The Skillet That
Cooks Without a Stove.

⚡ The Whole Argument Is Watts

Electric skillets run roughly 1,000 to 1,800 watts, and the common twelve-inch size sits at 1,200 to 1,500. A 1,500-watt skillet pulls about twelve and a half amps on a household circuit. An electric oven, by comparison, runs somewhere between 2,400 and 5,000 watts, and an electric range with the oven and a couple of elements going is well past that.

That difference is the entire reason this page exists. Our own loads-to-skip guide tells you to leave the electric stove and the water heater off the generator, because sizing a machine around them costs thousands of dollars you do not need to spend. The obvious question that leaves behind is: then how do we eat?

The answer is that you do not need a stove. You need about fifteen hundred watts and a place to set it down. A small generator running the refrigerator and a few lights has room for a skillet without anybody doing arithmetic in the driveway — and unlike the range, you can turn it off the moment supper is done and give those watts back to the freezer.

☠️ The Part That Actually Matters

Here is the reason this belongs on a preparedness site and not just a kitchen one. After a storm, when the power has been out for days and everyone is tired of cold food, people bring fire indoors. They set a charcoal grill in the garage. They light a camp stove on the kitchen counter. They run the generator on the porch, just outside the window.

That is what kills people after hurricanes — not the wind.

After the four hurricanes that crossed Florida in 2004, the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigated six carbon monoxide deaths in this state, and another 167 people were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at ten Florida hospitals. Federal investigators found that misplaced portable generators — indoors, in garages, or outside too near a window — accounted for nearly all of those exposures. CPSC has counted hundreds of generator-related carbon monoxide deaths nationally over the years it has tracked them, and it repeats the warning before every hurricane season, including this one.

Carbon monoxide has no colour and no smell. The early symptoms — headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion — read like the flu, or like being exhausted after a storm, which is exactly what makes it so dangerous. People who are asleep can die without ever waking up.

An electric skillet is the answer to the problem that causes those deaths. The generator stays outside, well away from the house and away from every window and vent, where it belongs. The cooking happens inside, on electricity, on a countertop, with no flame and no exhaust. Nobody has to choose between a hot supper and safe air.

One more thing worth knowing if you are still shopping for a generator: newer units certified to the current PGMA and UL standards carry carbon monoxide sensors that shut the engine down when CO builds up around it. That is a real safety feature that did not exist on the machines people died beside in 2004. It is not a licence to run one indoors — nothing is — but it is worth asking about. Our generator guide covers the rest.

🌡️ The Dial Is the Feature

A burner does not hold a temperature. It cycles — full heat, off, full heat — and you correct for it by standing there and paying attention. That works fine when you are forty. It works less well when standing is the expensive part of cooking, and it works badly when you are cooking on a generator and want the job done.

An electric skillet has a thermostat with numbers on it. You set 350 and it holds 350, adjusting itself, all the way through the cooking. For frying that is not a convenience, it is the entire difference between good and bad. Chicken wants oil somewhere around 325–350°F: too cool and it drinks grease and turns heavy, too hot and the crust is dark before the thigh is done. On a burner you are guessing, or you are clipping a thermometer to the pan and babysitting it. On the skillet you turn the dial to the number and go set the table.

The same dial is why it holds a simmer without scorching, keeps a pot of chili at serving temperature for an hour without anybody watching, and browns a piece of meat at a repeatable heat instead of whatever the burner felt like doing today.

🍗 Sunday Dinner on Generator Power

Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked in one pan, in order, while the grid is down. This is the sequence, and the order matters because you only have the one pan.

• Potatoes first. Put the peeled, quartered potatoes in the skillet with water to cover, lid on, dial to high. A domed lid boils water perfectly well. Drain them, mash them in a bowl with butter and hot milk, cover the bowl, set it aside. They will hold their heat far longer than you expect.
• Wipe the pan and pour the oil. An inch is plenty — this is shallow frying, not a deep fryer, and an inch of oil is a great deal safer to work with than four. Dial to 350°F and let it actually get there before the first piece goes in.
• Fry the chicken. Do not crowd it; two batches beat one crowded one, because a full pan drops the oil temperature and the crust never sets. Lid on for the first half if you want the thighs cooked through without darkening. Chicken is done at 165°F internal, and an instant-read thermometer is the only honest way to know.
• Gravy in the drippings. Pour off most of the fat, leave the browned bits, dial down to about 250°F, whisk in flour, then milk or broth a little at a time. The low steady setting is what keeps it from catching while you whisk.

One pan, one cord, one dial, and a hot Sunday dinner on the fourth day of an outage. That is a considerable thing for a household to be able to do, and it is worth more to morale than most of what people buy for emergencies.

🥘 What It Does the Other 360 Days

An appliance that only earns its keep during a hurricane is a bad buy. This one is not that. In a normal week it is a second burner that does not heat up the kitchen, and for a household of one or two it is very often the only pan that comes out.

• One-pan suppers — brown the meat, add everything else, lid on, low dial, walk away.
• Braising — the deep sided models with a domed lid do a pot roast as well as an oven, at a fraction of the power and without heating the house in July.
• Cornbread and biscuits — lid on, low setting, and it bakes. Not as well as an oven, but well enough that many cooks never turn the oven on for two people.
• A warming tray — at the lowest setting it holds a dish at serving temperature for an hour, which is what you want when the family arrives at different times.
• Big batches — sixteen-inch models will hold a full pound of sausage or enough green beans for a crowd, which is why they turn up at every church supper.

It does not replace cast iron, which will outlive everyone in your family and works on a campfire, or the dutch oven, which is what cooks when there is no electricity at all. Those are the no-power tools. The skillet is the some-power tool, and between them you are covered either way.

🔍 Buying One — and Why Used Is the Smart Buy

New ones run about $40 to $90. But the electric skillet is one of the great secondhand bargains in an American kitchen, because millions of them were bought, used for a few holidays, and put in a cupboard. Facebook Marketplace, eBay, estate sales and church rummage sales turn them up constantly, often for ten or twenty dollars, frequently barely used.

Farberware is the name most people over sixty will remember, and for good reason — the company started in New York in 1900 and its Bronx-made electric skillets, the deep stainless ones with the domed lid and the plug-in probe control, are still circulating sixty years later. Worth knowing before you shop: the Bronx plant closed in 1996 and the Farberware name has been licensed to other manufacturers for cookware and electric appliances ever since. So the badge on the front does not tell you what you are holding. Check the function, not the name — which is the same test that has run through this whole site since the water heater my grandfather bought discontinued for a third of the price.

What to actually check, on any skillet of any age:

• The probe. The detachable heat control is the part that fails and the part that is hardest to replace, because it is matched to the pan. Make sure it is present, that the pins are straight, and that the dial turns without grinding.
• Plug it in before money changes hands. Set it to 300 and hold your hand well above the surface. It should be hot in a couple of minutes and you should hear or feel the thermostat cycle.
• The cord. Cracked insulation, a scorched plug, or exposed wire anywhere near the strain relief — walk away. Not worth it at any price.
• The base. Set it on a flat counter. A warped or rocking base means uneven heat forever.
• The surface. Stainless can be scrubbed back to life. A nonstick coating that is scratched, flaking or bubbling should be passed over — you cannot fix it, and you do not want to eat it.
• The lid. A missing lid takes away the braising, the baking and the boiling. It is most of what the pan can do.

⚠️ The Honest Caveats

• It is a real load on a cord. Fifteen hundred watts is about twelve and a half amps, and that is precisely the situation where a long, thin extension cord overheats. If it will not reach the outlet, run the numbers first with our extension cord gauge calculator. Better still: put the skillet near the outlet and move the food.
• The control never goes in the water. The probe unplugs, and it stays dry. On most models the pan itself can be washed once the control is off — check the manual for yours, and if it did not come with one, look it up before you submerge anything.
• It dies with the power. No generator, no skillet. That is what the dutch oven and the outdoor cooking rules are for.
• Hot oil is hot oil. An inch, never more than a third of the way up the pan, dry food going in, and a lid within reach. Never water on a grease fire.
• Watch the trip hazard. A live cord running across a kitchen to a countertop pan full of hot oil is a genuinely bad arrangement. Short run, out of the walking path, every time.

🛒 Buy It at Fifty

This is a twenty-dollar decision at a garage sale and a ninety-dollar decision new, and either way it is the cheapest appliance on this entire site that does two completely different jobs well.

Buy it now, while you are shopping calmly and can look at four of them and pick the good one. Use it on ordinary Tuesdays so that you already know its dial and its habits. Then, on the fourth day after the storm, when the crews still have not reached your street and everyone is tired of sandwiches, you will not be learning a new appliance by flashlight. You will just be making supper — the same supper, in the same pan, that you made last week.