Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook!
This week and next, I am featuring cast iron cookware. I am a huge fan of cast iron and cook with it almost every day. This week, I am featuring a comparison of small skillets from Lodge, Finex and Smithey.
Today, I’m going to focus on the Finex skillet. **I have not been compensated for this review and all the opinions are my own.**
I first encountered Finex at the beginning of the pandemic when I, like everyone else in the world, was embracing home cooking, sourdough and paper products. I had a couple of pieces of Lodge for camping, but I never really got the hang of it and I was very hung up on Lodge’s pebble finish–I couldn’t see how it could come completely clean without dish soap and I also couldn’t see how it would ever be non-stick. I have evolved on this position. However, since I had time on my hands at the beginning of the pandemic, I started researching cast iron and came across Finex, which is manufactured in Portland, Oregon. It is hand polished to a satin finish on the bottom of the skillet and is gorgeous to look at–I was smitten and I saved my money and bought a skillet.
Let’s start by getting to know this skillet a little better. This is what my 8″ skillet looks like after about a year of use:
Finex basically makes only cast iron, but offers a range of skillets, both covered and uncovered, grill pans, sauce pans and dutch ovens. They were founded in 2013 and are made in Portland, Oregon. Finex products are pricey. This 8″ skillet is priced at $150.00 before tax and shipping (if applicable). With the lid, it is $200.00.
This is a substantial skillet. The official weight of the 8″ skillet given on the Finex website is 4.2 pounds. The one I have weighs in at about 4 pounds. Given that one of the features widely touted by devotees of cast iron is its ability to retain heat, the weight of the Finex, while notable, does not discourage me.
Finex is pre-seasoned and the 8″ skillet has an overall length of 14.7″. The shape of the Finex is octagonal, which is quite unique. The sides of the pan are sloped and the sides are about 2″ tall, allowing you to use any of the angled corners of the skillet as a pour spout.
I must say, however, that the hands down best feature of the Finex is the handle, which is wrapped in a substantial stainless steel coil, that simply doesn’t get hot when in use on a cooktop. All right, I suppose that I can’t say that categorically. I’m sure it would eventually get hot, but it takes a long time to get hot. The stainless steel coil system works very well as a “stay-cool” feature. The handle is also a good length, coming in at about 5.5″, which I like given the weight of this skillet.
The Finex skillets include a “helper” handle on the opposite side of the handle, and I like that, too–it is a nice feature for handling a hot pan especially when cleaning.
So let’s get cooking.
The first thing I did when I acquired the skillet was to go ahead and steam clean it and then season it. I always use the method recommended by Kent Rollins, the undisputed king of cast iron cooking. He recommends scraping the skillet clean with a wooden spatula and then heating the pan to smoking hot before rinsing under very hot water. [Be sure to use oven mitts on both hands for this process, as the skillet is very hot and the steam from the cleaning can cause burns!] I then poured a small amount of pecan oil into the skillet and rubbed it in well. I let the skillet cool before cooking with it.
As with the other two skillets, I am cooking bacon and eggs. Please note that many manufacturers will warn against cooking bacon right out of the box. Also, please note that I realize that this cooking comparison is not, per se, a fair comparison with say, the Blacklock skillet, which was new out of the box when I did this cooking task. Since my Finex is about a year old, I expect for it to behave beautifully in this task. These posts are more to introduce you to the cookware I am working with and to give information about dimensions, features and performance.
I used medium-high heat and the bacon did just fine. I turned the bacon after about every 90 seconds and found that I didn’t have to worry about it cooking too quickly as long as I was reasonably vigilant. It took about 7 minutes before it was nicely crisp and done.
The Finex cooked the bacon up nicely and I had no issues with sticking. I cleaned most of the bacon grease out of the pan and cracked an egg into the skillet:
As you can see below, the egg cooked evenly and I had no trouble flipping it, although there was a little sticking.
Clean-up, however, was very easy, which I expected on a year old skillet. Any egg residue lifted off with just a little paper-towel wipe and steam-cleaning took care of the rest very quickly.
Overall, the Finex handled the bacon and eggs like a pro. Next up is a comparison of how it holds up to such tasks as biscuits and more delicate tasks, such as searing fish.
As always, when I finished my cooking task, I promptly cleaned and seasoned the skillet.
See you next week and in the meantime–
Peace, love and good food!
Keri
