I have a deep and abiding fondness for Lodge – they were my first piece of cast iron and they are cheap (or used to be and even if they aren’t any more, you can usually find them for affordable at second hand shops in the US) — but I think, if things keep going along the way they did today, that my new love has to be the Iwachu omelette pan.

I want to go – if you want to try testing out if cast iron is for you, try this – but its list price is $100. It is currently going for $54 on Amazon right now, but you can get a really basic 10 inch Lodge skillet for less than $20.

And if you’re a meat eater or don’t mind cooking up some meat for people who do — Lodge’s pre-seasoned cast iron really isn’t that difficult to get to a point where you can fry eggs. You don’t even really need to do the whole hullaballoo of “wipe it with an oiled paper towel, stick in a really hot oven for a few hours, take out and rinse and repeat until you feel like the seasoning is sufficient”.

Slight tangent: I actually don’t recommend doing the hullaballoo not only because I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it actually creates a worse seasoning that is prone to flaking, but that’s my personal experience over the past few decades.

Note my attempt to persuade you by chucking out that time frame. Never mind that if you do something badly for a long time, you’re still doing it badly. But if you follow me on twitter, I have a picture of my cast iron baby to prove that my method results in a super pretty glossy seasoning.

Anyway.

If you have the spare cash, I still really would suggest going for the Iwachu as your first cast iron pan.

1. It’s just really pretty and it can easily go from stove to table. Look at that gorgeous curve and the lines on it. I love Lodge, but I am definitely plating my food instead of serving it in that chunky looking pan.
   Look — if I’m going to risk someone (me, I mean me) burning themselves while getting food from a really hot pan that is going to stay really hot for a good long while….it better look really pretty!
2. The seasoning on the pan is just really amazing straight out of the box. I washed mine up with soap and hot water, dried it, and went straight to frying rice with zero sticking. There wasn’t a “how to” note in the box, so I didn’t do whatever some of the people on Amazon recommend of starting it off with a hot oil bath.
   After frying rice with plenty of wok hei… I seared some mushrooms and made myself an omelette. Again, absolutely no sticking, and there was a brilliant exhibit of the Maillard effect.
   The third thing I did was heat up potato salad in the oven. Stuck the entire thing in the oven and let it go until the potato salad was golden brown on top. I didn’t bother oiling the bottom that time because I figured mayonaise was made of oil… Tried sliding it out of the pan when I deemed it done, and it didn’t want to come, so I nudged it a bit with a spatula. It came out in pieces, but it did release cleanly.
   This is …not something you can do with Lodge straight out of the box.
   I personally don’t mind seasoning pans, because I like that sense of establishing a relationship and nurturing it through tender loving care and lots of bacon.
   But some days you just want to fry rice without all that hassle, y’know?
   I haven’t tried frying an egg sunny side up (the true cast iron test) yet, but I figure it’ll do fine since the mushrooms were gorgeous. I’ll report back!
3. So the “stay cool” handle? Really does mostly stay cool. Or rather, “cool enough I didn’t need to use an oven mitt while frying my rice or the entire process of cooking my mushroom and onion omelette”.
   This is…just a stunning game changer. With my Lodge pan, by the time the pan’s heated up sufficiently to cook eggs nicely, the handle is too hot to even nudge.
   The Iwachu?
   I stir-fried bits of sausage until done, dumped that into a bowl, poured my egg and rice mixture into the pan and tossed until everything was golden brown and delicious, added in my chunks of steamed carrot, added the sausage back in, then finished everything off with diced onions.
   Tipped everything out into a serving bowl without needing an oven mitt.
   Amazing.
   Reset the pan (let it cool, washed in hot water, then dried), and started on my mushroom omelette.
   Seared the mushrooms until they were nice and golden brown (takes quite a while, so pan definitely had plenty of time to heat up the handle), dumped out the mushrooms, poured in the egg and let it set. Swirled the eggs around a bit to spread the omelette bigger, added some Emmental cheese, scattered some diced onion on top, let the mushrooms back in to the join the party, and then plated. On a cooler day I could’ve gone without my oven mitt entirely. It was just barely that side of too hot.
   The reason why this is important is because it means you’re so much less likely to burn someone, or me, if you use this as a serving dish. Also, it’s just nice not to have to use an oven mitt because those can be super clumsy and result in more accidents than they prevent.
4. This pan is so much lighter than a similarly sized Lodge. I don’t know how they managed it. The sides do seem thinner and the sides don’t come up as much, so…
   Anyway, I have the 22cm and it’s big enough for a generous one-person serving of fried rice or a three egg omelette.
   As my disability progresses, my Lodge is getting harder and harder to move around and use. This is a godsend. It is easy to lift with one hand and move around, which makes washing and drying it much easier. With my Lodge pans, I have to sort of hug the (often extremely hot) pan to my chest to dry it after washing.
   You might ask why I don’t put it down to dry and that’s because the counter is usually wet and I don’t remember to wipe down the counters before washing my pans mid-cooking.
5. I think it somehow gives a nicer sear on things than my Lodge? I don’t know what it is, but I never got the same kind of golden brown on my mushrooms.
   I…think it’s because it’s thinner so it vaguely behaves slightly closer to carbon steel. Pure conjecture! Anyway, the wok hei is incredible.

I’ll report back over the next however long to see if I’m still as in love with this pan in a week or month as I am today.

I will say that this is mainly a one-person pan depending on appetites. Kev had the fried rice over two meals, but I think it would’ve been “just enough” fried rice for a teen.
The sides are fairly shallow and I think it’s easy to spray things out while stir-frying. I think you can do a single serving of stir-fry, maybe. I’ll need to test this. Definitely not even stir-fry for two people, not unless it’s the super spicy kind.

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