Large Fry Pans

[eyeguy 54]

I have a problem... I am a fry pan junkie. I love the $9, 8 inch Cucina ceramic. Use for a year and chuck. 10 inch, I cant find one that hasn't gone bad right away even for 40 bucks. Whats a good one??

Mufasa staring at Ninas Super! lol

[cam7069]

CAST IRON

[eyeguy 54]

takes a day to warm them up

[Juneau4]

I wish I could help, but the best in a 10' I've can find for what I want is Cast Iron.

And it's probably 65 years old and still going strong, I can remember my Mom frying chicken in it in the late 50's. I'm an old faolt.

[Todd Caswell]

What are you doing frying fish in a pan???

Again Cast Iron, once there HOT they stay HOT

[fivebucks]

I've had the same cast iron for 30 years plus I have my grandpa's and that has to be 60 years old. They just keep working.

[B-man715]

Yep, buy a big old Made in the USA Lodge cast iron pan and never buy another pan in your lifetime (or even your kid's lifetime)

I have three different sizes from the medium one to the huge one, as well as a Dutch oven from them. I can use them all on a turkey burner. They work awesome compared to the sticky aluminium pots that come with the burner.

In the fish house I use a medium non-stick sauce pan (aluminum) and cover it with one of those screen deals for a light weight and minimal mess option.

[picksbigwagon]

I have 4, no wait 5 cast iron pans: 12", 5 qt chicken fryer, 8qt (?) dutch oven, a griddle pan and a wok (yep, a cast iron wok). I find for camping the 5 qt chicken fryer is all I need.

now truthfully, my wife hates cast iron for every day cooking so we have some callphalon pans that have served their purpose the past 4 years. $9 bucks a year and toss it is not a bad option if you aren't going to use cast iron. My 11 yr old son is already laying claim to my cast iron collection........

[leechlake]

tried this?

Wally World - Mainstays 10" Non-Stick Ceramic Skillet $9.96

I love buying the cheap "teflon" pans for the cabin and abusing them and then never pitching them like I planned. Sometimes I look at them and wonder what toxic waste I'm ingesting. I do have a few cast iron pans, burn my fingers on them a few times a year.

[eyeguy 54]

had cast iron and sold them. , not for everybody. I fry a lot of fish, on the ceramic stove top. Also fry a lot of veggies and eggs and meat. Fried cabbage and some northern today for lunch. the white 8 inch ceramics work dandy. and cheap city. gotta find a 10 inch and check it out. I only use the larger one for fish when frying up a bunch.

[eyeguy 54]

gonna try the wally one.

[DonBo]

Not cheap, but check out the Pampered Chef Executive Cookware 12" Skillet

Item Number 2865

We've got an older model of this and it's AWESOME!

[pikestabber]

Not cheap, but check out the Pampered Chef Executive Cookware 12" Skillet

Item Number 2865

We've got an older model of this and it's AWESOME!

I don't have the same brand, but I have the usual array of frying pans in different types and sizes, and my Texas Skillet like the one pictured here gets the nod 99% of the time. You can do anything with them!

[pikestabber]

Here's a cheaper version of something similar.

Or this one...

[eyeguy 54]

ooooops, I meant 12 inch. the 10's I have are great. grabbed 12 inch Farberware for 10 bucks a the mart. this will be for fishies only so will do a test on a bunch soon.

[eyeguy 54]

cabbage and fish mmmmm!

[pegleg]

cabbage and fish mmmmm!

For you guys around the cities that cook, you might want to check out Nordic Ware off of Hwy 100 and Hwy 7 in St. Louis Park. They have an outlet store and you can buy cookware, bakeware, serving trays, etc. for very reasonable prices. A lot of it is restaurant grade type of product so very good quality.

[delcecchi]

If you want non-stick, they are basically disposable. I have one from Sam's club that I really like. Or here is the scoop from cooks illustrated.

Quote:

No matter how gently you treat your nonstick skillet, the day will come when it lets you down. While cookware manufacturers claim they've improved nonstick coating strength and durability, scratches will eventually mar the pan's surface, it will become rough and stained, and it may pill or flake into your food. But even if your pan continues to look fine, its slickness will inevitably fade, much as wax wears off a car, and food will start sticking to the surface.

Despite these frustrating flaws, it’s hard to beat nonstick pans for cooking fragile foods like eggs and thin fish fillets. We also prefer nonstick for stir-frying, because fond won’t build up and scorch when you’re cooking in batches. Our longtime favorite is a tri-ply pan (aluminum sandwiched between stainless steel for even heat conduction) topped with nonstick. But its staggering price of $159.95 is a lot to pay for a pan that won't last you a lifetime—or even close to it. In the test kitchen, these pans barely last six months. And even if you use your nonstick pan only a couple of times a week, the Cookware Manufacturers Association concedes it isn't built for the long term: “If you get a year to a year and a half of life out of [a new nonstick pan], we think you got a pretty good deal," says Hugh Rushing, executive vice president of the association.

If we’re going to keep replacing nonstick pans, we’d prefer to spend less on them. Setting a limit of $50 for a 12-inch skillet, we found seven contenders from $17 to $49.95. But would “cheaper” mean “not so good”? To find out, we tested them against the super-pricey longtime favorite and along with our former Best Buy.

Put On a Coat

Most cookware manufacturers don’t make their own nonstick coating; they buy it from suppliers offering a menu of options, from basic to premium, and spray it on their pans. What goes into the coating helps determine its quality, but so do how exactingly it's applied and cured and how many coats go on. But while suppliers have figured out how to make the coating tougher—some brands even boast of using such hard materials as titanium or diamonds—nobody has figured out how to keep nonstick slick forever.

For this attribute, nearly all pans rely on a top coat of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). The trouble is, the minute you start cooking, this polymer starts to wear away. Frying over high heat, using cooking sprays, scrubbing the pan with highly abrasive pads, and sticking the pan in the dishwasher for cleanup—a big no-no even if manufacturers say it's OK—only speed the top coat's inevitable demise.

To see how this topmost coating in our pans would cope, we began by frying eggs, without fat, in each one. One pan stuck on the third egg. Several others quit before we cooked 20 eggs, and a few more got into the 30s or 40s, including our former winners. Only two pans were still going strong at 76 eggs (at this point we stopped the test).

Next we stir-fried beef and vegetables. Beef fond stuck and burned on pans that had already lost some slickness, so instead of merely wiping out the pans with a paper towel between batches of beef, we had to stop and scrub away the scorched fond with soap and water. We also noted when a pan's construction interfered with cooking; too-low sides let snap peas slip out as we stirred and flipped, but if the sides were too high, they trapped steam and prevented meat from browning.

Under the Surface

Slickness wasn't our only criterion for an inexpensive nonstick skillet. We also wanted a pan that cooked food evenly, had good size and heft but remained comfortable to maneuver, and continued to perform despite kitchen abuse.

Making crêpes gave us an excellent snapshot of how evenly food cooked and helped us evaluate the weight and shape of the skillets. While all pans measured 12 to 12½ inches rim to rim, their actual flat cooking surfaces ranged from a skimpy 8 to a generous 10 inches. We preferred skillets with a broad cooking surface and low, flaring sides of about 2 inches, which let us swirl the crêpe batter around evenly and allowed us to reach in and under crêpes easily with a spatula. In this test, one of the pans that released 76 eggs proved overly thin and lightweight, producing uneven browning. The other, which weighed a solid 2½ pounds and boasted a 9¾-inch surface and flaring 2-inch sides, continued its stellar performance.

These days many nonstick skillets are advertised as "metal utensil–safe," and we decided to put this claim to the test. We cooked a frittata in each pan and cut it into pieces with a metal spatula. Afterward, several pans sported a deeply etched starburst of cuts, and even our longtime favorite exhibited light marks. But we were hard pressed to detect any marks at all on a few pans, including—you guessed it—our soon-to-be-new favorite.

Next, to simulate the impact of months of use, we heated pans to 500 degrees, plunged them in ice water, and banged them on a countertop six times. As you'd expect of a pan of its top-notch construction, our old winner came away from this test unscathed. But a few pans warped or dented, and, heartbreakingly, the new front-running pan came away with loose handle rivets. Finally, we sent them all through the dishwasher, including the pans not advertised as dishwasher-safe.

Taking up these pans, many of which were now worse for wear, we performed one last test: scrambling eggs with no fat. A few gave up the ghost at this point; eggs stuck as if no nonstick coating remained. Our expensive old favorite now had a slightly hairy nonstick surface that required a bit of urging for scrambled eggs to release from the pan. But our front-runner looked ready for a few more rounds, and it served up perfect yellow scrambled eggs with little cleanup.

The Bottom Line

We’d like to say our new favorite pan aced every test, but that loose handle was a sign that it’s not high-end cookware. Still, at $34.99, it's a bargain. Its proprietary five-layer nonstick (most pans have two or three layers) never gave up during our testing, remaining slick and intact to the very end. It was the only pan in the lineup to give us the best of both worlds: an exceptionally slick, durable nonstick coating and top performance in cooking. As for the test kitchen's pricey old favorite, it boasts a lifetime warranty, so we still recommend it. But we'll be buying the more affordable pan from now on for our own kitchens.

Methodology:

We tested seven large nonstick skillets under $50, comparing them with our high-end former favorite and our former Best Buy.

INITIAL RELEASE: Number of eggs fried and released from the new skillet before sticking occurred.

COOKING: We averaged scores from cooking crêpes, beef and vegetable stir-fry, 12-egg frittatas, and scrambled eggs. Pans that browned evenly without hot spots earned higher marks.

DESIGN: We rated ease of use, shape, weight, balance, and maneuverability; size of cooking surface and handle comfort; and sturdiness after abuse tests, including heating pans to 500 degrees and plunging them into ice water.

COATING DURABILITY: Pans that released food easily throughout cooking and abuse tests rated higher. Tests included cutting frittatas in pans with a metal spatula, running pans through the dishwasher, and scrambling eggs in them without fat.

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And the winner is

Highly Recommended - Winner

T-fal Professional Non-Stick Fry Pan, 12.5 inches $34.99

Outperforming our former winner at a quarter of the price, this pan had the slickest, most durable nonstick coating, releasing perfectly throughout testing. It is well proportioned, with a comfy handle and generous cooking surface. Its only flaw: Handle rivets loosened after abuse.

If non-stick isn't important, then either cast iron or tri-ply stainless similar to all clad. I have an all clad 12 inch skillet and it is indistructible, plus it can go in the oven. (I also have cast iron, including a chicken fryer from my Aunt and my mom's fry pans. )

[deerminator]

My wife bought me a Cuisinart stainless steel pan and pot set a few Christmas's ago and I love it. They clean up nice and work well. I use SOS pads for tough cleaning. It leaves scratches and some people get worked up about that but pots and pans are made to get banged up. The top chefs and cooking show hosts are shown with their beat up kettles. They are fairly affordable too and have taken a lot of abuse these past two years.

[Down Deep]

I use a non stick I buy at IKEA -- about $20.00. I'm on my 2nd pan. They last for a couple of years with moderate use before the wear and tear takes its toll They have 8" and 12"pans. It has thick bottom which pushes heat evenly and a long handle which makes them easy to handle. I've learned that the better I regulate the heat the easier it is to successfully complete non-stick cooking no matter what kind of pan I'm using. I also have pump several spray bottles that atomize the oils I put in them. This allows me to control the coating I lay down in the pan. The aerosols shoot out a one size fits all stream.

[Sandmannd]

Got my wife a set of Rachel Ray Pans last year and they are the bomb! Around a hundy for the set and worth it.

[pikestabber]

20 " fry pan with bad handle, if you can fix it you could cook yourself anything with this baby on the stove, approx. 5 yrs old. a few kids stickers on it. located in East St.Paul.

[eyeguy 54]

be right over.

[pikestabber]

be right over.

Lol. That was my poor attempt at re-vamping the 20" Box Fan Thread via the Large Fry Pan route. I don't think it was successful

[eyeguy 54]

never read the fan info