Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Signature Round Skillet, 11.75", Cerise

Why it's worth it

Le Creuset's enameled skillet browns nearly as well as bare iron and never needs seasoning. It's also the only pan here you can cook a tomato sauce in without worrying, and it cleans with soap and water.

If seasoning is the reason you've avoided cast iron, this pan removes the entire problem. The interior is black satin porcelain enamel, formulated for higher surface temperatures, and it's chemically inert. You don't oil it after washing. You don't worry about rust. You wash it, dry it, put it away — and the surface it has on day one is the surface it has in twenty years.

It's the only skillet here that's genuinely happy with acid. Wine reductions, lemon, vinegar, long tomato braises — all of that slowly eats the polymerized seasoning off a bare pan and can leave a faintly metallic edge on the food. In the Le Creuset, none of it registers. That alone makes it the right pan for anyone who cooks a lot of braises and pan sauces.

From our review of 5 cast iron skillets, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +If seasoning is the reason you've avoided cast iron, this pan removes the entire problem
• +It's the only skillet here that's genuinely happy with acid
• +Browning is close enough to bare iron that most cooks won't feel shortchanged
• +It's also the one pan here that goes to the table without looking like equipment

What to know

• –Enamel is glass, and glass chips
• –It's not a high-heat searing pan, and some owners buy it expecting one
• –It costs several times what a bare Lodge does