Dolly Parton and Lodge Launch a Cast-Iron Pan Line
After releasing several box baking mixes with Duncan Hines, the superstar is moving into cookware.
Photo courtesy of Lodge
Dolly Parton is a Tennessee legend — born and raised in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.
Culinary types may argue that so, too, are Lodge Cast Iron pans. The 128-year-old, family-owned, American-kitchen-staple cookware brand is based in South Pittsburg, Tennessee.
So it makes sense that the singer and the cast-iron cookware brand would partner up to launch a line of Dolly-inspired, music-inflected cookware. Plus, Parton’s been into culinary partnerships lately.
“Made for Dolly fans (a.k.a. everybody)” and “cast to last generations," Lodge’s new Dolly Parton Cookware Line, which launches on March 14, “pairs the unparalleled kitchen performance or classic cast iron design with Dolly’s trademark flair,” Lodge says.
The line of USA-made, PFOA- and PTFE-free skillets features four different designs that combine references to Dolly, music and butterflies. (Butterflies, if you don’t know, are the “Love Is Like a Butterfly” singer’s symbol.)
A 10.25-inch Seasoned Cast Iron Dolly Parton Skillet, which retails for $40.50, boasts Dolly in profile, gazing upon a flying butterfly. A 12-inch Seasoned Cast Iron Dolly Parton Skillet ($48.00) features an image of a guitar with butterfly wings, Dolly’s name and a musical note. The 13.25-inch Seasoned Cast Iron Dolly Parton Skillet ($67.50) includes a “Lodge-exclusive,” “special-edition” image of Dolly’s face set against the Smoky Mountain horizon line and sky and the lyrical phrase “I Can See the Light of a Clear Blue Morning.”
All three of these skillets are excellent at heating evenly and retaining heat, the brand says. They come pre-seasoned with natural vegetable oil; are oven-, stove-, grill- and campfire-safe and suitable for searing, sautéing, baking, broiling, braising, frying or grilling; and can be used on gas, glass or induction cooktops.
But the one that may be our favorite — yet, at $25, the least expensive — is the Cast Iron Dolly Parton Guitar Mini Skillet. Shaped like a guitar, complete with guitar-string-shaped ridges on the guitar-neck-like handle, the collectible skillet also features Dolly’s signature beside the image of a butterfly. Seasoned with natural vegetable oil, it’s suitable for kitchen use, with the capacity of, say, a small, one-portion cornbread, or for display. The handle has a hole at its scalloped end, so you can hang it with ease.
There’s probably a new-skillets-for-old-flames joke to be made about this suitable-for-gifting cookware line, but we’re too distracted by how sweet these pans are to make it.
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