The Cookware Critic

The Best Cast Iron Skillet if You've Never Owned One

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

I put off buying a cast iron skillet for way too long. I had this idea that they were fussy, that I’d need to treat the thing like a museum piece, that I’d somehow ruin it within a week. Then a friend handed me one he found at a garage sale, and I realized I’d been overthinking it for years. It’s a chunk of metal. You heat it up. You cook on it. That’s basically it.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Dan, and I’ve been cooking almost every day for the past seven years.

It started when I moved into my first apartment with a kitchen bigger than a closet. My starter kit was a $40 cookware set from Amazon that warped within three months. The non-stick coating on the frying pan started flaking into my eggs by month five. That was when I realized cheap cookware isn’t cheap — you just end up buying it twice.

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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