- Hi, I'm Alvin and I love cast iron. One day the about to eat team were talking amongst ourselves
and discussing how it would be cool to test out expensive
versions of kitchen utensils, and tools that we all liked. You might've already seen
some of us documenting these experiences through our
videos, such as Andrew's five-hundred dollar
Japanese kitchen knife, and Inka's three hundred
twenty nine dollar toaster video. Well, today I am going to
be sharing my experience with a one hundred sixty dollar cast iron pan for 30 days. Full disclosure, this pan
was paid for by the company, and we will make a little bit
of money if you decide to buy the pan with the link below. But this video is not sponsored and I will be giving my
full and honest experience with these 30 days. So going into this, I really had three big major questions. Number one, how does this $160 cast iron
pan compare to the $25 cast iron that I've used
for many years and love both performance and utility
wise and in appearance. number two, will this $160 cast iron pan
incentivize me to cook with it more because of its many features. And finally, what I have paid $160 of my
own money to buy this pan, knowing everything that I
learned in these 30 days. Well, let's find out. So this pan is from a
company called Smithy. I ordered the number 10 cast
iron skillet with a leather handle because you know... why not. first impression of the pan itself. It really is quite beautiful. I really liked the factory
finish they applied, it's really smooth, shiny reminiscent of those
beautiful copper pans found in professional kitchens. Visually it's stunning. It is definitely prettier
than my $25 cast iron by far, but I was really curious if
this polished satin finished would actually last after
30 days of cooking with it. I really liked that the pan
came with these little tidbits of helpful information in the
form of these little cards. I think it really made using
this expensive tool for the first time, a lot less intimidating. after giving it a quick wash and dry as per the instructions, I was excited to read that one
of the best first things to cook in this pan was
caramelized onions and beef, which is one of my favorite combinations. It says that there's already
a few layers of seasoning on this pan, which makes it
ready to use out of the box. So I got a bunch of onions, cut them up. That's my new knife, by the way. And I heavily heavily
brown some 90 10 beef for this pans, maiden voyage. This beef is getting nice and brown. And to use all the fond
that the beef left behind, I then caramelized all
the onions that I cut. Just basically a buttload
of onions in some butter everything's working,
you know, so far so good. Nothing was sticking. The seasoning apply to the
pan from the factory finished seem to be working pretty well. Honestly, it was just
pretty fun to break in this new toy stirring and cooking onions for quite a long time. So after about two hours or so, that mixing these onions,
de glazing it, reducing it, adding the beef back in, my entire apartment just smelled
like so like great stuff. I essentially had made kind
of like a caramelized beef and onion jam, which actually tasted quite
similar to an oxtail jam that I loved at a French restaurant one night, pretty pleasant surprise. And after cooking with
this for the first time, the first thing that I did
notice was that the factory finished essentially,
almost all, but came off. I don't know if it was
due to the long cook time, the acidity from the onions
that constant stirring with the wooden spoon or the
exposure to the high heat. But this pen definitely looked
drastically different from the shiny new pan from three hours ago. Honestly, that was kind of disappointing. I was like secretly rooting
for the finish on the pan to stay on, but I guess it kind
of showed that underneath, you know, this is still a cast iron pan
and cast iron is cast iron. to clean this cast iron it's recommended to only
use water if possible, that way you don't strip off
any of those seasonings things like harsh dish soaps or
abrasives like steel wool would tend to scrape that away. But I had a lot of these burns
sugars and fond from the beef that eventually got a little too dark and stuck around for a bit. So I actually resorted
to a cleaning technique, taught to me by the very
talented Claire king. So instead of using
something like steel wool, this technique actually involves
using a generous amount of kosher salt and scrubbing
it around with a sponge, the rough textures of the kosher salt, not only act as an abrasive, but also as an absorbing medium, it feels almost like
using a loofa, you know, when you're showering, it's gentle, but it does get the job done. at this point... as you can see, the pan does desperately
need a re seasoning. So here we go, the way I do it, I let my cast iron heat on
my stove at the highest heat until it starts to smoke,
like, like a lot of smoke. at this point, you know, my windows are open. My vent fan is on, I have it another fan right
next to the stove to sort of push all those fumes towards the window. And after it's smoking, I wiping a very, very thin layer of neutral
oil all over the pan using a paper towel on this really, really, really hot cast iron while
it's still on the stove, you can hurt yourself
if you're not careful. So there is also an oven method
that if you can find online works really well. I do
this because it's quicker. And I think it's just more satisfying. I'm not sure exactly what
the science behind why the seasoning works the way it does, but I believe it has something
to do with how extremely high heat reacts with the
oil and creates almost like a non-stick like layer. Some of the chemical
composition starts to change. Old bonds are broken down,
new bonds are formed. I'm not exactly sure. Please trust a.edu website
for this information. But after doing this a few
times, you letting the oil smoke, you're rubbing on a thin
layer, wiping out the excess, repeating that over, the
cast iron should be seasoned. So as you can see, I got a little bit too
excited and I used a little bit too much oil, which is why there's these
little spots that happen all over the pan. It's not a big deal. It's not going to cause
anything crazy to happen, but the oil layer should
be really, really, really, really thin. So because of my schedule, I decided to cook at least one fun dish in my cast iron per week. Just to help me answer those
three questions from the beginning of this video. today, I decided to make tarte tatin, one of my favorite desserts to bake. And one that I've actually
made for the three ways of used cast are in video on this channel. I thought it'd be fun to make the same recipe in this cast iron since I've made it with
my $25 one in that video just to compare. So this recipe is pretty simple,
make a caramel with salt, sugar, and butter until it's smooth. I cooked a buttload of apples
in this caramel until the apples released their juices, then reduce down into this
nice glaze that coats, every single piece. As you can see, I've got a little too excited and over cook some of these apples. So a little bit softer than
I usually would have liked. Then I'm just putting
them in the cast iron, fanning them out, filling in
the gaps as much as I can. And then after a circle of
puff pastry goes on top. The whole thing goes into a really, really hot oven until that
pastry is really nice and golden brown. This is kind of deja vu for
me because making this is, it feels and looks exactly
the same as when I had made it with my $25 cast iron. And once this is all cooled off, a little flip upside down
into a plate, and there it is, you know, not as shiny or as
clean as I would have hoped, but that's because I
messed up when it came to over cooking apples. I don't think the cast
iron contributed to why it looks this way. Cause the release of the tart
was actually quite smooth, very pleased with the performance
on this one tastes pretty good too. Exactly how I make it. So all in all pretty satisfied. For cleanup, there's actually quite a bit
of a caramelized sugar that was quite hard to clean off and I
scrubbed it pretty hard with a sponge under running hot water. And maybe because my previous
seasoning wasn't the best, but I definitely had to re
season the pan after making this dish as well. I mean, I don't really mind cause I
honestly find seasoning a cast iron quite honest. So I'll
take any excuse I can. So it's been another week
since I last used my cast iron this time, I decided to pull it out to
cook one of my favorite things, which is steak. One of the biggest reasons I
love cast iron is because it retains heat really well and
also transfers heat really well, especially to things like steak. We're having this nice crust. It's just really beneficial to the food. After I'm rendering some
beef fat in the pan through, into revise to the sear off, I was pretty excited to cook
steak because my twenty-five dollars cast iron is actually
only nine inches in diameter. So having this new 10 inch
pan actually allowed me to finally fit two steaks at the same time, seems like something small. But to me it cuts down a ton of cook time. Essentially since these steaks
are from my friends and I really liked serving people
at the same time and the crust on these steaks, not bad. I like my steaks medium rare, so these didn't spend more than two minutes total in the pan. And you know, while the stakes arresting
on a rack outside of frame, I made a quick garlic herb
butter in the same pan with Rosemary Sage. I actually don't like the
popular butter basting method because I think it leaves
a ton of leftover wasted, sometimes burn butter in the pan or prolongs the time of steak
might spend in a pan, which could over cook it. instead. I just use a little bit and I like to brush it on top of the steak after it's sliced instead. So that each piece gets an even coat. One thing that I did notice
about the smoothie pan is that after it is re seasoned, it does take back quite a good
amount of the former luster, which makes it visually
very appealing as a serving dish for food. So I decided to serve my steaks
along some fries and stay in the pan itself. For me, it really made serving steak
fuel like more of an event. You know, that feeling where you go to
a steakhouse and the steak comes at the table and it's
a fancy restaurant and it's sizzling and this cast iron platter, and you definitely have to
give props for the smoothie pan for being able to give me that, that I don't think I would
have been able to get with my older pan. Another weekend, another
fun food adventure. So this time it's
cheeseburgers, if you know me, you can probably tell by now
that I'm just cooking all my favorite things inside this cast iron, just to see how things go. So these are just brioche buns toasted in brown butter and sage, another pleasant surprise based
on this 10 inch diameter of the pan. I can toast four
buns at the same time, instead of just two, it sounds dumb, but it kind of feels like when
you move into like a larger bedroom and you realize that
all the new things you can do with that much more space, honestly, it made me pretty happy
because I do make burgers every now and then. I could also fit in two
patties at the same time because before I'd only be
able to do one and that made me pretty happy. for the beef. I'm cooking a personal blend
of dry-aged ribeye trimmings, short rib and brisket. And maybe because this pan is
newer or that my seasoning was pretty good this time, but it was very, very satisfying to flip
these patties over it. One huge standout for me is
to know how amazing the crust this pan just gave to the burger. I mean like it's this beautiful, perfect dark golden brown
from like wall to wall. after that some American
cheese steaming it a little bit under a lid
and the patties go rest on a wire rack so that the
extra fat can drip off. One thing I usually find
annoying about making burgers is that in between each round of patties, I'd have to clean off any burnt
bits of cheese beef or fat before I could steer the next batch. That's my old cast iron and
often have to basically wash the whole thing, reapply oil and reheat it, which caused me a ton of delays. But this pan, I was really surprised I could easily just scrape
off all those burnt bits. And just after a quick wipe
with a paper towel is basically ready to go. for burgers this pan seems to be really, really, really solving a
ton of my efficiency issues. The burger itself is pretty simple... Two toasted buns, two
patties with some cheese, some burger sauce that I
made earlier. And that's it. And to clean up, I think I could avoided one
to two more uses in this pan before re seasoning the
whole thing. But honestly, I thought it couldn't really
hurt to just do a little bit, instead of just waiting until
everything was stripped away to give it a full four re seasoning. It's fun to see essentially
come back to life. So it's day 30. The last thing I wanted to cook
in my cast iron is actually a recipe directly from Smithy's website. And I've decided to try out a
recipe that I'd actually had never made before. It's a ricotta Dutch baby pancake. So I'm following the recipe
directly from Smithy's website, but I'm actually increasing
the recipe by 50% because there's this designed for two, six inch cast iron pans instead of one. So these are just some mass
rated strawberries that I had decided to make right before filming, but it's also really cool
about this recipe is that it's mainly done in a blender. I actually don't have a blender. So I'm using a food processor. So there's things like ricotta,
sugar, eggs, lemon juice, and flour that kind of all get mixed up. So once the cast iron is hot, putting in some butter to heat as well, then once the butter is sizzling, basically in brown butter to me, I'm pouring the better directly
into the pan while it's still in the oven. And this actually reminds me
of how Yorkshire puddings are made, where a liquid batter
is poured into a really, really hot metal vessel
is line with sizzling fat. And I just really like
to watch this transform, especially cause the
butter makes those edges so crispy and appetizing, how to feeling those are
going to be my favorite parts. So after the Dutch baby is done. The garnish is just some
powdered sugar with those masturbated strawberries. And
that's about it for this dish. I think this is also another
case in which the visual aesthetic of the pan
and how it looks made. The final dish appear
really appetizing to me, especially because it contrast
it really well with his light blue cloth that I had
laid out again, very, very easy release from the pan
when I'm taking out a slice of the baby pancake, maybe it was because of the
butter or maybe it was because of those multiple layers of seasoning. I'd applied by day 30, but it was very, very satisfying to make
and serve this dish. Taste-wise though, I actually don't think
this recipe is for me. Maybe I'd done something wrong
since this was my first time making a dish like this, but I think I was expecting
more of a fluffy pancake and this kind of fell on the
spectrum of a bread pudding. That's just my preference, but I did really like the strawberries and those crispy edges, I guess also making it in a 10
inch pan does alter the ratio of crispy edge to soft custardy
center a little too much. So that's probably why this
recipe was designed for to six inch pans for a reason. I think at this point I realized
just every time I use this pan, it's fun. All those dishes that I'm cooking, everything is a little bit
more fun than my old one, which is really cool. So after 30 days, the three major questions still remain. Number one, how does this the $160
cast iron pan compared to the $25 one I own? I think that $160 Smithy pan
definitely has an edge in appearance. It has a sleek finish that even
though it was lost a little bit throughout the process
does come back with seasoning. And because of that, I did end up using it to serve
a lot of dishes that I might not have served in my $25 pan. Question number two, will this $160 cast iron pan incentivize me to cook more with it because of its features. I say, yes, I definitely think this mini
cast iron because of its aesthetic appeal and its
performance bank on the similar level with other cast iron that
I own did incentivize me to cook with it. I was excited to serve
things like the steak in it. I was excited to see how
it made the Dutch baby look really nice. I was excited that it could
fit two steaks and four burger buns and two burger patties. I did enjoy being like this
feels more efficiently. I want it to make it just so
I could feel that I was being faster. I was being better
at making these things. And finally, the big question, what I have paid the full $160
to buy this pan myself with my own money, knowing everything that had been able to trial
in the last 30 days? no, $160 is a lot of money. And I have a cast iron pan that costs $25. If I pay 135 more dollars
for a cast iron pan, I also expect it to perform
at a higher level utility wise than just from a pure
aesthetic point of view. I do enjoy beautiful things,
but I do have a price. So even though I might not
have bought this with my own money, just for me to use at
home, the memory of using it, the experience of using it and
even knowing that it did cost $160 was exciting to me. And I think if you're able
to give that to someone else, I think that's a really, really, really cool thing to have because
that tool is going to last them quite a long time. But I did very enjoy my 30 days
when this cast iron and I'm looking forward to many, many more. Thank you guys. I'll see you guys later. [Groovy Music Fades]
