You can spend more on boutique carbon steel, but there's really no reason to unless you have the budget and fall in love with a design. Seasoning is the process of using oil to build up a natural patina that functions as a nonstick coating. You can use it for many different recipes, ingredients, and cooking methods, but not all (more on that in a minute). Eventually, your well-seasoned pan will have a slick, consistent black “patina” over the entire surface.

Black Carbon Steel Paella Pan | Products | Matfer Bourgeat USA Black Carbon Steel Paella Pan | Products | Matfer Bourgeat USA

It delivered excellent browning in our steak test, and our tester noted that the slightly arced handle added balance and control when lifting and shaking the lightweight pan. She uses her years of experience cooking in professional kitchens along with her degree in Culinary Arts from the Institute of Culinary Education to guide her thoroughly tested product reviews. My advice—when its time to cook that slow-simmering tomato sauce, grab a stainless steel or enameled cast iron pot, both materials are non-reactive , which makes them tolerant of acidic foods. You can use a thinner pan for high-heat searing and vice-versa, but you will get better results if you choose the pan for a primary use. And being a little heavier than most other materials, it sits nicely and safely on your stovetop and adds that solid feel to its robust looks.

There was no residue to clean with most of the foods as none of the foods stuck to the pan, so mostly cleaning was effortless. Besides, basic non-stick utensils tend to work the other way around… they lose their function gradually over time.

Carbon Steel Cookware Pros and Cons (Complete List) - Prudent Carbon Steel Cookware Pros and Cons (Complete List) - Prudent

Vollrath’s French-Style Carbon Steel Fry Pan performed similarly to the Mauviel in our tests, but it costs much less. But you'll want to start the pan over medium-low or medium heat and then gradually crank it up, because it helps distribute the heat evenly and prevent warping. The smooth surface makes carbon steel easy to cook with, and the ability to build up a seasoned surface is what makes these pans more naturally nonstick over time. In that case, deep frying is safe, although cast iron is the better choice because of its higher heat retention.Traditional carbon steel pans have long flat handles, but they can differ in height, and this can affect how the pan feels to use. The performance of both these pans is quite similar and it is just a matter of choosing your preferred weight. They have long, shallow sides for easy access to food and quick evaporation (to facilitate browning). In a world full of excellent nonstick frying pans and elegantly designed enameled cast irons, there is a silent but stoic workhorse that has traditionally been the staple of professional kitchens—the carbon steel pan.

Matfer Bourgeat Carbon Steel Fry Pan Review: A Versatile Pan Matfer Bourgeat Carbon Steel Fry Pan Review: A Versatile Pan

We've noted when pan on this list had a cooking surface that felt smaller, but some is up to personal preference and the kinds of foods you cook most. Carbon steel skillets, a mainstay in many restaurant kitchens, are now growing in popularity with home cooks. It may also depend on how you use the pan: if you like to toss it to flip your food, the lower handles are easier for most people.This superior heat tolerance is why most high-volume restaurants keep an array of carbon steel pans on hand.

Matfer Bourgeat Carbon Steel Skillet Review | The Kitchn

More and more, carbon steel pans are being sold with seasoned already applied, providing the home chef with a solid foundation on which to build. Coating the pans with oil helped here, but only the standouts made it to our final test, cooking an onion tarte tatin to see how each pan could handle a sticky dish in the oven.This pan aced our chicken breast test with perfect chicken, easy flipping, and easy cleaning — we only needed to wipe the excess oil out with a paper towel. Please make sure that Javascript and cookies are enabled on your browser and that you are not blocking them from loading. We noted whether it arrived preseasoned, and we compared each pan's responsiveness to and distribution of heat. The pan also cooled off a lot faster, hence giving precise control when making the pan-fried fish where I wanted to start off with high heat, but then lower it to let the fish cook through. The relative flexibility of carbon steel allows it to be stamped (pressed into shape from a single sheet), which gives it a smoother surface.