Cooking yourself or a loved one a perfect pair of fried eggs is a great way to start the day.
For years, Dan has been pitching us on an egg pan.
Dan is our head of operations—and a veteran of more brunch shifts than he'd probably like to admit. He made a convincing case.
From Dan:
As someone who spent a lot of time working brunch shifts in my younger days (front of house, but hey), I had a platonic ideal for what fried eggs looked like. To me the highest level was a perfect disc of soft but fully cooked egg whites with two or three yolks beautifully centered. They can be sunny-side up, over easy, over medium—or God help you, over hard—but they look something like this.
The platonic ideal of fried eggs
You can only make them in a smallish, rounded pan where the whites merge together in the center after breaking the membrane that encases each one, forming into a perfectly prescribed circle. And if you're going the over-easy route, the best way to keep that form is to learn to execute the dreaded "one-hand flip".
All of this sort of implies the form factor needed.
- A diameter that isn't too large, otherwise the whites will sprawl beyond the adorable little perimeter we're trying to achieve.
- A sloped, somewhat bowl-shaped cook surface so the eggs pool to the center and can easily slide around the pan and up and over the lip while flipping.
- A handle angled upward enough to give you the leverage to acheive lift-off.
- And critically, light enough that flipping feels like a flick of your wrist—not a kettlebell jerk.
For the most part these pans are used in restaurant kitchens, and they're disposable nonsticks or utilitarian carbon steel. But what if there was a version that was just as useful, and also beautiful—one that infused the morning ritual with a little joy and inspiration? That's what we built with the No.5 Chef Skillet.
Cooking yourself or a loved one a perfect pair of fried eggs is a great way to start the day. The flip is the little challenge that, when landed, sets you off with an early win—and when it's a little less than perfect, gives you something to strive for. I'll always give the nicer set to my wife and cover up my mistakes with hot sauce. Fortunately the taste is interchangeable.
How We Built It
At Field we already know how to make cast iron lighter and smoother—that's what we've spent the last ten years doing. But the No.5 pushed us to learn more.
First, there were the curved sidewalls. Steep enough to flip and toss, curved enough to slide food cleanly onto a plate. Machining a smooth, curved interior—different from anything we'd done before—meant learning as we went. We went through a lot of prototypes.
Machined (unseasoned) No.5s
Then there was the weight. Early versions were coming in around 1150g (2.6 lbs), but that still felt heavy for a pan built around the flip. We wanted to see if we could get it down to 1000g (2.2 lbs). So we kept adjusting the geometry, refining the machining, not settling until we got there without sacrificing any of the heat performance that makes cast iron worth using. Eventually we did. And when we picked it up, we knew it was right.
Dialing it in, bit by bit
Ready to Try It?
The No.5 Chef Skillet is the pan we wanted on our own stoves—and the one we want to hand to every friend who can't quite let go of their last nonstick. Light enough to flip one-handed, smooth enough for eggs without coatings or chemicals, built to last forever.
Try it for 45 days. If it's not the pan you reach for every morning, send it back.
