Nice looking pan! My Darto carbon steel “saute” pans are also essentially flat and I like it too, less fat needed to cover the middle indeed. Thought I’d mention in case you are looking for flatter bottom CS pans… The Dartos are very nice IMO, the one piece design is great.
From what I have seen and read online, I believe De Buyer CS pans have a more pronounced convex, my one and only De Buyer CS, a countrypan, also has that convex. I honestly still would like to add the 24 cm and 28 cm De Buyer frypans to my collection, as I like the De Buyer shape… It’s just that I already have sloped iron pans also… Apart from CS woks, they are cast iron though, so perhaps with that excuse I could justify the De Buyers :D…
I have mainly Skepsshult cast iron and then I also actually have a thin cast iron Ronneby Bruk ultra light pro 28 cm that I have sanded smooth, and its quite close to what the De Buyers would be shape wise, but more fragile. In that sense I like carbon steel more than cast iron. Otherwise, I’d appreciate if there was more thicker carbon steel pans.
I like Darto’s bigger cooking surface, but their website states “All models have a subtle elevation in their flat cooking zone to prevent the heat from stretching the steel downwards.” so I am still not sure if I should get one. How big is your Darto pan? Do bigger ones also have flat surface?
In addition to that, I make potstickers and bun version potstickers (水煎包) quite often, so being able to use a lid is essential. Seems like Darto pans are not designed for lids.
I have a de Buyer crepe pan and I don’t like the handle at all, the angle is too high so swirl the pan around is a bit awkward.
I dropped my Yamada pans more than once to the ground, not even a dent. I won’t be so lucky if they were CI, so I’ll stick to CS.
She learned a thing or two and best she doesn’t just use a non-stick for her everything all the time pan. Prob why the non-stick got so raggety so relatively quickly a few years. Having a few different pans for different things will be helpful. Thanks for everyone’s help.
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
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You and others here helped me with my CS pan and I now cook eggs over easy in it pretty much daily.
What I can’t (yet) do without a lot of follow up cleaning is scrambled eggs. For that, I still use the nonstick.
@chienrouge - someone here recommended the Green Pan to me and I’ve been using it for about 6 months so far, daily and more than once daily use by the kids when two of the older girls are home from college, and it’s what I used if I want scrambled eggs. Supposedly “healthy” non-stick but I’m not sure I believe all the hype about the ceramic surfaces.
I can’t speak to the Oxo pan mentioned above that ATK likes, but to me it looks like regular Teflon type surface.
I have sautes n15, n20, n25 that I use on the cooktop. I also preordered their 4mm special n30 saute, it should arrive in the fall.
I was aware of what they write there and so I was expecting a bit more convex when I ordered. I found that the convex is quite subtle indeed, but it’s there on my pans though and I think they are nice. I’d say I would not want my Darto saute pans to be any flatter, I’m sure it would be counter productive and make it easier for them to warp on my induction cooktop.
Your Yamada is probably flatter though, or it even has an almost cup in the middle? So that oil doesn’t easily even go to the sides? So… you can’t expect similar flatness from Darto I suppose. These are just nice and functional pans where I don’t find to be enough convexity so that I’d find oil pooling to the sides to be of any issue to me personally. However if you let the oil just sit there, eventually there will be a bit less oil in the middle…
I think ceramic pans do sound healthier. Even though I do not think Teflon pans are unhealthy. I think the biggest problem of ceramic pans are that they can lose their nonstick ability pretty quickly, especially at higher heat.
Ceramic is hard, and brittle. And high heat and severe temp changes (as well as metal utensils) can cause it to crack, chip, and scratch. This is way more an issue with ceramic than teflon, and why I don’t buy expensive ceramic pans.
But I have owned a couple for years and have not really seen an issue with them (although my most frequently used 8" skillet has a couple of chips on one area of the side wall). They do not have the burnt on color I have seen in some reviews… in fact, they look brand new (with the exception of those aforementioned chips).
But I don’t heat them empty, always use a little fat, and I don’t think I’ve ever used them above medium heat… plus I let them cool completely before washing them in warm water. YMMV, but I’ve had pretty good luck with them.
The best non-stick frying pan, IMO, is the Zwilling Madura Plus. Hands down, it’s the best.
But, and it’s a big but, it is kind of pricey for a pan. Depending on the size you get, it can range anywhere between $60-90, which isn’t expensive, per se, but not really inexpensive either.
I think for most folks you can easily get away with a “disposable” non-stick pan that you can pickup at your local grocery store (Safeway, Vons, Albertsons, Target etc.) for something like $20, and when it wears out in a year or two, get a new one.
Pretty much. Rendering bacon, caramelizing onions and shrooms, and then eggs for omelettes… fried/scrambled eggs by themselves… bechamel and thin sliced pastrami for S.O.S… all these things done pretty much on medium/low to medium.
Absolutely… different kinds of pans have different strengths and weaknesses. Your new Le Creuset will excel at frying, searing meats, braising, and everything else that works well with high heat retention. But it is not as responsive/even as aluminum or SS so not the best match for delicates.
I own several carbon steel pans and in some with a newer seasoning state I do experience a bit of flaking coming off from certain things cooking in the pans.
My older carbon steel pans with a deeper seasoning this flaking issue is not as prominent, but still my seasonings come and go - some seasonings seem to come off more easily than others.
My point is still that you WILL digest microscopic or larger pieces of old polymerised oil seasoning when you cook in carbon steel pans, whether one like to hear this or not.
Whether digesting old burnt in oil seasoning particles is unhealthy or even dangerous, I can’t tell for sure - and whether it’s more unhealthy than the caramelised black pieces you get from a freshly seared steak is less of a concern to digest than oil residue that has been part of a seasoning bond I also don’t know for sure.
But it’s just a concern to me, not a huge concern, but still a concern.
Especially when carbon steel pans so frequently are being suggested as alternatives to non stick pans.
No one seems to care about microscopic levels of polymerised oil seasoning going into the body, when using carbon steel pans and I find this a bit disturbing.
Yet I have no immediate plans to get rid of neither my non stick/ceramic pans nor my wonderful carbon steel pans.
I own 4 Mauviel M’Stone ceramic non stick pans & pots and while they seem quite sturdy (used mine since 2016/2017) they aren’t nearly as scratch resistant as my 4 Demeyere Alu Pro non stick pans.
If I used them daily I do now think they would probably not last for years and years, but with the frequency and the way I use mine now, they’ll must likely last decades before needing to be replaced.
Mind you I only use my non stick/ceramic pans at low to mid heat and never heats them up empty. Nor do I use metal utensils in them.
I like how the Darto is a one piece, so there are no rivets to fail ever. Eternal pan. I don’t mind cleaning around rivets, but I know some do. I also like how the Darto takes less space on the cooktop for a similar flat bottom. The n25 and n20 have about the same bottoms as on the Debuyer 28cm and 24cm.
Then the De buyer pro would have handles staying cooler for longer and also allow an easier access under some foods like omelettes with the sloped sides. Also Darto are not a very good fit for lids.
With these characteristics, I just might also prefer the De Buyer pro in use basically from a practical stand point as a single iron pan solution. But the Dartos are so darn nice and charmy that I honestly rather own them personally I still think. I wish I could justify the De Buyers, but it has gotten very hard to justify (or store,lmao) any more pans, or knives for that matter for me.
I feel I have what is the perfect carbon steel pan setup for my preferences - I live with my wife and no children, so we’re two in the household.
If I had children, I would also own the Darto N30 4mm (or be on the waiting list for it) and the De Buyer Mineral B Pro 32 cm, but as it is this - I believe - is the strongest carbon steel pan setup for me:
22 cm Matfer Bourgeat - used for spice & nut roasting and the occasionally 1-2 fried eggs.
24 cm & 28 cm De Buyer Mineral B Pro’s - mostly used for steak searing and meat searing and for when I’m lazy and don’t want to use my PLY or copper pans and want to sauté some vegetables after searing the steak in the same pan
Darto N25 & N27 - mostly used for searing larger pieces of meat before using the meat in either an oven dish or an ECI pot dish and used for searing XXL pieces of steaks where the De Buyer Mineral B Pro 28 cm has a too small effective cooking area and I’m not in the mood for using my Demeyere Proline frying pans.
I do prefer the French style flatter frying pan design for steak searing since it prevents the steaks from steaming, but the straighter sides in the Darto are not really tall enough for this to present an actual problem in real life cooking.
Sounds good Claus. Honestly the big Darto preorder saute will be too big for my cooktop… But I wanted it anyway, for future ;). I will probably use it mostly in the bbq sometimes until then.
But you know today, je me sentais comme un français. I was feeling totally French, so I made some potatoes in my 32cm De Buyer countrypan and the eggs in the De Buyer milady stainless pan in the absence of more French carbon pans. I beg you to notice also the De Buyer spatula, which is my all time favorite spatula. I diced the s with my old French Sabatier carbon of course.
Aaand I will probably get some more De Buyer carbon sooner or later. I am a bit torn if I would actually want the 28cm country pan also, but with the long Pro handle. I think it could be nice, I have so many regular frypans already. Be as it may I will try to use this bigger country pan more also. The potatoes came out good without a parboil, provided some stirring. I preferred yesterdays parboiled still, but those I essentially deep fried
s with my old French Sabatier carbon of course.
