REVIEW – I am not a professional cook, but I do a daily breakfast and a bit of other cooking from time to time and was thrilled to receive the three-piece set of imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets that I was sent to review. How non-stick are they? How heavy are they? Read on to have these and other questions answered.
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, hamburgers, and fish.
While the three-pan set is marketed as dishwasher safe, the inclusion of the very nicely stained wooden handles would surely not hold up well over time utilizing a dishwasher. In fact, this is specifically called out in the manual. I did not place them into the dishwasher for those reasons, opting for only hand washing. Note one can remove the handles and place them in the dishwasher, but I think that is more work than just washing them by hand. It is worth also 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.
Since the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets are non-stick, they are easy to clean. It is worth noting that in some cases using just a cloth washrag does not always penetrate the depth of the honeycomb design, and thus may require the use of a soft brush to really feel good about the cleaning in the sunken dimple crevasses of the honeycombs.
Setup
The imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillet three-pan setup is nothing more than attaching the handles to the pans with the included screw rods, washers / spacers with the only tricky thing being to notice that the handle for the small pan is shorter than the handles that are included for the two larger pans. Thankfully, I noticed, so I did not have to redo anything, not that it would be a big deal if I had not noticed that at the start of the assembly.
The final step is to wash, dry and treat the surface of the pans with an edible oil. That’s it! Bring on the heat.
Performance
I will start off by stating that the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets performed as expected. The non-stick surface performed admirably, no matter what was cooked. These are cast iron pans, and while they may be lighter than other cast iron pans their size, they are considerably heavier than a set of three non-stick aluminum non-stick pans available at Walmart for around $30. Specifically, the weight of that kind of pan set is 1.23 lbs for the 8”, 1.72 lbs for the 10” and 2.4 lbs for the 12” pan. The imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets are close to twice the weight of the corresponding aluminum non-stick counterparts.
The other thing to keep in mind is that if you are used to cooking with the aluminum non-stick pans, the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets will retain heat to a greater degree than the aluminum non-stick counterparts and is in fact specifically highlighted 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 two pics are of the omelet cooked with butter, while the third 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. Like I said earlier, I am not what I would call a super experienced cook, but my wife is. Outside of the weight of the largest pan, my wife had no difficulty pulling off her magic with the 12” pans as the following pictures should convey. 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.
Here are what I think are perfectly prepared and then cooked French Toast.
Fried Catfish, browned to perfection.
Hamburgers, following what we call the sizzle burger recipe, cooking in butter and Worcestershire sauce.
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
- Heavier than other non-stick pans
- Dishwasher safe without disassembly
Final thoughts
I really liked the imarku Cast Iron Honeycomb Nonstick Skillets three-pan set 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 be performing as well a year from now as they did again this morning during the cooking of my breakfast.
Price: $149.99
Where to buy: imarku (Save 30% with the code: gadgeteer30 expires 3/31/24)
Source: The sample of this product was provided by imarku.
