I have been using DeBuyer carbon steel pants for about 4 years now. I am starting to find them very tedious for daily cooking. And their seasoning does not retain over the years at all even though the majority of cooking I do is frying. Any moisture in the pan and the seasoning comes off with a metallic taste. I’m replacing my carbon steel pan with stainless steel pan for convenience and consistency.
I’m honestly surprised by the amount of negative comments regarding carbon steel pans on here. I want to say it’s a skill issue, but I don’t know what they’re doing with their carbon steel pans. I’ve been using my parents’ DeBuyer carbon steel pans for my entire life on an induction range that’s even older than me. I also used it on glass cooktops too now that I moved away for college. My pans have never warped on me, are a dream to clean and season, and the lighter weight makes it my go to pan for almost all my cooking unless I’m baking, frying, or cooking acidic food. The pros of stovetop seasoning my carbon steel pans made me use that method to season all my cast iron cookware too. While my carbon steel pans never turn completely black like my cast iron skillets, they’re still nonstick. It’s a workhorse pan not a looker 🤷🏼
Lighter weight? You must be joking. I have a DeBuyer Mineral B Pro. It's 3mm thick of carbon steel and heavy as a tank. My All-Clad copper core pan is much lighter! What do you have, a $6000 top-of-the-line induction range? Most induction ranges have tiny coils (5" diameter) which will get the middle of your pan screaming hot and leave the rest ice cold, causing it to warp and create an island of bare metal in the middle as all the fat runs to a ring around the outside! And since carbon steel is such a bad conductor of heat (10-12x worse than copper or aluminum) no amount of gentle preheating will ever get you a completely even temperature across the whole bottom of a large pan. Notice in the video Andrew only measured the temperature of the pan in the dead centre and not at the edges. If he had you'd see a several hundred degree drop at the edges for carbon steel
@@chongli297 sorry I should have specified. I meant lighter weight than cast iron since that’s a comparable cookware that has natural nonstick properties. In my mind I thought it was obvious since this was a video about carbon steel but after reading my comment again I can see how people would also include teflon pans and stainless steel cookware as well. In the country we primarily cook with cast iron that our grandmas and parents pass down to us so that was what I used until I gravitated towards my parents’ carbon steel pans when I was a kid. The lighter weight and me not usually baking or finishing food off in the oven (I only have the mineral Bs with the epoxy handle), made it a better choice than cast iron. We don’t have any ceramic or teflon nonstick pans in our household and I only use stainless steel cookware to cook acidic food, when I want fond to make a sauce with cooking wine, to boil water, and to heat up soup if I didn’t cook it in a Dutch oven. As for my induction range we have an old GE one that is built into the island. Not sure how old that is, but the house was built in 1982 before my parents were even born and they bought the home in 2008. We never bought a different range and don’t know if the original home owners upgraded since 82-2008. I think the heating ring on that is 10-12”, but I can measure for you when I finish my midterms and come home for Thanksgiving next month. To my knowledge only the smaller portable induction cooktops or the cheaper induction ranges at ikea have a 5” heating element. I’ve used my DeBuyer pans to help my aunt cook Thanksgiving dinners previously and she has a 2022 Samsung induction ranges that’s no where near $6k like the JennAirs of the world. She doesn’t use carbon steel but uses almost cast iron exclusively on her range without any issue. I can see how the portable induction cooktops would give carbon steel and cast iron issues since they don’t have an aluminum or copper core to spread out the heat, but it hasn’t been an issue from my anecdotal experience with a full size induction range. If you’re using a portable induction range with the small heating elements (I think only the Breville control freak and commercial induction cooktops from Avantco, Mirage, Garland, and so forth has an 8-10” heating element), then I would recommend the Strata pan instead. Cook culture did a video about that and the aluminum core spread the heat out pretty decently (not perfect though) compared to standard carbon steel pans
Yeah. Iv had no trouble with my carbon steel pans. Minus I did get a few rust spots years ago but a that Lodge eraser and a re-season fixed that real quick.
I’ve had my carbon steels for several years now and they are beautiful. I keep them beautiful by understanding the limitations: nothing acidic; do not cook/deglaze with wine, citrus, vinegar or tomatoes. Save that for your stainless pans. **Nothing sticks**, and my non-stick pans were traded in years ago. (As non-stick pans degrade within 2 or so years and end up in the landfill, you are, for all intents and purposes, buying garbage)
Finally! Someone who knows what he is talking about. I am a skilled cook and decades ago I purged my kitchen of all aluminum cookware. I have a variety of cookware, stainless steel, cast iron, and 1 lo-carbon steel hand hammered wok. I got that wok in the mid 90s and seasoned it once. It looks ugly but it is the best for making Asian food. It is a round bottomed wok which didn't matter back then since I was using a gas stove. When we moved to our current home which has an electric range it couldn't be used on it since it needs to be in contact with the flame. However, I just happened to have an indoor butane stove that I got from our local Asian grocer that works perfectly with it. Anyway, outside of Asian food most of my cooking is done in stainless cookware. Two of my favorite skillets are American Kitchen by Regalware which are made in the USA. They are thick walled, 100% stainless steel not clad and work very well on an electric stove. I seem to recall they weren't cheap when I bought them about 15 years ago. Gods only know what they go for now. The rest of my stainless is cladware and do a great job making stocks and sauces. Incidentally I've gotten into a few debates on how to clean cast iron especially with people who seem to think the only way to clean them is with rock salt. I've even referred them to the Lodge webpage which describes using mild soap to clean a properly cured cast iron skillet. I use a plastic scrubbie and liquid detergent to clean my wok and cast iron. The scrubbie does a great job of scouring without damaging the coating. I've never heard of Made In cookware but I shall check them out just out of curiosity as I have all the cookware I need for now. Later. Cin, cin!
I have stainless pan for making sauce, cast iron for grilling steak and stir frying, and nonstick for cooking egg and pancake. After I got a mafter carbon steel , I rarely use the other pans. Hands down the most versatile pan and I can use it for everything (except sauce. I still use stainless for that
Buying a non stick to eventually throw it away is silly. A carbon steel pan doesn't just last a lifetime, but generations. I bought a Darto out of Argentina and i love it. It's one piece with no rivets, and the handle isn't coated so you can season it in the oven. Dab paper towel in vegetable oil and cover the pan. Then take a dry piece of paper towel and remove residual oil until the pan is matt and streak free. Put upside down in cold oven. Set to 475 and bake for an hour.Turn off the oven and leave the pan inside to slowly cool down with the oven. I did this six times and have a beautiful evenly blackened pan that is non stick Darto is affordable, half the price as European brands. They offer a 15$ worldwide shipping fee and cover any import costs. They believe the best advertising is getting their pans in as many homes as possible. They don't pay for advertising or for people to manage social media accounts, and pass the savings on to their customers.
@@Kravmagagod so you spent 3-4 days seasoning your pan. Sear one steak and you can do it all over again. Sear a steak and then produce slider eggs. It can’t be done with a lengthy re-season. To me, every re/season is $100 of my time. I am not a hobbyist. I want to cook. My Curtis Stone nonstick is perfect after 5 years, costs one third as much, and requires zero maintenance.
@@alexandermayer2026 I don't spend 5-6 days seasoning the pan. It takes about one minute to oil, open the oven door and place the pan inside. A total of about six minutes. The hour of baking doesn't bother me because I don't stand next to the oven staring at it the whole time. I don't sear steaks in it, I use it to replace non stick. So eggs, grill cheeses and stuff like that. I sear steaks in stainless steel, non stick is very poor at forming a crust. You don't spend a third of the price, you spend a third of the price every five years. Btw, those pans are cheap, there's zero chance you've been searing steaks for five years and they are still in perfect condition. My guess is after six months you already saw considerable degradation in the non stick surface.
I brought my Winco CSFP-12 Polished Carbon Steel French Style Fry Pan for $22 from Tigerchef. It is made in Spain. Professional grade, decent enough for everyday cooking.
@@Kravmagagod wrong, wrong and wrong. The oven method is supposed to cool when it is done naturally in a closed oven - 3 hours. I am still going strong on my nonstick; so you can’t evaluate it on price or performance. I generally don’t sear in it. It was the carbon steel that was supposed to that and completely failed. I generally use my sous vide gun now.
Tip: Use a solid metal spatula for your carbon steel pan, no wood, no plastic. Keeps the pan clean and in most cases wiping it with a kitchen paper afterwards is enough.
I have a Misen carbon steel pan and it works great on my gas stove. I got it to replace my non-stick pans which all eventually failed. I don’t know anything about the Made-In pan but my Misen is pretty thick so it retains heat well and has not warped at all but it’s pretty heavy… not as much as a cast iron pan but definitely heavier than any non-stick pan.
Once I learned how to use my carbon steel it has been a workhorse for searing meat. I used non-stick for a long time and it never got hot enough and the surface would fail over time. The seasoning isnt a perfect non-stick but it is easy to clean. I have messed up my seasoning before and it came right back with just a few coats of oil.
chinese dude here - been using carbon steel woks for 40 years. as you've stated they're great for temperature control, which is critical for stir fry. I tend to use a mix of restaurant supply carbon steel woks for stir fry and deep frying, pre-seasoned BK carbon steel cheapos from Home Goods for general use and discount tramontania stainless skillets from costco for acidics overall for 90% of my cooking - cast iron I use almost exclusively for baking, braising, and pizza. Bottom line is just use the right tool for the right job.
I used to be a big advocate for carbon-steel pans, but after trying a stainless-steel one, it have to say its bliss not having to worry about seasoning and rust. i can cook tomatoes every day of the week without worry, and food does not stick or burn to it like people usually claim. If you get too much sticking just give it a small splash of water and it all releases and gives great flavor to the food.
I appreciate that - I'm always trying to be upfront about sponsorships and provide honest reviews. I'll be releasing some new carbon steel test results in the next week.
I have 2 carbon steel pans that I love and my wok too. However...using his method of wiping iwth a paper towel to see if it's black?...All 3 of mine always wipe black...and if they dont, the food sticks as there's not enough seasoning so I'm not sure how to get to his middle ground as shown in the video.
Hey Andrew! Thanks for making this video on carbon steel pans. Are you ever thinking about doing a full comparison video like the ones you've done for knives, stainless steel, and cast iron? I’m looking to buy some cookware very soon actually. I'm planning on getting new pans like stainless steel, cast iron, and carbon steel along with some new kitchen knives. Your videos have been very helpful in guiding my choices. But because you don’t have a carbon steel comparison video like you do for the other pans, I'm hoping you could reply with a few insights. I’d really appreciate it if you can: - How many different carbon steel pans have you tried so far? - Out of the ones you tried so far, which carbon steel pans do you recommend the most? - Have you compared them to De Buyer and Matfer? I’ve heard those are the best brands. You mentioned Made In in your video, but I've seen a couple of reviewers say their carbon steel isn’t as good as De Buyer’s or Matfer’s. - Have you checked out Smithey’s carbon steel options? They have a shallow one (Farmhouse Skillet) and one with normal depth (Deep Farmhouse Skillet). I learned about Smithey from your video where you rated their cast iron as top-notch. I went to their website to read more about their cast iron pans and that's where I saw that they also had available carbon steel pans. But it’s hard to find reviews let alone ones comparing them directly to others like De Buyer or Matfer, which is both strange and frustrating. They’re quite expensive since each one is handcrafted. That's a nice feature but it doesn't say anything about the performance itself and how their two carbon steel pans compare with the others out there. Would you know how they perform? Would you go with Smithey or stick with De Buyer or Matfer? Thanks for reading my message! If you can answer my questions, that would be a big help as I plan my kitchen purchases soon. And thanks for all your great videos as they really make a difference!
Smithey might look cool but DeBuyer for carbon steel and Lodge for cast iron will also work perfectly. If you go into the fancier more expensive route I recommend Alex Pole Ironworks for carbon steel and Field Company for cast iron. Smithey Carbon steel has low sides which turns them more into a heavy searing pan like a thick DeBuyer. DeBuyer has many different sizes, the thick pans that are almost unwarpable 2,5-3mm thick and the thinner pans of varying thickness 1,5-2mm. Thinner pans with higher walls are very versatile for many apllications. Thicker pans are perfect for searing.
Just visited the Smithey website. Smithey tends to make heavy cookware. More than actually necessary, especially for their cast iron range. Their Carbon steel farmhouse skillet should perform the same as a Debuyer MineralB/Carbone Plus/Pro 28cm frying pan. The Smithey looks cooler though. I live in Europe and I get the Debuyer for 50€ in Amazon. In the US it is probably more expensive. I prefer cookware with higher walls so If I had to choose between the Smithey or something else, I would choose the Field company no.8 and/or no.10. The no.8 has the same smooth cooking surface, similar weight and dimensions (cooking surface is the same), higher walls for more versatility, for half the price.
Seems as though the ideal solution is to purchase what actual restaurants are using. It most likely won’t be any of the boutique brands because they need to hold up to a very abusive environment. But the memory I have for these pans is they are badly warped so as a home cook with an induction stove being as flat as possible is huge. My Matfers have held shape well after around 2years of daily use.
hi prudent, just watched the whole video. i got almost all the information regarding carbon steel cookware. But if you can make a video about carbon steel "BAKEWARE", that would be great as I have just ordered Meyer carbon steel bakeware today and It would be a great headstart for me to start baking in them. Also as baking is not a regular thing in indian household, it would be great if you can tell me how to store the bakeware after using them. Thanks!
The trick to seasoning carbon steel is to heat it, wipe oil on and wipe the oil off until it's dry. Heat it up again for 15 minutes and wipe it dry again for oven seasoning. Continuously wipe it dry for stove top seasoning. You will get flaking if your layers are too thick.
Yeah, I tried the thick glassy seasoning the first or second time I tried to season my stuff, and it looked really nice. The eggs were happy to slide around too. But the surface failed nearly immediately. Thin thin thin. More thin became mo better. My eggs are perfectly happy with their own dedicated teflon egg pan, and the pan itself may likely last ages longer since it never sees a chicken, just the egg
If your cast iron or carbon steel pans are seasoned well, acidic foods won't bother them at all, even when braising in acidic sauce. I've made bolognese with a cast iron dutch oven many times with more tomato sauce than normal and made chili as well... no issues at all.
Carbon steel vs stainless steel vs cast iron. All have positives and negatives. They all have this in common - they need to be seasoned when heating up to be non-stick. Cast iron is the heaviest with SS being the lightest (and maybe most expensive). All 3 maintain heat well. Cast iron is the least expensive out of the 3 but is the heaviest pan. SS is the lightest. When purchasing a frying pan consider the amount of cooking surface. Pans are measured across the top of the pan. Many pans are sloped which decreases the actual cooking surface of the pan. So, a 10" pan may have only 8" of cooking space. Lodge, for example, makes cast iron skillets where the sides are not really sloped providing more cooking coverage. Don't knock aluminum skillets as they are the least expensive skillet and produce similar results as the more expensive ones. BTW I have a 10" cast iron skillet, a 12" All Cald SS skillet and a 10" carbon steel skillet. All work well for what I cook.
But for Asian style stir fried it’s hardly to find similar design like this made in 12 CS pan from other brands, the wall of the pan is higher than de buyers,matfer and darto, also it’s only 2mm so it’s great to cook on gas
I am going to buy a Demeyere Proline 7 pan (i.e. heavy thick pan). Is there any reason to also buy an enameled cast iron pan? Is it worth to have both? For me it seems like they will have very similar properties due to the thickness of Demeyere. Thank you.
Carbon seems to have all the high maintenance of the cast iron pieces I already own. My next pan will probably be stainless Tramontina or Mad In. Thank you for the demonstration.
For value and quality, Tramontina stainless steel pan is a great choice that can hardly go wrong. I brought a set of 10 inches and 12 inches from Costco for $35 on April, and a $20 Infrared thermometer with EMS setting from Amazon. I have ever had anything stick on the pan so far.
Definitely has the maintenance issues of cast iron, due to risk of rust. Highly recommend stainless steel for the busy, lazy, or low effort/maintenance cooks.
Is it really that much maintenance though? The only extra thing you have to do is dry it right after washing and leave it on the stove to get fully dry which doesn't take up any of your time since you can do the rest of your dishes while that's going on.
@@PhilippeCarphin Yes it is a real issue at times. Years back when I was newer to cookware, busy, stressed, a lot going on in my life, it'd be a more laborious task that was unnecessarily cumbersome compared to non stick cleaning, or cleaning regular dishes where you can just soak them and not worry about rust. A good chunk of the general population benefit greatly from the soaking method or less involved cooking methods like baking and air frying. Too busy with their own lives and prioritizing their time for other things, and not having the attention budget to learn and develop cast iron maintenance habits.
Hey, I noticed u have their griddle there, how u tried using it on your electric stove top? How does it work? Does it heat evenly? Does it lay flat? Thanks, awesome video btw.
Thank you! It takes a little while to heat up and the middle between the two burners won’t be as hot in the first few minutes. But if you preheat it, it works really well - great for pancakes. You can also keep one side cooler/hotter than the other for cooking different foods or keeping things warm.
My everyday pan is a thick carbon steel pan I bought in Japan from Riverlight. I like my Stargazer but, maybe because it’s so expensive, I don’t use it every day so the seasoning isn’t as good.
Field is a good example of this. It's very similar to carbon steel. The big difference is carbon steel pans typically have longer handles that stay cooler since they are a separate piece.
I would add that better carbon steel pans will be as heavy as thin cast iron, or premium stainless steel. DeBuyer's, or Matfer's carbon steel will smoke a Made-in's. There's a lot of review comparisons on YT with actual cooking comparisons. Made-In is highly competitive when it comes to stainless though. Also, how easy they are to clean make up for the 30 secs it takes to season it. Nothing cleans easier than a seasoned carbon steel pan, period!
After throwing out my (yet another) worn out nonstick pan and spending 1 day watching dozens of cast iron vs enameled cast iron vs stainless steel vs carbon steel vs enameled carbon steel pan comparisons, I am totally lost. My $20 thick aluminium pans with ceramic nonstick coating could handle anything - searing, frying, tomato sauces, eggs in various forms, simmering for a couple of hours, after all of which I could put them straight into a dishwasher or fill them with water or leaving them dirty and half-submerged for a couple of days (and then put into a dishwasher) - and they would simply come out clean and ready for next use. Yes, they have to be replaced every 3-5 years, but heck, I don't have to care about heating them on medium low, seasoning, not cooking tomatoes or with wine, (not) cooking eggs, avoiding washing with dish soap and god knows what else - and it turns out these skillets were the most versatile and the cheapest of the bunch. It seems that for a $200 Le Creuset one can have 10 of them, which translates to up to 50 years of use and unparallelled versality.
carbon steel does a better job of being non stick, although in my experience there's not much difference between them in terms of say, frying an egg. One big difference is cleaning - it's easier to clean a carbon steel pan after frying an egg than it is on a stainless pan, since unless you're cooking on the lowest temperature, the non-contact spots on the stainless will start to polymerize which is not really great thing to happen on your stainless pan to keep it non stick for the next use. You must clean stainless to spotless every time to get non stick performance. Not the case with carbon steel. You can be super lazy with it and it's fine.
You can get carbon steel pans that are thick and made out of a single piece. Darto and Solidteknics are two of them. I really like my solidteknics pan, It feels like a blend of cast iron and carbon steel. Both those brands are superior to the ones in this video like de buyer.
My induction “burner” warped several carbon steel pans after a few uses, so that they didn’t have flat bottoms. Maybe some induction hobs wouldn’t. I’ve given up on them. I’ve never had an induction-ready stainless steel pan warp in that way, but the ones I’ve tried are laminated. If they were magnetic stainless steel and all one piece, maybe they’d warp too?
Now, these carbon-steel pans were from no-name makers, though branded Guy Fieri, and maybe expensive ones would not have warped. The 12” was $25 and the 10” $20 in 2015. (Or so says my record of Amazon purchases.) Maybe a $100 pan from a famous maker wouldn’t have warped. I don’t know. Maybe if I buy an expensive one through Amazon they’ll let me return it for a refund should it warp.
I also warped one, but it was my fault, I heated it up too fast. Especially with induction you can pump far more heat into the pan faster than the material can distribute, the result is warping. Always start on low setting.
The Made-In carbon steel skillet really isn't the best one to be running all these comparison tests. They use exceptionally thinner gauge compared to the other popular brands, which is why their carbon steel line notoriously gets poor reviews compared to their other products. This cost-cutting shortcut causes their pan to heat unevenly as well as scorch its seasoning, causing it to flake off. It would've been nice to see these comparison tests run on a more mainstream skillet, like a Matfer.
Carbon steel, because of its low carbon content and smoother surface, doesn't season as well as cast iron. This is why when cooking in a wok, they always tell you to "pass oil" as a first step. This is where you get the pan hot, then add oil, lots of it, and aggressively swirl it around until it's smoking, and dump the excess oil. It's similar to the De Buyer recommended seasoning process. This "pass oil" effectively seasons the pan on the spot and makes cooking non-stick.
Interesting. I have had a made in China hand hammered wok since the mid 90s and once seasoned never needed more than a tsp of peanut oil once hot. I've watched quite a few Asian cooks male and female on youtube and they don't "pass oil". They use a bit more oil than I do but I guess it's by preference. When I make egg fried rice I use very little oil and the egg never sticks. One of the most common mistakes made with woks is not heating the wok before adding the oil. Back when I got my wok I was discussing it with an Asian co-worker who told me to remember, "Hot wok, cold oil, food doesn't stick.".
Nice video. I like stainless steel because I've heard from different videos and information sources that cast iron and carbon steel can both release iron into your food and it can build up to where you have too much iron in your system. They used to use this as a selling point - you get iron when you cook, but it can be too much iron, and I think most of us that eat a well-balanced diet get enough iron.
Stainless steel releases nickel and chromium into your food, nonstick releases micro plastics. The iron released by your pans is nonabsorbable which means it just passes through your system and is not dangerous. If cooking with them is causing excess iron in your system, maybe try and lay off the red meat.
My comment about carbonsteel on induction has been taken down 2 times, this is my last attempt to warn people about buying thin carbon steel frypans for induction cooktops!
@@SolarCookingGermany I think UA-cam is automatically taking down site references, but if anyone interested in knowing about induction cooking with carbonsteel and other cookware, one can search this on Google: "High level induction stove, cookware and cooking guide. The good the bad and the ugly!"
@@SolarCookingGermany I am allowed to post comments about controversial topics like wars, politics and mental ilness, and site with external sources, but im God forbid NOT allowed to talk any debt about cooking on a cooking comment section 🤷
Seasoning... I don't find it daunting anymore, but I do find it tedious. And since you can't season a pan evenly over electric, you have to do it in the oven which turns out to be a big chore and a huge waste of electricity. One of the advantages of carbon steel + gas is that the pan seasons itself as you cook, the flames rolling up and around the sides of the pan insure a nice even seasoning at the edges of the cooking surface and the side walls. On electric this just doesn't happen at all. It's very frustrating!
The electricity used by ovens is way less than most people think, I dont remember the numbers at the moment bit it’s about cents per hours. Energy used for stoves, either gas or electric, is not cheaper.
@@profchaos9001 Be that as it may, having to season separately and repeatedly in the oven is a longer, more time-consuming and tedious process than seasoning once and then having the cookware get seasoned naturally by cooking. The simple act of searing a steak in a carbon steel pan causes lots of fat to splash all over the sides of the pan. On a gas stove the sides of the pan are hot enough for this fat to polymerize and incorporate into the seasoning. On an electric stove the sides of the pan are much cooler so this fat becomes a sticky mess for you to clean up rather than providing more layers of seasoning the build up over time
Atleast in my country, as I've read, the electric oven seasoning is around 100 times more expensive than a simple stove top seasoning in a typical home electric oven.
I have an electric stove and oven. Also have carbon steel and cast iron pans and cook with them constantly. For me it is the superior cookware in terms of performance at the cost of seasoning. Especially for dry cooking aplliances. For the average cook this might not be of importance and I would recommend using a teflon pan and stainless pots/pans. I just dont like stainless pans. I gave them try and hope, but in every single metric a carbon steel of the same size outperforms. This is my experience. The high quality nonstick is essential for so many things and stainless is not at the level of nonstick. Getting stainless to be nonstick very often requires to overheat oils and fats to a certain temperature which alters taste. Carbon steel is very forgiving and highly nonstick for so many things. About seasoning: I understand what you mean but I will give you a tip: If your electric stove works for cooking it will also work for seasoning. Yes, the sides will not season well except in the oven but it does not matter for most applications. I season the pan on the stove and if I bake something I just preheat the oven with the pan and let it season on the way. It just takes for me the upper rack at 475f (250c) for 15 mins or so. When I season on the stove, I season the surface and then rinse with hot water after letting cool for some seconds. The hot water lifts the leftover grease from the sides and you get a perfectly cleaned pan. Cast iron pans have high sides and most of the time not even a gas stove can season the sides well. Which is the same problem. But the oven can. And you do not need to season the sides all the time because usually it does not wear off. The cooking surface requires the most seasoning after cooking. The beauty about carbon steel is it seasons very quickly compared to cast iron. Thinner pans. Upper oven rack: the preheating time it takes to get to 475f. Stovetop 5 mins. Seasoning is something that happens along the way. There are many ways to season. Sometimes you dont need to season. Sometimes you can season later. I would only recommend iron cookware to someone that is interested in exploring their culinary abilities and not for someone that just wants to make themselves a meal. It also depends what you are cooking. For some cuisines like the italian, you might not require iron cookware. Like for pasta, lasagna, risotto, pizza, etc. But for more baking, roasting, pan frying, etc, there where you take advantage of high heat, bare cast iron and carbon steel are the only thing that perform to the fullest.
I have only bought madein pans for a few years now. But… The madein carbon steel pans are shaped poorly. The bottom of the pan is too small. For 2 people, I cook primarily on 10” pans. The SS are great, can fit 2 ribeyes no issue, but in carbon steel, it’s so small, I can only do one. Sears great, and is great in the oven, but if I can’t cook 2 at once, then it’s useless. Their stainless steel pans are the best. So skip the carbon steel unless you get the 12”. Just know the usable space in the 12” is about the size as the SS 10”
I mention it at the 2:13 mark and the video is tagged so there’s a huge “sponsored” label in the top left right from the start of the video, and I mention it in the description. What else would you suggest?
Other channels mention it from the top and sometimes in the title. Just a suggestion for clarity. I absolutely appreciate the high level of serious work you put into your videos
I’m in the process of testing it and so far I’m a fan. I’m planning to do a comparison of several carbon steel brands soon - Matfer, de Buyer, Made In, Strata etc.
I can't stand the taste or smell of carbon steel pans. I know I'm in the minority, but the metallic taste turns my stomach. I've tried several brands and it's always there.
I’ve genuinely tried to like and use the carbon steel pan I have, but it’s just too much of a pain to deal with, plus it doesn’t distribute heat well and tends to smoke like crazy, not for me
Carbon steel does not heat evenly on glasstop or induction. My Matfer warps on my glasstop, then flattens when it cools, just when I don’t need it. Searing a steak ruins the seasoning every time. You can’t cook scrambled eggs on low temp on carbon steel without massive sticking. A French omelette is really difficult with carbon steel due to uneven heating. Carbon steel leeches, including arsenic, and leaves a metallic taste (Uncle Scott on a carbon steel paella pan). Heat retention is a myth unless you want to use an ugly frying pan as a serving dish. With carbon steel you worry about your seasoning not about nailing the recipe for your food. Carbon steel is an outdated material unless you have just the right size burner that runs flame up the sides of the pan. With stainless and no more temp control than you need with carbon steel. This is 5 years of experience with a top brand carbon steel. Case closed.
That was my honest to God experience. Seasoning comes on and off, and you cannot use carbon steel on a glass top. It will warp and bend exactly as you described, even if you only turn the heat up to medium and never wash the pan when it's hot. I think stainless steel and cast iron both have their pros and cons and I love them for different purposes, but carbon steel to me was the "worst of both worlds."
Although some carbon steel pans are more prone to warping than others (Matfer vs. Debuyer like in your example), it remains a problem nonetheless. You can see the warping in the Madein pan as it's spinning while he's attempting to take it's temp. I went with Darto which seems resistant to this so far (albeit a bit heavier than most carbon steel, but has the added bonus of being a one piece pan).
What’s your take on carbon steel woks since cast iron ones are pretty much not used anymore? Also, people seem to not like stainless steel woks because of sticking…
@@ConqueredSunwhat carbon steel pan do you have? I’ve used my DeBuyer carbon steel pans for most of my life on an induction range older than me and glass ranges with zero issues. Never had any of them warp and it’s super nonstick despite my pans almost never turning completely black
@@JacksonWalter735 Matfer Bourgeat. I have to admit that the one I got was part of a batch that was recalled by the French government for safety problems, so my view on the material may have been colored thus.
I hate the phrase "Carbon Steel." I hate it because it is marketing bullshit. Those pans are stamped (it's the cheapest manufacturing method in the world), and they are made from s cheapest steel money can buy which is A-36. And the addition of the word Carbon to the word Steel is redundant. There is no alloy of steel called Carbon Steel. ALL steel has carbon in it. ALL. So marketing filth invented the phrase to fool unsuspecting cooks into thinking there was something special about them. There isn't. They are all stamped from cheap steel and the prices they charge for them are mind bendingly insane. Not one made anywhere should sell for more than ten or twelve dollars and that'd be high. In truth they are the exact same stamped steel pans used by cowboys on the trail in the 1700 and 1800s.
Carbon steel is not new. We've been using it for ages, as you say. If it isn't broke, it doesn't need fixing. In general IMO the whole elitism regarding cookware itself is ridiculous. End of the day they're all just ancient old chunks of crap dug up out of the ground and beaten or poured into a useful shape. Doesn't really matter how it's done and overall people overthink all of it. If you know how to cook (and have a fat) then anything is non stick. Does it matter what we call it? I don't think so. Then again I've never been one to pay a lot of money for cookware. The only rule I have been on with the times is to skip non-stick. If you are in the carbon steel camp, stainless camp, or cast iron camp, you're already ahead of the game because your cookware is going to last exponentially longer than the non stick camp.
I jumped in with both feet and now I have a mess of these suckers in the garage waiting to be taken to the church rummage sale. Ugly, greasy spoon looking stuff. I don't want to eat food cooked in them. Yuck!
I have been using DeBuyer carbon steel pants for about 4 years now. I am starting to find them very tedious for daily cooking. And their seasoning does not retain over the years at all even though the majority of cooking I do is frying. Any moisture in the pan and the seasoning comes off with a metallic taste. I’m replacing my carbon steel pan with stainless steel pan for convenience and consistency.
I’m honestly surprised by the amount of negative comments regarding carbon steel pans on here. I want to say it’s a skill issue, but I don’t know what they’re doing with their carbon steel pans. I’ve been using my parents’ DeBuyer carbon steel pans for my entire life on an induction range that’s even older than me. I also used it on glass cooktops too now that I moved away for college. My pans have never warped on me, are a dream to clean and season, and the lighter weight makes it my go to pan for almost all my cooking unless I’m baking, frying, or cooking acidic food. The pros of stovetop seasoning my carbon steel pans made me use that method to season all my cast iron cookware too. While my carbon steel pans never turn completely black like my cast iron skillets, they’re still nonstick. It’s a workhorse pan not a looker 🤷🏼
Lighter weight? You must be joking. I have a DeBuyer Mineral B Pro. It's 3mm thick of carbon steel and heavy as a tank. My All-Clad copper core pan is much lighter! What do you have, a $6000 top-of-the-line induction range? Most induction ranges have tiny coils (5" diameter) which will get the middle of your pan screaming hot and leave the rest ice cold, causing it to warp and create an island of bare metal in the middle as all the fat runs to a ring around the outside! And since carbon steel is such a bad conductor of heat (10-12x worse than copper or aluminum) no amount of gentle preheating will ever get you a completely even temperature across the whole bottom of a large pan. Notice in the video Andrew only measured the temperature of the pan in the dead centre and not at the edges. If he had you'd see a several hundred degree drop at the edges for carbon steel
@@chongli297 sorry I should have specified. I meant lighter weight than cast iron since that’s a comparable cookware that has natural nonstick properties. In my mind I thought it was obvious since this was a video about carbon steel but after reading my comment again I can see how people would also include teflon pans and stainless steel cookware as well. In the country we primarily cook with cast iron that our grandmas and parents pass down to us so that was what I used until I gravitated towards my parents’ carbon steel pans when I was a kid. The lighter weight and me not usually baking or finishing food off in the oven (I only have the mineral Bs with the epoxy handle), made it a better choice than cast iron. We don’t have any ceramic or teflon nonstick pans in our household and I only use stainless steel cookware to cook acidic food, when I want fond to make a sauce with cooking wine, to boil water, and to heat up soup if I didn’t cook it in a Dutch oven.
As for my induction range we have an old GE one that is built into the island. Not sure how old that is, but the house was built in 1982 before my parents were even born and they bought the home in 2008. We never bought a different range and don’t know if the original home owners upgraded since 82-2008. I think the heating ring on that is 10-12”, but I can measure for you when I finish my midterms and come home for Thanksgiving next month. To my knowledge only the smaller portable induction cooktops or the cheaper induction ranges at ikea have a 5” heating element. I’ve used my DeBuyer pans to help my aunt cook Thanksgiving dinners previously and she has a 2022 Samsung induction ranges that’s no where near $6k like the JennAirs of the world. She doesn’t use carbon steel but uses almost cast iron exclusively on her range without any issue. I can see how the portable induction cooktops would give carbon steel and cast iron issues since they don’t have an aluminum or copper core to spread out the heat, but it hasn’t been an issue from my anecdotal experience with a full size induction range.
If you’re using a portable induction range with the small heating elements (I think only the Breville control freak and commercial induction cooktops from Avantco, Mirage, Garland, and so forth has an 8-10” heating element), then I would recommend the Strata pan instead. Cook culture did a video about that and the aluminum core spread the heat out pretty decently (not perfect though) compared to standard carbon steel pans
Yeah. Iv had no trouble with my carbon steel pans. Minus I did get a few rust spots years ago but a that Lodge eraser and a re-season fixed that real quick.
People talking crap about carbon steel and stainless steel are those who believe a 300 dollar junk hexclad that lasts 2 ys tops is better
I’ve had my carbon steels for several years now and they are beautiful. I keep them beautiful by understanding the limitations: nothing acidic; do not cook/deglaze with wine, citrus, vinegar or tomatoes. Save that for your stainless pans. **Nothing sticks**, and my non-stick pans were traded in years ago. (As non-stick pans degrade within 2 or so years and end up in the landfill, you are, for all intents and purposes, buying garbage)
Finally! Someone who knows what he is talking about. I am a skilled cook and decades ago I purged my kitchen of all aluminum cookware. I have a variety of cookware, stainless steel, cast iron, and 1 lo-carbon steel hand hammered wok. I got that wok in the mid 90s and seasoned it once. It looks ugly but it is the best for making Asian food. It is a round bottomed wok which didn't matter back then since I was using a gas stove. When we moved to our current home which has an electric range it couldn't be used on it since it needs to be in contact with the flame. However, I just happened to have an indoor butane stove that I got from our local Asian grocer that works perfectly with it. Anyway, outside of Asian food most of my cooking is done in stainless cookware. Two of my favorite skillets are American Kitchen by Regalware which are made in the USA. They are thick walled, 100% stainless steel not clad and work very well on an electric stove. I seem to recall they weren't cheap when I bought them about 15 years ago. Gods only know what they go for now. The rest of my stainless is cladware and do a great job making stocks and sauces. Incidentally I've gotten into a few debates on how to clean cast iron especially with people who seem to think the only way to clean them is with rock salt. I've even referred them to the Lodge webpage which describes using mild soap to clean a properly cured cast iron skillet. I use a plastic scrubbie and liquid detergent to clean my wok and cast iron. The scrubbie does a great job of scouring without damaging the coating. I've never heard of Made In cookware but I shall check them out just out of curiosity as I have all the cookware I need for now. Later. Cin, cin!
I have stainless pan for making sauce, cast iron for grilling steak and stir frying, and nonstick for cooking egg and pancake. After I got a mafter carbon steel , I rarely use the other pans. Hands down the most versatile pan and I can use it for everything (except sauce. I still use stainless for that
Buying a non stick to eventually throw it away is silly. A carbon steel pan doesn't just last a lifetime, but generations.
I bought a Darto out of Argentina and i love it.
It's one piece with no rivets, and the handle isn't coated so you can season it in the oven.
Dab paper towel in vegetable oil and cover the pan. Then take a dry piece of paper towel and remove residual oil until the pan is matt and streak free. Put upside down in cold oven. Set to 475 and bake for an hour.Turn off the oven and leave the pan inside to slowly cool down with the oven.
I did this six times and have a beautiful evenly blackened pan that is non stick
Darto is affordable, half the price as European brands. They offer a 15$ worldwide shipping fee and cover any import costs. They believe the best advertising is getting their pans in as many homes as possible. They don't pay for advertising or for people to manage social media accounts, and pass the savings on to their customers.
@@Kravmagagod so you spent 3-4 days seasoning your pan. Sear one steak and you can do it all over again. Sear a steak and then produce slider eggs. It can’t be done with a lengthy re-season. To me, every re/season is $100 of my time. I am not a hobbyist. I want to cook. My Curtis Stone nonstick is perfect after 5 years, costs one third as much, and requires zero maintenance.
@@alexandermayer2026
I don't spend 5-6 days seasoning the pan. It takes about one minute to oil, open the oven door and place the pan inside. A total of about six minutes. The hour of baking doesn't bother me because I don't stand next to the oven staring at it the whole time.
I don't sear steaks in it, I use it to replace non stick. So eggs, grill cheeses and stuff like that. I sear steaks in stainless steel, non stick is very poor at forming a crust.
You don't spend a third of the price, you spend a third of the price every five years. Btw, those pans are cheap, there's zero chance you've been searing steaks for five years and they are still in perfect condition. My guess is after six months you already saw considerable degradation in the non stick surface.
I brought my Winco CSFP-12 Polished Carbon Steel French Style Fry Pan for $22 from Tigerchef. It is made in Spain. Professional grade, decent enough for everyday cooking.
@@sysopr
Great value.
@@Kravmagagod wrong, wrong and wrong. The oven method is supposed to cool when it is done naturally in a closed oven - 3 hours. I am still going strong on my nonstick; so you can’t evaluate it on price or performance. I generally don’t sear in it. It was the carbon steel that was supposed to that and completely failed. I generally use my sous vide gun now.
Tip: Use a solid metal spatula for your carbon steel pan, no wood, no plastic. Keeps the pan clean and in most cases wiping it with a kitchen paper afterwards is enough.
I have a Misen carbon steel pan and it works great on my gas stove. I got it to replace my non-stick pans which all eventually failed. I don’t know anything about the Made-In pan but my Misen is pretty thick so it retains heat well and has not warped at all but it’s pretty heavy… not as much as a cast iron pan but definitely heavier than any non-stick pan.
Once I learned how to use my carbon steel it has been a workhorse for searing meat. I used non-stick for a long time and it never got hot enough and the surface would fail over time.
The seasoning isnt a perfect non-stick but it is easy to clean.
I have messed up my seasoning before and it came right back with just a few coats of oil.
Love to hear it!
chinese dude here - been using carbon steel woks for 40 years. as you've stated they're great for temperature control, which is critical for stir fry. I tend to use a mix of restaurant supply carbon steel woks for stir fry and deep frying, pre-seasoned BK carbon steel cheapos from Home Goods for general use and discount tramontania stainless skillets from costco for acidics overall for 90% of my cooking - cast iron I use almost exclusively for baking, braising, and pizza. Bottom line is just use the right tool for the right job.
Awesome honest coverage, thx
I appreciate that!
I like how you get to the point and keep it brief and concise, I don't have the patience to watch 20 minutes of wasted video
bro? ts was not brief you gotta be trolling LOL
I used to be a big advocate for carbon-steel pans, but after trying a stainless-steel one, it have to say its bliss not having to worry about seasoning and rust.
i can cook tomatoes every day of the week without worry, and food does not stick or burn to it like people usually claim.
If you get too much sticking just give it a small splash of water and it all releases and gives great flavor to the food.
Very fair assessment even if the video was sponsored by them, I think the assessment was fair none the less and not as biased. Good video, thumbs up.
I appreciate that - I'm always trying to be upfront about sponsorships and provide honest reviews. I'll be releasing some new carbon steel test results in the next week.
I have 2 carbon steel pans that I love and my wok too. However...using his method of wiping iwth a paper towel to see if it's black?...All 3 of mine always wipe black...and if they dont, the food sticks as there's not enough seasoning so I'm not sure how to get to his middle ground as shown in the video.
Hey Andrew! Thanks for making this video on carbon steel pans. Are you ever thinking about doing a full comparison video like the ones you've done for knives, stainless steel, and cast iron? I’m looking to buy some cookware very soon actually. I'm planning on getting new pans like stainless steel, cast iron, and carbon steel along with some new kitchen knives. Your videos have been very helpful in guiding my choices. But because you don’t have a carbon steel comparison video like you do for the other pans, I'm hoping you could reply with a few insights. I’d really appreciate it if you can:
- How many different carbon steel pans have you tried so far?
- Out of the ones you tried so far, which carbon steel pans do you recommend the most?
- Have you compared them to De Buyer and Matfer? I’ve heard those are the best brands. You mentioned Made In in your video, but I've seen a couple of reviewers say their carbon steel isn’t as good as De Buyer’s or Matfer’s.
- Have you checked out Smithey’s carbon steel options? They have a shallow one (Farmhouse Skillet) and one with normal depth (Deep Farmhouse Skillet). I learned about Smithey from your video where you rated their cast iron as top-notch. I went to their website to read more about their cast iron pans and that's where I saw that they also had available carbon steel pans. But it’s hard to find reviews let alone ones comparing them directly to others like De Buyer or Matfer, which is both strange and frustrating. They’re quite expensive since each one is handcrafted. That's a nice feature but it doesn't say anything about the performance itself and how their two carbon steel pans compare with the others out there. Would you know how they perform? Would you go with Smithey or stick with De Buyer or Matfer?
Thanks for reading my message! If you can answer my questions, that would be a big help as I plan my kitchen purchases soon. And thanks for all your great videos as they really make a difference!
Happy to answer your questions. Please shoot me an email so I don’t forget Andrew@PrudentReviews.com
Smithey might look cool but DeBuyer for carbon steel and Lodge for cast iron will also work perfectly. If you go into the fancier more expensive route I recommend Alex Pole Ironworks for carbon steel and Field Company for cast iron. Smithey Carbon steel has low sides which turns them more into a heavy searing pan like a thick DeBuyer.
DeBuyer has many different sizes, the thick pans that are almost unwarpable 2,5-3mm thick and the thinner pans of varying thickness 1,5-2mm.
Thinner pans with higher walls are very versatile for many apllications. Thicker pans are perfect for searing.
Just visited the Smithey website. Smithey tends to make heavy cookware. More than actually necessary, especially for their cast iron range.
Their Carbon steel farmhouse skillet should perform the same as a Debuyer MineralB/Carbone Plus/Pro 28cm frying pan. The Smithey looks cooler though.
I live in Europe and I get the Debuyer for 50€ in Amazon. In the US it is probably more expensive.
I prefer cookware with higher walls so If I had to choose between the Smithey or something else, I would choose the Field company no.8 and/or no.10. The no.8 has the same smooth cooking surface, similar weight and dimensions (cooking surface is the same), higher walls for more versatility, for half the price.
Seems as though the ideal solution is to purchase what actual restaurants are using. It most likely won’t be any of the boutique brands because they need to hold up to a very abusive environment.
But the memory I have for these pans is they are badly warped so as a home cook with an induction stove being as flat as possible is huge.
My Matfers have held shape well after around 2years of daily use.
hi prudent, just watched the whole video. i got almost all the information regarding carbon steel cookware. But if you can make a video about carbon steel "BAKEWARE", that would be great as I have just ordered Meyer carbon steel bakeware today and It would be a great headstart for me to start baking in them. Also as baking is not a regular thing in indian household, it would be great if you can tell me how to store the bakeware after using them. Thanks!
I love reviews like this. Not to long yet not half as***d.
De buyer VS. Merten and storck? Which one is better?
The trick to seasoning carbon steel is to heat it, wipe oil on and wipe the oil off until it's dry. Heat it up again for 15 minutes and wipe it dry again for oven seasoning. Continuously wipe it dry for stove top seasoning. You will get flaking if your layers are too thick.
Great advice ^
Exactly, very thin layer of oil is the key on seasoning carbon steel. 👍👍
The advice I saw recently is you want to wipe it down like you're trying to wipe off all the oil. You won't and what's left will be the right amount.
Yeah, I tried the thick glassy seasoning the first or second time I tried to season my stuff, and it looked really nice. The eggs were happy to slide around too.
But the surface failed nearly immediately.
Thin thin thin.
More thin became mo better.
My eggs are perfectly happy with their own dedicated teflon egg pan, and the pan itself may likely last ages longer since it never sees a chicken, just the egg
If your cast iron or carbon steel pans are seasoned well, acidic foods won't bother them at all, even when braising in acidic sauce. I've made bolognese with a cast iron dutch oven many times with more tomato sauce than normal and made chili as well... no issues at all.
Carbon steel vs stainless steel vs cast iron. All have positives and negatives. They all have this in common - they need to be seasoned when heating up to be non-stick. Cast iron is the heaviest with SS being the lightest (and maybe most expensive). All 3 maintain heat well. Cast iron is the least expensive out of the 3 but is the heaviest pan. SS is the lightest. When purchasing a frying pan consider the amount of cooking surface. Pans are measured across the top of the pan. Many pans are sloped which decreases the actual cooking surface of the pan. So, a 10" pan may have only 8" of cooking space. Lodge, for example, makes cast iron skillets where the sides are not really sloped providing more cooking coverage. Don't knock aluminum skillets as they are the least expensive skillet and produce similar results as the more expensive ones. BTW I have a 10" cast iron skillet, a 12" All Cald SS skillet and a 10" carbon steel skillet. All work well for what I cook.
You should review the new strata carbon clad skillets.
In progress! :)
Good video. I still prefer stainless steel. Thanks :)
I would recommend Matfer and DeBuyer carbon steel pans 100x over the Made In.
I’ll be doing a full comparison of these brands (plus others) soon
But for Asian style stir fried it’s hardly to find similar design like this made in 12 CS pan from other brands, the wall of the pan is higher than de buyers,matfer and darto, also it’s only 2mm so it’s great to cook on gas
@interestingidea6502 Thats one use case. For most types of cooking a thicker CS pan is superior.
@@PrudentReviews I would love to see reviews of darto and solidteknics, as they are far superior to mafter and debuyer.
Did you try to season carbon steel like asian wok to blue ferrum oxide color?
I am going to buy a Demeyere Proline 7 pan (i.e. heavy thick pan). Is there any reason to also buy an enameled cast iron pan? Is it worth to have both? For me it seems like they will have very similar properties due to the thickness of Demeyere. Thank you.
No not really. Both heat up slow but retain heat well. Not a huge difference in performance. Enjoy!
Carbon seems to have all the high maintenance of the cast iron pieces I already own. My next pan will probably be stainless Tramontina or Mad In. Thank you for the demonstration.
For value and quality, Tramontina stainless steel pan is a great choice that can hardly go wrong. I brought a set of 10 inches and 12 inches from Costco for $35 on April, and a $20 Infrared thermometer with EMS setting from Amazon. I have ever had anything stick on the pan so far.
Definitely has the maintenance issues of cast iron, due to risk of rust.
Highly recommend stainless steel for the busy, lazy, or low effort/maintenance cooks.
Is it really that much maintenance though? The only extra thing you have to do is dry it right after washing and leave it on the stove to get fully dry which doesn't take up any of your time since you can do the rest of your dishes while that's going on.
@@PhilippeCarphin
Yes it is a real issue at times.
Years back when I was newer to cookware, busy, stressed, a lot going on in my life, it'd be a more laborious task that was unnecessarily cumbersome compared to non stick cleaning, or cleaning regular dishes where you can just soak them and not worry about rust.
A good chunk of the general population benefit greatly from the soaking method or less involved cooking methods like baking and air frying. Too busy with their own lives and prioritizing their time for other things, and not having the attention budget to learn and develop cast iron maintenance habits.
@@PhilippeCarphinit's not. It doesn't rust nearly as fast as cast iron and the seasoning is very easy.
Hey, I noticed u have their griddle there, how u tried using it on your electric stove top? How does it work? Does it heat evenly? Does it lay flat? Thanks, awesome video btw.
Thank you! It takes a little while to heat up and the middle between the two burners won’t be as hot in the first few minutes. But if you preheat it, it works really well - great for pancakes. You can also keep one side cooler/hotter than the other for cooking different foods or keeping things warm.
My everyday pan is a thick carbon steel pan I bought in Japan from Riverlight. I like my Stargazer but, maybe because it’s so expensive, I don’t use it every day so the seasoning isn’t as good.
Why would you not use an expensive cart iron pan?
@@boredboiseboy I think I subconsciously feel like I should save it for more special food, like a nice steak.
@@peterl.104 I use mine for everything, the more you use it the better it gets 👍🏻
@@boredboiseboy I agree. I will try to share the love to both my pans
What about machined smooth cast iron that is as thin as carbon steel?
Field is a good example of this. It's very similar to carbon steel. The big difference is carbon steel pans typically have longer handles that stay cooler since they are a separate piece.
I would add that better carbon steel pans will be as heavy as thin cast iron, or premium stainless steel. DeBuyer's, or Matfer's carbon steel will smoke a Made-in's. There's a lot of review comparisons on YT with actual cooking comparisons. Made-In is highly competitive when it comes to stainless though. Also, how easy they are to clean make up for the 30 secs it takes to season it. Nothing cleans easier than a seasoned carbon steel pan, period!
After throwing out my (yet another) worn out nonstick pan and spending 1 day watching dozens of cast iron vs enameled cast iron vs stainless steel vs carbon steel vs enameled carbon steel pan comparisons, I am totally lost. My $20 thick aluminium pans with ceramic nonstick coating could handle anything - searing, frying, tomato sauces, eggs in various forms, simmering for a couple of hours, after all of which I could put them straight into a dishwasher or fill them with water or leaving them dirty and half-submerged for a couple of days (and then put into a dishwasher) - and they would simply come out clean and ready for next use. Yes, they have to be replaced every 3-5 years, but heck, I don't have to care about heating them on medium low, seasoning, not cooking tomatoes or with wine, (not) cooking eggs, avoiding washing with dish soap and god knows what else - and it turns out these skillets were the most versatile and the cheapest of the bunch. It seems that for a $200 Le Creuset one can have 10 of them, which translates to up to 50 years of use and unparallelled versality.
The “benefits” of carbon steel seems to be the cons or reasons why you said to avoid cheap thin stainless pans so what would be the difference there?
carbon steel does a better job of being non stick, although in my experience there's not much difference between them in terms of say, frying an egg. One big difference is cleaning - it's easier to clean a carbon steel pan after frying an egg than it is on a stainless pan, since unless you're cooking on the lowest temperature, the non-contact spots on the stainless will start to polymerize which is not really great thing to happen on your stainless pan to keep it non stick for the next use. You must clean stainless to spotless every time to get non stick performance. Not the case with carbon steel. You can be super lazy with it and it's fine.
Excellent video
Thank you!
You can get carbon steel pans that are thick and made out of a single piece. Darto and Solidteknics are two of them. I really like my solidteknics pan, It feels like a blend of cast iron and carbon steel. Both those brands are superior to the ones in this video like de buyer.
My induction “burner” warped several carbon steel pans after a few uses, so that they didn’t have flat bottoms. Maybe some induction hobs wouldn’t. I’ve given up on them.
I’ve never had an induction-ready stainless steel pan warp in that way, but the ones I’ve tried are laminated. If they were magnetic stainless steel and all one piece, maybe they’d warp too?
Now, these carbon-steel pans were from no-name makers, though branded Guy Fieri, and maybe expensive ones would not have warped. The 12” was $25 and the 10” $20 in 2015. (Or so says my record of Amazon purchases.) Maybe a $100 pan from a famous maker wouldn’t have warped. I don’t know. Maybe if I buy an expensive one through Amazon they’ll let me return it for a refund should it warp.
I also warped one, but it was my fault, I heated it up too fast. Especially with induction you can pump far more heat into the pan faster than the material can distribute, the result is warping. Always start on low setting.
I have the "Merten & Storck" 12" carbon steel skillet ($40 on Amazon) and have had no issues using it on induction even on high heat.
This was helpful!
Great to hear! Thanks for watching
My stainless pan sears better than my iron pan, weighing less, win win.
I think that heat conduction is key here.
The Made-In carbon steel skillet really isn't the best one to be running all these comparison tests. They use exceptionally thinner gauge compared to the other popular brands, which is why their carbon steel line notoriously gets poor reviews compared to their other products. This cost-cutting shortcut causes their pan to heat unevenly as well as scorch its seasoning, causing it to flake off. It would've been nice to see these comparison tests run on a more mainstream skillet, like a Matfer.
Carbon steel, because of its low carbon content and smoother surface, doesn't season as well as cast iron.
This is why when cooking in a wok, they always tell you to "pass oil" as a first step. This is where you get the pan hot, then add oil, lots of it, and aggressively swirl it around until it's smoking, and dump the excess oil. It's similar to the De Buyer recommended seasoning process.
This "pass oil" effectively seasons the pan on the spot and makes cooking non-stick.
Thanks for the tip. Agreed, the seasoning tends to degrade, especially when you cook on high heat (ex searing meat)
Chef Wong on UA-cam does this with his woks.
@@CH-ec5on It's standard procedure all across China.
He mentions that. Which does make sense when you understand the cookware and style of cooking.
Interesting. I have had a made in China hand hammered wok since the mid 90s and once seasoned never needed more than a tsp of peanut oil once hot. I've watched quite a few Asian cooks male and female on youtube and they don't "pass oil". They use a bit more oil than I do but I guess it's by preference. When I make egg fried rice I use very little oil and the egg never sticks. One of the most common mistakes made with woks is not heating the wok before adding the oil. Back when I got my wok I was discussing it with an Asian co-worker who told me to remember, "Hot wok, cold oil, food doesn't stick.".
Nice video. I like stainless steel because I've heard from different videos and information sources that cast iron and carbon steel can both release iron into your food and it can build up to where you have too much iron in your system. They used to use this as a selling point - you get iron when you cook, but it can be too much iron, and I think most of us that eat a well-balanced diet get enough iron.
I wonder how iron gets released when it's under 30+ layers of seasoning.
@@wnose
I don't think you're wondering, I think you're pretending to wonder while you disregard the possibility.
Stainless steel releases nickel and chromium into your food, nonstick releases micro plastics. The iron released by your pans is nonabsorbable which means it just passes through your system and is not dangerous. If cooking with them is causing excess iron in your system, maybe try and lay off the red meat.
My comment about carbonsteel on induction has been taken down 2 times, this is my last attempt to warn people about buying thin carbon steel frypans for induction cooktops!
If you heat them up slowly there should be no problem, don't fire 1500 Watt into a cold pan, start with low settings. P.S. UA-cam censorship sux.
@@SolarCookingGermany
I think UA-cam is automatically taking down site references, but if anyone interested in knowing about induction cooking with carbonsteel and other cookware, one can search this on Google:
"High level induction stove, cookware and cooking guide. The good the bad and the ugly!"
@@SolarCookingGermany I am allowed to post comments about controversial topics like wars, politics and mental ilness, and site with external sources, but im God forbid NOT allowed to talk any debt about cooking on a cooking comment section 🤷
@@kaspervendler1726 I can't even do that, my comments disappear a lot. I probably have the "wrong" opinions... 🙄
Did you try posting a link? Those usually don't make it through the filters.
I love and hate my stainless steel, I wish it was more durable. My sponges leave scratches on the pan
Review Darto
Seasoning... I don't find it daunting anymore, but I do find it tedious. And since you can't season a pan evenly over electric, you have to do it in the oven which turns out to be a big chore and a huge waste of electricity. One of the advantages of carbon steel + gas is that the pan seasons itself as you cook, the flames rolling up and around the sides of the pan insure a nice even seasoning at the edges of the cooking surface and the side walls. On electric this just doesn't happen at all. It's very frustrating!
The electricity used by ovens is way less than most people think, I dont remember the numbers at the moment bit it’s about cents per hours. Energy used for stoves, either gas or electric, is not cheaper.
@@profchaos9001 Be that as it may, having to season separately and repeatedly in the oven is a longer, more time-consuming and tedious process than seasoning once and then having the cookware get seasoned naturally by cooking. The simple act of searing a steak in a carbon steel pan causes lots of fat to splash all over the sides of the pan. On a gas stove the sides of the pan are hot enough for this fat to polymerize and incorporate into the seasoning. On an electric stove the sides of the pan are much cooler so this fat becomes a sticky mess for you to clean up rather than providing more layers of seasoning the build up over time
Atleast in my country, as I've read, the electric oven seasoning is around 100 times more expensive than a simple stove top seasoning in a typical home electric oven.
I have an electric stove and oven. Also have carbon steel and cast iron pans and cook with them constantly.
For me it is the superior cookware in terms of performance at the cost of seasoning. Especially for dry cooking aplliances. For the average cook this might not be of importance and I would recommend using a teflon pan and stainless pots/pans. I just dont like stainless pans. I gave them try and hope, but in every single metric a carbon steel of the same size outperforms. This is my experience. The high quality nonstick is essential for so many things and stainless is not at the level of nonstick. Getting stainless to be nonstick very often requires to overheat oils and fats to a certain temperature which alters taste. Carbon steel is very forgiving and highly nonstick for so many things.
About seasoning: I understand what you mean but I will give you a tip:
If your electric stove works for cooking it will also work for seasoning.
Yes, the sides will not season well except in the oven but it does not matter for most applications.
I season the pan on the stove and if I bake something I just preheat the oven with the pan and let it season on the way. It just takes for me the upper rack at 475f (250c) for 15 mins or so.
When I season on the stove, I season the surface and then rinse with hot water after letting cool for some seconds. The hot water lifts the leftover grease from the sides and you get a perfectly cleaned pan. Cast iron pans have high sides and most of the time not even a gas stove can season the sides well. Which is the same problem. But the oven can. And you do not need to season the sides all the time because usually it does not wear off. The cooking surface requires the most seasoning after cooking.
The beauty about carbon steel is it seasons very quickly compared to cast iron. Thinner pans. Upper oven rack: the preheating time it takes to get to 475f. Stovetop 5 mins.
Seasoning is something that happens along the way. There are many ways to season. Sometimes you dont need to season. Sometimes you can season later.
I would only recommend iron cookware to someone that is interested in exploring their culinary abilities and not for someone that just wants to make themselves a meal. It also depends what you are cooking. For some cuisines like the italian, you might not require iron cookware. Like for pasta, lasagna, risotto, pizza, etc.
But for more baking, roasting, pan frying, etc, there where you take advantage of high heat, bare cast iron and carbon steel are the only thing that perform to the fullest.
You don't need to season your pan a million times over. Do it once then cook with it. No big deal for a pan that lasts forever.
I have only bought madein pans for a few years now. But… The madein carbon steel pans are shaped poorly. The bottom of the pan is too small. For 2 people, I cook primarily on 10” pans. The SS are great, can fit 2 ribeyes no issue, but in carbon steel, it’s so small, I can only do one. Sears great, and is great in the oven, but if I can’t cook 2 at once, then it’s useless. Their stainless steel pans are the best. So skip the carbon steel unless you get the 12”. Just know the usable space in the 12” is about the size as the SS 10”
So cast iron has more carbon than carbon steel and carbon steel has more iron than cast iron. Who thought these names up?
Lmao
You should probably make it clear in the video if the content is sponsored, and not just in the less visible description
I mention it at the 2:13 mark and the video is tagged so there’s a huge “sponsored” label in the top left right from the start of the video, and I mention it in the description. What else would you suggest?
Other channels mention it from the top and sometimes in the title. Just a suggestion for clarity. I absolutely appreciate the high level of serious work you put into your videos
What are your thoughts on the Strata clad carbon steel pans? Perhaps a review?
I’m in the process of testing it and so far I’m a fan. I’m planning to do a comparison of several carbon steel brands soon - Matfer, de Buyer, Made In, Strata etc.
I prefer stainless, sears like cast :)
His Made In skillet is a spinner. 7:05
There are some new cookwares that go through 'Nitriding' process. Could you speak more about the usability and safety of these cookware?
Need to look more into this but sounds interesting
Baffles me that people put ANY pans in the dishwasher.
Sticky McStickystick-pans
Steel is iron with carbon added. 😂
I can't stand the taste or smell of carbon steel pans. I know I'm in the minority, but the metallic taste turns my stomach. I've tried several brands and it's always there.
Restaurant chefs use carbon steel
They do, and for good reason!
I’ve genuinely tried to like and use the carbon steel pan I have, but it’s just too much of a pain to deal with, plus it doesn’t distribute heat well and tends to smoke like crazy, not for me
Depends on the brand, but it's not for everyone - I understand that
Carbon steel does not heat evenly on glasstop or induction. My Matfer warps on my glasstop, then flattens when it cools, just when I don’t need it. Searing a steak ruins the seasoning every time. You can’t cook scrambled eggs on low temp on carbon steel without massive sticking. A French omelette is really difficult with carbon steel due to uneven heating. Carbon steel leeches, including arsenic, and leaves a metallic taste (Uncle Scott on a carbon steel paella pan). Heat retention is a myth unless you want to use an ugly frying pan as a serving dish. With carbon steel you worry about your seasoning not about nailing the recipe for your food. Carbon steel is an outdated material unless you have just the right size burner that runs flame up the sides of the pan. With stainless and no more temp control than you need with carbon steel. This is 5 years of experience with a top brand carbon steel. Case closed.
That was my honest to God experience. Seasoning comes on and off, and you cannot use carbon steel on a glass top. It will warp and bend exactly as you described, even if you only turn the heat up to medium and never wash the pan when it's hot. I think stainless steel and cast iron both have their pros and cons and I love them for different purposes, but carbon steel to me was the "worst of both worlds."
Although some carbon steel pans are more prone to warping than others (Matfer vs. Debuyer like in your example), it remains a problem nonetheless. You can see the warping in the Madein pan as it's spinning while he's attempting to take it's temp.
I went with Darto which seems resistant to this so far (albeit a bit heavier than most carbon steel, but has the added bonus of being a one piece pan).
What’s your take on carbon steel woks since cast iron ones are pretty much not used anymore? Also, people seem to not like stainless steel woks because of sticking…
@@ConqueredSunwhat carbon steel pan do you have? I’ve used my DeBuyer carbon steel pans for most of my life on an induction range older than me and glass ranges with zero issues. Never had any of them warp and it’s super nonstick despite my pans almost never turning completely black
@@JacksonWalter735 Matfer Bourgeat. I have to admit that the one I got was part of a batch that was recalled by the French government for safety problems, so my view on the material may have been colored thus.
I hate the phrase "Carbon Steel." I hate it because it is marketing bullshit. Those pans are stamped (it's the cheapest manufacturing method in the world), and they are made from s cheapest steel money can buy which is A-36. And the addition of the word Carbon to the word Steel is redundant.
There is no alloy of steel called Carbon Steel. ALL steel has carbon in it. ALL.
So marketing filth invented the phrase to fool unsuspecting cooks into thinking there was something special about them. There isn't.
They are all stamped from cheap steel and the prices they charge for them are mind bendingly insane. Not one made anywhere should sell for more than ten or twelve dollars and that'd be high.
In truth they are the exact same stamped steel pans used by cowboys on the trail in the 1700 and 1800s.
Carbon steel is not new. We've been using it for ages, as you say. If it isn't broke, it doesn't need fixing.
In general IMO the whole elitism regarding cookware itself is ridiculous. End of the day they're all just ancient old chunks of crap dug up out of the ground and beaten or poured into a useful shape. Doesn't really matter how it's done and overall people overthink all of it. If you know how to cook (and have a fat) then anything is non stick. Does it matter what we call it? I don't think so. Then again I've never been one to pay a lot of money for cookware. The only rule I have been on with the times is to skip non-stick. If you are in the carbon steel camp, stainless camp, or cast iron camp, you're already ahead of the game because your cookware is going to last exponentially longer than the non stick camp.
I jumped in with both feet and now I have a mess of these suckers in the garage waiting to be taken to the church rummage sale. Ugly, greasy spoon looking stuff. I don't want to eat food cooked in them. Yuck!
They're quite easy to clean...
Where's and when is your church
Sale?
If you seasoned and looked after them then they are meant to discolour and look that way just shows they are well used
Yes…Teflon is right for you. Stick with your T-fal.