SKILLETS AREN’T JUST FOR THE STOVETOP

Take a walk through our test kitchen and you’ll see stacks of skillets—small, medium, large, traditional and nonstick—all of them ovensafe. They’re undoubtedly the most useful pans in the test kitchen. We use a skillet to cook everything from burgers, steaks, and chicken to eggs, stir-fries, and sauces. But that’s not all. We use skillets to cook a host of other dishes that are started on the stovetop and finished in the oven, turning typically long-cooking dishes like roast chicken and baked ziti into weeknight meals. How do we do it? We brown chicken parts on the stovetop and then slide the chicken into the oven to finish cooking through. And for baked ziti? We cook the pasta right in sauce on the stovetop, add the cheese, then pop it into the oven to brown. Both dishes take only about 30 minutes from start to finish.

For most recipes the test kitchen prefers a 12-inch skillet. This large size is the most versatile because it can accommodate a big steak or all of the pieces of a cut-up 3-pound chicken. Look for a skillet that weighs about 3 or 4 pounds. Lighter weight pans performed poorly in the test kitchen and cooked food unevenly. Pans in the 3 to 4-pound range browned foods beautifully and have enough heft for heat retention and structural integrity, but not so much that they are difficult to lift or manipulate. A word of caution: When moving a skillet from the oven to the stovetop, remember that the skillet (and handle) will be hot for some time. To remind ourselves of this (after more than a few burns), we wrap a dry towel around the handle right after we pull it from the oven or slide an oven mitt over it. For more information on skillets and recommended brands of both traditional and nonstick skillets, see “POTS AND PANS”.