Lodge Logic L10SK3 12-Inch Pre-Seasoned Skillet

Iron skillets cook evenly in these. These are the best. Great size. May think about buying even a larger size.

For under $20 and free shipping, this can't be beat. Though it comes pre-seasoned, I still coat it (the entire pan, inside and out and the handle, too) thinly with regular vegetable oil and bake it in a 450-degree oven for an hour. I then let the pan cool completely and repeat the process one more time. It is true that you need good kitchen ventilation to do this though not over-coating with oil cuts down on the greasy smoke considerably.

The pan now looks amazingly shiny and nothing sticks to it. Omlettes, potato pancakes, sauteing vegetables, roasting a whole chicken, etc. Everything comes out great and above all, no worries about non-stick chemicals, etc.

I do repeat the seasoning process every so often purely for asthetic reasons because I like my entire pan to be equally black!

This is the kind of kitchen gear that doesn't cost a lot, you keep for years, use for everything and wonder how you did without it. We almost never put this skillet away. It's in constant use. For weekends, we make a big fry-up breakfast (yeah, not good for you, but once a week...) and do bacon, eggs, tomatoes and sausages. It's great for any kind of frying, chicken, fish and you can even do a steak though I will say that this is a smokey process indeed.

To pan-grill a steak, grease the pan lightly and sear the steak on each side, testing the meat for done-ness by pressing on top. Rare steak feels like flabby flesh. Well-done feels resilient. One clue is to test your hand; rare is the firmness of between thumb and forefinger, medium is your thumb muscle and well done is your wrist. Pinching these will give you an idea of how done your steak "feels." When finished grilling, remove steaks to a warm plate and you can deglaze the pan with a swish of cognac or wine, add a swirl of butter for a very luxurious sauce.

Washing this pan requires hot water..and no soap. If there are burnt bits, scrub them out with salt. Rub the pan dry. This keeps the seasoning from being removed by detergent and makes the pan almost as non-stick as a teflon pan, though of course not quite.

Found the Lodge Logic Skillets on the Lodge Website for 2x as much as Amazon... Thanx :D

I got this for cooking steaks but now I use it almost every evening. My only complaint is that Amazon temporarily raised the price to I think around $21 which I paid, and then noticed that kroger right down the street sells it for $19. Now the price here is back down to $19 so with free shipping I highly recommend getting one of these

edit -- noticed when i went back to kroger that the price i mentioned before was the sale price, so its now up to close to $30 there. Good deal here.