout and shave your fingers instead.

To Separate Each Sprout Into its Individual Leaves

This is a restaurant-y technique that you're unlikely to use at home, but for sake of completeness, I'll include it here. If you want to deconstruct each Brussels sprout into individual leaves, say to fry them as a crispy garnish or salad element, you'll use the same method as for trimming the damaged outer leaves described above, slicing off the bottom of the core to detach the next layer of leaves, but in this case you'll continue to slice deeper and deeper into the core, with each successive step helping to disconnect the next layer of leaves.

I recommend doing this with a paring knife, so that you'll be able to cut away at the core and pluck off leaves without having to repeatedly pick up and put down the sprout and a larger chef's knife to do the task.

As you drill down into the center of each sprout, you'll often find the leaves become more tightly packed and stubborn to remove, even after they've been disconnected from the core. They'll also become ridiculously small. How far you try to go to get to the true center before quitting and moving onto the next sprout is up to you.

All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.

[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

Like a hammer, a quality mattress, and at least one comfortable place to sit and read (no, not the toilet), a cast iron skillet is one of those things just about every home needs. Cast iron requires a little more attention and care than a pan made from something like stainless steel, but in exchange for a well-maintained layer of seasoning, you get a piece of cookware that's rugged enough to put a profound sear on the thickest steak while delicate enough to allow a frying egg to glide across its surface without sticking. A cast iron pan can also last for generations, provided you don't utterly abuse it.

For a long time, there you didn't have much of a choice when acquiring cast iron pots and pans. You were either lucky enough to inherit your grandmother's old pieces, or you went and bought a brand new Lodge.* And let's be clear, that's not meant as a dig against Lodge. After America's cast iron heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when companies like Griswold, Wagner, and Blacklock (Lodge's name before it switched to its current one in 1910) made some of the finest cast iron cookware this nation has ever seen, the industry almost completely collapsed. By the late 1900s, Lodge was pretty much the only domestic cast iron cookware foundry left. Their modern pans don't sport the smooth finish that the good vintage stuff is prized for, but they're otherwise totally reliable pieces of cookware.

* OR you frequented antique markets and yard sales for vintage cast iron pieces, then fixed them up yourself following our guide.

Recently, though, there's been a cast iron resurgence, and many of the newer brands launched on sites like Kickstarter. The impetus for this cast iron renaissance, if I can call it that, is hard to pin down, but I suspect this last decade's growing interest in heritage goods combined with crowd-driven financing models like Kickstarter have played their part. Oh, and of course it probably hasn't hurt that websites like this one have been praising and demystifying cast iron for years.

Just a few years ago I saw little purpose in reviewing cast iron cookware, given the lack of options out there. Today the situation is radically different. The market is swirling with options, and the price differences can be staggering: A 10-inch skillet can cost you anywhere from under $20 to over $200—and, mind you, I'm not including pricier enameled cast iron like Le Creuset in these figures.

To explore this new cast iron landscape, I tested 15 cast iron skillets, all under a $200 price cap, to determine whether any of the newcomers are offering valuable performance enhancements that might justify the cost. I chose to run the review using 10-inch skillets (or the closest to that measurement available from each manufacturer), since it's one of the more useful sizes for most homes. Ten-inch skillets are also more affordable than their similarly useful 12-inch counterparts; if I'd conducted this review using the larger 12-inch sizes, several brands would have been eliminated due to their being over my $200 limit.

Our Favorites, at a Glance

The Best Everyday Cast Iron Skillet: Lodge 10.25-Inch Skillet

Lodge's basic cast iron skillet has long been one of our most recommended pieces of kitchenware, and it remains so today. It's a little heavier than some of the other options out there, but it performs as well as anything else we tested and has a price that's hard to argue with. Add in that it's made in the USA by an established company with a proven track record, and we see little reason for most folks (living in the United States) to look elsewhere. This 10.25-inch size is arguably the most useful for most people, but the larger 12-inch skillet is nice to own as well, especially for bigger families.

The Best Lightweight Cast Iron Skillet: Lodge Blacklock 10.25-Inch Skillet

This new line of cast iron cookware from Lodge is clearly trying to capitalize on the renewed interest in vintage-style cast iron, especially now that the market has become crowded with startups attempting to revive the old cast iron standards of lighter weight and smoother surfaces. While Lodge's Blacklock line does not seem to be smoother than any of its other cast iron, it is remarkably less heavy. We found little to no difference in performance between it and its heavier counterpart, so if you can spend more, you'll likely appreciate how much easier it is to move this skillet around your kitchen.

The Criteria: What We Look for in a Great Cast Iron Skillet

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I nearly drove myself nuts before initiating testing for this review just trying to decide what qualities a "good" cast iron pan should have. Cast iron itself is not a good conductor of heat, but it retains heat well. Those two characteristics are interlinked: the better a metal conducts heat, the worse it holds onto it. So if I find one pan that conducts heat better than all the rest, should I reward it for that or not?

I fretted similarly about how I would factor in each pan's weight. Cast iron is heavy, even for me, and I'm far from the weakest person you might find in a kitchen. So is a lighter-weight pan better? On your wrists, sure, but at what cost? The mass of a cast iron pan is, at least in theory, central to its ability to hold lots of heat. If a heavy skillet proves to sear steaks better than a lighter one, how do I decide what the ideal balance is between those potentially opposing qualities?

In the end, my testing solved these conundrums for me: The best cast iron pan is the one that performs its core tasks—searing, baking, and nonstick frying and sautéing—with success. And what my testing revealed is that, for all the nerding out one can do about cast iron, there's practically no difference in performance from one pan to the next. Yes, you read that right: For all their variations in weight, size, smoothness, and form, most cast iron pans perform about the same under the same conditions.

This finding left me with a much easier determination to make, one that mostly took into account cost, brand reliability, as well as ergonomics and other user experience (UX) considerations.

The Testing

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To assess these pans, I focused on tasks that would reveal how well each cast iron skillet performed its most important functions: searing, frying and sautéing, and baking. I also measured heat conduction over time at both the center and edge of each pan, and recorded each one's weight, bottom thickness and diameter, and smoothness, in case any of those attributes might help explain how the pans performed in the more practical tests.

On top of that, I analyzed ergonomic factors like handle comfort and pour-spout efficacy.

Measuring Conduction

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Cast iron is not a good heat conductor, but that doesn't mean all the skillets in my test would conduct heat equally poorly. I needed to assess how quickly and evenly each pan heated on the stovetop. (Whether being a better conductor of heat or not is good or bad was a question for the other tests to help me answer.)

To find out, I set a stovetop gas burner to what I would describe as a medium flame, then set each pan on top. From the moment each pan was set down, I used an infrared thermometer to record the temperature every 10 seconds for 20 intervals (totally 3 minutes 20 seconds). I allowed all the pans to cool back to room temperature and then repeated the test while measuring each skillet at its edge (to keep the "edge" position consistent on pans of slightly different diameters, I used the bars on the stovetop grate underneath to help me set my sights).

Over the course of 3 minutes and 20 seconds, I measured the temperature of the floor of each skillet at both the center and edge, taking readings every ten seconds. This chart shows the final temperature each skillet registered at the 3 minute, 20 second mark.

The results here were remarkably different: Some of the skillets still hadn't hit 200°F by the end of the heating cycle while others were above 400°F. Now, as I explained above, there's no reason to assume a slower-to-heat cast iron skillet is worse than a faster one, nor vice versa. That's a question the performance tests would have to help answer.

Still, I did see some trends. First, while it doesn't map perfectly to the mass of each skillet, overall the ones that were fastest to heat were also the lighter-weight ones, while the slowest were the heaviest. This makes sense: The more metal there is to heat up, the longer it will take.

One exception to this observation was the Butter Pat skillet, which is one of the newcomers to the cast iron market. It was the second slowest to heat, but solidly middle-of-the-pack in terms of weight. In its case, the distribution of metal may help explain why it heated so much slower than the other pans of similar weight: The Butter Pat has much thinner walls and more of its mass in its base. (This accumulation of mass in the base may also explain why the Butter Pat, unlike almost every other skillet, had such similar degrees of heating at both the edge and center of the base, since there is much less metal in the walls to continuously siphon off heat as it radiates towards them.)

Egg Frying

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Eggs stuck in nearly every skillet; over time as seasoning builds up, this will no longer happen.

After running through my heat conduction measurements, it was time to take these pans for a real spin. I was curious to find out how well-seasoned each skillet was out of the box (good seasoning = more nonstick). Since cast iron cookware requires ongoing maintenance to build up great seasoning, I didn't necessarily think skillets that underperformed in this test should be disqualified, but I figured it could help as a tie-breaker.

Judging by sight alone, some of the skillets arrived better seasoned than others: Some were a lighter brown color, indicating less build-up of seasoning applied at the factory, while others were jet-black, a sign of much more substantial seasoning accumulation.

Two skillets showing different amounts of out-of-the-box seasoning (a lighter brown cast suggests less build up of seasoning, while darker black suggests more).

To test each one, I first gave each skillet a bonus layer of seasoning (two skillets in the group required a pre-seasoning step before first use, so it only seemed fair to put them all through the same process). Then I preheated all of the skillets in ovens set to 250°F. Working one at a time, I removed a skillet from the oven and set it over a consistent moderate flame. Next I added one tablespoon of oil and let it heat for 30 seconds before cracking two eggs into the pan.

Using this pre-heating process, each egg sizzled gently when it hit the pan, which was just what I wanted to see: any cooler and the egg wouldn't be frying, any hotter and it'd have a much easier time not sticking. This was exactly the heat level I'd use in one of my prized cast iron skillets at home to gently fry an egg without it sticking.

In every single pan (except the Starfrit, but it's an outlier with some kind of coating on it), the eggs fused to the metal. The Butter Pat and Smithey skillets had some of the most severe sticking, and they also had appeared to the eye to be the least seasoned out of the box, but none of the other skillets performed well enough to declare an obvious winner. The clear lesson here is that almost no cast iron pan arrives with its potential nonstick surface fully realized: You will need to build up the seasoning at home no matter what.

Steak Searing

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Just about every skillet, when preheated properly, put a great sear on beef.

The next test was all about high heat: How well could each skillet sear a steak? I used thick slabs of boneless beef short ribs to find out.

For this test, I preheated all of the pans in 500°F ovens. Then, working one at a time, I removed them, added 1 tablespoon of oil, then seared two large short rib slabs in each, turning them every 30 seconds for a total of 3 minutes per side.

Just like in the egg-frying test, all the skillets performed incredibly similarly, except this time they did their job well. Just about every single one produced deeply browned and crusty steak on both sides. If there was a difference, I had a hard time spotting it. The only one that I thought maybe wasn't as good was the Amazon skillet, which I thought possibly put less of a good sear on the second side of the steaks (but, again, I wasn't certain even as I stared and prodded it, so the difference wasn't by any means huge).

Cornbread

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It was nearly impossible to spot any differences when baking cornbread in each skillet.

My third real-world test was baking cornbread. I hoped to see three things here: First, how deeply and evenly browned each cornbread was on the bottom and sides; second, how much rise did each cornbread experience; and third, how much did any of the cornbreads stick.

What I saw instead were nearly identical loaves of cornbread coming out of every single skillet. Each one browned the bread evenly and deeply on both the bottom and sides, indicating that they all have enough stored heat all over, certainly more than the room-temp batter could counteract when it was ladled in. Each one also rose similarly, indicating they each delivered similar heat into the batter, causing similar levels of oven spring. And, finally, none of them stuck to the metal, indicating that after the first round of pre-seasoning, followed by the egg frying test and the steak-searing test, the seasoning was beginning to build up on all of them. With a few more uses, they'd all be ready to fry some eggs with no trouble.

Comfort and Ergonomics

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Weighing and measuring the skillets.

Given how little light was shed on the skillets based on performance, other characteristics like price, comfort, and some design considerations were going to be the primary deciding factors.

During all of the prior testing, I had been taking UX notes, including which skillets were the most uncomfortable to hold and which were just too dang heavy. I also ran an oil-pouring test, filling each skillet with a half-cup of oil, then pouring it back out into a narrow jar to see which channeled the fluid most effectively.

I learned that the best pour spouts are large and deep, and if you can't have that, you're better off having no pour spout at all: The skillets with shallow and small spouts tended to dribble the most. While good to know, I didn't consider small spouts a dealbreaker if the pan otherwise performed well and is well priced.

How We Chose Our Winners

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Given how similarly all of the cast iron pans performed in these tests, the real decision came down to comfort, ergonomics, and price. For that reason, I'm recommending two Lodge skillets, since they're affordable, reliable, and backed up by an established company with a proven track record. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't recommend some of the newer, more expensive skillets I tested, however.

Some of the pricier skillets in this group were a pleasure to use. Several feature a much smoother cooking surface, the result of a sanding or polishing step that removes the casting's naturally rough surface. This is a step that adds labor and cost to the manufacturing process and contributes to a higher price. A smoother surface may not have much impact on performance, but it's without a doubt more pleasurable to run a metal spatula across it.

There are also economies of scale to consider: It's to be expected that smaller manufacturers that are just entering the market won't be able to compete with a large company like Lodge on cost. Competition is still a good thing, and I'm glad it's been reintroduced into the cast iron cookware market; hopefully over time the presence of these new contenders will be a benefit to the consumer overall. Please do read about the other brands below to see if any are of interest to you.

The Best Everyday Cast Iron Skillet: Lodge 10.25-Inch Skillet

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Lodge skillets have been a staple in the Serious Eats test kitchen and many of our homes for years. They're affordable and well-made by a company that has a longer track record producing cast iron cookware than any other in the Unites States. Unlike almost every other more affordably priced cast iron brand, Lodge still makes their plain cast iron cookware in the United States (their enameled cast iron, on the other hand, is manufactured abroad).

This skillet does run slightly heavy at about five-and-a-half pounds, which is about one pound heavier than the average for all the skillets in this review. Still, the handle is comfortable to hold both bare-handed and with a towel or oven mitt. And while the basic line from Lodge doesn't have the lighter weight and smooth finish of vintage pieces and more expensive contemporary brands, there's little to no impact on performance as a result of this.

If we have one gripe, it's that Lodge's pour spouts are small and shallow, leading to more frequent dribbles and spills in our tests, but this is hardly a reason not to buy one given the price and overall quality.

Although this test focused on 10-inch skillets, it's also worth considering the larger 12-inch size, either in addition to this one, or, perhaps for bigger families, instead of it.

The Best Lightweight Cast Iron Skillet: Lodge Blacklock 10.25-Inch Skillet

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The new Blacklock line from Lodge is the company's attempt at offering an option for those seeking cast iron forged to meet more heritage specs, which generally means lighter-weight and polished to a smoother finish. That's how many of the new players in the cast iron cookware space are positioning themselves—as a return to those old quality standards—and Lodge is smart not to cede that portion of the market to these new competitors entirely.

These Blacklock skillets deliver on the lighter-weight side of things. The 10.25-inch option weighs 4 pounds 2 ounces, making it the second lightest skillet in our tests and a full 1 pound 6 ounces lighter than the standard Lodge. It's a difference you can immediately feel. And based on our tests, that reduction in mass has no noticeable impact on how the pan is able to perform.

Lodge's Blacklock skillet is lightweight and comfortable to hold.

The skillet design is handsome, at least to my eyes, and evokes a certain old-timey aesthetic, particularly in the curving lines of the stay-cool handle (keep in mind, though, that no cast iron pan's handle truly stays cool for long).

Where Lodge seems to have drawn the line on manufacturing costs was on the polishing the surface of the pan. As far as I can tell, the Blacklock skillet has a similar surface texture to Lodge's basic line. If a smooth-as-ice cast iron skillet is what you're after, you'll need to seek a vintage piece or buy one of the pricier skillets from one of the other companies below that do invest in the smoothing step. But given that Lodge has managed to keep the price of this skillet close (at the time of publication) to its basic line, most folks would do well to consider this first.

The Competition

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Below are notes on the other models we tested for this review. In addition to the models listed below, I also included two "chef-style" cast iron skillets in this review, one from Lodge and one from Smithey Ironware. Chef-style cast iron skillets are cast in a more traditional frying pan shape with sloped sides, which allow for tossing ingredients more easily when sautéing. They performed well in all the tests, but baked up slightly wonky looking cornbreads given the different form. I'm on the fence about how I feel about them (they weren't bad by any stretch), but am inclined to suggest slightly lighter-weight carbon steel skillets for sautéing purposes instead.

• Utopia Kitchen's cast iron skillets came as a set of three for just $23 bucks, making it quite the deal, but they arrived with visible flaws in the casting, including deep pinhole pits in one of the skillets, which was sufficient cause to eliminate them from further testing.
• Camp Chef's cast iron skillet arrived from Amazon with the handle cracked off. This doesn't necessarily mean it's a subpar casting job—any cast iron pan can crack and break if dropped or struck with enough force—but since it was the only pan to ship in the larger Amazon box without a protective box of its own, I can't recommend it. Cast iron should be packaged well enough to guarantee delivery in one piece.
• Amazon itself now sells cast iron skillets under the AmazonBasics brand. It performed reasonably well throughout testing, and is certainly inexpensive, but its surface is extra rough and, at least in the hand, doesn't feel like a particularly high-quality piece of cookware.
• Victoria is a Colombian cookware and cast iron manufacturer. It's a fairly well-established brand, but has a rougher finish, similar to Amazon's. Given that Lodge costs more or less the same, appears to be better quality, and is made domestically, I'd recommend it instead.
• I looked at Lancaster, but their skillets won't be available until later this year, so I wasn't able to include it in this round of testing.
• Nest makes pretty looking skillets with handles cast to look like tree-branches, but their biggest size is a 9-inch skillet; without the option of larger sizes that I find more practical, I decided not to include it.
• Starfrit's The Rock bills itself as a cast iron skillet with a specially finished surface, formed through some kind of pellet-impact technology, though it seems to have some kind of nonstick coating applied as well. It was the lightest weight of all the skillets in the review, and has a riveted handle, which is unusual for cast iron. It managed to cook an egg without sticking, but its sloped sides and seeming inability to pick up layers of seasoning due to the nonstick coating left me puzzled about how this skillet relates to more traditional cast iron. It's a little too much of an outlier to recommend for those seeking a true cast iron skillet.
• Hallman Originals only produces larger 12-inch skillets at the moment. I ordered one, since I do find that size useful, but its chunky design makes it awkward to handle.
• Borough Furnace is another small producer of high-end cast iron cookware that caught my eye, but in addition to their cookware frequently being backordered, the $300 price (at the time of publication) for a 10.5-inch skillet was something we just couldn't justify.
• Marquette Castings makes a handsome skillet that's lightweight, smooth, and has a particularly comfortable handle. It's worth considering if you're seeking a smoother finish, but didn't make the top picks due to its higher price relative to performance.
• Finex was, at least for a while, the darling of food stylists and Instagrammers, all thanks to its unique hexagonal design and massive coiled handle. Visual appeal, though, doesn't offset the downsides of this pricey skillet. I have no beef with the hexagon thing, but this skillet was way too heavy, weighing in at about six pounds. All that mass makes it by far the slowest to heat up, but without enough gains in searing performance to justify it. Add to that its thick handle, which I found difficult to hold securely (I can only imagine how someone with smaller hands would fare), and I can't recommend it.
• Field is another company offering lighter, smoother cast iron skillets, and it does a nice job with this one. Its design is simple and classic, and it performs well. Once again, due to the higher price, my recommendation for most home cooks remains Lodge.
• The skillets from Butter Pat Industries are, to my eye, the handsomest of this new generation of cast iron skillets, and they've done an interesting thing by managing to successfully cast a skillet with thinner walls while allocating more of the mass to the base, where the cooking really happens. This design feature, though, didn't produce noticeable enough performance results to set it apart from the crowd, and, yet again, the high price means it's not the right pick for most folks. I also found the ridges on the underside of the handle to be uncomfortable to hold.
• The Number 10 skillet from Smithey Ironware performed as well as all the rest, but, being the second heaviest of the group at 5 3/4 pounds and among the higher-priced options, I'd be reluctant to recommend it.
• The Skillet from Stargazer arrived too late to be included in the testing, but we hope to update the review soon once we put it through the paces.

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