- Grilling with a round grill pan is also a great way to add depth of flavor to dishes. The high heat from the grill pan sears the food quickly, locking in the juices and creating a delicious caramelized crust. This adds an extra layer of flavor and texture to your dishes, making them taste like they were cooked on an actual grill.
Whereas handles on skillets are often already part of it, making it an overall single piece of metal. That said, the common exception would be the French skillet which closely resembles a frypan with typically riveted handles.
- When it comes to kitchenware, porcelain enamel cookware is quickly becoming a popular choice among home cooks and professional chefs alike. This type of cookware offers a unique combination of durability, heat distribution, and ease of cleaning, making it an excellent addition to any kitchen arsenal.
- In conclusion, the black iron frying pan is a must-have kitchen tool that offers unparalleled versatility, heat retention, and even heat distribution. Its natural, non-stick surface makes it easy to cook a wide range of dishes with minimal fuss, while its durability and long lifespan make it a worthwhile investment for any serious cook. So if you're in the market for a new frying pan, consider adding a black iron model to your collection – you won't be disappointed!
The flared sides also prevent steam from accumulating, hastening cooking by preventing mushy food.
Now this is a pretty tricky one. Frypans and skillets both rarely come with lids. When a frypan does come with a lid, it’s often made from glass which allows you to monitor food easily. Even so, it’s pretty rare for a lid to be available unless you specifically purchase the lid as an add-on.
Uses Of The French Skillet
Fry pans come in a greater variety of sizes, making it easy to adjust to the food being cooked, whereas French skillets are designed to handle larger quantities of food.
How to Clean Stainless Steel Pans
Frypans have curved edges starting from the base that straighten towards the top. But don’t confuse frypans with saute pans as those have vertical sides that begin right from the base. You’ll also rarely find a frypan with pouring spouts on its edge unlike those often found on a skillet.


Copper cookware is best known for its luxurious finish and excellent heat conductivity, as well as for its price—a small copper saucepan can fetch around $200, while a stockpot can cost upwards of $1,000. This makes copper relatively uncommon as a cookware material, though many cooks swear by it.
To help give you a running start, we’ve put together a guide to six of the most common pan materials, how to cook with them, what they’re best used for, and how to decide which one is right for you.
The expense—and lack of induction compatibility—can be a deal breaker for some cooks when it comes to copper pans.
It is important to consider the design of the pan when cooking specific food items, but generally, these pans are interchangeable.
“There are a few things to consider when you’re buying cookware, including how you cook, durability, and price,” says Lance Nitahara, an assistant professor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. “On the low end of the price scale are nonstick and cast iron; copper is on the high end. But each does a different thing.”
Below, you’ll find advice on how to choose the right frying pan for how you cook, plus highlights of top-performing pans from CR’s tests, listed alphabetically and not by rank. You can see how all the pans we test perform in our frying pan ratings and learn more about the different types of pans in our cookware buying guide.
According to one version, Le Creuset coined the term to promote their product as enticing and exotic.