The Best Carbon Steel Pans for Every Budget

The entry-level category is where I shopped the most, trying out a total of seven different carbon steel pans in the under-$55 range. This Merten & Storck skillet didn’t just outshine the rest of the budget-friendly pans; it’s unexpectedly become my utility go-to for home cooking over the past couple of months, performing admirably across a broad range of cooking projects.

I like that this pan comes pre-seasoned, and that it walks the line between sturdy and lightweight. You can cook with this on an induction burner, in the oven, on the stovetop, or wherever, as it’s graded for up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit and doesn’t have any components or materials that should be kept away from high heat. The brand uses the term “Black-Rolled Carbon Steel” for this pan, which helps conduct heat evenly and build up a natural nonstick patina over time. More than anything, this pan felt intuitively easy to use for a carbon steel novice like me, and I’ve gone back to it again and again over other entry-level models—the pan loves bacon, loves chicken thighs, loves anything with a sear or a crispy edge, even a good grilled cheese. Plus the price is right. This is the ideal carbon steel pan to get you started.

Cooking my way through all these pans, there was one offering that pretty quickly emerged as my own personal favorite, and it’s this one from father-son duo Copper State Forge of Goodyear, Arizona. Functionality is important in cookware, as in life. But so are the aesthetics of it all; I’m not made of stone, and my capacity to be moved by cooking with what is an undeniably beautiful object is clear and present. Of all the pans I tried, of all the pans I researched, the work they’re doing at Copper State just feels so deeply beautiful and artistic, like a fusion of functionality and expression in the form of a copper steel pan. I know I sound crazy; I would have thought I was crazy for writing this three months ago, but here we are. This pan is *vibes* —it’s gorgeous, it feels so clean, is beautiful to cook with, and it photographs beautifully.

There’s something about that hexagonal shape, but there’s an intense workmanlike quality to the pan as well—you can sear proteins, you can sauté vegetables, you can work with sauces and stocks. Those hexagonal-shaped edges function as pour spouts, making it easy to pour off a little broth to dress the greens or get rid of the extra bacon grease before you finish crisping things up. The pan’s design is simultaneously useful and aesthetically pleasing, which is really, at the end of the day, all any of us can ever truly hope to be. I cooked with 20 pans for this story, but it’s the Copper State Forge pan I’ve found myself most excited about cooking with again, to the point where I’m like, shopping for it at the grocery store—imagining how the black cod might crisp up in it with a little miso and mirin, or anticipating the crispy sear on a split sausage for my next big family breakfast.

Good carbon steel pans have this way about them—they seep into your mind, into your life, and this pan is fully inside my head now, living rent-free. If I could only cook with one pan from this story for the rest of my life, it would be this one.

The Lodge Cast Iron company is an American cookware icon. It's been synonymous with cast iron pans since 1896, and still proudly makes all its products and accessories out of two working forges in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, a few miles east of Chattanooga. (The brand’s recent Dolly Parton collaboration completes its unassailable Tennessee cred.) “Cast Iron” may be in its brand name, but the carbon steel offerings from Lodge are no afterthought—at an attractive price and easy to use, there’s lots to love about this pan.

A big 12-inch pan like this means you can cook a couple things at the same time—sear off your steak and sauté some mushrooms, why not?—and the pan holds heat beautifully, staying steady and hot over long periods of time. This to me would be the perfect pan to take camping and cook over a campfire, or use to bake off a nice batch of angel biscuits in your outdoor Gozney oven, but it also made perfect fried eggs on my crummy little home induction burner straight out of the box. The connectivity that Lodge offers as a heritage brand is really attractive to me as well. You can’t fake stuff like that—Lodge’s history is the real deal, and you feel connected to all that when you cook with these pans.

Yes, you’ve noticed the price jump. I’m convinced there’s fantastic value in the previously mentioned brands, but when you move up into the realms of carbon steel geekery, the price per pan increases parabolically. Smithey Forge is a really cool new company based in South Carolina; it is extremely online, and chances are simply reading this post means you will be served social media content by Smithey. (Not every brand has been around for 100 years.) I tried multiple products from Smithey for this piece and came away with two general impressions. The first is that they’re not for everyone—these pans are big, honking heavy things; there’s a learning curve; and they’re not meant for casual cooks. (Do not walk away from the burner when using your Smithey.) The second is that these pans are serious, extraordinary tools, built like grand old guitars or vintage guitars: solid state, extraordinarily solid and thick, and built to last.

The Smithey Deep Farmhouse Skillet confounded me at first. What, exactly, am I supposed to cook in this thing? And then it hit me: This is actually a multi-tool replacement for some of the same style of cooking I’d been doing in my Dutch oven, or a Crock-Pot. Simmer a batch of chicken thighs in this pan—use good homemade chicken stock and add lots of aromatics—and you’ve got this stable, purpose-built canvas for developing flavor. Or make a huge mess of fresh clams, cooked in thick chopped bacon and good cider, to serve with heaps of finely chopped parsley and crusty bread.

When I talk about the multifaceted, multitool in-betweener reality of the carbon steel paradigm, this Smithey Forge deep skillet is kind of exactly what I mean. And when I talk about a learning curve for carbon steel pans in general, please take this from my own personal experience—I had to learn, to cook, to iterate, and figure out what the purpose of this pan was in my life before it made sense. And now that it’s clicked, wow. It’s worth every penny.

As you get deeper into the world of carbon steel pans, you begin to understand that there are people for whom this is really a form of art—true artisan craftspeople expressing themselves in the medium of carbon steel cookware. That’s the story here for Dennis and Kasey Kehoe, blacksmith artists based on California’s Central Coast and founders of Kehoe Carbon Cookware.

Very few carbon steel pans are available with wooden handles. That’s something they’re distinguishing themselves with at Kehoe, and the end result offers a tactile touch point for real hands-on cooking. Use this pan to build your dream sauce—an alfredo, a romesco, a marinara—or cook your way through something intricate, like ratatouille or creole étouffée. The pan’s unique cold hammered texture catches sunlight and oil in the most attractive way, and if you’re someone who loves the Instagram of it all, Kehoe’s pans are catnip. Terms like “heirloom” and “heritage” get overused in writing about cookware—heck, I have used them already a few times in this story—but buying a pan from the Kehoes is like investing in traditional hand-tailored clothing, or purchasing your beef directly from the retired dairy cow farmer. Yes, you pay for it, but this pan will not just be in your will, it’ll be in your kid’s will. At that point the whole thing’s a bargain.