Every Kitchen Deserves a Roasting Pan

Roasting Pans are staples in weeknight cooking. They’re perfect for one pan dinners, but can also be used for holiday roasts to feed a larger crowd. Here, we break down what these pans are, why we chose to make ours out of carbon steel, and why they have a place in your kitchen, no matter the time of year.

What Even Is a Roasting Pan?

A roasting pan is, at its core, a large, oven safe pan. They’re designed to cook ingredients at high temperatures for long periods of time. Many roasting pans are fitted with a removable rack. The purpose of the rack is to elevate proteins and allow their juices to drip down onto a bed of vegetables below. For this reason, roasting pans are especially useful for cooking large cuts of meat, but they can also be used without the rack to roast vegetables.

We designed our roasting pan in partnership with Chef Tom Colicchio to make cooking and serving easier. Unlike Sheet Pans which are great for crisping and caramelizing, our roasting pan is designed with high walls to keep the heat inside. If you really want to lock in moisture, you can easily cover the whole pan with foil. Additionally, one of our favorite features is that you can start cooking on the stovetop before moving our roasting pan into the oven to finish off a pan roast.

Why Carbon Steel?

Roasting pans are typically made of a heavy duty metal, like stainless steel or sometimes cast iron. Chef Colicchio opted to make this roasting pan out of one of our favorite materials, Carbon Steel. Carbon steel not only heats up quickly, but it retains that heat, making it ideal for oven cooking. This heat retention also keeps browning even.

Plus, once you season your roasting pan, it will begin to develop a naturally non stick surface. Unlike stainless steel roasting pans, which sometimes require soaking to remove stuck on bits of food, our carbon steel roasting pan can be wiped clean once its patina has been properly built up.

What Is a Roasting Pan Used For?

If you’re roasting something in the oven, a roasting pan is the piece of cookware to use. You can use our roasting pan for a variety of meat and vegetable dishes. It can fit a chicken or a whole fish, complete with vegetables on the bottom. Especially when making a roast, you can start on the stove top before moving the whole pan into the oven to finish cooking.

You can also use our roasting pan for medleys of vegetables or pasta dishes to feed a large crowd. Because it’s carbon steel however, make sure to add any acidic accents, like citrus or vinegar when it’s time to serve. Otherwise, you risk stripping the seasoning from your pan.

So, Do You Really Need a Roasting Pan?

The answer, as always, depends on what you’re cooking. If you enjoy the ease of one pan dinners or are making a roast protein to feed a crowd, our roasting pan is likely to become an essential piece of cookware for you. While you could make due with a Dutch Oven for some recipes, you’re not going to have nearly as much space at your disposal, making flipping and moving ingredients easy.

There’s also the disposable aluminum option, but those are poor quality and ultimately wasteful. Plus, because of their naturally flimsy construction, depending on the dish, they may not even last their advertised single use.

When it comes down to it, if you’re cooking on a regular basis, you deserve a well-constructed, beautiful pan that can stand up to multiple uses, and if cared for correctly, look great doing it. Whether you’re using it to roast whole chickens, or filling it with colorful vegetables, it’s time you upgraded your kitchen with a roasting pan you’re proud to own.