Introduction
I’m not a professional chef, but I prepare breakfast daily and cook occasionally, so I was thrilled to receive the three-piece set of imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets for review.How effective are they at being non-stick? Continue reading to find answers to these questions and more.
What is it?
The imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets are a set of three cast iron, non-stick skillets, consisting of the standard 8”, 10”, and 12” pans.
What’s in the box?
- 8” Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillet with Wooden Handle
- 10” Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillet with Wooden Handle
- 12” Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillet with Wooden Handle
- 3 Extra washers / spacers for the handles
- Owner’s Manual
Hardware specs
8” Weight | 2.03 lb |
10” Weight | 3.35 lb |
12” Weight | 4.54 lb |
8” Dimensions | 8” x 16.8” x 1.57” |
10” Dimensions | 10” x 19.8” x 1.96” |
12” Dimensions | 12” x 21.8” x 2.28” |
Max Temperature | 500º F |
Design and features
The imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets are pretty much exactly what one would expect them to be. I was sent the set of three pans which allowed me, and my wife, to cook many different things, be it omelets, fried potatoes, pork chops and fish.
It is worth noting that the mechanism to attach the wooden handles to the cast iron pans is well designed as it does not rely on any threading in the wooden handle to stay tightly attached. The thru-handle design, coupled with the washer/spacer should last for as long as one owns the pans.
Given the handle attachment design is so robust, the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets can easily be used in a reduced storage environment such as a camper, where the handles can easily be removed, without risk of any kind of wear damage, to allow them to be stored compactly in a smaller cabinet or even a drawer.
Setup
Setting up the skillet involves installing the handle using the included screws and washers. The only minor detail is that the smaller pan has a shorter handle, which I noticed before I started. The final step is to wash, dry, and season the pan with cooking oil, and then you're ready to start cooking.
Performance
I'll begin by saying that the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets worked as anticipated. The non-stick surface performed excellently, no matter what I cooked.
One important point is that if you're accustomed to cooking with aluminum non-stick pans, you'll notice that the imarku skillets retain heat much better, which is also emphasized in the manual.
Now onto the actual cooking experiences.
I literally cook a two-egg omelet and hashbrowns pretty much every single morning for breakfast. Which means that as of this writing, I have probably spent more time with this product, then I have spent with any other product that I have reviewed and that is not counting the other meals where this pan set was utilized.
To cook an omelet hashbrown breakfast, I use the 8” pan for the omelet and the 10” pan for the hashbrowns. I found the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets to work very well for this daily cooking task, although I must admit that it is much harder not to scorch the omelet using these pans vs the others. I see this as more of just getting used to the new behavior, but for the egg omelet it is more of a challenge. I tend to lean to my eggs being more done so that issue, is not an issue for me. I have not experienced any sticking, even when cooking the omelet with no butter and the hashbrowns with the slightest amount of oil. I find that I get better cooking results by using butter for the omelet and more oil for the hashbrowns, so I only did that test one time, returning to using butter and oil on all other occasions
The first pic is of the omelet cooked with butter, while the seconf one was cooked with no butter. As you can see the no butter is just as clean as the one cooked with butter.
Here is a set of pictures of the hashbrown cooking process. I always blend in the onions at the end of the cooking to avoid over cooking the onions.
Here is the final plated, never thought I would use the term plated before, breakfast. Check out that chef like application of ketchup on the hash browns. Maybe I should give a call to Jeremy Allen White to see if there are any openings on next season of The Bear.
If I am being honest now, all the other cooking with the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets was done by my wife, with me closely monitoring. So, to be clear, I have more sheer experience with the pans, but my wife’s experience is more varied but far less frequent than my daily breakfast routine, and in all instances, the Imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets performed admirably.
Fried Catfish, browned to perfection.
Finally, three pork chops, again fried to perfection.
In all cases above the clean-up was easy and straight forward, i.e., not even a hint scouring for any of the post cooking cleanup. This includes leaving the breakfast pans in some cases dirty all day until dinner before cleaning.
What I like
- The pans are very nice looking.
- Handles removable to allow for compact storage, oven usage or dishwasher cleaning.
- Superior handle attachment design
What I’d change
Dishwasher safe without disassembly
Conclusion
I really liked the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets and look forward to using them on a daily basis. They are perfectly sized for most fried cooking jobs. Unfortunately, there is no way to evaluate the longevity of the pans non-stickiness over time given the short amount of time I get to spend with these pans before this review was written. That said, I do not have any concerns that these pans will not be performing as well a year from now as they did again this morning during the cooking of my breakfast.
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