Fed Up with Throwaway

Stargazer Cast Iron was founded in 2015 by housewares designer Peter Huntley. After years of designing products for other companies, Huntley became disenchanted by the lack of quality and accountability present in modern goods manufactured overseas. In a time of unprecedented globalization, he saw more and more classic American brands compromising the principles that made them great, in order to cut costs and bolster the bottom line. It reached a tipping point when he went searching for a new skillet and discovered that, like so many other products, quality in cast iron cookware had been on the decline for decades. Fed up with the status quo, he set out to build a product and a company that could be held to a higher standard.

Humble Beginnings

Convinced people should have access to high quality, well designed cast iron at a reasonable price, Huntley set out to build something totally new to cast iron. In the summer of 2015, Six months, 21 designs and several prototypes after he began, he had designed the first Stargazer skillet.

Peter spent the rest of that summer in his garage producing Stargazer's first run of 250 skillets. Working sunrise to sunset, and often well into the night, he hand-sanded the castings to a smooth finish. He seasoned them in his home oven, boxed them on the dining room floor, and drove them, one compact carload at a time, to the local post office to ship.

Thriving on Principles

Today, tens of thousands of skillets later, Stargazer continues to grow, guided by the principles that we were founded on in  2015.

All of our products are American-made and of the highest quality available. We are transparent, honest and accessible to our customers. Finally, we employ sustainable production practices in order to minimize our environmental footprint.

_____________________________

American-Made from Beginning to End

The whole process happens here, from raw materials to packaging and everything in between.

Casting

Our skillets begin their journey at our foundry, where domestically sourced, primarily recycled iron is melted at 2,800°F. The molten iron is refined and checked for purity, then poured into molds made of sand and clay in a process known as “green sand” casting. Once cooled, the molds are released on a shakeout line, leaving behind a solid, raw casting. Each skillet then undergoes preliminary cleanup grinding. It is at this point that other cast iron cookware is seasoned, packaged and shipped to retailers, but not ours. A Stargazer skillet is just beginning to take shape.

Machining

The raw castings are sent to our machine shop, where they are individually loaded into a custom-built fixture and CNC machined across the entire interior surface. This allows us to dial in the optimal weight and thickness of each skillet with precision. This process is also the first step towards creating a cooking surface that is naturally non-stick and easy to clean.

Surface Finishing

The skillets pass through inspection and move on to the finishing process. Our craftsman use a series of hand tools to grind and smooth any burrs or other artifacts remaining from casting and machining. After being meticulously shaped by hand, each skillet undergoes our proprietary two-step surface finish treatment that yields the smooth, micro-textured cooking surface that has made Stargazer famous, designed to easily release food but hold onto seasoning.

Seasoning

Each Stargazer Cast Iron skillet is then hand-seasoned with two coats of all-natural, certified non-GMO oil. We use our own blend of canola, grapeseed and sunflower oil that gives our skillets their trademark bronze color. These high smoke point oils create a durable seasoning so your skillet arrives ready to cook right out of the box. For customers who prefer to season their own skillet, we offer a bare finish option that serves as a blank canvas for your secret family seasoning recipe.