The Best Grill Pan for Great Searing and Beautiful Char, Tested and Reviewed

If you're an apartment dweller with no access to a yard for whom grill-marked chops and veggies inspire feelings of wistful longing, the best grill pan may just change your life. It's the secret to achieving those telltale crosshatches that brag, “yep, I cooked this outside” without, you know, actually cooking outside.

A grill pan not only achieves the trademark lines, but to a degree it can replicate an outdoor grill’s elemental pleasure, yielding lustful blistering and charring on our favorite foods. It’s not exactly the same since a stovetop won’t generate the smoky flavors of a charcoal grill (but neither will a gas grill). There will, however, be heat and splatter, and there will be grill marks, which you won’t get from a griddle or frying pan.

And even if you do have an outdoor BBQ setup, a grill pan can still be a nice addition to your arsenal. They give that grill feel inside when the weather might be too cold to cook outside, and cast-iron models can go right onto grill grates, creating a cooking surface that’s friendlier to small or skinny items prone to slipping down into the coals, like asparagus or shrimp.

In our tests we determined that the best grill pans produce defined grill marks, had even heat distribution, good heat retention, and offered plenty of space to arrange whatever it is you’re cooking. And as is the case with barbecue cooking, they should also thrive over high heat. Given the range of materials, coatings, sizes, depths, and shapes, it can be a dizzying task to choose which one will be right for you. So read on for our top picks. And to learn more about what we think makes one pan better than another and how we tested grill pans, scroll further down.

Table of contents

Best grill pan overall
Best preseasoned grill pan
Best budget grill pan
What we looked for
How we tested
Other grill pans we tested
The takeaway

Le Creuset is known for its beautiful, high quality cookware that comes in an array of striking colors. Like its world-class Dutch ovens, the Le Creuset Signature Square Skillet Grill is enameled cast iron, which, while not a perfect nonstick coating, does prevent food from getting too glued on. Weighing in at a light (compared to others we tested) 6.5 pounds, the Signature Square Skillet can work on electric, gas, and induction cooktops, not to mention stand up to 500℉ oven temperatures and safe under a broiler. When a burner is cranked to medium-high, the pan doesn’t take long to heat up and retains its heat throughout the cooking process. As an added bonus, it’s completely dishwasher-safe (though hand-washing is recommended), and it comes in 12 colors (natch).

If you’re looking to sear larger items, the Le Creuset size might be limiting. And with a price tag ranging from $185 to $225, it is certainly an investment.

Like the Le Creuset, this US-made grill pan is destined to become a coveted piece of cookware you’ll pass down to your kids. It was the most spacious of any grill pans we tested and had the tallest, most sharply cut grates, which yielded the most defined sear marks. A hefty pan, weighing almost 11 pounds, it really stays put on the stovetop.This means that it takes longer to preheat; but the payoff is that it heats more evenly — even into the further reaches of the pan, away from the heat source — than any others that we used.

Unlike the enamel-coated cast-iron, this preseasoned cast-iron pan requires a bit of maintenance. You’ll need to touch up the seasoning by building up layers of fat on the surface in order to develop a good, nonstick coating, and you’ll need to make sure to dry it after hand-washing to prevent rusting. But for some cooks, that’s part of the pleasure: we think of cast-iron and carbon steel as organic, ever-improving cookware materials that you can really develop a relationship with over the years.

While we don’t, ourselves, mind the maintenance associated with cast-iron, we acknowledge that some readers may find it annoying or off-putting. Additionally, this is a heavy pan. While its heft ensures even heating, it also makes it difficult to maneuver. And at $220 it is also an investment.

At a fraction of the price of our other top picks, this enameled cast-iron grill pan is a bit more compact in size but delivers defined grill marks at the stovetop. It’s a great choice for small kitchens, for limited storage space, or for anyone wanting to just test the waters of a grill pan. Weighing 6.5 pounds, it’s got enough heft to absorb and retain heat, and with its low walls, steam quickly cooks off, speeding up the searing and grilling.

The Cuisinart’s size can be limiting — it’s ideal for smaller cuts and veggies. Large proteins and some whole vegetables might not fit without trimming down. And reviewers have pointed out that the enamel coating isn’t as durable as other brands, so it may flake or chip off more easily.

The three materials we tested actually provide quite different experiences. Cast-iron is a heavy material that absorbs and retains heat well. An enameled coating gives it some nonstick qualities and also doesn’t require routine seasoning. Uncoated cast-iron, though, needs seasoning and regular use to develop a nice smooth, nonstick surface.  Nonstick pans are usually much lighter weight and are easy to use, but as with all nonstick pans and pots, they can’t hold up to searing temperatures and even if you care for them properly, they’ll need to be replaced every few years as the coating wears. We did test some, but they just can’t mimic the char of an outdoor grill in quite the same way and we just don’t think nonstick is the best cookware in the first place.

We limited our testing to square-shaped grill pans. They generally offer more surface area than round grills that better mimics the feeling of being at a real grill.

Grill grates that are too thin or too shallow produce less defined grill marks. On top of that, shallow grates defeat the purpose of a grill pan — because they don’t lift the foods high enough above the fats and juices that drain off through cooking, it is much harder to sear.

Because the primary use-case for grill pans is high heat, we preferred pans that could withstand prolonged exposure to high temperatures. Again, this is why we don’t think nonstick is a good choice for grill pans.

To test grill pans, we cooked two different proteins (skinless, boneless chicken breasts and skin-on salmon filets), grilled cheese sandwiches; and as many halved zucchinis as we could fit in each one.

We evaluated the quality and evenness of the grill marks we got, took note of how long it took for each pan to heat up, and whether they cooled down dramatically with the addition of food. We also factored in the heft of the pan and the maintenance it would require.

Then came the cleanup: How long did we have to wait for the pan to cool down, and depending on both the material of the pan and how deep the grooves were, how easy was it to clean?

It’s spendy, but we liked Staub’s 12-inch grill pan. We think the 10.3-inch grill press, which you can get as part of a set and makes paninis a breeze, is worth adding on, but the pan is great on its own.  Like the Le Creuset, the pan works on all stovetop surfaces, is oven-safe up to 500℉, and comfortably fits multiple proteins or sandwiches. (That said, it does take up a bit of storage room, should size matter to you.) Whether or not you’re grilling up a fillet of salmon or pressing a sando, this stunner by Staub sets you up for nothing but success when it comes to indoor grilling. But while it is beautiful and heavy (16 pounds) and wonderful, the $300 price tag (when including the press) may be prohibitive. We’ve also seen it go in and out of stock lately.

Demeyere’s is one of the few nonstick grill pans we considered. We chose it because of Demeyere’s reputation for making terrific cookware and extremely durable nonstick. We found it to be a lot of fun, thanks to how spacious it is, how lightweight at 3.25 pounds, and how its low walls allowed steam to escape so easily. That said, even with the best nonstick coatings, we don’t think it’s a great choice for a grill pan. Nonstick coatings just aren’t durable enough to regularly expose it to the high heats necessary for a grill pan. Additionally, the grill marks the Demeyere produced on our food were blurry and weak, because of both the lower heat requirements of nonstick coating and because the grates themselves are very low, more like subtle bumps in the pan than prominent protrusions that lift the food from the base. Nonstick pans are also well known to have limited lifespans — they’ll work great for a few years, but ultimately need to be replaced.

We thought the All-Clad was a fine choice for the price, though not up to the level of the Le Creuset or the Staub. The size of the cooking surface made room for plenty of food without crowding the pan, and the raised ridges led to good grill marks. It was also very lightweight (three pounds), had a cool-to-touch stainless-steel handle, and was dishwasher-safe, making cleanup a breeze. But again, because of its nonstick coating, this pan won’t have the same lifespan as a cast-iron pan and because of the heat thresholds of nonstick, it couldn’t sear well. It also isn’t compatible with metal utensils because they can damage the coating, rendering it mostly useless.

The Lodge brand is a contender whenever you’re talking about the best cast iron (their  cast-iron skillet is one of our favorites), and its 11-inch cast-iron grill pan ticks a lot of boxes: It comes preseasoned, can be used on all surfaces, and is equipped with a pour spout for easy cleanup—all for less than $30 at the time of publishing. While being fairly lightweight for cast iron—just over seven pounds—the pan heats up quickly and takes a while to cool down, so keep a good pair of oven mitts handy if you need to move it around. And as is true with uncoated cast-iron, it’s hand wash only.

If you like grilling things year-round or just don’t have a situation that permits you to have an outdoor grill, you should have a trusty grill pan at the ready, and the Le Creuset Signature Square Skillet Grill makes for a solid, attractive addition to your pan portfolio. For an exceptional, heirloom-style cast-iron pan that’s spacious and delivers on its promise, the Smithy No. 12 Grill Pan will guarantee you a lifetime of truly excellent grill marks. Or for a smaller pan that’s a terrific value, the Cuisinart 9.25-Inch Grill Pan is our choice.