Cast iron skillets with heat ring

Phil N.

New member
I have 2 cast iron skillets with heat rings and they sit flat when cold but when cooking with them they don't sit flat. Is this normal?
 
Could be. The flat cold/warped hot phenomenon is sometimes observed, but usually on older, thinner pans. Are you sure it's a cold/hot thing? The bottoms can be curved but the rings still flat, so they'll be flat on a counter, but can wobble on a grate, depending on the size of the grate and the pan. Are they sitting on the rings on your burners, or do the rings land outside the grate? Or the grate might not be perfectly level.
 
I have a ceramic top stove. Cold, they set flat. When cooking and they heat up they don't set flat. I thought the heat ring was to level it, even if the bottom of the skillet was a little warped.
 
If they're deforming when hot and then returning to flat when cooled, I'd say it's probably something more pans do than we tend to realize. Heat rings, among other things, brought a degree of stability to otherwise less than flat bottoms. Glass cooktops, however, have apparently revealed some things we hadn't observed previously, and have brought a new set of challenges to using cast iron that didn't exist on gas grates and coil electrics.
 
I took a mini level and put it all over the bottom of both of my skillets, and they are level. I don't think it will affect my cooking with them. They did a great job cooking.
 
I noticed that mine often wobble because of uneven wear on the heat ring it self. I have some older larger Griswold and the most wear occurs at the top or front of the pan from dragging the lip when full.
 
Here is what I have discovered. While heating it up with oil, it wobbles. After putting the chicken in to fry it, it doesn't wobble. As long as there is food cooking in it there is no wobble. Once the food is removed it wobbles, until it cools down.
 
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