Pull a new cast iron pan out of the box and the first thing to ask is what’s on it. Bare iron rusts, and a layer on the surface is what protects it. The question is whether that layer came from a bottle of cooking oil or a drum of synthetic resin.
Barebones answers it in its own words: its cast iron is “free of resin-based sealants,” and the polished skillet is seasoned with organic sunflower oil. The index lists the All-In-One skillet at Bronze, and the sentence about the coating is the reason it got that far.
What seasoning is
Seasoning is oil baked onto iron. NOVA’s explanation of the predominant hypothesis: heat breaks the fatty acids in the oil into smaller pieces, and those pieces join into larger molecules that form a layer on the metal and keep water off the iron. You can use the fat of your choice. The process starts when the oil passes its smoke point, which NOVA puts at 520 °F for virgin avocado oil and 350 °F for coconut oil.
Yes, that layer is a polymer. It’s also cooking oil that got hot, and nobody added a synthetic resin to make it. We count oil seasoning as not plastic, the same way we count a wax finish or a plated handle, and the standard page says so. What we don’t count is a varnish, an acrylic or an epoxy sprayed over bare iron to make it look finished in the store. Those are plastic, and a pan wearing one is out.
Seasoning keeps building. Field Company, which pre-seasons its skillets with grapeseed oil, says cast iron isn’t truly nonstick until months of use have built up dozens of interlocking layers.
What the Barebones skillet is made of
The pan and the lid are both HT150 iron, the maker’s name for a cast iron and steel blend. The lid has a D-ring handle of copper-plated spring wire, 4 mm gauge, and it flips over to serve as a second shallow pan on coals. The cooking surface is polished, with the sunflower oil baked on and no sealant. We found nothing on the skillet that is plastic.
The part to watch is that wire ring. A lid handle gets hot and gets grabbed hot, and the joint where the ring meets the iron is the one place the pan has a seam. Barebones describes it as copper plated No. 70 spring wire, 4 mm gauge. It doesn’t say how the ring is fixed to the lid, and that’s the first of the open questions below.
Polished is the unusual part. Barebones says pans of this kind were standard in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and that cheaper casting later made a rough, porous interior the norm. If you’ve cooked on a grandmother’s pan that felt like glass, that’s what it was.
Field says cast iron needs a little texture so that seasoning can grip, which is why it recommends scouring with chain mail. A polished surface has none of that, and a polished pan has none of it, so expect to cook with fat for a while before the layer takes hold.
What the maker hasn’t said
Bronze is the tier here, because four small things are open. Barebones doesn’t say how the wire ring is fixed to the lid; a weld or a rivet is likely, but the page doesn’t state it. It doesn’t say whether the outside carries a finish, or whether the pan wears a label or sticker. And it doesn’t describe the packaging.
For someone avoiding plastic, the finish and the sticker matter most: either could be a plastic coating or label the page never mentions. If the maker answers, the verdict moves.
What it costs
On 2026-11-15 the 6 inch was $41.99 on sale, the 10 inch was sold out, and the 12 inch was $101.99. The top size costs far more than the small one for the same design, so decide what you cook for. A 6 inch with a lid is a camp pan for one. A 12 inch is a family pan.
Cook in it often, with some fat. Field says each use adds a little more seasoning, and calls cornbread, roasted vegetables and fried food particularly good at building it.