I have these really nice steel All-Clad pans that are a pleasure to work with; they were a wedding present and probably cost 1B dollars. I assume that if my stove was not a piece of shit I’d have lots of pleasant memories of gently sautéing this or that. But truth is my stove slants, the burners suck, and my life is filled with other similarly first world problems.

Also, did you know that Teflon® is a health risk when heated to over 500°F? Not that you are going to ever cook anything at that temperature, unless you suck at cooking, but still.

Plus the afore mentioned All-Clad frying pan is like 14 inches in diameter and is really way to big for when you want to fry an egg. So many problems. Solution: I bought a cast iron pan. It cost 17$.

AND IT TOTALLY ROCKS!

Listen people. First, if you care, the cast iron distributes the heat so evenly that my shit stove no longer burns bacon on one side. Hurrah!

Second, and more importantly, you just wipe the pan out when you are done. That’s it. It is actually against the rules to use soap/detergent on a cast iron pan. If, by some chance, you forgot to flip your grilled cheese because you were enthralled in The Wire and now it’s formed a molecular bond with the bottom of your skillet, WORRY NOT. I just boil some water in the bottom of the pan*. Boom, problem solved. Read more about caring for cast iron cookware.

Cheap, reliable, easy to clean. What more could you ask for?

* Don’t pour cold water in a hot pan, you’ll crack it.