Prepd Chef Skillet – The Ultimate Everyday Pan

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The cast-iron skillet is the cornerstone of any serious kitchen. With it, you can sear, bake, or fry with unbeatable results. No other type of pan even comes close to its performance and it lasts forever. But due to its weight, cast-iron is often overlooked in favor of less capable pans. We set out to change that.

Introducing Prepd Chef Skillet – a lighter, smoother, and more agile cast-iron.

By reducing the design to its simplest, most minimal form, Prepd Chef Skillet is more than 30% lighter than traditional cast-iron without compromising its unbeatable searing power. With it, you can sear, bake, fry, and even sauté – it’s the ultimate everyday pan!

Through precision machining, we completely transform the typically rough cooking surface into one that’s perfectly smooth.

After polishing, we season the pan with 4x layers of grapeseed oil, baking each layer at high temperature for over an hour. The extra hours of polishing and seasoning result in an incredibly smooth, naturally non-stick finish — without any of the synthetic chemicals, so you can cook at high heat without any worries.

Due to its lighter weight, Chef Skillet is surprisingly agile and easy to maneuver. Its lighter weight combined with its contoured shape allows you to sauté with ease.

But Chef Skillet still has weight where it counts (in the base), maintaining the key advantage of cast-iron – its unbeatable searing power. Chef Skillet will become your go-to pan for everything from frying eggs to baking your favorite dessert.

Prepd Chef Skillet works on any style of cooktop, from gas to induction – even the grill… or the oven!

Unlike other types of pans, cast-iron cooks food evenly — not just on the surface. Cast-iron has far superior heat retention and the greatest thermal mass, so it can transmit heat far beyond the surface of the pan. This results in unbeatable sears, juicy roasts, and perfectly golden bakes that no other pan can offer.

Prepd Chef Skillet can do the job of a roasting pan, a stainless steel skillet, and a non-stick, all in one!

We’re making the Chef Skillet in both 8″ and 10″ versions. The 8″ size is ideal for making individual meals. Perfect for your weekend shakshuka brunch or treating yourself with a skillet cookie!

Our skillets are made with care, attention to detail, and to the highest quality. Prepd Chef Skillet is an investment that will last many generations, and better yet, it will only improve with age. Every use adds to the layers of seasoning, so your skillet will become even more non-stick the longer you use it.

We’ve also designed a set of matching accessories to help you get the most out of your Prepd Chef Skillet – from cooking to cleaning, to serving. So you’ll be Prepd for any situation!

These accessories include a leather handle cover, a table trivet, a chain mail scrubber, a slotted turner, and lids to fit both sizes of the skillet. They will be available to add to your order 14 days after you pledge via BackerKit.

The accessories below will be available to purchase via Backerkit 14 days after pledging on Indiegogo:

Leather Handle Cover – $15
Prepd Trivet – $15
Prepd Chain Mail – $15
Prepd Slotted Turner – $20
Prepd Cast Iron Lid – 8″ – $29
Prepd Cast Iron Lid – 10″ – $39
Prepd Cast Iron Lid Set – 8″ + 10″ – $59

We absolutely love cooking with cast-iron and following the successful Kickstarter launch of the original Prepd Skillet in October 2019 we have worked closely with our manufacturing partner to explore more ways to utilize the incredible capabilities of this fantastic material while further improving its performance with new designs and manufacturing techniques.

With the Chef Skillet, we set out to create the ultimate everyday pan, by reducing the design to its simplest most minimal form. By doing this, we were able to reduce its weight by more than 30% compared to a traditional cast-iron, while maintaining its thicker base and unbeatable searing power.

We have further developed our machining process to create a smoother cooking surface that is also extremely effective at holding its seasoning. We achieve this by first sandblasting the skillets inside and out and then polishing the interior of each skillet with our precision machines.

After polishing, we apply an additional round of bead blasting, which adds a fine texture to the cooking surface to prepare it for seasoning. This will not only help the skillet hold its seasoning during production but also over years of use.

We have also tested many different approaches to perfect our pre-seasoning techniques. When producing the Prepd Chef Skillet we coat each pan with 3-layers of grapeseed oil. After applying each layer of oil we bake the pan for one hour at 450 degrees F to polymerize the oil. After this extensive seasoning process is complete we also perform an additional phase of heat treatment to prepare each pan for its first use.

We’ve already completed our first round of tooling, trialed the machining process, made the first full samples, refined the seasoning process, and put it through testing. Now we need your help to enter the final stage, complete the final tooling, and kickoff production.

At Prepd it’s our goal to make eating well, fun, and enjoyable through good design.

Prepd was founded by two industrial designers: Chris Place & Will Matters, together we have designed and manufactured dozens of products and delivered products to customers all over the world. Our first product together was the Prepd Pack a reinvention of the lunchbox that was launched and successfully delivered to over 12,500 backers on Kickstarter in 2016. Since then we have continued to innovate and we have developed new approaches to solve some of the pain points in the kitchen.

We can’t wait to go on this next Prepd journey with you!

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