No. 8 Cast Iron Skillet

The number on a cast iron pan looks like a diameter and never has been. It refers to the burner ring on an old wood-burning stove, which is why Field Company's No. 8 measures 10 1/4 inches across the top and 8 3/4 inches on the cooking floor.

Most modern cast iron is sold as cast, straight out of the sand mould, and the pebbled surface that leaves behind is why a new pan takes months to build a slick face. Field machines the cooking surface smooth instead, the way pans were finished a century ago, then bakes on three coats of organic grapeseed oil before the pan ships.

The walls are thinner than the current norm and the same thickness all the way round, which is where the weight goes: the No. 8 comes in at 4.5 pounds, well under what most cast iron of the same diameter weighs today. That figure was not a target picked for marketing. Field weighed the vintage Griswold pans it was copying and put the useful band for a ten-inch pan at 4.3 to 4.5 pounds. Heavier and you are carrying metal that adds no heat. Lighter and the pan starts to warp.

There are no pour spouts, because testing showed that spouts drip anyway. The walls flare instead, like a pitcher with no lip, so liquid leaves cleanly from any point on the rim. The pans are poured from recycled iron using green sand casting, the same method Griswold and Wagner used, which is the part that makes the smooth face worth doing at all.