I have four cast iron skillets, ranging in size from the smallest, six inches across, to the whopper, at 12½ inches. The two smaller ones are lighter weight than the larger ones. I use them for cooking eggs, making pain perdu (lost bread), buttermilk biscuits and grilled cheese sandwiches, or for pan-frying chops and small steaks.
The whopper is so heavy I have to use both hands to lift it. It’s reserved for larger roasts, such as the turkey for Thanksgiving or the ham at Christmas, or when I do an entire pork fish (whole loin). It holds enough for a crowd, of whatever I’m cooking at the time.
My favorite of the four, however, is the 10½ inch skillet. I use it for just about anything, from my (damned-good-if-I-do-say-so-myself) Southern fried chicken, to rice pilaf, to dry roasted vegetables, to French-fries and smothered cottage fries; from hamburgers and chili to pineapple-upside-down cake and apple tarte tatin. It is my work-horse, the one we all refer to as the cornbread skillet, for that is the only one of the four that makes decent cornbread.
The cornbread skillet is of the perfect depth and the exact weight, and has sides of the scientifically precise angle, for making cornbread as it should be made: slightly higher in the center, with crispy sides and bottom, and with small wells around the rim where the olive oil flowed up over the batter as it spread across the sizzling hot pan. It can’t be beat!
