We tested 20 pans to find our top picks for grilling indoors.
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One of the few redeeming qualities of where I live is that it's always grilling season. Occasionally rain interferes, and sometimes it's too hot to stand by a grill, but these are exceptions rather than the rule. I realize many don't enjoy the same climate benefits and often move the party indoors when the weather turns cold. You also may not have access to an outdoor grilling space. Grill pans are a good go-to for these circumstances.
While they may not give the smoky flavor of a charcoal grill, grill pans create the texture and caramelization that one would expect from a wood or gas grill. The biggest design challenge of a grill pan is building the grates, or ribs, high enough to keep the food elevated from fat and moisture released while it cooks. Grease needs to run from the food, and water and juices need to evaporate without causing too much steam. This way, the "grilled" food doesn’t pan-fry and doesn’t get hit with too much moisture, preventing caramelization and leaving it grey and flabby.
We took 20 top-rated grill pans into our test kitchen to see how they performed. In addition to the ribs, factors like material, size, and handle design determined which pans came out on top. See the winners, losers, and in-betweens below.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
It has good heat retention and distribution, with no cool spots. Spouts on two sides of the pan make pouring easy.
Some may find it heavy for its dimensions.
Leading this roundup, the Le Creuset got top scores in almost every category. The same enameled cast iron that the the brand’s signature Dutch ovens are known for adds to the pan's weight, but it also eliminates the need for seasoning it before use. In our tests, the cast iron contributed to the grill pan’s excellent heating capabilities, too, as it reached 300°F in just over three minutes.
Across all of our tests, even our zucchini grilling section, the Le Creuset achieved dark grill marks on the initial side, with varying degrees of browning, from good to excellent, after turning them, as one would expect on a grill. The pan retained heat, too, dropping only 150°F in five minutes after removing it from the burner. It’s also easy to clean, requiring only a light scrub with soapy water.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
This cast iron construction ensures even heat distribution, and the spring-encased handle is easy to hold, even when hot.
This is one of the more expensive options we reviewed, and it's quite heavy for a pan of its size.
The Finex grill pan comes with a sizable price tag. But for those who don't have access to outdoor grilling, it's a sound investment in your experience that can also serve as a conversation piece in your kitchen. It's certainly not all looks, though. This 10-inch pan weighs eight pounds; its heaviness provides even heat distribution and retention, making this an excellent pan for high-heat searing or low-to-medium heat cooking for thick cuts of meat.
The handle is part of the construction, so you don't have to worry about any rivets loosening. It comes wrapped in a thick, stainless spring that stays cool and allows for easy gripping. The grill ribs are tall and wide enough to leave food with grill marks. The ribs also keep the food out of any grease that might drip, ensuring that you're grilling your food instead of frying or sauteing it. The octagonal shape with sloping sides is designed for easy access with a spatula. The pan comes pre-seasoned with flaxseed oil, so it's ready to use right out of the package.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
The Lodge’s sloped sides make delicate work much easier, and it heats very evenly.
The ribs could be slightly taller, and it was a little difficult to clean.
The Lodge grill pan is a different animal than the enamel-coated cast iron pans we tested. It’s rustic by comparison, but that didn’t diminish its performance. This cast iron pan came pre-seasoned, ready to cook. The fins stand ⅛ inch high, which gives plenty of room for evaporation, and thus good browning. In one of our tests, we noted that evaporation might be too efficient. Grilling a pork chop, the flat sides had excellently browned grill marks, but the vertical edges remained pink and visually unappealing from the steam generated as the juices boiled off in the bottom of the pan. Still, a quick sear on those and the aesthetics greatly improved.
Temperature testing showed 25°F or less variation across the pan, translating to even cooking. The pan’s edges slope inward, wider at the top, which allowed us to work with some finesse on more delicate items in our testing. We see the performance, design detail, and price as a great value. Plus, there’s no need to overthink caring for cast iron; we wiped it clean with a sponge and hot water.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Joy Kim
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
The Smithey No. 12 is built to be handed down to the next generation, and it gave excellent grill marks in all our tests.
It’s very heavy compared to many of the other models we tested.
Smithey Ironware doesn’t mess around. The No. 12 Grill Pan is the type of cookware that becomes a family heirloom. The pan came pre-seasoned, meaning no work to perform before cooking on it. It was the heaviest of the lot we tested, but its two handles made moving it fairly easy. The angled sides provided leverage for turning large pieces of food. It was slower to heat than most of the pans we tested, largely due to the density of the cast iron construction, but it also retained heat very well, only dropping 80 degrees in five minutes after removing it from the burner.
The pan’s ribs were the right height for juices to run off and evaporate while allowing room for grease to collect without touching the food. It created good grill marks in all of our tests. In our burger test, however, this and many other pans cooked the burgers mostly through before flipping, leaving less-than-perfect grill marks on the second side. Cleaning was almost pleasant, requiring little more than a light wash with soapy water.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
The Finex yielded some of the best grill marks in our testing, and its design makes pouring grease and juices easy.
The handle, intended to stay cool, didn’t perform as expected, and there was more temperature variation across the cooking surface than we’d like to see.
In our tests, the Finex stood out for the distinct, well-defined grill marks it left on food. The design made adding and manipulating food in the pan easy, but the handle, intended to provide a cool place to grip, missed its mark. The ribs were spaced well, which allowed grease to run off, and gave juices enough room to evaporate without “steaming out” the food while it grilled. Since the ribs are slightly higher than some, we expected they would make cleaning more difficult, but the opposite was true. It was easy to clean with soapy water. As a final thought, the octagonal shape provided options for which direction we could pour off grease and juices, which is a nice touch.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
The Lodge distributes heat well for a double-burner and performs well with thinner foods, like pancakes, zucchini, and grilled cheese.
It would benefit from higher sides and ribs and perhaps angling the ribs towards the grease collection channel.
In general, I’m not a fan of two-burner pans or griddles. The heat frequently concentrates under each burner, leaving a cooler spot where the pan sits between the burners. The Lodge does a decent job of distributing the heat, avoiding that cool zone that would be the hottest were it a single burner. The grill side performed well in most of our tests, although we found that when cooking foods that put off a large amount of grease, like burgers, the ribs and channel system left a bit to be desired in diverting the grease. Because of this, the burger’s grill marks weren’t as distinguished as they could be. Yet, it shined when cooking thinner, less grease-producing foods, like grilled cheese and zucchini, and gave great color to pancakes.
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Will Dickey
Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore
Balancing cost, quality, ease of use, and performance, the Le Creuset Signature Cast Iron 10.25-Inch Square Skillet Grill Pan performed the best overall. The Staub Enameled Cast Iron Grill Pan is essentially the same price and, in some cases, outperformed the Le Creuset, but it’s a little fussier regarding what utensils are appropriate to use with it and how to clean it.
The material dictates the weight of the pan, how you can use it, and how to clean it. Cast iron is inherently heavy but gives great heat distribution. It's also exceptionally magnetic, making cast iron a good option if you are looking to build an induction cookware set. Anodized aluminum is slightly lower on the heat distribution scale but at a significantly lower weight. Some may hesitate to use an eight-pound cast iron pan on a glass cooktop, but aluminum doesn't generally work on an induction burner unless specifically noted.
Nonstick coatings are equally important. Ceramic isn't as long-lived as other coatings but is mainly free of toxins that will leach into your food—popular in top-rated nonstick cookware sets. Alternative coatings serve well but might not stand up to metal utensils or machine washing. Enamel pans offer longevity and easy cleaning but are not explicitly designed to be nonstick and require a little more finesse in your cooking techniques.
One of the most significant construction considerations is the handle, according to both Julio Aguilera, partner and executive chef of Copas in San Francisco, and Alex Harrell, executive chef of Commons Club in New Orleans. The best construction has a shorter handle cast as part of the pan. The next-best has shorter handles, strongly riveted to the pan. The least preferable is a grill pan with a longer handle with solid rivets.
Why all this concern about handles and fasteners? The longer the handle, the more stress you put on the point where it joins the pan. In a cast iron or aluminum scenario, the handle and pan are one piece, so the entire pan absorbs the stress. In a riveted situation, the rivets handle the pressure of the weight of the pan and any food in it. This isn't particularly damaging, but heat comes into play.
On the stovetop or in the oven, the metal expands when it is hot and then contracts as it cools. So, when taking weight, heating, cooling, and expanding and contracting into consideration, it's perfectly normal for those joints to weaken and get jiggly. It happens faster in longer handles than in short ones simply because of the weight distribution. This weakness presents a safety concern when handling hot food and pans and is one of the most common reasons people buy replacement pans.
Elements to consider in selecting the correct size for you include the size of the burner that you're going to use and choosing a pan that not only fits that burner but is also adequate for the type of foods that you'll cook and the number of people that you'll cook for. Look for something with a slightly larger capacity than you'll regularly use to account for unknowns, like having friends or family over for dinner now and again. Harrell stresses the importance of the depth of the sides as a safety measure. Grease splatters and overflows can lead to fires and burns, and a higher side minimizes these opportunities.
How much time and effort do you want to put into the care and feeding of your pan? Enameled cast iron is easy to maintain and is dishwasher safe. Cast iron takes a larger degree of care and is the subject of much lore about cleaning. Ceramic surfaces might require special cleaners or methods. Each material has its strengths and weaknesses in cooking but also in cleaning and storage. You'll have to weigh your level of dedication to cleaning vs. cooking results.
We strive to replicate the experience any consumer would upon purchasing a grill pan in our testing. After removing the pans from the packaging, we wash them, and then, pre-seasoned or not, we season any cast iron or carbon steel pans before moving into the rest of the tests. The first test was to make a grilled cheese sandwich. In that, we took note of the grill marks a pan imparted, how toasted the bread was outside of the grill marks, and how melted the cheese was after the bread was grilled and toasted. Next, we heated the pan to a pre-defined temperature and grilled strips of zucchini, noting grill marks, how well any liquid extracted evaporated, and the final temperature of the pan, to illustrate any temperature variations.
Moving on, we repeated the heating and grilled a pork chop for a pre-defined amount of time, noting the finished temperature and if it required more cooking time to reach 145°F and again recorded the pan’s temperature. We again repeated the heating process and cooked two burgers in a manner similar to the pork chop and zucchini tests. For reversible or griddle pans, we did the same again with pancakes. Finally, we cleaned them, noting how easy or difficult the process was. Along the way, we collected impressions about the design (ease of use, rib size/spacing, heat retention, how comfortable the handles were, and how easy the pans were to move) and overall impressions of the pans. We then scored these impressions on a scale of one to five, weighted the design and performance ratings to count for 50% of the total, and then averaged the scores to arrive at the final score.
Victoria Cast Iron Square Grill Pan with Double Loop Handles ($23 at Amazon) The Victoria is a 10-inch cast iron pan that weighs just under six pounds, which is great for people who have lifting issues, but the lighter cast iron results in unpredictable heating and poor heat retention.
Cuisinart Enameled 9.25-Inch Square Grill Pan ($40 at Amazon) The Cuisinart performed well in all our tests, except cooking burgers. Its low ribs weren’t compatible with greasier foods, and a slightly higher rib design could help that and alleviate splattering.
Borough Furnace Grill Pan/Braising Lid ($180 at Borough Furnace) Disappointingly uneven grill marks in the burger and zucchini tests kept this pan out of the running, but it made excellent grilled cheese and nicely-marked pork chops.
Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Skinny Grill Pan ($120 at Williams Sonoma) The Skinny Grill Pan is a lot like me – awkwardly sized. It doesn’t quite fit well on two burners but is too big for just one, and the sides and fins are shallow and don’t work well for grease-heavy foods, like burgers, leaving them dry and unappealing, with a concerning amount of grease contained by the shallow sides.
GreenPan Valencia Pro Ceramic Nonstick 11-Inch Grill Pan ($68 at Amazon) The wide spacing of the ribs left uneven grill marks and led to steaming some of the food. The circular design diminished its capacity compared to a square pan.
When testing products, the inevitable truth is that some will be winners and some won’t make the cut for various reasons. The KitchenAid 11-Inch Enameled Cast Iron Grill Pan ($200 at Amazon) had great brand promise. But its uneven heating and poor retention yielded mediocre results across the board. We had hope for the Amazon Basics Pre-Seasoned Cast Iron Reversible Grill/Griddle ($32 at Amazon) as a well-performing value brand. Unfortunately, it warped during our testing and delivered poor results. Finally, we found the NutriChef Cast Iron Reversible Grill Plate ($40 at Amazon) had a poor design overall, with uncomfortable (and hot) handles and insufficient rib height to prevent steaming instead of grilling.
Cast iron cleaning is the stuff of lore and is subject to many misconceptions. Everyone has their own method, and most of them are not wrong. Harrell likes to clean his with some salt, a little water, and a bit of Dawn dish detergent, then scrub the pan with a balled-up piece of aluminum foil before drying it on the stovetop and applying a little vegetable oil.
You can use a grill pan for anything you would typically put on the grill. That could be meats, poultry, vegetables, meat substitutes, or any combination of the above. It's important to note that you won't get the same flavor out of a grill pan that you would from a grill, but it will give that Maillard reaction texture that you would expect from grilled food. Outside of that school of thought, you can use a grill pan to develop texture in your dishes that you wouldn't get from simply pan-searing or give visual dynamics to a dish from those beautiful charred marks that grilling provides.
That depends on several variables. Harrell likes to bring a couple of cast iron grill pans with him when he goes camping to account for the chances of the grill at his campsite being in disrepair or left in a poor state by previous campers. The cast iron pans are a great replacement for cooking on a sub-par grill.
That said, not all grill pans are equal in this area. I've ruined the finish of a few enamel cast iron pans by using them on a grill over an open fire. The enamel tends to have little ripples in the finish that trap soot from the fire and leave black smudges all over the pan. Check your manufacturer's recommendations for the safest means of using a pan on the grill.
Not covered here, but worth noting: Aguilera is a fan of new pans available on the market designed for sauteing on the grill. They have strategic holes in them to give your foods that grilled flavor while maintaining the texture and quick cooking of a saute.
Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and food writer with four decades of experience in the food industry. His written work appears in Food & Wine, Food Republic, Serious Eats, Tasting Table, and other publications.
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