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Due to the Faustian bargain we’ve all made with the internet, our access to a limitless wealth of the world’s knowledge has come at a cost. In exchange for never again having to rack your brain over something as trivial as the name of the Telletubbies’ pet vacuum cleaner (it’s Noo-Noo), our every single pic, click, and search query is used to target us with highly specific advertising.
Because I am a twenty-something who likes to cook, this means I see a ceaseless stream of ads for market-disrupting cookware and kitchen appliances. Naturally, I’ve come to wonder if any of these products are worthwhile.
Which brings me to the Always Pan, the flagship product from direct-to-consumer company Our Place. This hybrid steamer-saute-fry pan comes in a range of on-trend hues and has been popping up in my feed for months now. I’ve been curious to find out whether it lives up to its claim of doing “the work of eight pieces of traditional cookware.”
According to The New York Times, Malala Fund co-founder Shiza Shahid started the company with hopes of designing cookware “to fit the needs of the modern, multiethnic American kitchen.” And like many a forward-thinking consumer start-up, Our Place emphasizes ethical labor and the use of responsible materials in its mission.
The Always Pan comes with a few components: There’s the pan, a lid, a metal steamer basket, and a wooden spatula. The pan itself is rounded and 2½ inches deep, similar in depth to a conventional saute pan. It has a ceramic nonstick coating and two side spouts for pouring, as well as a heat-resistant handle. The domed lid makes it a bit more spacious than a typical pan, and the knob on top is also heat resistant. There is also a little knob on the handle for the spatula to rest on, which rounds out the overall compact and modular design.
I tested the pan mostly by living and cooking with it: I brought it along to my friend Kristina’s Lunar New Year party to help her prepare some of the dishes she was serving. At home, I scrambled eggs, blistered shishito peppers, and attempted to sauce a whole pound of pasta in it. I even made pancakes on a weekday morning for my roommates, not out of the kindness of my heart, but in the pursuit of knowledge—knowledge I will now share with you.
What I Liked
It can’t be denied that this pan has some serious countertop appeal. The one I tested came in the most Instagram-advertised color, called “spice”—a sort of dusty pink that blends in well amidst the Instagram landscape of painstakingly curated influencer content and other aspirational minimalist homewares. If pink is too much for you, it’s also available in quintessential Restoration Hardware neutrals: a taupe color called “steam” and a black called “char.”
As for how it cooks, the Always Pan’s greatest asset is its non-stick surface. It’s ceramic, chemical-free, and slick like a dolphin. Eggs slid right out of the pan at a tilt of the wrist, and with a little nudge from the spatula, I coaxed my pancakes out with ease. The pan is dishwasher safe, but it was also extremely easy to clean by hand. As for its sauteing abilities, the pan demonstrated even heat distribution and resisted any burnt-on bits of food. It was also lightweight enough to move around with one hand.
What I Didn’t Like
While I was curious about this pan’s ability to function as a steamer, I was ultimately disappointed in the design. The space between the bottom of the pan and the steamer basket is extremely narrow and allows you to fill the pan with less than an inch of water. When I steamed a bag of baby bok choy, the water began to percolate through the basket as soon as it reached a boil. You could say the solution to this would be to use less water at a lower heat, but I was already concerned about the pan burning dry. As a result, I found this spacing issue to make steaming a fussy operation; particularly when you’re steaming delicate or bready items like bao, it’s not ideal. The pan’s short-legged basket makes it better suited for blanching than steaming.
The Always Pan is 10 inches in diameter—while they advertise it as a pan capable of cooking food for a family of four, it was too small to prepare any of the dishes for my friend’s Lunar New Year party, and was incapable of saucing a standard pound of pasta. The pan’s size makes it better suited to people who routinely cook dinner for one or two.
I also noticed right from the start that the bottom of the pan was easily scuffed by my stove top, which didn’t give me much hope for its long-term durability.
So, Who Should Buy the Always Pan?
I’ll definitely use this pan, but I won’t always use this pan. If I am cooking for a crowd, finishing a braise in the oven, or I’m in need of the searing power of cast iron and stainless steel, I’ll reach for something else. However, my roommate, whose diet consists mostly of steamed vegetables and something he calls “hard tortilla” (a corn tortilla dried out in a toaster oven) found this pan a good fit for basically all of his culinary demands. He’s a Marxist vegan currently enrolled in law school, and I work at a food website and often have people over for dinner. Our needs? Different!
The ideal Always Pan owner is someone who likes to cook but primarily sticks to the stovetop, and who is restricted by a small kitchen. It would be a suitable gift for someone moving into their first apartment, but shouldn’t be purchased to replace existing cookware with the hope that one pan could accomplish what three did before. If you’re fortunate enough to have a spacious kitchen filled with tons of pots, pans, and heavy-bottomed French cookware, you likely won’t find any added utility in an Always Pan. And at $145, it is certainly not a budget buy.
However, if you have a beat-up set of nonstick pans that need to go, the Always Pan could be a good all-in-one replacement, especially for someone cooking primarily for one.
