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See why.The Best Cast-Iron Skillets
Artisan brands of American-made cast-iron cookware challenge the old guard.
By Updated Sept. 1, 2022
Top Picks
Looking for enameled cast-iron skillets? We've got you covered.
Looking for a smaller size? We've also tested 8-inch and 10-inch cast-iron skillets.
What You Need To Know
We tested 12-inch preseasoned cast-iron skillets, including artisan pans made by small American companies. While we were able to cook successfully in every skillet, our favorite pans shared certain traits: They were among the heaviest, at around 8 pounds, with sides measuring more than 2 inches tall. The Smithey Ironware No. 12 Cast Iron Skillet is made by a small company in South Carolina. With a smooth, polished interior and a classic shape, it aced all our tests, searing, baking, and browning beautifully and releasing food like a nonstick pan would. But it’s about $200, so we also chose a Best Buy. The Lodge 12 Inch Cast Iron Skillet, at about $44, offers equivalent performance at a bargain price. Its surface felt pebbly right out of the box and was a bit sticky in the beginning, but after a few rounds of cooking it released food like a champ.
What You Need to Know
We love cooking in cast-iron skillets; they’re an essential part of our kitchen. Whether we're searing, frying, baking, braising, or roasting, these pans are incredibly sturdy; they're also naturally nonstick. As you use them, their seasonings keep improving because heated fat molecules link up to form a polymer (essentially a connected grid). This creates a hard, elastic film that bonds to the iron, protecting it from rust and forming a surface layer that easily releases food—and is endlessly renewable. You can hand down these pans for generations.
Cast-iron skillets were common in the United States in the 19th century and made by many American manufacturers. Sadly, almost none of those companies survived past the middle of the 20th century, as sales of cast-iron cookware fell behind newer stainless-steel and aluminum pans. Two of the most famous companies, Wagner and Griswold, folded in the 1950s, and their vintage pans are now highly sought after by collectors. Lodge Manufacturing, based in Tennessee, has been producing cast-iron cookware since 1896, making it the longest continuously operated American cast-iron cookware company (and the largest). Today, most cast-iron skillets—aside from Lodge—are imports from China, where cast-iron cookware was invented. But within the past decade, artisan cast-iron cookware makers have sprung up in the United States, many with a declared goal of re-creating labor-intensive features that have disappeared from most modern cast-iron cookware, including smooth, hand-polished interiors (unlike modern pans, which have a rougher, more “pebbly” surface that shows the texture of the sand they were cast in) and pans that are cast to be slightly thinner and more lightweight—prized features in vintage cookware.
What to Look For
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Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
Silky-smooth from the get-go, this roomy pan didn’t let food stick and stayed impressively slick throughout testing. Its heavy weight helped it retain heat, so it seared food evenly and deeply. The pan’s bronze color became blotchy as we used it, but it will gradually gain a nice patina with lots of use.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
While this skillet started out with a rougher surface than those of the artisan pans, its gently nubbly texture quickly gained seasoning, and by the end of testing it released food and cleaned up perfectly. At about 8 pounds, it’s heavy, but that weight helps with heat retention and browning. Its roomy surface and high sides make it a versatile performer—all at a great price for a pan that will last forever.
Recommended
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
A heavy, classic cast-iron pan with excellent heat retention, it deeply browned steak, fries, and cornbread. Its fairly rough surface gained seasoning as we used it and released food beautifully by the end of testing, but it still snagged towel lint and stayed a bit oilier and gummier than was ideal. It came with a very handy silicone handle cover that let us skip using pot holders when it was on the stovetop, though it couldn’t protect our hands when the pan had been heated to 500 degrees in the oven.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
We fell in love with the satiny-smooth surface; simple, elegant, spoutless shape; and slightly lighter weight of this artisan pan, which released food perfectly—even fish, the bane of most of our lineup. Rim to rim it’s slightly less than 12 inches across, but nearly straight sides mean that it still has 10 inches of cooking space. Because it’s more than 2 pounds lighter and a bit thinner than our top-rated pans, it ran a little hot and browned food slightly less evenly.
Available for purchase at: www.fieldcompany.com
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
We loved the curved sides and graceful shape of this pan, which has a nubbly surface that started out nicely preseasoned but lost a little slickness along the way. A small strip of cornbread stuck to the pan, and some eggs stuck in the final round, though a gentle scrub was all it took to clean up. It took a bit longer than others to gain seasoning, likely because its surface is slightly rough.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
While this wide, low artisan pan was a joy to cook in and released food perfectly, its low sides limited its versatility (you need at least 2-inch sides to contain oil when frying foods such as chicken, hush puppies, and doughnuts). It’s also the most expensive pan we tested. The manufacturer claims to achieve its extremely smooth surface not by power sanding but by a proprietary casting process that allows for a smooth surface, thin walls (which shaves off weight), and a thick base that holds heat and encourages browning. The pan arrives lightly preseasoned, with a gorgeous golden-brown color that darkens with use.
Available for purchase at: www.butterpanindustries.com
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
Made in Colombia by an established family-run company, this roomy skillet was well designed, with a terrific long, rounded handle that made its weight easier to hoist. It browned food nicely, but its nubbly surface, which started out well seasoned, backslid during testing; a big section of the bottom of our cornbread stuck, and we saw more sticking in our final round of eggs. That said, it will eventually regain seasoning and is a well-made pan at a remarkable price.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
Handling this lightweight, handsome pan was a real pleasure, and its tall, bowl-shaped sides and broad surface left plenty of room for food, but the thin bottom and lack of heft meant that this pan cooked slightly unevenly. Some potato wedges came out half dark and half light depending on where they sat in the pan. We had to move them more than usual and let them cook longer to even out the browning. (We made burgers to double-check this; they came out two-tone, not the evenly deep-brown crust we expect from cast iron.) Despite being “triple-seasoned,” this pan lost some slickness by the end of testing.
Available for purchase at: www.lodgecastiron.com
Recommended with reservations
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
We could cook every recipe in this pan, with good results. But the extremely rough cooking surface was a challenge, since it ripped lint from paper towels and didn’t let us wipe off excess oil easily. As a result, it stayed a bit oily and gummy between uses, and fish stuck; the pan’s slickness didn’t improve much during testing. A slightly narrow cooking surface and tall, nearly vertical walls made it slightly awkward to get a spatula under food. We liked its padded cloth handle cover, which came in handy on the stovetop.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
While we were able to prepare every recipe in this pan with reasonable success, its surface was rough and snagged lint from paper towels. Cornbread and fish stuck, and scrambled eggs stuck a bit more at the end of testing than they had at the outset. Steep, nearly straight walls plus a slightly narrow cooking surface made it a bit challenging to get a spatula under delicate fish. While this pan will eventually gain seasoning, it was slower going compared with the other pans we tested.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
The innovative design of this American-made skillet had lots of good ideas that didn’t always (pardon the expression) pan out. While the pan browned steak nicely, released cornbread, and fit well on a crowded stovetop because of its squared sides, extras such as the multiple pouring spouts and the fat, steel-wrapped handle didn’t provide extra function. Swiping a spatula around all its corners felt inefficient. Even with its smooth, machine-sanded cooking surface, fish and eggs stuck a bit, with more sticking on the pebbly-textured interior of the sides.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Lisa McManus
Lisa is an executive editor for ATK Reviews, cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube, and gadget expert on TV's America's Test Kitchen.
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