Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

The Seasoned Panis free to read because it is supported by affiliate links. When you click a link to a skillet, dutch oven, or accessory and go on to buy it, we may earn a small commission — at no extra cost to you. You pay the same price you would have paid anyway; the retailer shares a slice of its margin with us for sending you their way. That commission is how the site pays for itself. It does not change which pans we recommend, the order we rank them, or a single word of what we say about them.

Amazon Associates

The Seasoned Pan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Amazon is our default retailer, and most product links on the site are tagged Amazon links using our associate tag, t5castiron-20.

We may add other retailer or brand programs over time — a cookware maker’s own store, for instance. If we do, the same rule applies: a link earns us a commission only through a program we have actually joined, and we would rather send you to the option that’s better for you — cheaper, in stock, better warranty — than to the one that pays us more.

How to spot the links

Outbound links to a retailer are marked as sponsored and open in a new tab, and every buy button carries an #adlabel and a link back to this page. We are not trying to disguise a commercial link as neutral editorial — when a button can earn us money, we say so right on the button. Prices shown next to those buttons are pulled from a live retailer feed and stamped with the date they were pulled; where we don’t have a live price, the button says “Check price on Amazon” instead of showing a number.

Cookware prices move constantly — a Lodge skillet that’s $20 one week can be $27 the next, and enameled dutch ovens swing far more than that during sales. Because our feed refreshes, the number you see should be close to current, but the retailer’s own page is always the final word. Confirm the price there before you check out.

Why you can trust the recommendations anyway

The reasoning behind a pick is identical whether or not a link earns us anything. A great deal of the cast iron worth owning is inexpensive to begin with, and we regularly recommend the cheaper pan — we’ll happily tell you that a $25 bare skillet does the same job as a $200 one for most cooks, and we’ll tell you when to skip a category entirely. We do not accept payment for reviews, we don’t take “sponsored” placements dressed up as editorial, and we publish no fabricated reviews or star ratings. No brand can buy a spot on this site. How we actually evaluate cookware is documented on our how-we-research page, and the standards we hold ourselves to are in our editorial policy.

Who writes this

The Seasoned Panis written by Stephen V., a cast-iron enthusiast who has cooked on these pans for years — not a materials lab, a test kitchen, or a manufacturer. We compare cookware on its published specs and materials rather than claiming bench tests we haven’t run, and we’re upfront about that throughout the site.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you want to know whether a specific link earns us a commission, ask us— we’ll tell you straight.