A new Lodge skillet costs around $30. A good one will last a century. That math is hard to argue with.

Lodge has been casting iron cookware in South Pittsburg, Tennessee since 1896, making them the oldest surviving cast iron manufacturer in the United States. Joseph Lodge founded the original Blacklock Foundry there, a fire leveled it in 1910, and three months later the family rebuilt and renamed it Lodge Manufacturing. More than 125 years on, it's still in South Pittsburg, still family-owned, and still the largest employer in the county.

The foundry process is about what you'd expect — molten iron poured into sand molds, cooled, cleaned, inspected. What's less expected is that Lodge runs two full foundries in the same small Tennessee town, the second of which opened in 2017 and increased capacity by 75%. That's an American manufacturer expanding domestically, which is rarer than it should be.

One thing worth knowing before you buy: Lodge's traditional seasoned cast iron is made in South Pittsburg. Their enameled cast iron line — the colorful Dutch ovens — is not. If the origin matters to you, stick to the bare cast iron. It's the better product anyway.

Lodge was the first cast iron manufacturer to pre-season their cookware at the foundry, which they started doing in 2002. Before that, a new cast iron pan needed several rounds of seasoning before it was ready to use. Now it comes ready to cook on. This sounds like a small thing but it probably did more to bring cast iron back into everyday kitchens than anything else.

The case for cast iron in general is that it's essentially indestructible, distributes heat evenly, goes from stovetop to oven without complaint, and gets better with use rather than worse. The case for Lodge specifically is that you get all of that for the same price as a mediocre nonstick pan that'll be in a landfill in three years.

Buy: lodgecastiron.com — also at most hardware stores, kitchen shops, and REI.