If you’re ever stuck on a desert island with just one pan, you’d better hope it’s a cast-iron skillet. Whether you’re searing, roasting, baking, frying, or braising, the skillet’s weight, nonstick surface, and heat-retaining properties make it the best choice. These recipes, from appetizers to desserts, take advantage of cast-iron’s great benefits.

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Skillet-Roasted Rosemary Potatoes

Roasting these potatoes in a cast-iron skillet helps brown and crisp up the skins while the interiors stay moist and creamy.

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Black-Pepper-Crusted Beef Tenderloin with Chimichurri Sauce

Not only does the cast-iron skillet give this sear-roasted steak a beautiful crust, but its weight comes in handy too: you can use it to crush the whole peppercorns for the coating.

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Cornbread with Scallions & Bacon

Skillet-baked cornbread is a classic, and for good reason: pouring the batter into a searing-hot skillet greased with hot fat, then baking, makes for a beautifully golden-brown, crisp crust.

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Fig, Taleggio & Radicchio Pizza

Here’s a novel use for the cast-iron skillet: its ability to retain heat makes a great stand-in for a pizza stone if you don’t have one, producing that crackly, pizzeria-style crust.

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Sweet & Spicy Fried Peach Pies

For crispy fried foods, cast iron can’t be beat because it holds a fairly constant temperature even when food is added to the oil. As a result, the crust is quickly sealed and absorbs less oil, making it crisp, not greasy.

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Beer-Battered Coconut Shrimp with Rémoulade Sauce

Not only does the cast-iron help keep the oil hot, but the skillet’s large surface area allows you to cook a lot of small things, like these coconut shrimp, in one batch without overcrowding.

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German Pear Pancake

This light and airy German-style pancake develops a superior crunchy crust when baked in cast-iron.

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Quick Chocolate Bread Pudding

The cast-iron skillet’s virtue in this recipe is that it goes from stovetop to broiler to table, so you can have a homey, comforting bread pudding on the table in just 30 minutes, with only one pan to clean.

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Chicken Under a Brick

Putting a foil-wrapped brick on these chicken breasts maximizes their contact with the cast-iron pan, which gives them deep golden-brown crisped skin, while the meat stays moist and juicy.

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Southwestern Braised Lamb Shanks

A cast-iron skillet keeps the temperature steady even when the heat is low, as is ideal for low-and-slow braises like these lamb shanks.

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