A Skillet's as Good a Crepe Pan
By REGINA SCHRAMBLING
NLIKE tarts, Bundt cakes and soufflés, crepes do not need a special pan. You can buy one, made of thin dark steel with a low, slightly sloping rim, but is it worth the investment? I put a classic seven-inch crepe pan to the test against my all-purpose Wear-Ever nonstick skillet. For both, I tried two standard recipes from Julia Child and Madeleine Kamman.
Both pans are perfectly nonstick. The crepe pan heated evenly, very quickly, and retained the heat through the cooking of many crepes. All the crepes got a uniformly speckled brown surface, and I was able to make them good and thin. One serious disadvantage is the handle, which is steel and gets hot fast.
But the skillet worked just as well, and it has a rubber shield on the handle. The only downside was that its rounded sides kept the batter from spreading evenly before it set, and so I had to work to keep the edges of the crepes from thinning out and turning crisp. But that problem was far outweighed by the Wear-Ever's ability to do so many other jobs besides cooking crepes.
The crepe pan is $13.98 at Zabars, the skillet $27.98.
The New York Times, January 2, 2002