What is the point of a cast iron skillet?

Cast Iron skillets are undeniably cool, and definitely one of the the internet’s favorite obsessions, but are they actually useful? Is there any advantage to cooking in a cast iron pan instead of a stainless steel or teflon one, or is it all hype?

Let’s find out together, using the Lodge 10.25” skillet that I’ve been using for about a straight decade, and which costs about $15 - $25 through most retailers (that particular one is on sale for $14.88 as of this writing).

So what’re the advantages here?

Internet folks will often argue that the main advantage of cast iron is that it “heats evenly.” I always took that as face value because, one, I didn’t know what it meant, and two, it was easy to retroactively justify. “Even heat means even cooking” I would explain, as if my teflon and stainless steel pans were only cooking the left-side of my eggs or something.

The truth is that cast iron actually doesn’t heat evenly at all, and is in fact quite a poor conductor of heat -- which is its main advantage. Once it gets hot, its “high volumetric heat capacity” means it stays hot, making it better at cooking. If you take the time to preheat your skillet for about ten minutes before plopping your steak or eggs into it, then your pan won’t be cooled down by the addition of food, and end up cooking that food more evenly.

Cast iron also emits more heat (which makes sense, since there’s more heat crammed inside the pan), so it cooks more of the food. While steel essentially only cooks the part of the food that’s touching the pan, cast iron radiates heat out at a far higher level, meaning more food gets cooked.

That sounds neat, but don’t I have to be really delicate with it? I'm deeply lazy, and hate learning new things.

A friend once sheepishly admitted to me that her utterly filthy cast iron pan had been sitting on her stove for a week because she wasn’t sure how to clean it. The internet had warned her against using soapy water, or water at all, because it could be ruined.

The truth is, cast iron skillets are pretty sturdy because they’re made out of, you know, iron. The only thing you really need to worry about is rust, which means you need to minimize the time your cast iron spends wet. That means you can’t soak the cast iron or put it in the dishwasher, but you can scrub it with a sponge (yes, even a soapy one) to get all the crud out, and then simply heat it up on your stove to evaporate all the water. Basically, you wash it with slightly more awareness than you would use with literally any other pan.

Okay this all makes sense but nothing about it is sexy. What’s the sexiest thing about a cast iron skillet?

My favorite thing about my cast iron -- which, sure, I guess could be called “sexy,” you weirdo -- is that cooking things that require a combination of stovetop cooking and baking: since the cast iron is all cast iron, it can go straight from the burner to the oven (or vice versa) without risk of melting any handle (because the handle is also cast iron). Wanna cook German Pancakes? I sure do, because they’re delicious, and I will be using my cast iron pan.

The other thing is that you can get these pans way hotter than other pans. I wouldn’t cook eggs over a campfire with a teflon pan, but I absolutely would with a cast iron. In fact, I have, and they were great. I even cooked an entire mess of chili over a campfire, with a cast iron dutch oven, and it came out amazing. Though, I want to clarify that everything tastes better when you’re camping, because you’re freezing and starving and on the verge of death from hypothermia or at least likely slightly drunk.

Finally, you can always hold out the hope that you’ll be able to use it to fight off a bunch of bandits.

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Joshua Sargent is an editor for Hearst Newspapers. Email him at josh.sargent@hearst.com.