Field Company vs Made In

Field and Made In both make premium, machined, made-in-the-USA cast iron—but they were built for different kitchens. Field has made cast iron and nothing else since 2016, modeled on vintage Wagner and Griswold pans: lighter, smoother, built for the home cook. Made In is a well-funded multi-category brand whose first cast iron line arrived in 2026, engineered for high-heat restaurant output. Here’s how they actually differ.

For most of Made In’s existence, comparing it to Field didn’t make much sense. Made In built its name on stainless clad and carbon steel; Field makes cast iron. That changed in 2026, when Made In launched its first cast iron line and put the two in the same category for the first time.

Two things drive everything below.

The pan, and the kitchen it’s built for. Field’s shape, proportions, and weight come from a decade studying vintage cast iron—an old design, made lighter and smoother. Made In started at the other end, and its co-founder says so plainly: other brands lean into “the nostalgia of classic construction, and a lot of the Americana and heritage behind it, which is great”—while Made In designed for what works “in a commercial kitchen night in and night out.”

It’s a useful admission. A restaurant wants a tool that does a job on a line. A home cook wants performance too, but also a pan that feels right in the hand—the one you reach for without thinking. That’s personal, and it lives in the details a spec sheet won’t show.

The company behind the pan. Field has made cast iron and nothing else since 2016. Made In is a multi-category, well-funded brand that added cast iron in 2026, priced just under the established players. The name invites a fair question: most Made In cookware is made abroad—stainless in Italy, carbon steel and knives in France. Its cast iron is made in the USA, which stands out mostly because so little of the lineup is.

Made In is also exceptional at marketing—the launch films, the photography, the staging are some of the sharpest brand work in cookware. They lean into a language of innovation, in a category premium makers have been building on for over a decade. And the chef-kitchen identity, while real, isn’t a differentiator: Smithey is in acclaimed kitchens, Field is used by professional cooks and food editors, Lodge has been in restaurant kitchens for a century. “Loved by chefs” describes the whole category.

Set the marketing aside and the pans converge more than the positioning suggests—both well-made smooth-surfaced cast iron that’ll cook for decades. The real differences are quieter: how heavy a pan you want, how a surface holds seasoning over years, how the design choices play out in daily use, and whether you’d rather a brand that does one thing or many. None has a universal right answer. It comes down to how you cook.

Field Company
Founded in 2016 by brothers Chris and Stephen Muscarella, Field is a small, family-owned business that makes one thing. It grew out of a specific frustration: the vintage Wagner and Griswold skillets they admired (lightweight and smooth, with a nonstick patina built over decades of use) had no real equivalent on the modern market. Their solution was to reverse-engineer what made those pans work: lighter castings, machined cooking surfaces, considered geometry.

What began with a $1.6 million Kickstarter has become a respected cast iron maker—still independent, still family-run—with a following among chefs, food editors, home cooks, and collectors who want vintage performance without the estate-sale hunt. Field makes cast iron. That’s it.

Made In
Made In was founded in 2017 by Chip Malt and Jake Kalick in Austin, Texas, out of a fourth-generation family kitchen-supply business. The brand built its reputation on chef-backed stainless clad and carbon steel, earning placement in thousands of professional kitchens. Its Seasoned Cast Iron line launched in May 2026—the company’s first cast iron—debuting at Williams Sonoma before opening direct sales on its own site in June 2026. Made In describes the line as the result of years of R&D, made in the USA, with each pan lathed and ceramic-tumbled to a smooth cooking surface. It’s a serious first entry into a category Made In is new to.

Key Differences

• Field has made cast iron exclusively since 2016. Every design and engineering decision the company has made applies to this one object—and that focus shows.
• Made In is a strong multi-category brand making its first cast iron pan. The execution reflects genuine R&D and real manufacturing capability, alongside the characteristic priorities of a brand new to the category.

Every premium cast iron pan is made the same way at the start: a blend of pig iron, recycled cast iron, and steel, melted and poured into a sand mold which turns into gray iron. That’s how quality cast iron has been made for a century, and it’s the process behind Field, Made In, Lodge, Smithey, Lancaster, and Stargazer alike.

Made In presents that blend as a differentiator, contrasting its pan against cheap imports that are “just 100% pig iron”—porous and brittle. The contrast is real, but it’s with the bottom of the market, not the premium pans here, which all start from the same place. The lone exception is Yeti (originally Butter Pat), which skips conventional sand casting for a costlier investment-casting process that emerges close to final form—exceptionally smooth, and priced to match.

So the raw material isn’t where these pans diverge. What happens after the casting is.

Field
Field machines the cooking surface and walls to a specific texture—smooth enough to cook on immediately, but with shallow tool marks that give oil something to grip, so both pre-seasoning and your at-home seasoning bond better than on high-polish pans. Where Field pushes hardest is weight: the walls are machined and thinned close to the limit of what the iron can take, for a lighter, more refined pan—while keeping mass in the base, where it matters for searing and heat retention.

Made In
Made In machines its surface the same fundamental way—lathe-turning the interior and walls to remove weight and smooth the finish. However, the end result is a pan that weighs more than a non-machined Lodge at the same size.

Both brands use media tumbling, which smooths exterior surfaces and preps the pan for seasoning.

Key Differences

• Both brands use the same materials and casting technique. They both machine their surfaces to a smooth finish—the process is essentially the same. The difference is how far Field takes it: thinner walls, much less weight, with searing mass kept in the base.
• Made In makes their surface smoother, similar to Smithey, while Field leaves behind an intentional texture which they say produces better long-term seasoning results.

Every bare (non-enameled) cast iron pan ships pre-seasoned—Field, Made In, Lodge, and the rest all arrive ready to cook on. Made In calls its line “Seasoned Cast Iron,” which as a spec is not a differentiator, but as marketing it’s sharp because it speaks to the cook who is worried about learning how to season a pan. It also makes it stand apart from enameled cast iron.

What’s easy to miss is that factory seasoning, on any pan, is just a starting layer—thin, and not what makes cast iron nonstick. The seasoning that matters is the one you build yourself, cook by cook. Which is why the surface underneath matters more than the coat it ships with.

Both brands improve on the cheaper, automated spray-on seasoning process that Lodge employs. Sprayed oil tends to pool and set unevenly. Field and Made In each take a more careful approach—but they don’t do it the same way.

Field
Field uses skilled craftspeople to apply seasoning by hand, coat by coat, pan by pan, over the machined micro-texture left from the casting stage. Pans arrive with an even, dark-gray finish that builds fast once you’re cooking on it—most people notice a real jump in release after a handful of meals, the layer settling into something durable and slick. Ready to use out of the box, better with use.

Made In
Made In’s tradeoff is in the finish. The surface is polished close to a mirror, then seasoned by tumbling each pan in oil-infused birdseed—a method Made In says coats more evenly than spraying. It ships a shiny gold and reads as premium on a shelf, but a polished surface gives seasoning less to grab, so the patina can be slower to set in. (The gold fades to black with use, as it does on any cast iron.) Made In also seasons in flaxseed oil, which builds quickly but is debated among cast iron cooks for the long haul—some find it flakes more readily than slower-building oils.

Key Differences

• Both skip automated, spray-on seasoning. Field lays it on by hand, coat by coat; Made In tumbles it on by machine.
• Factory seasoning is thin, and it isn’t what makes a pan nonstick. The coats that count are the ones you add yourself, which puts the importance on surface texture, not the finish it ships with.
• Field’s micro-texture is built to hold seasoning; Made In’s polish is built to catch the eye. It’s a known pattern with the glossiest pans—a common complaint about Smithey is that its smooth surface won’t hold seasoning.

Field
Field’s 10-inch No.8 Skillet weighs about 4.3 pounds—the result of casting geometry that keeps the sidewalls thin while concentrating mass at the base. Pick it up and the proportions feel right in a way that’s hard to name: nothing announces itself, the weight is where it should be. Field designed it that way deliberately—mass at the base so searing and even heating aren’t compromised on exactly the dishes cast iron is prized for, like a steak. It’s a distribution borrowed from vintage pans, the ones still hunted down at estate sales a century later.

Made In
Going through the painstaking process of engineering a lighter weight cast iron is not where Made In focuses. Their 10-inch skillet is about 5.7 pounds—roughly a pound and a half heavier than Field’s, and heavier even than a similarly sized Lodge. Though extra heft holds temperature well for high-heat searing and oven work, most home cooks won't notice a difference in performance. Made In offers a looped helper handle on the top of the skillet to make maneuvering this weight more possible.  

Key Differences
Weight in a cast iron pan is a genuine matter of preference, how you cook and how much pan you want to handle.

• Made In leans heavier—more thermal mass, more pan in your hand.
• Field leans lighter, with the mass placed where it earns its keep.

Most cast iron skillets share the same geometry: a flat base, walls that rise at a gentle radius, a rim that flares slightly. Field, Lodge, and Made In all build to it, because it’s what a cast iron skillet is. And the two flagship pans are nearly the same size—Field’s 10-inch pan has an 8.75-inch cooking surface; Made In a 9-inch cooking surface. Footprint isn’t the difference. Shape is.

Made In
Made In’s pitch is a more curved wall, built for how chefs cook—tossing, folding, sliding food out. In practice it’s closer to a standard skillet than the framing suggests: Made In opened the radius where the base meets the wall a little more than a typical pan. A real change, but a small one—enough to carry a “chef tool” message, not enough to cook like a true chef skillet. Set it beside a Field or a Lodge and you’d be hard pressed to see it.

Made In also uses dual pour spouts, like Lodge—which testing has shown do little to actually prevent drips.

Field
Field’s everyday skillet uses a gentle radius too: enough curve for a spoon or spatula to reach the corners, enough upright wall to bake in. But Field dropped the pour spouts and flared the rim all the way around, so it pours clean from any point—no spout to line up.

For real chef-style cooking, Field built a separate pan: the No.5 Chef Skillet, a true curved wall from base to rim, made to keep food moving for flipping, folding, and sliding out. It’s the first of the chef skillets—suited to eggs now, with larger sizes coming. The choice is the tell. Rather than round the everyday pan and call it chef-ready, Field makes a distinct shape for the job.

Key Differences

• It isn’t about size—the cooking surfaces are within a quarter inch.
• Made In gives you one shape for everything, with two pour spouts and a single grip spot.
• Field’s rim has no spouts and pours from any side, and there’s a separate pan (the No.5) when you want a true curved chef shape.

Both pans use a trigger grip—a contour on the underside of the handle where your index finger rests and pulls. It’s one of the clearest places to see how the two brands think differently.

Made In
Made In’s handle borrows its shape from the company’s stainless clad line, which gives the cookware a consistent look across categories. That means a longer handle than most cast iron skillets carry—about 6.5 inches—built around a single defined trigger position, engineered, in the company’s words, for the weight of cast iron. The length gives you leverage and distance from the heat. Your finger settles into one spot.

Field
Field’s handle runs long too, at 5.75 inches, but the trigger is a continuous sloped ramp instead of a fixed notch. There’s no one place to hold it. Choke up toward the body to shorten the lever when the pan is full and heavy; slide back for an easier carry, or to toss what’s in the pan. The same slope fits a range of hand sizes. The ergonomic shape comes from woodcraft—the way a carved spoon narrows where the handle meets the bowl—and from many iterations and testing around how a pan actually gets picked up.

Key Differences

• Made In’s longer handle buys reach and leverage from one fixed grip.
• Field’s shorter handle buys choice—choke up for control, slide back for comfort, let your hand find the spot.
• They’re built around different ideas of how a heavy pan should move.

Field Company
Field’s 10-inch pan is $165, or $148.50 for first-time buyers with the 10% welcome discount. Field also offers 10% through GovX for military, veterans, first responders, and teachers, and free shipping over $150. Returns are accepted within 45 days, used pans included, no questions asked; return shipping is on the customer. Every pan carries a lifetime warranty, and a person answers every service inquiry.

Made In
Made In’s 10-inch runs $149.95, less than Field’s full price, but similar to Field’s with the first-customer discount. Returns are accepted within 60 days, used pans included. Like Field, Made In encourages you to actually cook with the pan before deciding—with free return shipping on one return per order. The lifetime warranty covers manufacturing defects, with the usual exclusions for metal utensils, dishwasher use, and excessive heat. There’s no first-time discount on cast iron.

Both Field and Made In make premium bare cast iron with machined surfaces. The difference is what each was built for—and which kitchen it was built for.

Field is the better fit if you want:

• A pan built for the home cook—functional details that make it a pleasure to cook with day to day.
• The closest thing on the market to a vintage Wagner or Griswold—lighter and smoother than modern cast iron, without the estate-sale hunt.
• A lighter skillet with a textured surface that builds long-lasting nonstick seasoning.
• A pan from a brand that makes nothing else besides cast iron.
• A company that makes all its core products in the USA.

Made In is the better fit if you want:

• A pan built for cooks who want restaurant performance—engineered for high-heat, high-output cooking.
• A pan from a brand with deep credibility in stainless and carbon steel.
• A polished, gold-toned finish that photographs well and presents well.
• A multi-material catalog from specialist makers worldwide—stainless from Italy, knives and carbon steel from France.
• The Made In name and what it signals about professional kitchens.