imesh

  Chefs have heralded carbon steel for years, but now it's time home cooks get in on the secret. To help, we tested 20 pans to find the best for most cooking tasks. We weighed the pros and cons of our top performers before arriving at this list. If you like to cook, chances are you already know how important it is to have both a quality nonstick skillet and a reliable cast iron pan in your kitchen. A carbon steel skillet combines the benefits of both pans, making it a heavy-duty workhorse that's surprisingly slick and easy to clean. Conducting heat quickly and evenly, carbon steel is the preferred material for paella pans — especially if you want to achieve a crusty socarrat, or the bottom layer of paella. Moreover, these pans are compatible with all cooking surfaces, from induction cooktops to grills , and can go in the oven. Stuck-on food, however, takes vigorous scrubbing to remove, as we found with the fried egg in our first test. Sticking also made the egg difficult to fli...