Field Cast Iron Review: Egg Problems & Great Gratins

So about 20 25% uh lighter weight than uh lots of other cast irons.

So people that have maneuverability issues, have trouble with the weight of cast iron, uh they're going to like the field.

I think if you are in the market for a lighter cast iron pan, you might really like the feel, especially if your cook top can get it heated evenly.

And I think one of the reasons I've had so much trouble with eggs in that field is that um those grooves, they uh I think they have not filled in yet and um they're kind of gripping food a little bit when I try and slide it around.

There is [music] a very tiny uh ring around the bottom of the pan which makes it sit up just a little bit. It's barely even noticeable. The Brevel has a temperature sensor in the middle of the cooking surface there and it has to stick up and make contact [music] with the bottom of a pan. Um there's also a logo here in…

Uh, no matter what I tried, I was getting, um, different essentially different cooking zones. I couldn't get the pan heated very evenly and I would put an egg in and sometimes um, part of an egg would stick and part would slide and the egg would come apart. And I think that's because the pan is not heated evenly and…

This uh 10-in pan um I had to work in two batches.

It's [music] um too narrow to lay out strips of supermarket bacon, but it will hold four if you cut them in half.

Let's talk a little bit more about that uneven heating though here. Uh you can really see it with these grilled cheese sandwiches. Give them their first turn there. And you can definitely see where one half of the grilled cheese is toasted and the other uh the butter is melted, but there is no toasting on there. So,…

I've also made some breaded squash and zucchini. And I like these for testing pans because I can lay them out all around the pan. Then when I flip them, I can tell if they're hotter or cooler spots. You can definitely tell that um some of these zucchini are much browner than the others.

And it's just a little bit more uneven and a little bit more difficult to cook in this pan than some others I have reviewed.

And after doing a ton of work on the seasoning and doing a lot of cooking, circling back to eggs, and I got this. And I got to say, I have never seen that [laughter] fried egg before. It's almost like uh orbiting almost like a planet or something. I don't know if that counts as half of a fried egg. never had um a…

And finally, I got to where I found that, uh, just trying different temperatures, if I went really, really low, um, I could get an egg to release, and this is after three or four minutes of setting up very, very slowly. I could get an egg to kind of sort of release and it'll move around, but I still say that egg is…

And holy cow, this thing is cooking very quickly, setting up very quickly. It's slid, but this is kind of one of those brown uh what I call internet eggs. [music] It slid, but it is kind of like shoe leather, and they wouldn't actually want to eat this egg.

Uh, normally I flip my steaks at two minutes when I do a hightemp sear on the stove top. So, I checked it at 2 minutes and actually I thought it could use a little bit more time. So, I put it back on that first side and gave it another minute. So, at 3 minutes I turned it and um, very nice browning and sear on there.…

And I'm going to say here that I can get an egg to slide now. The field, I mean, it's definitely come in. You can see the difference. It's darker and it's gotten better. But I am still waiting. I have yet to cook a truly delicious uh perfect fried egg in this guy after a month and a half of heavy seasoning and usage.

I have reseasoned this pan multiple multiple times. I have seasoned it with Crisco, with grape seed oil, with peanut oil. I have seasoned it in the oven. I have done carbon steel type seasonings on a stove top, getting the pan smoking there.

the field turned out some nice cornbread, no sticking and a nice crust.

this field cranked out an absolutely delicious [music] grten with no sticking on the potatoes.

Butter potatoes. Those brown up pretty nicely and they did not stick. That's a good thing.

But the field did okay here and I think it helped with the browning that both the potatoes and the okra, they get moved around a little bit.

I think you did an okay job with bacon. Just a little bit of pulling on there, but the um the card says uh bacon can actually stick a little bit early on. So, with that in mind, I think it did uh just fine. I started it out in a room temperature pan, brought it up to heat, some early [music] flips, and mostly…

Um I mentioned that the pan doesn't have as much thermal mass as maybe some other cast irons or carbon steels for that matter, but I am still getting a good sear and browning here.

And here, summoning every bit of egg sliding mojo that I could muster, [music] I got a moderately decent sliding egg. It released even did okay on the flip. You know, cast iron skillets are not really known for flipping eggs, so the side walls are too tall, etc., etc., but it's still released on that second side, and…

Not quite as much as a smiddy, but definitely five or six times more than a comparable lodge.

But it's not going to change the fact that um I've had a little bit of difficulty with this with this guy and it's not worked as well as some lowerric cookware right out of the box. So, there's still a um problem with the value proposition there.

cooking red meat in a pan at high temperatures on a gas cooktop really does add some color to a piece of cookware, whether you're cast iron or carbon steel. And I think this was very good for the seasoning on this field.

Um, 0 to 10 cooks, 60%. So, lots of people are having better luck with the field um than I have had so [music] far.