Induction Ready

We've had fun this fall getting out to more shows and meeting some of you in person here in the shop! After chatting IRL, it's clear that induction cooking is rapidly becoming more common in your home kitchens. Cast iron is a great partner for induction technology, but not all skillets will perform equally. If not handled with care, powerful induction heat can easily warp a cast iron pan - but not one of ours!

We've specifically designed our skillets to work well on induction over the long term, making sure your skillet survives its way into becoming an heirloom.

Let's take a step back. 

Cast iron is prized for its ability to hold onto heat. Dropping a large cut of meat into a hot pan will not cause the iron's temperature to drop, giving you an A+ sear. That is because cast iron has relatively low thermal conductivity, meaning that it is not great at transferring or distributing heat. This is why we always recommend pre-heating a skillet before use. That slow warm up allows the iron some time to become uniformly hot across the material.

An induction burner works by using a magnetic field between a copper coil and the metal in your iron cookware. The heat generated by this interaction is intense in the small area where the two intersect, creating a notable hotspot. To mitigate hot spots, conventional advice would have you match your skillet's diameter to a similarly sized hob, however, the relationship between the size of an induction hob and its coil can be inscrutable. The actual coil is often much smaller than you would expect.

A while back we ran some thermal testing on our skillets and others on an induction burner. The below is a visual representation of the hotspot created when a modern lightweight skillet was placed on high for just a couple of minutes on a hob sized to accommodate this 10" pan:

You can see that the factory seasoning scorched right off of the above skillet (not one of ours!) where the induction coil was.

When cast iron heats up, it expands. Over time, this intense, localized heat will stress the metal and warp, or maybe even crack, the pan. What's worse, you can't use a warped pan on induction! The metal needs to make contact with the cooktop to work.

Again, you can avoid this by following best practices, but it doesn't take too many mess ups to do some damage. Induction cooking is marketed by how fast it can get hot. Think of claims like: "boil a pot of water in two minutes!" It takes some work to adapt to a new way of cooking and your cookware should be made to survive that learning curve.

 

We guarantee our skillets against warping. 

We specifically gave our skillets fat bottoms to slow down the creation of this kind of hotspot. The greater mass in the base protects our skillet from warping when cooked on induction or over live fire. This, paired with our custom surface finish, is going to give you a skillet that will continue to perform as cooking technology advances.

Anyone who has ever shopped for a lightweight or thin-cast vintage skillet will know that the description always mentions whether the skillet "sits flat". Over time, even normal cooking stresses the metal.  Induction technology is only going to accelerate this effect. We are proud to be making new heirlooms designed for the future of cooking.

 

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Related: Design Refresh, Getting Started