Norpro Mini Cast Iron Panini Pan with Press, 5.9 IN, As Shown

I bought this for my boyfriend and he is in love with it. It's well made, cast iron and just the right size. For everyone complaining about food sticking, YOU NEED TO TREAT CAST IRON BEFORE YOU USE IT (google it). After treatment, nothing will stick to this pan and it's perfect for making a decadent panini or quickly making a sample sandwich even tastier. The pan on it's own works great for frying up other things as well, like bacon and eggs.

This is the perfect grill pan for one! Love making grilled cheese or Panini. Comes out to perfection. However, my favorite thing to grill in this pan is a portabella mushroom...the large ones. They grill up to perfection and the little press makes them cook perfectly and with grill marks on both sides. The pan comes pre-seasoned and nothing sticks. Clean up is a dream, as well. A soft sponge and some hot & soapy water and you are good to grill again. I love this little pan and pull it out when I'm just cooking for myself and don't feel like using my larger grill pans. Very well made, too.

This pan is an adorable little pan that makes a very good panini. The only reason I took off a star was due to the fact that the pan handle and top press handle are made of seemingly cheesy plastic. For the price I would expect them to be much nicer. As a bonus though, neither of the handles got hot while cooking so I guess that is the important thing. I normally plan to wear an oven mitt with cast iron. I had to turn my sandwich over to get an even brown but that may be due to my inexperience using it. I may not have let the top get heated thoroughly. I am happy with it and am looking forward to trying lots of different combinations. It is super cute and easily stored.

I bought this pan instead of an electric panini press hoping I could save cupboard space. Unfortunately, there were too many cons involved for me to even consider keeping this pan - I've since returned it. Uneven cooking: I started out using the included instructions for cooking an average panini. I ended up with a blackened piece of bread on the bottom (that stuck to the pan, despite it's claim to be pre-seasoned), and a barely touched piece on top. I tried again using a different technique, using low/med heat until the pan was heated through, and then removing the pan from heat once I put a sandwich in it (this way, neither side of the sandwich would be subjected to hotter temperatures than the other). Somehow, this still resulted in a half burnt, half limp sandwich. Finally, I tried heating the pan and the press on two separate burners (on med/high as the instructions suggested), removing both from heat at the same time. Even with all these techniques (experimenting with different heats and breads), it was still impossible to get a sandwich that was evenly cooked on both sides. We wasted a lot of ingredients thinking this pan would be simple to use if the instructions were followed correctly :( Super tiny size: If you're using slices of bread for normal, store-bought loaves, you'll need to cut the crusts off to fit in this pan - it's much smaller than you'd think. Unless you want to cut the crusts off your bread, you're stuck with using smaller loaves, like french bread. Weird plastic handles: The lid and handle are made of plastic, supposedly so that you don't burn yourself. However, both handles are so short and close to the main pieces that, unless you have small hands, you will end up burning your fingertips!

First one arrived with broken press handle, but Amazon replaced it quickly, with return shipping on them. Used this little panini pan, and works as advertised: crispy on the outside, melted yummy on the inside. The possibilities of "insides" are endless! Use your imagination. It's very small size is no drawback for us: we want to use it on our sailboat when cruising. And being non electric is even better.

This cast iron panini pan is the perfect size for grilling anything from a single hamburger to a salmon steak, but for paninis? Who makes paninis with Wonder Bread? I use big crusty artisan bread or focaccia and those don't fit too well. But I was aware of that when I ordered this pan to grill beef and fish for single servings. There are some serious problems with this cast iron pan. The information page here on amazon.com says it is "preseasoned cast iron," but the "preseasoning" wipes off like black sho polish! After two attempted uses, I finally ran the pan through my dishwaher (without detergent) on the hottest setting, immediately set it over medium heat on my cooktop to dry out any moisture still left in the cast iron, then seasoned it by rubbing it with organic ghee and put it back on the cooktop at medium high heat and left it alone until it stopped smoking and the fat had seared into the cast iron for a great natural cure. Worked like a charm. It no longer dyes thing black. The other problem? My biggest wish is that the pan did not have the plastic/rubber/whatever handles on the pan and the press so they could both go into a hot oven. Frankly, no matter how much you pre-heat the press that sits on top of the paninini while cooking, unless you turn the sandwich while cooking stove-top in this pan, it will not be uniformly browned on both sides because the press cools while the pan keeps heating. (I suspect the pan's designers are NOT cooks!) Oh, and the raised grill ridges in the pan are not as deep as those in my other 2 cast iron grills so fatty meats or olive oil coated paninis don't drain as well in this pan. But now that the bad cast iron factory "preseason" has been corrected, this pan is working pretty well for me. I just wish I could put it in the oven! Norpro, are you reading this? I hope so. i

This is my first cast iron pan. I got it mainly for grilled cheese sandwiches. But the first thing I made on it was a thin boneless pork chop! Tasted great but was a little hard to clean after that one! This pan is very small - just big enough for square sandwich bread. Really nice though and happy with it!