Everything We Recommend
The short version, for those already inching toward the checkout: buy the de Buyer if you want the heftier, heat-hoarding pan with a lifetime warranty and a faint sense of occasion. Buy the Matfer if you want the lighter, rivet-free workhorse the professionals swear by, one that will cheerfully go into a hot oven or over a fire and costs a bit less doing it. Below, the full interrogation.
Meet the Contenders
de Buyer Mineral B (12.5 in)
The Mineral B is the pan France would like you to picture when it thinks of itself: made since 1830, finished in a film of beeswax (the “B” is not decorative), and built with a heft that suggests it holds opinions about your cooking. This is the 12.5-inch model, with a genuine nine-inch flat cooking surface (room for a proper steak or a Sunday’s worth of eggs) and it carries a lifetime warranty, which is either confidence or a dare.
de Buyer Mineral B Carbon Steel Fry Pan (12.5 in)
- Bare carbon steel: lighter and more heat-responsive than cast iron, naturally nonstick once seasoned, not a synthetic coating in sight
- Ships under a food-safe beeswax finish you scrub off before the first seasoning
- Works on any hob including induction; rated oven safe to 400F for short spells; lifetime warranty, made in France
Matfer Bourgeat (9 3/8 in)
The Matfer is the one you actually find hanging in professional kitchens, usually blackened to the colour of a well-kept secret. It is a single sheet of high-carbon steel with the handle welded straight on: no rivets, no seams, nowhere for last week’s garlic to build a small civilisation. At nine and three-eighths inches it is the nimbler of the two, and at ninety-odd dollars it is the one your wallet quietly prefers.
Matfer Bourgeat Black Carbon Steel Frying Pan (9 3/8 in)
- One piece of uncoated high-carbon steel: no PTFE, no PFOA, no chemistry set
- Steel handle welded to the body, rivet-free, so there is no trapped grease, rust or burnt food
- Rated for every hob, the oven, the grill and open flame; made in France
Build and the Handle Question
Pick both pans up and the first thing you notice is where the handle meets the body. The Matfer’s is welded straight on, one continuous piece of steel, no rivets, no little metal studs breaching the cooking surface. This matters more than it sounds. Rivets are tiny ledges, and tiny ledges are precisely where grease, scrambled egg and the ghost of last Tuesday’s onions go to build a small civilisation. The de Buyer, traditionalist that it is, keeps its riveted handle, which is sturdy as a church pew but hands you two little bolts to scrub around for the rest of your natural life. The Matfer’s seamless construction is the reason it hangs in so many restaurant kitchens: nothing to trap, nothing to work loose, nothing to think about at eleven o’clock at night with a Brillo pad. It is unglamorous engineering, and it is the better engineering.
Round to Matfer: the rivetless welded handle is cleaner, tougher and one less thing to nag at you.
Heft, Heat and the Perfect Sear
Now the de Buyer gets its own back. This is the heavier, more substantial pan (thicker steel, more metal, more thermal ballast) and when you are chasing a proper crust on a ribeye, ballast is everything. A heftier pan holds its nerve when a cold steak hits it, rather than sulking and shedding its heat the way a flimsier pan does. The result is a steadier, more even, more properly bronzed sear: the kind that fogs the kitchen with smoke, sets off the alarm and makes the neighbours faintly jealous. The 12.5-inch model here also gives you a real nine inches of flat cooking surface, enough for a steak that lies down flat instead of curling apologetically up the sides. It is a pan that rewards confidence and punishes fidgeting, and for the searing that carbon steel exists to do, the extra mass tells.
Round to de Buyer: more mass, more heat retention, and a bigger stage for the sear.
Beyond the Hob: Oven, Grill and Open Flame
Both pans are bare steel, and both, once seasoned, become gloriously, chemically nonstick, and if you are new to that particular ritual, our guide to seasoning and caring for carbon steel will save you a fortnight of trial and error. Where the two part company is what happens when you want to leave the stovetop. The Matfer’s all-steel welded handle does not care where you put it: a screaming oven, the barbecue, a campfire, the lot. The de Buyer’s handle, by contrast, wears an epoxy coating and a cautious label (de Buyer rates it oven safe to 400F for up to ten minutes) which is perfectly fine for finishing a frittata and considerably less fine for a long braise or a session over coals. If your cooking ever wanders outdoors, or into a hot oven for any real length of time, one of these pans flinches and the other simply shrugs.
Round to Matfer: an all-metal handle that goes wherever the heat does.
The Long Game: Warranty and Buying Once
Here the de Buyer plays its trump card. It arrives with a lifetime warranty, which on a pan that is essentially a seasoned lump of iron is less about expecting failure and more about the manufacturer looking you in the eye and murmuring “this is the last frying pan you will buy.” The Matfer, no less durable, makes no such written promise; it simply expects to outlive you and says nothing about it, like a French waiter. On price the tables turn: the Matfer here is the cheaper pan, at a little over ninety dollars against the de Buyer’s hundred and change, though you are buying a slightly smaller pan for the saving, so check the sizes before you crow too loudly about the bargain. If you want the bigger pan and a warranty you can wave at dinner guests, the de Buyer earns its extra few dollars honestly.
Round to de Buyer: the lifetime warranty and the larger pan justify the small premium.
How We Tested
Neither pan was a gift; neither maker has our address, and the beeswax was scrubbed off with our own elbows. These verdicts come from cooking in both pans in our contributors’ kitchens, on separate schedules in separate households rather than side by side over one hob, and we prefer telling you that to implying a bake-off that never happened. The jobs were carbon steel’s greatest hits: steaks seared, eggs slid, seasoning built and occasionally ruined. We ran no instruments, so the 400F handle rating, the sizes, and the prices are the makers’ listed specs, flagged as such; the sear and cleanup verdicts are experiential. The full methodology lives on our how we test page.
Which Should You Buy?
After all that, the honest truth is that there is no bad pan here, only two philosophies wearing the same black patina. The Matfer took the handle and the versatility; the de Buyer took the sear and the warranty. It finished two rounds each, which is exactly the sort of result that helps nobody at the checkout, so let us make it simple.
Buy the de Buyer Mineral B if you cook mostly on the hob, want a big, heavy pan that hoards its heat for a restaurant-grade sear, and like the quiet reassurance of a lifetime warranty on a slightly larger pan.
de Buyer Mineral B Carbon Steel Fry Pan (12.5 in)
- Heavier build hoards heat for a steady, restaurant-grade sear
- Genuine nine-inch cooking surface, room for a proper steak
- Naturally nonstick once seasoned; lifetime warranty, made in France
Buy the Matfer Bourgeat if you want the lighter, rivet-free pan the professionals reach for: one that cleans up in seconds and will follow you into the oven, onto the grill or over an open fire without a word of complaint, and costs a little less doing it.
Matfer Bourgeat Black Carbon Steel Frying Pan (9 3/8 in)
- Rivetless welded handle: nothing to trap grease, nothing to clean around
- All-steel build rated for hob, oven, grill and open flame
- Lighter and nimbler, uncoated high-carbon steel, made in France
And if this bout has you leaning back toward the heavier side of the family, our best cast iron skillets roundup ranks that territory in full.
