Mauviel M'Steel Black Carbon Natural Nonstick Frying Pan With Iron Handle, 11-in, Suitable For All Cooking Surfaces, Made in France

Great pan! Heats up quickly, temperature is easy to control and the heat is even. These are really great pans. Don't be afraid of the seasoning process. If you do it right (and it isn't that hard) you will be rewarded with pans that will serve you well and last longer than your lifetime. With that morbid thought out of the way, here's how to season this type of pan: I seasoned in the oven first to get a good patina and good layer of baked on oil. Oh, first get the beeswax off. I just pour boiling water over the pan in the sink and use a long handled scrubber to get it off. It comes right off like this. You will want to use another pot of boiling water to then get the beeswax off of your sink basin, by the way. Once the wax is off, put the pan in the oven set to 400 or 500 deg. let it get really hot in there - about ten or fifteen minutes. Take it out (with a mitt, please). apply a THIN layer of flaxseed (or vegetable, for that matter) oil using a paper towel and tongs. Don't use too much. It will make the pan sticky and just smoke more when you season it prior to cooking. put a piece of aluminum foil under the oven rack. Put the pan, upside down, on the rack over top of the aluminum foil. Bake it for an hour or hour and a half. After that, turn off the oven and let the pan cool in the oven until it is cool to the touch. This can take some time. When it is cool, take it out. Now your pan will have a good initial seasoning. Before you cook with it for the first time (and subsequent times, for that matter), heat up the pan on a burner over high heat. When it is hot, put a small amount of your favorite oil in there. Swirl the hot oil around in the pan and try to get it up the sides as much as possible without splashing it out. Put the pan on the burner and let it smoke (use your vent hood, here). Let it really smoke. Not just little wisps, but a good smoke. When you get good smoke coming off, turn off the burner and swab out any excess oil with a paper towel. Just do a light swab to get the excess out... don't scrub the pan. And don't burn yourself. I have mastered the art of using a folded towel on a hot pan to lightly swab the oil, but at first I burned the heck out of my fingers. Use tongs if you don't want to risk it.. .but go light! Don't scrub off the seasoning. Just get the excess. Let the pan cool down on the stove. It won't take too long - maybe ten minutes. Now you are ready to cook. If you did it right, you should have a glassy, non-stick surface. I did a seared tuna steak the first time out and very little of it stuck. Almost none, in fact. Tuna came out perfectly seared. To clean, just use hot water and maybe the rough scouring side of a sponge. Usually just the smooth side of the sponge and the hot water. No soap. It is actually easier to clean than a non-stick or stainless pan, in my opinion. Here's the trick - EVERY time you cook, take an extra five minutes and go through the burner seasoning method. It will pay off. Do it while you prep your food for cooking. Again, just heat the pan over high heat, put in a small amount of oil (I like flaxseed), swirl it, let it smoke, swab out excess oil. It sounds like a pain, but it really really isn't. I am going to post this same review for the Mauviel M'steel crepe pan I own as well. By they way, that is the best pan I have ever owned for making omelettes, fried eggs, crepes... it also makes perfect quesadillas.

This was my first carbon steel pan. It replaced a non-stick T-Fal pan that I had for years. My first cooking experiences with it have been very positive. After seasoning it was just about as non-stick as the pan it replaced. It has the most even heat of any pan I own and I liked the shape of the sides that make it easy to scoop, toss, and fold. I initially found the handle a little awkward, but I came to appreciate that it sits well above the flame on a gas stove. The biggest challenge was getting the beeswax off the pan. The instructions say to wash it in hot water, but I didn't want that much wax going down my drains and potentially solidifying later. I used a plastic scraper (like a credit card) to remove most of the wax. I then attempted to scrub off the rest. If I had to do it again, I would have turned up the temperature on our water heater because I just don't think it was hot enough. The wax softened with the water at 110F, but was still very difficult to remove. I think hotter water would have done a better job. After thinking I had all of the wax removed I followed the seasoning guide from Prudent Reviews on YouTube. I did not follow the Mauviel seasoning instructions because I wanted to season all surfaces of the pan in the oven. The pictures show before seasoning and after seasoning. The darker blotches after seasoning were the invisible bits of wax that burned during seasoning. Fortunately, those bits were mostly in areas that aren't cooking surfaces, like the top edges. However it does highlight how much wax was still there even though I thought I had removed it. This was my fault, the Prudent Reviews guide tried to warn me! After seasoning I did the obligatory fried egg test. It released very nicely and I got the egg just the way I like it. It has really impressed me with other dishes too. I'll be interested to see if it warps over time, especially since a flat induction cooktop is in our future, but for now it is in great shape. I couldn't ask for anything more from a pan.

This is a good pan, but I wish I known before what I learned from the unboxing, so wanted to share my experience. for of all, it comes covered in beeswax, and no advice on removing it. The wax thickly smeared on; at first glance you woukd think the new pan is already scratched, but don’t worry, it’s just the wax and you need to remove it: 1) don’t try to remove the wax under running water in the sink; you will get wax all over the sink and in the drain, it’s very hard to remove, normal hot water from the tap won’t soften this wax 2) you need to use boiling hot water; if you have a pot large enough to fit the pan, fill it with boiling water and dip the pan into it to soften the wax, it will then wipe off; otherwise pour boiling water from the kettle on the pan, it will eventually get hot enough; 3) only use something disposable like paper towel to wipe off the wax from your scalding hot pan, the wax will transfer and you won’t be able to remove it. After wax is all eventually wiped off you will have a shiny new pan. After this, follow their directions to season, and it’s a good pan. 6 week review: great pan, nice browning, easy stovetop to oven, much lighter than cast iron. Non-stick if you pay attention to ensure there is some oil between item and the pan. do wipe a thin layer of oil on after every wash. don’t worry if your patina develops splotchily, even areas that still look silvery are still good. does what coated nonstick pans cannot do, and you can pick it up with one hand.

Pan is well made, sides are sloped for access to food. So far it's been a good pan.Heavier than expected but that's just my inexperience. Adding a 6month update. Been using this as my main fry pan. Well seasoned and good non-stick. I bought a generic lid. With a little attention to heat eggs slide around, indestructable, oven safe and perfect for searing. Great pan!!

First you have to get the wax off. Bake the pan in a 200° F oven for 20 minutes or so. I put mine on a cookie sheet with lots of paper towels, which saved a lot of mess. Then I scrubbed it and put it back in the 200° oven. After another 20 minutes it was wax-free. Since it was already at 200°, I rubbed it with flax-seed oil, all over, including the handle. I rubbed off most of the oil with another paper towel. I put it back in the oven and turned it up to 550° F. Left it for an hour. Turned off the oven and let it cool fully for several hours. When I took it out, the pan was a beautiful dark brown color and seemed sort of non-stick. I repeated this process several times. Then I used the pan. I fried chicken and bacon. I sauteed spinach. Nothing stuck badly, but the beautiful finish didn't hold up. Within a week, 15% of my new, hard-won seasoning had flaked or chipped off. Did I make the oil too thick? I don't know and I didn't give up. I repeated the seasoning steps. I heated the pan to 200°, rubbed it with more flaxseed oil, wiped off as much oil as I could, put it back in the oven at 550°, and left it there for more than an hour. When the baking on was done, I turned off the oven and let it cool slowly overnight. I have a well-insulated Chambers oven, and it probably took 4+ hours to fully cool down each time. I did this many times, over and over. It took a long time. After 8 more seasoning processes, my pan is quite non-stick. I can scramble and fry eggs. All meats and fish work well; I can sear steaks and not lose any goodness. No matter the temperature, nothing sticks. I often brush the hot pan with a little fresh coconut oil on a paper towel before I add food. I don't use this pan for acidic foods like tomato sauce, or boiling liquids, ever. It finally, after all this work, works just like people say. It is perfect and I would never part with it. I scrub the pan with a soft scrubby or chainmail and hot water and dry it immediately. I rarely use soap and never use steel wool. I don't use salt either. This is a great pan and I love mine. It works well with my induction burners as well as huge flames and high temperatures. The bottom is perfectly flat, unlike many carbon steel pans that cost much, much more. It is a joy to use in every way. Was it worth all the trouble? I don't think about that any more, this pan is part of my life.

Bought the pan because I have a flat electric stovetop and want to be able to use carbon steel pans instead of teflon coated (or similar) pans. The pan has a terrible bowl when heated up and I love the pan other than it heats unevenly due to the warping. I reached out to customer service and I am providing their "response" below. DO NOT TRUST the "guarantee" or description on Amazon, there is no guarantee, in what is clearly a manufacturer's defect, they will do absolutely nothing, telling you that you can't heat the pan high, or heat it up slowly. Do yourself a favor and look for a carbon steel pan elsewhere. I have a smaller Matfer Bourgeat pan that does not warp, I may buy that pan to replace this piece of garbage. Providing what Customer Service Wrote below: "As you know, your pan flattens it’s self out when heat is applied, this is normal, and Mauviel pots/ pans must be heated up very slowly. Copper and Stainless steel and the M’steel range pans tend to start to deform when the temperature is too high. This is why we recommended never exceeding 2/3 of your heating capacity. For example, If you have an induction hob. The maximum would be 6 on a range of 9. On gas cookers, medium heat is enough. Unfortunately, if the base is no longer flat, this is a sign that it has over heated and will need repairing. On a gas cooker this isn’t too big of a deal but this can cause some problems with induction hobs as the connection isn’t as good. At the moment we do not offer this type of service but it is something we are looking into. If you know any experienced welders or experienced metal workers, they should be able to realign your pan. Please take note that sadly sometimes when a pan has been to overheated, it is impossible to realign the base."

Amazing pan! I’d say for anyone looking to switch to carbon steel, make sure you research how to cook on them. They just require more work and are a different cooking style compared to non-stick. You have to learn how to manage heat and fat better than with non-stick. I can use this pan to cook eggs and they glide around no issues, but I did have to season the pan about 5 times. The pan will last a lifetime and I love it!

I have had this pan in the 9.5inch size for 8 years now, my first carbon steel pan, I just finished reading some of the 1- and 2-star reviews and quite a few of them mention sticking eggs, warped pans, my wife is the queen of burnt offerings and if this pan is not warped by now it will never warp, this is the greatest pan in my lineup and I will very soon by the 14 inch Mauviel pan, people who complain about carbon steel pans do so because they do not know how to season them properly, when seasoned properly they are nonstick as long as you have the seasoned coating and use a little pre oiling in the pan and don't crank the heat up, these pans get hot extremely quick with a lower temperature setting, as long as you learn to control the heat these are amazing pans.