Review: Our Place Always Pan

My wife Elisabeth and I own a fancy All-Clad pan and, for the life of us, we can't remember how it ended up in our kitchen. As far as we're concerned, it just appeared there one day. Did one of us inherit it from an ex? Did I steal it from my mom? (Hi, Mom!) Seriously, no idea.

At first, the design of this pan felt funny. With a bit of research, I learned it's called a d5 Stainless-Steel Essential Pan, a $179 All-Clad model available only through Williams-Sonoma. (All-Clad also makes a $200 "Weeknight Pan" that's very similar.) It's sort of like a 12-inch sauté pan with sidewalls that are taller than normal—tall enough that you can put four quarts of liquid in it. Over the course of the last couple of years, I've come to use it more and more. You can sear or braise in there and it's big enough to make soup, but not as heavy as a cast-iron pan or Dutch oven. Also, that extra sidewall height keeps hot oil from splattering onto the stovetop when sautéing in it.

When news reached me about a new pan from a company called Our Place—the Always Pan—I was curious. It was smaller but had the same basic shape as my All-Clad, plus a particularly high-domed lid and an intriguing square handle. It felt like a nice excuse to do a deeper dive on the basic design. Is it "essential"? The answer, especially the comparison between the two pans, surprised me.

I started using them whenever I could. One dish that originally helped put the All-Clad on my radar was the stir-fry, as the pan shape is very similar to that of a flat-bottomed wok. The similarly shaped Always Pan is relatively light, a bit over 3 pounds without its lid, so giving the pan a flip doesn't tax your wrist.

With either pan, you're not hefting a monster when you maneuver it. I appreciated the D-shaped "helper handles" opposite the regular handle on both pans, particularly nice for a longer lift or pouring out a hot sauce.

However, I noticed deficiencies with the Our Place pan that became hard to ignore. First, the pan had some notable doming to it, where the center of the cooking surface is slightly higher than the edges. If I poured a bit of cooking oil in, it would coat the bottom, but as it heated and became less viscous, it would eventually run out to the edges, leaving a ring of hot oil around an uncoated center. The pan has a ceramic nonstick coating, but I tried cooking an egg in there, and the part of it that wasn't on oil stuck a bit, an upsetting defect for a $145 pan.

I also noticed a bit of paint chipping here and there around the pan lip. "What happens to the paint chips?" Elisabeth asked, a question with an answer that I didn't want to think about too much.

I also noticed it was slow to heat up, often needing a higher heat setting than other pans, a problem that stems from a mediocre ability to work with induction stoves. I'd encountered this before, especially with my T-Fal nonstick, but that pan cost $30. Induction stoves only work with pans that include magnetic material like cast iron or certain kinds of stainless steel, and the Always Pan appeared to have a bare minimum. To test this, I poured two cups of room-temperature water into the All-Clad, turned the burner to high, and started a stopwatch. With a bottom layer of what is called "induction stainless steel" in the All-Clad, it brought the water to a rolling boil in a rocket-fast minute and 10 seconds. With the same quantity of water, the Always Pan took five minutes to reach what I'd call a steady boil, at which point I turned off the heat. (Since my testing, Our Place says it has started producing its pans with a new induction plate on the bottom. However, the old version of the pan still appears on the company's website. I haven't tested the newer version of the pan; Your mileage may vary.)

Finally, I'd been enjoying putting Alton Brown's 2016 cookbook EveryDayCook: This Time It's Personal to the test. It's good, slightly nerdy cookery, with solid, tested recipes, and I started head-to-head testing with chicken piccata. On neighboring burners, I browned boneless, skinless thighs that had been dredged in flour. Both pans did a fine job until I looked at the stovetop beneath the Always Pan.

"Hey! What's with all the swearing?" Elisabeth called up from a floor below.

Alton's recipe calls for a gentle shaking of the pan as the chicken crisps up, just sliding the thighs around to make sure nothing sticks or burns. When I pulled the Always Pan from the burner, though, I found a bunch of scratch marks on my stove top, like some vindictive kindergartener with a nail had etched vaguely concentric hieroglyphs onto my back right burner. The exterior of the Always Pan has a fashionable, vaguely nubbly painted surface, and when it cooled down, I found a couple spots where the paint wore away and left little shiny points of metal poking through, which scratched my stove.

It's worth noting at this point that I've cooked on this stovetop for three years, shaking such behemoths as my 7-pound cast-iron skillet and a 13-pound-plus Dutch oven on the cooktop's glass-ceramic surface with abandon. That three-year streak of looking perfect ended with the 3-pound Always Pan. As the stove owner, I declared the Always Pan disqualified from further testing, something I'd recommend to anyone with a ceramic stove surface, either induction or electric. It's also worth noting that, while the Always Pan had not yet been released when I tested it, the pan I received for review was certified by an Our Place founder as being a production model. (The company's newer pan bottom might alleviate the scratching issue as well, but again, I haven't tested that version.)

This left me with just the "control" pan—the All-Clad that appeared mysteriously in my kitchen several years ago. I made Alton's weeknight spaghetti sauce, using it in his chicken parmesan meatballs, which had me gently browning the meatballs, then letting them bubble away in the sauce. If it hadn't already been in use, I could have used the All-Clad to boil the pasta.

Next, I turned to Alton's Mussels-o-miso, where a couple pounds of mussels get a quick steam bath in a miso-beer broth, redolent with shishito peppers, garlic, and ginger. Along with making for a helluva lunch, it alerted me to the sweet spot that the 4-quart size occupies. A 2.6-quart version like the Always Pan is too small for something like this, ditto for the 3-quart version of the All-Clad, which comes in 3-, 4-, and (honking) 6-quart sizes. Four quarts for this type of pan felt perfect.

The last thing I made in the All-Clad was Alton's onion oxtail soup, where you sear the oxtails, sauté vast quantities of onions, add wine, and pop it in the oven for a couple hours until the meat just about falls off the bone. It's a textbook Dutch-oven braise, but the All-Clad subbed in without a hitch, and if it was this pan I was reviewing, I’d give it a 9 out of 10.

Cast as a romantic story, my relationship with my All-Clad pan would be the tale of a slow burn, where someone who'd been there the whole time, lost behind other, flashier options, suddenly became undeniable in their beauty. The folks at Our Place might need to work out some kinks in a hurry, but both the Always Pan and the All-Clad are reminders of how essential this style of pan can be.

Update, October 29, 6 pm: This story was amended to include details about the changes Our Place has made to the design of the bottom of the pan.