Best Cast Iron Skillet - Review of Finex, Smithey, FieldCo and Lodge

welcome back to the channel and today we're going to be doing a comparison against some bespoke cast iron pans that are manufactured in the u.s we've got one from finex one from smithies we got one from field and company and then we're going to compare it against our regular old 12-inch cast iron pan from lodge so in terms of the comparison we're going to take you through a bunch of the features that we think are important first how do these cast irons cook how do they clean up how's the finish on these cast iron is the surface smooth what's the weight like what's the thickness of the walls how well can they retain heat and we'll walk you through a whole bunch of other features here and hopefully this review is just helpful if you're looking at buying one of these brands you can figure out which one's right for you now before we jump into this i just want to thank the brands who sent these skillets out to us free of charge and we're not being paid for this review video they sent them out to us on the assumption that we were gonna do a fair comparison and give you our honest feedback here on the channel so the first dimension that we're gonna compare here is the smoothness and finish across these pans and this is absolutely the biggest difference that you're going to notice between bespoke cast iron versus a traditional lodge when you look at the foundry process for manufacturing cast iron cast iron is almost always made in sandy molds so they make a mold out of sand and then pour the iron into that and that's how you actually form one of these cast iron pans in a foundry so when you break away the sand mold you're left with the iron having a bit of that sandy texture to it and that's what delivers that rough kind of surface on on some of these skillets now with the bespoke cast iron pans they actually then machine the surfaces of these down so they're really nice and smooth and that just helps your pan act a little bit more non-stick now it's not to say your lodge won't be non-stick over time as you get more cooks in under your belt but it'll take a while before the seasoning over multiple cooks gets this to the point where it's as nonstick as one of these other cast iron skillets now if you're handy and you're up to it some people will actually take angle grinders or sanders to their lodge cast iron pans and just grind that down themselves now of course that's going to work through the pre-seasoning that lodge puts on these pans at the factory but that's absolutely an option and you just go through that re-seasoning process and you can get a pan that's roughly as smooth as these other bespoke ones as well but again it's going to take you a couple hours to get that done so let's see if we can tell a difference between these bespoke pants so you rub your finger just along the base of the skillet there that is absolutely smooth just like glass you're gonna go across the smithy here same you don't feel any bumps at all field company pretty similar as well very very smooth when you touch the lodge you can hear the graininess as your finger goes across that cast iron pan that just isn't present in the other skillets here so the next dimension we're going to compare here are the weight of these pans because after all we're cooking in cast iron because that weight provides these skillets a beautiful thermal capacity meaning that once we actually heat them up they stay warm even if you put cold proteins or other cold food in here which makes it great for delivering a ton of crust or if you're cooking over a campfire and again that's all driven by the weight and material of these pans the weight of the finax was 7.7 pounds the smithy came in heaviest at 8.6 the field and company was the lightest at 5.6 pounds and the lodge was the second heaviest at 8.1 pounds so these are all a similar weight with the exception of the field company skillet which is considerably lighter and you can really notice that when you're using it and it makes it frankly a little bit easier to use just because of the weight you compare it to the finex you compare it to the smithy you really notice that you're holding a heavy cast iron pan but again it's that trade-off of weight versus thermal capacity of the pan now the next thing i want to compare here is just the handles across these pans because they're actually quite different first i want to talk about the finex it has this beautiful coiled steel handle and the reason for that is this coil design not only does it look great but it actually prevents this handle from warming up no matter how long we've cooked for using this skillet this handle won't get hot at all now the actual coil piece it starts a little bit back from the pan you'll see you've got this little cast iron nub here and so when you're gripping the part that is cool it does make the pan feel a little bit heavier just because the leverage is back but this thing will just never get hot and that's a real benefit relative frankly to any of the other cast iron pans here i don't notice a ton of difference between these three all of them have nice rounded edges so that when you're holding the pan your handle isn't actually digging into your hand that much so i don't notice much of a difference across these skillets but the finex is really a standout in this category so the next thing i want to compare are the pour spouts on these skillets you'll see both the smithy and the lodge have pour spouts built right into the sides so you can pour anything out either side whether that's something that you're cooking in the pan that you need to pour out or whether that's the residual grease from a cook so that's really handy now going to the finex you might not see an obvious spout but because of this octagonal shape that they have to the pan you can actually use any of these edges as a pour spout and you won't get anything that drips out so that's a pretty cool feature there then you go to the field company and you look at this and there's no designated pour spout so that's just something to keep in mind when you're talking about this skillet so now let's talk about the lids so the finex comes with a lid you don't have to worry about fumbling around and finding a lid that will fit that shape same with smithy comes with a designated lid and neither of these two skillets do so the field the lodge no lids there this is the number 10 field cast iron the number eight does have a lid option but the number 10 doesn't now this is actually a pretty important feature and in particular what i want to point out with the smithy is that the lid actually doubles as a skillet or a griddle and that i think is really really cool so it not only is this a lid so if you're baking bread or any other recipe that you're making that actually needs a lid you've got one but if you want to make smash burgers which you all know we're a huge fan of here on the channel you can actually just use the lid here of the smithy and i love that dual functionality i think that's an ingenious little design that they incorporated here so the next comparison we're going to run is just how quickly these heat up and how well they retain heat so we're gonna put all of our burners here on medium high and we're gonna let these warm up for about five minutes and then just using our infrared temp gun here we'll check the temps see how these warmed up so the results of the heat retention test are in here i'll pop them up on the screen but not surprisingly because the field and the finex were actually the lightest pans they heated up the fastest and in that initial three or so minutes on the burner we actually got both of those up to around 320 to 325 degrees while the smithy and the lodge only heated up to 200 in the case of the smithy and 225 in the case of the lodge now what you'd also expect is that the heavier panes would retain their heat better and that's exactly what happened if we look at the field in the finance they both lost between 180 to 185 degrees fahrenheit over a 15 minute period while the lodge in the smithy only lost 80 to 75 degrees fahrenheit so it might take you a little bit longer to heat up the heavier pan but you can definitely tell the thermal capacity of those heavier pans will just hold that heat a lot better if you remove it from the fire or if you go and serve something in the dining table that's still in the cast iron pan it'll stay warmer longer because you've got that residual heat from the pan that will just continue to keep your food warm next i wanted to touch on the fact that these are all american made you've got finex which is originally manufactured in portland oregon they were acquired by lodge in 2019 and so they shift the actual foundry part of their operation down to lodge's foundries in tennessee but all of the finishing and machining and assembly is still done in portland oregon and you can actually see right here on the back of the pan they've got a really nice design that pays homage to that origin now smithy they manufacture their skillets in charleston south carolina and similarly you can see on the back here they pay homage to that right with a stamp on the bottom of your skillet which is pretty cool i like that field and company they don't have a single location for their manufacturing they outsource it and they have their foundries i believe it's in wisconsin in indiana so they're spread out a little bit more and then of course lodge like we mentioned with finex the foundries are down in tennessee so that's where they make those now the next thing i want to compare is just the overall style or aesthetic of these skillets and the standout for me is going to be the finex there this octagonal shape i think looks really great i love the steel coiled handle it's just something really unique that sets that skillet apart from the others and it's not to say that these other skillets don't look nice they absolutely do i love the smithy you got some nice touches here with this bird imprint their logo right on the handle you've got nice little touch finishing touches up here beautiful stamps on the back of these so it's not that these skillets don't look great i'm just saying for my personal preferences i do like the finex design so the last category and what i'm sure you're going to be interested in is just the price difference between these skillets now the finax without the lid runs you 190 and it's 290 with the lid the smithy it's 200 on a standalone basis 300 with the lid that doubles as the griddle the field company this is 160 and you know those are directionally in and around the same prices for some really nice bespoke cast iron and of course the field and company coming in a little bit cheaper and i think that just has to do with the amount of weight or material of iron actually used in it relative to the others and then lastly you've got the lodge and the lodge comes in at 20 bucks and it's available almost anywhere so massive difference clearly lodges the winner from the price standpoint so when you take all that into consideration which is our favorite pan well before we get into that i just want to say that our favorite pen may not be the pan that's right for you you should be thinking about which of those features is the most important do you want a light pan then you might go with the field if you really prioritize design maybe you go with the finex but for us i actually really like the smithy and the reason for that not just the fact that it's really smooth but i love the extra weight to me it's not a big deal and that's the whole reason that we're cooking with cast iron is to get that thermal capacity and i also love the fact that the lid doubles as a griddle so that's frankly my decision-making process behind the smithy my wife loves the field company and that's because she prefers the lightweight and prioritizes that but again just think about which features are going to be right for you as you think about making what is a pretty significant investment into one of these skillets but these are all heirloom pieces that will last for generations to come so if you're spending you know two three hundred dollars on a skillet just keep that in mind that this is going to last you forever so that's the end of the review video where we take you through the differences of these skillets but if you want to see us cook bacon and eggs in each of these to see how they hold up and just see the cooking performance i'm going to put a link over here to that one if you want to check it out so thanks for tuning in consider giving this a like leave a comment below and we'll see you on the next one thanks for tuning in

Channel: BBQ and Bottles

Views: 45,821

Keywords: BBQ and Bottles, BBQandBottles, Skillet Reviews, smithey skillet review, field company skillet review, cast iron review, lodge skillet review, lodge cast iron, smithey cast iron, field company cast iron, finex skillet review, finex cast iron, cast iron skillet reviews, field co cast iron skillet

Id: o-41mxKd_BA

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021