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Review by Ron Atkins:

I own several Lodge cast iron products and use them everyday. I have 3 teeneage boys that enjoy cooking, and after they destroyed a few teflon coated pans, I decided I would go heavy into cast iron. These pans are indestructible. You can use them in the oven or stovetop, and if you keep it seasoned properly food will not stick. Also, to avoid sticking problems, you may want to remember to allow the pan to get hot before applying oil or food.As to seasoning, the Logic line now comes preseasoned. But don't make a big deal about this. To season a cast iron skillet simply coat it lightly with oil and bake it for a half hour or so. I have also seasoned these skillets on the stovetop. Cast iron is also great because it does not easily scrap like stainless steel and aluminum pots. Aluminum pans are painful to me, as my teeth fillings react to the aluminum. With cast iron, you won't have this problem. I also take my Lodge pan camping and set it right over the coals to cook. No melted handles or scorched bottoms to mess with.

Review by D. Horton:

Let me start by saying we have a kitchen full of 20+ pieces of Calphalon Hard Annodized Commercial cookware. I was always of the opinion that quality cookware carried a price that was justified by the performace of the cookware. So I thought if I wanted cast iron I should look at LeCreuset... wrong! Lodge blew that theory out the window! I can't express how well this simple pan works. Let it get hot and it will hold the temp like nothing else, oven to cooktop. I finally decided to get a good cast iron skillet after hearing Alton Brown (Host of Good Eats - ...- TV Food Network - ...) rave about cast iron for the last few years. He steared me to Lodge, Lodge's web site (lodgemgf.com) told me about the pre-seasoned "Logic" line. This stuff makes cast iron simple. No messing around with seasoning a new pan. Simple care instructions. And clear instructions to reseason should the need occur. At the price these pans sell, there is no excuse to not have one, (or more) in your kitchen. It will soon become your favorite pan. I bought a 5 quart Lodge Logic Dutch Oven at the same time and it is fantastic as well!

Review by G. Powell:

if you are just outfitting your kitchen, start with this pan. Especially if you are cooking for 2 or 3. The 10" deep skillet is one of the least expensive, decent fry pans available. You can do a dutch apple pie with the lid on in the oven, you can cook eggs, pancakes, french toast on the lid. If you are cooking for 4, and want just one fry pan, get the 12". Otherwise this pan does it all. Roast, fry, oven and stove top. The pans are tough, mine is going on 20+ years.

Downside, takes a bit more oil or grease than a Teflon pan, but then if you own a parrot you already know you can't cook on Teflon. Makes you wonder how good it is for the rest of us.

Review by Colin Mcnee:

Simply put, this is the best-designed piece of cookware you will ever use. Chicken fryer, dutch oven, skillet... use your imagination. The 'bottom' half is an excellent deep sauce pan in which you can make a decent sized batch of spaghetti sauce or chili, the 'top' half is a perfectly proportioned skillet. The sides are high enough and have a slight curve so that you can use it as a saute pan and low enough to serve as a griddle. I only have a small hot-plate in my apartment and I use this combo as a stove-top oven. Skillet-side down, it makes great baked chicken, deep side down it makes pot-roast. I couldn't be happier.

Review by B. Davenport:

When I saw the price,free shipping, and factory pre-seasoning, this dutch oven proved irresistable. The size is great and the black color was attractive.Sadly, the factory pre-seasoning did not meet expectations! I learned to cook using cast iron, and I still own several "original finish" cast iron skillets, griddles and specialty pans (tri-ply stainless steel is wonderful, but some things just cook more evenly with cast iron). While cast iron is not difficult to season,it was just an added bonus to order a dutch oven that I thought would have an even, well applied finish to begin the seasoning process (properly seasoned cast iron pans only get better over the years). When the dutch oven arrived, I was surprised by what seemed to be a discoloration under the finish on the inner surface of the pot lid. I used the dutch oven for the first time to make chili. The steam from the chili caused the "pre-seasoning" on the inner surface of the lid to mottle badly, and the area that had initially appeared discolored was revealed to be covered with rust. A tell-tale metallic smell was also present (usually a sign that your pan might need to be seasoned again). Needless to say, I was disapointed. This pan proved to be MORE effort than the original finish pans since I had to scrub down the lid to remove the remaining mottled pre-seasoning, and to remove the rust. I then just seasoned the lid properly the old-fashion way in my oven. All in all, the Dutch oven is well worth (and the saved .66 in shipping charges is also appreciated), but the Lodge Cast Iron Manufacturing Co. has a reputation for quality that this finish did not meet. I contacted the company to express my concerns (ie, did I need to take additional steps to remove all of the factory applied finish) and to ask if this problem was evident in other pans in the pre-seasoned line.The Lodge Co. has not responded to my email. Bottom line, before paying full price plus shipping, for anything in the pre-seasoned line, I would compare the cost to the original finish, or to the beautiful new Lodge enamel cast iron items.

Review by Randall J. Donner:

First off I enjoy quality kitchen tools. I never minded paying for a quality tool. But when you get prenium quality at a rock bottom price, well it just doesn't get any better than that. Also any of the cast iron products from Lodge will easily last a lifetime or two, with minimal care. I previously owned a 7 quart duch oven and loved it. But my daughter finally has moved out, and it's just the wife and I at home now, so I downsized to a 5 quart dutch oven. I was happy to see Lodge offer a dutch oven with side handles instead of a wire bail, because we do most of our cooking at home in our oven, not at a campfire. The 5 quart dutch oven and 10 inch skillet would be a perfect gift for someone just starting out in life. They probably would not realize the value of what they recieved, until they are cooking a pot roast or a pot of chili for their grandchildren thirty years later.

Review by L. Bernstein:

I absolutely adore this griddle, and I use it almost every day.

At first, I wasn't sure that I wanted a cast iron griddle. They are HEAVY and not dishwasher safe . . . so I tried a few nonstick brands first --top dollar brands with high ratings.

I hated them. The nonstick surface was inferior. On a reversible griddle, the underside became sticky and difficult to clean. The heat was distributed unevenly. One claimed to be dishwasher safe, yet when I put it in the dishwasher, some of the nonstick surface came off.

I am extremely health conscious, and I use very little oil when I cook. Food often stuck to the "non-stick" surface -- go figure.

I wanted to find a great griddle that I could use for many things, including cooking like the chefs in Japanese Steak Houses -- I dreamed of using a small dash of my favorite oil and flinging shrimp, chicken and veggies on the griddle like a pro. No, I didn't think I could toss my tools in the air or catch the shrimp in my pocket . . . I just wanted the flavor and the ease of cooking.

By this time, I was on a quest, and the non-stick stuff just wasn't cutting it. I did a little research, and I learned that pros recommend the Lodge griddle, so despite my apprehension, I thought I'd give it a try.

Wow! The pre-seasoned surface is perfect and better than any non-stick surface I have ever used. Just a tiny bit of non-stick spray is all I need, and everything from pancakes to eggs flip with ease. Grilling Japanese style works perfectly.

On the grill side: whole steaks, chicken, fish -- fabulous, fast, and everything has those beautiful grill lines. Nice for grilled vegetables, too.

The griddle is indeed heavy, but it's okay. I wouldn't recommend lifting it if you have serious muscle or joint problems, and I wouldn't want to drop it on my foot, but otherwise, go for it. I'm a softie, and if I can handle it, so can you.

As for not being able to put the griddle in the dishwasher: I don't believe I'm going to say this, but I don't care about having to handwash it. The griddle cleans so easily, a few swipes and I'm done. If I forget to clean it and wake up to it the next morning (okay, so I'm not Suzy Homemaker), I just lay it straight across the top of my sink -- not IN the sink, but rather, balanced from edge to edge, on top . . . and I run a little water over it, let it set for a few minutes, and it's easy to clean.

A word of advice: Just as it says in the instructions, you need to clean the griddle without soap (water only) to preserve the pre-seasoned finish. However, should you want to use soap, you can. There are instructions included in how to re-season the griddle -- it's easy.

I frankly didn't like the idea of not cleaning with soap. I didn't feel as though the germs were destroyed . . . but soap doesn't really kill germs, it merely works as a surfactant that makes water wetter so things become easier to clean.

If you want to kill germs, heat is one of the best ways to do it. Every time you use the griddle, you preheat it on the range for about five minutes or so -- you're killing far more germs than if you had used soap!

You can also rub your griddle with a very light coating of oil, stick it in a hot oven and disinfect it that way (this is also similar to how you reseason it).

This is one of the easiest, most wonderful kitchen tools I own. It is a breeze to use, I feel like a pro flipping all that food around. Everything comes out great, and it is very easy to use, and food does not stick.

I have since added six more pieces of cast iron to my collection, one triangle cornbread/scone, a round muffin/biscuit, and four cast iron skillets. Two of the skillets are antique -- talk about well-seasoned! I do not use the bread/muffin bakers as much as I thought I would, but I use the skillets almost every day. I love them.

PS: I remember reading somewhere that using cast iron also adds iron to your diet. A nice extra, yes?

Review by Joe Bob "Barefoot Okie in FL":

Goodness - I see two chief complaints posted here: First, some people say it's heavy. Well, yes, it is. It's over 200 square inches of iron, folks. The weight is clearly advertised, so I'm having a hard time understanding this complaint. The second complaint some have is uneven heating. Lodge could fix that - all they have to do is make it thicker - and much heavier, and even more people would be unhappy about the weight.

Since the number of comments about the weight and the uneven heating seem about equal, I'd say Lodge did a great job of hitting a happy middle ground. Personally, I count on a little uneven heating, I'll sear breakfast chops on one end over a high burner and flip eggs on the other over a lower burner - I've even been known to run mine on just one burner, cooking on one end and warming on the other. When I was a grill cook, that's how I ran my grill, hotter at one end. You also have to allow for some "settle time" for cast iron - compared to aluminum, it's a fairly slow heat conductor, which gives cast iron it's wonderful thermal stability. But it takes time for the heat to distribute, so give it a few minutes.

I can't comment on the factory coating - I strip and season the cooking surfaces on all my iron, new or used. I made one modification to mine, which Andrew pointed out - I took a dremel and ground a shallow notch in the outer lip of one end of the grease gutter to help pouring the grease out - if you do this, be sure to smooth the edges of the notch to avoid heat stress cracks - they love to start at sharp corners - and don't make it too deep - just a small notch makes a big difference when dumping grease.

While I'm at it - I'm a heretic - a blasphemer - an apostate. My confession? I sometimes clean mine with soap - to be more precise, detergent, which most modern dish soaps actually are. I think the "no soap" thing is a bit of mythology that's come down to us from Great-Grandma, whose dish soap was basically lye and some type of animal fat (my grandma used bacon grease for her soap). So yeah, maybe lye soap was a bad idea, but it had a very different chemistry from today's dish detergents, and as far as I can tell, modern detergent won't touch the baked-on grundge on the bottom of my aluminum and enamel cookware, and they don't touch my properly seasoned iron either. I do always make sure to rinse very thoroughly, and re-oil after cleaning, however, as that thin film of oil is life to cast iron.

I love this grill on the cooktop, but if you want to see this beauty at it's best, and you have at least a 20" charcoal grill, set it on your charcoal grate and have some fun. I don't think mine ever cooled off during the week or so after hurricane Charley, while we had no electricity. I had stocked up on hardwood charcoal before the storm, and as my neighbor's fridges warmed, and their freezers thawed, they kept bringing me food to cook before it spoiled - and of course, they shared with the cook. The neighbors saved some of their food, the Lodge grill got quite a workout, and my family ate very well!

It's a well-made product. It's American. And it's a great value. What's not to love? Just don't drop it on your foot - did I mention it's heavy?

Review by T. Miotto:

I bought these cookware set a month ago. I have seasoned them, although they are already pre-seasoned. I would recommend doing it to avoid stickiness. They are great pans, but require care, not to say that they are healthy. I am satisfied with my purchase.

Review by A. Raven:

I've decided to replace my teflon pans with cast iron and this is one of the first ones I bought. So far it has been excellent. The large size is fantastic, though it's definitely heavy. My arm muscles are getting a workout! I'm glad I got it pre-seasoned, since that was one less thing to hassle with. I have found that cooking with cast iron makes food taste better. Kind of surprsing. I'm not sure why this has been the case, but my husband and I have both noticed it. I have to say though, it is very different than cooking with a regular teflon pan. At first I kept burning everything. Cast iron gets very hot and maintains a steady hot temperature. I'm finding that I'm basically cooking everything in this pan on med-low heat, where I would have used medium heat. Overall, I'm happy with my purchase though and plan on getting a couple more cast iron pans

Review by Duane Marcotte:

If you want the best cast-iron skillet, buy the Lodge. I have four other skillets of theirs and one skillet is a least 40 years old, and still in top condition. The only complaint that I have with this 15-1/4 inch skillet, is that the inside bottom is not smooth; but it was still easy to clean after making chicken milk gravy.

Review by kittyworld:

I cook for myself, so this little skillet is the perfect size for 3-egg omelet in the morning, or veggie saute for dinner. I am a small to medium sized female w/ skinny arms, but this skillet is not too heavy so I can still lift it w/ one arm. It's not really non-stick because the eggs won't easily slide off the pan like they would from a good new non-stick pan, but it's much much better compared w/ my stainless steel skillets. As long as you soak the pan in water after cooking, by the time you finish your meal, the food residue can be easily washed off with a brush or sponge. I use a nylon dish brush with hot water and cleaning is very fast and easy. I never use soap or steel wool. Leaving a bit grease on acts like re-seasoning. This is the same way I take care of my carbon-steel wok. The only complaint I have is that the handle is way too short. The skillet is relatively heavy but even with my small hands it still feels as if the handle only fits half of my palm, so it forces your hand to hold it really close to the hot pan - really bad design. Though I use it everyday and find it indispensable, the short handle alone is why I am unwilling to give it a five star rating.

Review by NuJoi:

After struggling with a set of three regular cast iron pans from a different manufacturer, I finally boxed them up for Goodwill. I never mastered the seasoning part of cast iron usage. I ended up with a sticky residue and one pan rusted. After about three attempts of scouring and reseasoning, I gave up and ordered three Lodge Logic Pre-Seasoned skillets.

It is fanstastic. It worked like a charm with the first use -- no problems with sticking at all. I actually smiled while making my burger! My cornbread was also back up to Southern standards thanks to my 10-inch pan.

The 10-inch works well for cornbread and frying. (Actually cast iron is the only way to make good cornbread.) I use the 8 for single burgers. The 6 I bought out of habit, but it also works well for single burgers.

Clean up is relatively easy. Wash with hot water; Lodge does not recommend using soap. Dry thoroughly. I then heat mine on the stove top, turn off the heat, add a tablespoon of oil and use a paper towel to spread the oil on the entire pan inside and out. After the pan cools, I wipe away any excess oil and store the pan.

For anyone who wants a head start on leaving heirloom cast iron pans, I strongly suggest this product.

Review by stacy:

This Dutch oven is absolutely gorgeous! An incredible value in the world of enameled cast iron these days, I have a Le Creuset dutch oven that I love, but wanted another piece that was smaller and to be completely honest, wanted to to test one of Lodge's new enameled cast iron pieces that are more price friendly. I have other lodge pieces which I love and thought it was worth a try. I have to admit I was lured by the beautiful red color. Now that I have received it and see it, the picture does not do it justice! It is so pretty, but it cooks superbly like my other lodge pieces, but clean up is so much easier and I don't have to oil each time. I can also cook dishes that are acidic that I can't in the regular cast iron. You also can cook at almost half the normal temps in the oven because it retains the heat so well, which is great with the price of electricity and gas right now! I really think these are going to take off with their affordable prices on these. They have the Lodge name security backing them and hopefully they have not sold their name to produce these like a lot of other companies these days, but I doubt it. But for under for a 6 quart dutch oven, it is worth a try! I am very happy and showing all my friends and family. Do give these a try!

Review by Laurie Hamilton:

I called Lodge Mfg. They e-mailed me a report showing the testing that they have had done on their enamel coated cookware. All of their non enamel cookware is made here in the U.S. The enamel coated cookware is made in China but has been tested for lead content. That set my mind at ease and thought this review would help others too.

Review by Diana:

I bought this 3-pack iron skillet set at a discount store years ago for after my sister had gone on about how great her new cast iron pan was. Curious, I thought "they're so cheap, why not try?" At the time I had many really fancy non-stick pans, anodized aluminum pans, stainless steel pans; you name it. Well, I still have those pans, but now they sit in the cupboard while the cast iron pans have gained a permanent place atop my stove. The cast iron pans are *that* fantastic. At first, I thought I didn't like them, because while the set says they're pre-seasoned, it does take a bit more seasoning (rub with lard or shortening and put it in the stove for 15 min, then wipe off) and actual cooking (the real seasoning) in the pans before they get blacker and begin acting like nonstick pans (without chemicals). Yes, you may burn some food at first, but that passes, and the nonstick, heat-retaining result is totally worth it. Expect your pans to blacken with use (blacker=more nonstick). The pans heat evenly, and retain that heat(unlike aluminum and nonstick), so food cooks more evenly and tastes so much better! Also, I learned that you DO NOT USE SOAP on these; just clean with a stainless steel scrubber and really hot water. Soap will ruin cast iron, as the seasoning will come off and it will rust. I suspect the reviewer who dislikes these pans probably doesn't know how cast iron cookware works. These pans are so nice to use, and they keep getting better and better with more use. As they are sturdy, I expect that they will stay with me for the rest of my life, then be passed on to future generations. This cookware is totally worth it. If you are wondering whether to try them, just do it - you'll be happy you did.

Review by bman:

These cast iron pans are heavy and appear to be of good quality except for the fact that after only two or 3 uses, I get black paint from the pan in everything I cook. I have some lodge cast iron pans and they are wonderful. Spend the extra on lodge pans and you'll love them. The smallest pan in this set is useless.

Review by lighten_up_already2:

I'm a lousy cook and I love pancakes. I've always had to go to a restaurant to get a decent pankcake because I never figured out how to make them right.

But when I got this Griddle I started turning out perfect pancakes every time! There must be something about iron. I've never had any iron cookware before. And the size is just small enough so it's not too heavy, but the flatness allows me to make a "short stack" of pancakes all at once.

This is the most joy that .00 has brough into my life in a long time. And, I'll save a ton of money over the rest of my life not going to restaurants to get pancakes!!

Review by G. Powell:

I love cooking with cast iron. This pan is great for making those 3 egg omlets, pancakes, fried eggs, etc. The low lip makes it easy to get the spatula under the eggs and flip them. On the down side if you fry bacon or sausages in it, the grease will spatter the stove. On a campfire that of course won't be a problem.However if you have limited space in your kitchen cabinet get the combo cooker. The lid is nearly as large as this one and you get the fry pan as well.On the plus side, this pan being thin fits right under the stack of cast iron pans I already own. So if you cook for a large family and want to serve everyone faster, this is a good way to go as an additional pan.