If You Buy Only One Type of Pan, Make It Carbon Steel
No matter how gently you handle a chemically treated nonstick pan, it will last only a few years, due in part to the coating wearing off with use. But with a carbon steel pan, the more you cook with it, the more nonstick it gets.
Carbon steel is also durable, even more so than cast iron. Though cast iron may seem like the sturdier of the two due to its heft, its higher carbon content actually makes it more brittle. Carbon steel pans are stamped out of more flexible metal sheets, and they can take a beating. They’re the workhorses of professional kitchens for a reason, designed to be flung from the burner to the oven and back again.
Chef Tom Colicchio, who collaborated with the direct-to-consumer cookware brand Made In on a line of carbon steel pans and is an investor in the company, has been using his for decades. “The first pan I bought going back, like, 40 years ago was a blue steel pan, and I got it at Zabar’s,” says Colicchio, referring to New York City’s vaunted food and cookware emporium. “I still have it to this day.”
