Why did they think they had to improve on cast iron? It was perfectly good the way it was! How hard is it to season cast iron? You take some Crisco, smear it all over, bake the pan on low for a while, wipe it out and repeat as many times as necessary to get a nice seasoned finish. I agree, look for cast iron at thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales. If it is in really bad condition, have it sand blasted and season it again yourself. If you clean it up good and heat it in the oven, it will be sanitized. Used pots, pans, bowls, gadgets, etc. can be scrubbed clean and used safely. I collect pottery, china, molds, etc. that are decades old and I use them. Never killed anyone or made them sick, as far as I know. Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now.

I have both some Le Creuset items and some less expensive competitors' items as well (Lodge, some other Chinese stuff). They all seem to work well. LC is great stuff, as is Staub, but you do pay a premium for those brand names. I don't know if in the long run the less expensive stuff will last as long, but right now I don't see much of a difference in the performance. Cooks Illustrated compared some of these a while back, and found they liked a $40 enameled cast iron pot from Target just about as much as a $200 LC item. All enameled cast iron (ECI) items are good at long, slow cooking. The cast iron holds heat well and isn't super fast at changing temperatures; that's why they're so good for unfussy slow braises. One of my favorite cold weather dishes (I've posted this several times, frequent readers please forgive the repetition) is a great application for your new ECI. This is a perfect dish for a day when you have a lot of laundry or housework to do. You have to be in the house anyway, so you may as well have a no-stress supper cooking while you're doing other work. You put it in the oven at lunchtime, and after seven hours you have some juicy and scrumptious lamb. Gigot de sept heures (Seven hour leg of lamb) 1 leg of lamb, about 6# 4 garlic cloves, sliced, plus 20 whole garlic cloves 1/4 cup olive oil salt & pepper 2 small onions, thinly sliced 4 carrots, peeled 1 bouquet garni 1 cup dry white wine 1 cup flour, 1 cup water Preheat oven to 300ÃÂ F. (If necessary, trim most of the external fat off the lamb. Some legs of lamb will come with a heavy fatty connective tissue, called the "fell", covering a lot of its surface. Remove as much of it as practical--leaving it on will make the dish gamier because a lot of the gamy flavor is in the fat and connective tissues.) Make many small stab incisions in lamb and place slivers of garlic in each incision. Rub lamb well with olive oil, season with salt & pepper. Place it in Dutch oven and add onions, carrots, bouquet garni, garlic, wine. Put lid on Dutch oven. Combine flour and water, make a 'caulk' and use it to seal the lid to the dutch oven. (Note: That's not necessary if you have a casserole or Dutch oven with a fairly snug-fitting lid.) Place it in the 300ÃÂoven and cook for 7 hours. Yes, 7 hours. NO PEEKING--leave it alone. A half hour before it's done, fix some noodles or rice or couscous to soak up the juices. Remove the Dutch oven and break the seal. You don't eat the cooked flour paste. That's it. About a half hour to an hour of prep, then you leave it the heck alone for 7 hours. It's nearly foolproof. Serve it with whatever else you want, and a medium bodied red wine goes quite well with this (say, a nice Zinfandel) but a dry white (such as the remainder of the bottle you opened to get the cup of wine in the recipe) is fine as well if that's your preference.

I agree, I have cast iron pans that are decades old and they just get better, my favorite is as slick as teflon. The best seasoning I've found is to make french fries, the hot grease just soaks right in, but I normally coat my cast iron with crisco and put it into a hot oven when it needs seasoning. As Colleen mentioned, cast iron can be shattered, I cracked a nice skillet by taking it off a campfire and putting it into a bucket of cold water so that the kids wouldn't touch the hot pan. Sigh. I'm assuming this is not enameled cast iron, which is something different entirely. I wouldn't do something with a sweet sticky marinade right away, if ever. That stuff is going to accumulate into those little ridges and be a bear to get clean, although Colleen's boiling water method works well for me too. I think when you get used to it, and it becomes properly seasoned, you're going to love it, but there is definitely a learning curve with cast iron. Annie

Buehl, drawers with heavy duty glides won't have a problem with the weight, but nesting them can be a bit of a hassle, because you need the forearms of a Wisconsin dairy farmer to lift two at a time to grab a third from the bottom of a stack. One of the beauties of cast iron is it's ability to hold heat, but because of the mass they take a little longer to heat up. I love that the instant heat of gas heats the pan up quickly. I'm sure they'll hold heat just as well on electric, but they might take longer to come up to temperature. I'd also worry about my pans scratching a smooth top electric, because they are quite heavy. HTH.