What is the advantage of a steel skillet over a cast iron one? I currently use cast iron for most everything and am curious what I might be missing.
Pan sauces made with wine, vinegar, or any other acid are better in stainless steel. If you put any acid in cast-iron, you are harming your seasoning, and leeching iron into your food. This will affect the taste of your sauces, I find pan sauces taste metallic when made in cast iron.
Stainless steel also heats up and cools down much faster than cast-iron. This is great when you need quick heat, or fine control of your heat. You can also plunge a piping hot stainless pan into an ice-bath without cracking it in half.
If there's an advantage to getting a steel skillet as well, what would be recommended?
Go with a a bonded stainless-steel pan with an aluminum core. The most well known manufacturer is All-Clad. The stainless steel exterior is great due to it's non reactivity, you can literally put anything in it. The aluminum core distributes the heat much more quickly and evenly, minimizing hot-spots.
Is a steel skillet good for cooking omelettes?
Not in my opinion. I go with a non-stick pan every time.
I have to recommend sticking with a nonstick pan for eggs. There's simply nothing better, although well seasoned cast iron comes awful close. If you're spending more than $20 for a nonstick egg pan, you're doing it wrong. You don't need Calphalon, or any other big name for a good nonstick pan. Go to a restaurant supply store if you can and buy a cheap one there. With care it should last you 2-5 years depending on use. I found my current one at a Bed Bath & Beyond.
This coating is not the same thing as a seasoning.
Iron rusts when exposed to air. For cooking purposes, you season it, and it prevents rusting. Some manufacturers sell their iron cookware pre-seasoned, but others use other types of coating to prevent rust. This other coating can consist of wax or petroleum products such as parafin. Its only purpose is to seal the pan air-tight for the time it spends in warehouses and stores. It would melt during cooking and mix with your food. Therefore, you can't use it instead of seasoning.
But you can't season a pan "on top" of the wax coating. The real seasoning would stick to the wax, and when the wax melts, the seasoning will come off. Therefore, you have to remove the wax coating before making a normal seasoning from polymerized oil.
If you bought a pan which was seasoned instead of wax-coated, you can start using it without any removing and re-seasoning.
Best Answer
They're pre-seasoning with some sort of fat. It varies by manufacturer, though soy is probably fairly common (its both cheap and has a high iodine value). For example, Lodge uses soy oil.