Mauviel 24 cm M'Steel Steel Fry Pan, Black

Don't believe everything you read on the internet, they say. How many you-tube videos have I watched where the author waxes lyrical about the benefits of cooking with carbon steel frying pans. The Michelin star chefs use them, they say, and so you should too. Or should you?This Mauviel steel frying pan is good quality and - versus a non-stick pan - is still very weighty and heavy despite some reviews saying it is not as heavy as a De Buyer. You could certainly whack a mole or a screaming child with this.After taking a geological age to get the wax off in hot water, I was ready for the "seasoning" , which the you-tuber wouldn't shut-up about. Well frankly unless you live in the hills, seasoning is pretty horrible where you burn the oil into oblivion and smoke out the house. The neighboursing flats were ready to call to fire brigade. It took hours to get the smell out of the kitchen/entire apartment.But I was done right? That was the hard part? My new pan had aged as fast as I have through the pandemic, which was a sign I was ready to cook. Now onto the egg test - a couple of fried eggs. Fail. Stuck to the pan and in the scrubbing all my effort of seasoning basically went down the drain, leaving a splotchy pain. Yikes. I wasn't going through that seasoning process again so soon.I tried again a few more times to season to pan, and through cooking, slowly improved the non-stick qualities. Though the food always tasted a little of burnt or oxidized oil. I have noticed that in restaurants where they do the scrambled eggs in a cast iron or carbon steel pan. It tastes like someone cooked them in the oil from a deep fat fryer out of a greasy Chinese.And it noticed that I had to use a lot more butter or oil than I normally would during cooking. In fact, look at any video of a carbon steel frying pan being used and there is usually an obscene amount of oil or fat in the pan as they effortlessy swish the eggs around.Wait a minute. I can already do that with my stainless steel frying pan! If I add that much butter or oil to a stainless steel pan, it doesn't stick much either. And if it sticks a little, I have no problem getting in there and scraping the food off during or after cooking.And actually I am not so sure if that many modern day chefs do use these carbon steel pans. You see a lot of chefs using All-Clad stainless steel frying pans. With an adequate starting layer or butter or oil, most stainless steel frying pans do a decent job. And they require both less maintenance and less annoying of the neighbours.This pan unfortunately will not get used much in the future.

I regret not getting a pan like this long before now. I bought it to replace a good non - stick pan that was losing its coating, both from age (5+) and from excessive heat, since like all non-stick pans it couldn't cope with the temperatures needed to sear meat. I've been getting increasingly frustrated by that: the idea that you need to replace a pan that easily costs £60 every five years, though it's a solid piece of manufactured metal, seems pretty repulsive. It's neither practical nor environmentally great.And this is the alternative. I've now had it for more than a year, and its reliability and the sheer quality, plus previous experience with carbon steel (my wok) means I am entirely confident that it is likely to last as long as I do.First impressions were great: it's really good, solid, simple, old-fashioned manufacture, the kind of thing European manufacturing made when it was the best. One-piece pan, a solid handle held on with three rivets, nothing else. It's fairly weighty in this 28cm size, but not forbiddingly so. I don't think I could break it if I tried - certainly not without a sledgehammer. For the forty quid I bought it for, that seems great, especially as equivalent non-stick pans could easily cost double that.Preparing it for the first use wasn't hard, though it took thirty minutes. As with cast iron pans, there's a lot of stuff on the internet that makes sealing it sound like a difficult and arcane art.Basically, after ten minutes getting rid of the anti-rust beeswax with hot water, heat, and kitchen towels (annoying, but better than rust on a new pan) I brushed it with oil and burned it on for five minutes; then I did the same but with more oil. I suspect doing it in the oven might have been slightly better. But, contrary to the internet,, I don't think the initial searing matters that much. There were certainly flaws with mine. As I learnt from my wok, the secret isn't the first seal it but how you look after it.The number one secret is: always DRY BY HEATING IT UNTIL IT SMOKES before putting it away. The number-one thing people do wrong with carbon steel is 'drying' it with a tea-towel and not getting it dry enough - or even worse, drip drying. Dry it, or finish drying it, by heating it empty. If you don't, it will rust. And if you do that, if you avoid scrubbing it too hard too often, and if you oil it a little each time before heating, the patina just gets better and better each time. It's really not much labour at all, and it beats buying a new non-stick every five years.The other secret to making sure it's non-stick is to cook with it, It's not a pan to keep in the back of the cupboard. Ours lives on the hob and does all the better for it.So: how does it cook? The answer is marvelously. From first go, it was as non-stick as our non-stick when frying eggs, which is a pretty good benchmark. The non-stick might have won, just, when it was new, but I don't know, since nothing has stuck to this one yet. I shall have to test it with an omelette.Add that to an excellent sear, because of the high heat capacity, and it's a perfect pan. I thoroughly anticipate not just using but loving this pan in the decades to come, and I couldn't recommend it more highly. I'm sure the same would be true of any similar pan (e.g. De Buyer) but, even if equal, I doubt they would be better.There's a reason restaurants use carbon steel constantly. I'm not going back!-----Nearly 2 years later, November 2019----I don't take back anything above. As the pan gets older it's getting better - the seal is better and better.----May 2021----Still great. I hardly ever add oil before heating now, the patina is very robust. Comparing it to a normal non-sick pan we inherited recently, better than ones we previously owned, the carbon steel isn't quite as good at frying eggs. At everything else, it wins hands-down.

It is good pan but not for glass top or induction top.the bottom is not flat and easy warp when heat up

Not sure some of the reviews re the difficulties removing the beeswax and seasoning some have had. Plenty online how to dos. Ditto no issues with the warping some have noted. Cooks really well and in very large part non stick. Was with not water. No soap Dry on burner. Haven’t had to re season and cooked no acidic foods (tomatoes etc). Slightly heavy rot toss things but manageable. Have subsequently bought the carbon steel wok. Cannot Ross food on that but fabulously deep. Cooks food really fast. Both will last several lifetimes.

I bought this mauviel at the same time as the 26cm de buyer mineral b. Chose the msteel in 28cm as it is lighter.First, everyone should forget about Teflon and just buy these - the de buyer is perfectly non stick after just a few uses.As for this mauviel, I am returning the first one as it warped badly straight away. Replaced it as I wanted to love this pan - it is lighter than the de buyer and looks great. But the second one also warped so it doesn't sit flat on the hob. We have induction hobs so maybe it works better on gas. But it is meant to be compatible with induction. I will keep the mauviel now as its cumbersome to return.So in short, buy carbon steel but buy the de buyer (mineral b). Not the mauviel.

Bottom of the pan warped producing a dome.