Heavy Metal: Darto Carbon Steel Pans

After Cook's Illustrated wrote a positive article on carbon steel pans, I wanted to give them a try. Old school like cast iron, induction compatible, virtually nonstick -- what's not to like? These Darto pans from Argentina are beefy, and after seasoning, nearly as slick as nonstick.

The Cook's article caused a run on the highest-rated Matfer Bourgeat skillet, and opportunistic vendors jacked up the price exorbitantly. Some reviews complained about quality control in the fabrication. I started looking for other brands.

We've got a well-stocked kitchen with plenty of skillets, but wanted to try carbon steel. Most of ours are aluminum: Calphalon I bought when I first started kitting out my kitchen, and big nonstick ones from restaurant supply stores. But we'll be moving to Barcelona some time in the future, and our kitchen will have an induction cooktop which won't work with aluminum; we'll need something ferrous, something with steel. Cast iron's super heavy, and our favorite All Clad pans -- a sandwich of steel and aluminum -- will work, but they're really pricey. Carbon steel should do the trick.

The Cook's article claimed carbon steel heated evenly, had enough mass to be able to sear beautifully, weighed substantially less than cast iron, and -- once seasoned -- would be as nonstick as grandma's old Lodge or Griswald cast iron. Like cast iron, the steel isn't intimidated by metal spatulae and other tools -- we wouldn't have to pamper the pans like Teflon and its clones. Cook's has a video review which is informative (especially since the original article is hidden behind a paywall).

We went out to a local restaurant supply store, and after prodding, they found a carbon steel skillet. It was dirt cheap, maybe $10 or so. But it was also super cheap feeling, thin and light, and felt like it would warp with serious heat. We gave it a try and were surprised that it performed quite well, and was fairly slick without any seasoning at all.  This certainly wasn't a pan I'd want to depend upon, but it made me more committed to looking for a good carbon steel manufacturer.

While watching one of the food-nerd videos on Chef Steps, I saw they were using an induction cooktop and they mentioned the pan was from Darto. I notice the handle wasn't attached with rivets, but was one continuous piece of steel -- I loved the aesthetics, but more importantly, it meant it would be a lot easier to keep clean. The community forum in Chef Steps seemed quite positive as well. So was the forum in another food-nerd site, Serious Eats.

Good, I'd found my manufacturer. All Darto pans are made of 3mm thick carbon steel: really substantial. Prices on the US portion of their website were quite reasonable. Problem is, Darto is in Argentina: these pans are heavy, and shipping is big addition to the price.  

Some of the comments in fora indicated that Darto had been able to reduce shipping costs, but they were still high. I ran some numbers for a couple larger skillets to get some advantage on shipping. When I checked back a few weeks later, I noticed they had a set of 5 pans for a combined price of $199. This was less than 2 or 3 pans with the required shipping.  "Such a deal!" as my parents say.

Coincidentally, it was nearly my birthday and my folks were looking for something to get me. What do you get for the cooking-obsessed couple that has everything? A nice set of Darto pans with free shipping would be fantastic. Thanks so much, M&P!!!  (I noticed while writing this that they've dropped the price of the set to $169; even better for you, gentle reader.)

After the PayPal payment went through, the pans arrived in just a couple of days, via DHL. Great service. 

Each pan came wrapped in a burlap bag, very attractive

Three larger skillets and two smaller ones; the 2-handled "paella" is really cute and seems perfect for making the provoleta we'd enjoyed in Buenos Aires

They came with no care and feeding instructions. I knew they might be coated with manufacturing oil or some other lubricant to keep them from rusting during storage and transit, so I washed them thoroughly.  But more importantly, I knew they'd have to be "seasoned" like cast iron, but there were so many conflicting guides on how to do this on the interwebs.  I finally stumbled upon a Spanish-language video from Darto that I followed; it was a bit unusual compared to anything else I'd seen. Heat the pan just until hot, turn off heat. Add a tiny amount of oil to a paper or cloth towel and apply the thinnest possible coat to the warm pan, wiping out any residual oil. Then heat until smoking and hold on highest heat for a full 10 minutes. Let cool. Repeat this process 10 more times. Seemed like overkill, but I wasn't going to argue with the manufacturer.

Seasoning 5 Darto skillets, an older cast iron pan is on the back left for comparison

The process did take a while but I spread it out over a couple days. I just left the pans on the cooktop so I could do them next time it was convenient. It's good we have a vent hood that really does suck: this process makes a lot of smoke. The burners and pans generate a lot of heat, and keep generating heat since their thermal mass holds on to the heat and radiates it out slowly.  Don't even think about touching them, even the handles, while this is going on.  During this process the carbon steel took on an attractive blue-black, almost iridescent color in the base.

Irene was the first to use them and messaged me at work that they were in fact quite nonstick -- great news (I was so jealous). This morning, I gave the biggest skillet a try, making a French omelette. My technique is not as good as Julia Child's or Jacques Pepin's, but I was delighted the omelette didn't stick, even though it included cheese: success!

Check out this other video from Darto where they're cooking fish and getting gorgeous sear, looks yummy.

I think we're really going to enjoy these Darto pans, here on our gas cooktop, and in Barcelona on induction. They're a good investment.

Ginger Beer #1

I really like a spicy ginger beer, not the alcoholic one, the soda. Most are insipid or sickly sweet or both; some fake the spice with chili! The best I've come across is DG from Jamaica but Goslings (of the Rum fame) makes one now that's good. We made one years ago but it was difficult and messy. Bartender Jeffrey Morganthaler has a good write up on how he does it, including an instant one using an iSi soda siphon, which we just happen to have. It turned out well but we'll tweak it for the next batch. Here's our first take on his recipe, using the iSi.

1 ounce Ginger juice (see below)
2 ounces Lemon Juice, finely strained
3 ounces Mint Simple Syrup
10 ounces Ice Water

I took a "hand" of fresh ginger, scraped most of the skin off with the edge of a spoon, cut it up, and juiced it with a juice extractor we got from FreeCycle -- much easier than using a MicroPlane!  Juice a lemon and strain with a fine strainer to remove pulp. At this point, the liquid changed from a slightly green-brown from the ginger to a light salmony pink from the acid. Irene pointed out it was the color of sushi ginger -- exactly.

We had made mint simple syrup for cocktails so added that rather than plain simple syrup. For force carbonation, the liquid needs to be cold so we used ice water.

Add all the ingredients to the iSi, straining once more since lemon juice can foam up and bits of skin can clog the siphon's dispenser. For our 1.0L siphon (0.5L liquid volume) we used one CO2 charger, shook well, and let chill in the fridge for a half hour.

To serve, invert and dispense into iced glasses, and enjoy. After our initial taste test, we added some rum -- white for Irene, white with a touch of molasses-y black for me -- and had a variation on a Dark and Stormy.

What Worked, What Didn't

This wasn't as fiery-gingery as we'd like. Next time, bump up the ginger to 1.5 ounces. 

We might try freezing the ginger hand before extracting: some vegetables and fruits break down when their cells freeze and exude their juices when they thaw -- this might make the extraction more efficient.

For 2-4 drinks, this was a fair amount of work. Just setting up and cleaning the juice extractor was a lot of overhead. Next time, we'd use Morganthaler's preferred method of force carbonating a large batch with a CO2 cylinder and a clever Liquid Bread soda bottle adapter -- which we also happen to have. 

Monkfish sous vide with mint and basil

Our garden's overflowing with mint and a friend gave us a bunch of farmers' market basil, so we went with a Thai flavor to cook some monkfish. Since this fish takes a long time to cook, we used sous vide to keep it tender, poaching it in flavored oil in the water bath.

We stemmed the basil and mint, washed and dried, sliced fine, then poached it in some (fairly neutral) coconut oil to push the Thai flavor. We chilled that, with the herbs and the portioned monkfish so it would be solid when we vacuum bagged it: this worked well since the coconut oil sets just below room temperature.

A blog post tried a number of different temperatures and found 48C/118F to be the best so we heated the water bath and dropped the bagged fish and oil into it. Once the oil melted, we timed the cooking for 30 minutes. We use a Igloo Playmate cooler to minimize heat loss.

Meanwhile, Irene made a salad out of Malabar Spinach we'd gotten at the farmers' market. It's a more toothsome green so she dressed it early to allow the leaves to soften a bit. The dressing included lime juice, fish sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, hot chili and sesame oil.

Once the fish was cooked, I strained the oil and seared the fish in cast iron with a bit of the oil.

We'd also gotten the season's first corn on the cob. We've made the grilled corn in the Pok Pok cookbook so we did a riff on that -- first cooking it in its husk in the microwave (our standard approach), then heating a bit more of the oil in a pan with some salt and chile flakes, giving it a little browning, then a lashing of fresh lemon juice.

What Worked, What Didn't

The sous vide was great for the monkfish. Cooking conventionally can dry out and toughen the outer area of the fish during the long cooking it needs, or leave the interior undercooked. This cooked it all the way through without overcooking. The time and temperature seemed fine.   The searing didn't add much texture, and that may be because my oil had a bit of the liquid from the herbs or fish so didn't produce a hard sear.

The oil did provide an attractive perfume to the fish, but not nearly so pronounced as we'd expected.  Afterwards, we chilled the oil so we could separate any herb/fish liquid from it, and plan to use the oil to poach squid -- mint and squid is a surprisingly good combination. The oil was fairly neutral with almost no coconut flavor; this is a good thing in most preps, but here we could have used more Thai stylings.

The corn finished in fat with spices and citrus is something we've taken to recently, and it worked here as well. An assertive coconut-flavored oil would take it in a more Thai-flavored direction.

We've never had this spinach before, but it turned out well. The plants are also said to like hot weather so would grow well in our garden when the rest of our salad greens have bolted or withered.

Next Time...

I'd like a good sear so maybe we could use a little fresh oil to avoid any chance of water-based liquid and also since the heat might be driving off the herbal aromatics. Or finish under the broiler or with our Searzall.

I'd also pre-cut the monkfish into medallions before bagging them in the oil. This should allow better flavor penetration and more surface area to sear.