I’ve personally always felt cast iron pans, with its extra thermal mass, were a bit better for searing than the slightly lighter carbon steel pans.
But looking at the overall picture I claim carbon steel pans are the perfect searing pans.
Winning by a hair over cast iron.
If I however plan to do a deglaze in wine for a pan sauce, a thick ply pan or thick copper pan might be the better alternative.
Why are carbon steel pans a smidge better for steak searing than cast iron pans ?
I personally can’t find cast iron pans with a totally smooth interior bottom. They very often have a somewhat rugged bottom. This makes a bit of a mess on the stovetop, when you deglaze the pan.
Carbon steel pans have smooth interior bottoms, so they work more smoothly for deglazing of the pan
I find it a bit easier to tilt a carbon steel pan, when you for instance want to butter baste the steak. Cast iron is stiffer and heavier, and butter basting is a tiny bit more awkward in a cast iron pan than in a carbon steel pan.
The handle on most cast iron pans are short and awkwardly designed. It makes it a tiny bit more cumbersome to get the pan in and out of the oven, if you want to finish your steak in the oven. Here carbon steel pans are a bit more easy to manoeuvre with its slightly lighter weight and longer handle.
Why cast iron pans are better for searing than carbon steel pans ?
Cast iron pans usually are even heavier than carbon steel pans. This gives the pan more thermal mass and once pre heated, this gives the cast iron pan an even better ability to do a constant high heat sear without dropping the temperature as fast as a carbon steel pan.
Finally what makes both cast iron and carbon steel pans more practical than other type pans for high heat searing jobs ?
In my view high heat searing will always be a messy job with splatter delivered to the surroundings and polymerised oil stains on the interior of the pan.
Using a copper pan or clad/ply pan for this job will often result in visible oil and butter stains inside the pan, which often can be quite cumbersome to clean or in rare cases will be impossible to get rid of.
Using cast iron and carbon steel pans in these high heat sear situations, the oil stains and oil polymerisation will rarely be visible at all, since these pans are dark brown and black anyway and even if visible it will only be contributions to the already existing seasoning of such type pans anyway.
Let me hear your input and your personal favourite - are you a fan of both type pans, or do you prefer cast iron over carbon steel for searing ?
I’m in the cast iron camp when it comes to searing.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
3
I like both CS and CI for searing and don’t notice much difference, even when searing something large like a sirloin cap roast (aka rump cap, picanha, coulotte).
I do like CS a bit better for fat basting and making a pan sauce due to what you mention - I find it a lot easier to tilt a CS pan with the larger and angled handle. I don’t have any problem with pan sauces in cast iron due to the bottom, though - all of mine are very old and completely smooth, not that pebbly-textured bottom many manufacturers started doing later.
OTOH, I find the larger/angled CS handle a hinderance if oven-finishing. I’ve got 3 racks in the oven generally spaced every other slot and while the CI will slide in on any rack, I’ve got to move a rack to make enough room for the CS handle. And I invariably forget to do this until I’m trying to wrestle the pan into the oven. Small inconvenience, though.
For thinner steaks (say, 3 cm or less) I find the 5-layer stainless works very well, too. I only do this if I’m trying to cook a lot of them as fast as possible though (at the moment I’ve got 4 SS pans but only 1 CS and 2 CI). Cleanup is much harder with SS than CS or CI or hard-anodized aluminum.
I’ve started playing with this 12 aluminum pan (stock photo from someone selling it used on eBay at the ridiculous price of $60 - I don’t think it would be that much new). I’ve had two of these for decades but buried them deep in the cabinet because they would spin on my (then) ceramic top stove. An early high-heat go with it was disastrous but after some advice here on HO I’ve gotten the hang of using it. I’ve got one with a fairly good seasoning on it now, after searing quite a few steaks. It’s a bit lighter than the CS (I think 4 pounds vs 5) but seems to do a fair job at heat retention. And the cooking surface is quite a bit larger than the same-sized CS, which is a plus.
As I don’t sear thick cuts of steak/pork (if I did I’d use CI), I mainly use CI for pan frying, bacon, and browning ground beef.
What I do sear (mostly seafood and occasionally chicken), I usually do it in ply SS… mainly because I have way more control over the heat than I do with CI.
I prefer cast iron.
But that has more to do with form than material.
I got a cast iron skillet, and hot plates (like a griddle, but flat).
Whereas I only have a carbon steel wok. Much as I like it, it’s not good for searing a bigger piece of steak
Claus you have outlined the pros and cons very nicely and I agree the comparison is a photo finish.
In my limited experience (I have 3 mineral B pans and a half dozen old cast iron pans) i reach for cast iron over carbon steel if I need a monolithic pan for very high heat searing. The reason is my carbon steel lining gets compromised with very high heat searing, but my cast iron seems to tolerate this better.
The last few times I pan seared steaks I used thick tin lined copper. It seared beautifully and deglazed for a pan sauce afterward. Generally I compromise on the heat of the sear in exchange for deglazing.
Sometimes when I sear a steak at very high heat I actually don’t appreciate what can be overly scorched or burned beef.
I have CS that is roughly the same thickness as my old CI. The CS wins because of the better handle, the sloping sides, and the smoothness. I hang onto the CI for sentimental reasons, but it is used mainly for frittatas and not much else.
How thick is your thickest carbon steel pan ?
My thickest is De Buyer Mineral B Pro 28 cm and my two Darto’s, which all are 3 mm thick.
If you compare carbon steel pans and cast iron pans with the same thickness, do you then believe they will perform equally great for searing and for sustaining heat in general ?
Do cast iron pans and carbon steel pans of the same thickness have the same thermal mass ?
Obviously both cast iron and carbon steel pans are viable, and they have a lot of similarities. They can both rust. They both can be seasoned (and needed to be really)…etc. The main difference is that cast iron is harder and more brittle, and carbon steel is more mailable and softer. This makes it easier to make a thinner carbon steel pan.
Overall, I like both styles, but have shifted from cast iron to carbon steel. The potential lighter weight, smoother surface and being slightly more malleable (less brittle) are all attractive to me.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
12
The conductivities are pretty close, I think maybe CS is only a few percent higher than CI. So my impression is that theoretically two pans of the same size/design/mass would perform so closely in that regard that I wouldn’t notice any difference.
Stainless has a much lower conductivity than CS/CI so holds heat for a long time.
I think I’m skipping my cast iron pans altogether since my 3 mm thick carbon steel pans perform so great for me - I’ve also found a way to make my wine pan sauces without having to risk trouble with the seasoning of my CS pans. I simply deglaze in boiling water after the steak/hamburger is done, and then transfer it to one of my PLY/Copper sauce pans or high sided frying pans and finish the wine pan sauce there.
I also learn from a mistake once – from a carbon steel wok (not pan). The recipe call to add vinegar stir and then add water (for a sauce). That really removed a lot of my seasoning from the carbon steel. Since then, I do the opposite, add the water, mix, and then add the vinegar.
I have read that CI holds heat better and CS conducts better. I really do not care. For me the winner combination is the longer, angled handle and the sloped rim of CS. For me the shape and size of a pan are more important than the material.
Can anyone confirm that if you take a raw cast iron frying pan and a raw carbon steel frying pan of the same thickness and of the same shape and size, the cast iron pan will be able to sustain heat better and overall arguably provide the better overall searing result ?
Do we have any chemists on the forum ?
I’m in agreement with Tim and Alarash in that the shape of a pan and the shape of the handle is more important than how well a pan can provide a great or not so great high heat searing result, which is why I personally prefer carbon steel pans over cast iron pans.
But I still find it interesting to know if cast iron truly has more total sustained heat capacity than carbon steel, if the pans are equally thick, say 3 mm thick.
For the same size and shape, then the cast iron and carbon steel pans will have the same heat capacity.
If anything, carbon steel is touch higher in specific heat capacity.
Right you are. The common wisdom that cast iron “holds more heat” is technically false yet practically true, owing to the fact that common cast iron pans are generally thicker than their common carbon steel comparators.
If everyone used a 4mm thick Daarto CS and one of the new breed of <3mm cast iron as comparators, the common wisdom might be the opposite.
