Kitchen

A cast iron skillet is the longest-lasting piece of cookware you’ll ever buy. It’s also the hardest to get wrong — Lodge makes a perfectly usable pan for forty bucks, and it’ll outlive you. But there’s a range between “usable” and “this is the pan I reach for every single time” that matters more than you’d think. Weight distribution, handle angle, surface smoothness, how the seasoning takes — these details determine whether you use the skillet daily or it sits on the bottom shelf gathering rust. I tested six cast iron skillets spanning the full spectrum from budget workhorses to enameled French imports, comparing how they heat, how they handle, and how they feel after a year of use. ...