It's a niche I'm interested, but I've always been interested in people's relationships with pots, especially weight. Some people like or don't care about being heavy, while others need something light. Lately, I've been drawn to Kuhn Rikon's heavy horn car and put it on the right rear burner of the stove, and as I was thinking about where to store the pot, I realized it was already in the perfect spot.
The skillet in question is a Black Star from Swiss manufacturer, and it's a 9-pound skillet, the size I tested it, with a cooking surface of 24 centimeters and 32 centimeters from edge to edge. It's functional, looks great, and weighs just over 9 pounds, which is quite heavy compared to the competition. It's also admittedly pricey at $250. Especially when you compare it to something like the classic Lodge cast iron pot, which weighs about a pound less and costs a fraction of the cost of an imported version.
smooth operator
Let me just say that while I love cooking with cast iron skillets, including Lodge ones, I don't have a fetish for them. Seasoning levels vary, but you rarely run into sticking issues. I wash them with soap and water, but that often scares people with those fetishes. At least they can rest easy knowing I'm not the kind of animal you'd throw in the dishwasher.
For example, some pot makers recommend a seasoning process in which potato skins are baked with salt in oil with a high smoke point. This will remove the corrosion protection layer and start seasoning the bottom of the pan to get to work.
I didn't do that. One of the main differences between the Lodge and Kuhn Recon is that the Black Star has an incredibly smooth cooking surface. I've read that classic lodge pans have a sticky surface that picks up flavors over time, so that there's little difference between their non-stick texture and that of smoother models. That being said, the Smooth has always felt cleaner and more luxurious to me, and the Black Star was smoother the day I arrived, but over the years my lodge has become smoother. I stuck it on top of the burner right out of the box and scanned the surface with a thermal camera. Everything looked clean and even as the pan heated up there were no noticeable hot or cold spots.
One change from what I was used to was that instead of the more classic cast iron skillet style with one helper and one “regular” handle, I used a Dutch oven style model with two helper handles. was to use. This freed up a bit of space on the stovetop and made it a lot cleaner. Once I got used to it, I didn't miss it. (At this size and weight, the Lodge's regular handles aren't very useful anyway.) I've come to enjoy the Kuhn Recon's flared sidewalls, making it easy to access and tip over the contents of the pot with a spatula. is now a little easier. They also gave us something like an additional cooking surface that we could prop our food on. A bit of a cheat, but with more vertical walls it wasn't an option at all.
best practice
Leaving a pot on the stove when not in use has probably been around since the invention of pots, stoves, and laziness, but doing it with this nice-looking, high-performance pot comes with some major side effects. has occurred. That means I cooked more.
On my induction stove, the pots are a little on the small side, but all induction pots felt like sports cars or precision instruments to me, heating up quickly and being consistent and predictable. This combination works very well and feels almost futuristic. The only improvement I can think of is regarding the stove rather than the pot. With a pot this big, it would be nice if the burner could reach all the way to the edge.
What I was happy to realize is that during the months I was testing this bread, I hardly ever used a traditional nonstick pan. The bottom was smooth and coated with butter or oil, so no nonstick was needed. Sure, there are some recipes where nonstick is best, but there aren't that many, and the industry is confused. Teflon is becoming obsolete and ceramic doesn't work well and tends to wear out quickly. With the Kuhn Rikon, if I got a little stuck from the scramble (or whatever) I was cooking, I could lean on the thin-bladed metal spatula and scrape the bottom clean without worrying about damaging the surface. Simple, easy, and PFAS-zy free.
