Okay so, the long awaited blog post. Is the Our Place Always Pan worth the money? I promised this post a few months ago but life got ahead of me and I’ve only just had the opportunity to really sit down and share my thoughts on it. So grab a coffee, or a snack, or even both—because this is going to be a long post.

Also for the sake of transparency, this pan was gifted to me by the lovely Our Place team, however I was originally the one to reach out to them asking to test it out and I did not promise them any sort of content or coverage in exchange for the pan. I had seen it all over social media and wanted to try it out for myself to see if it was really worth the hype. Peter and I were both also at the time on the market for a new pin since the coating on our old one that was about 6 years old had almost completely scratched off, so we were intrigued about the Always Pan and wanted to test drive it for ourselves. When I shared that I had received it via my Instagram stories, I received a flood of DMs asking for a review, so here we are now!

But let’s get the elephant out of the room. I’m not going to make you read all the way till the end to find out my final thoughts because I honestly hate when I search up a review only to find that they take forever to get to the answer. In short? Yes, I think it’s worth it. Now that that’s done, I’ll dive into the nitty gritty details about the pan and why I think it’s a worthy addition to your kitchen.

Colour

Before jumping into crazy logistics, I wanted to touch base on the colour. Aesthetics may not be a big focus for some, but because we shoot so much content at home, everything that we purchase always comes with the thought of “will it look cute for photos”. I’ll be honest that aesthetics definitely go into a major decision as to whether or not I liked this pan, and the answer is yes—I loved all of the colours that they had to offer. So much so that I had a hard time picking between the Steam or the Spice shade. At first we went with the Steam colour since I wanted something a little bit neutral, but we’ve since added a Spice shade and Blue Salt (pictured here) as well for some variety and colour.

I think it’s safe to say that there is a colour for everyone in the shade range that they offer. Since my first pan, they’ve also released some other limited edition colours too, so if you don’t like any of the colour offerings now, just keep an eye out for some that I’m sure they’ll release in the future! The pans come in a multitude of neutral colours, along with some other fun shades, and their limited edition ones are definitely unique. Between bright bold shades, to muted grey-toned pastels, there literally is a colour for anyone.

Size

When we were on the market for a new pan, we wanted something that was large enough for us to be able to stir fry a dinner for the two of us, but also at the same time small enough to be able to fry up eggs for breakfast and not have to clean up a massive pot or pan as a result. The Always Pan is about 10″ in diameter, making it the perfect width across for eggs (I can finally make more than just 2 eggs at a time) and also great for grilling up bacon without having the edges flip upwards along the sides of the pan. We also have had some other great frying pans in the past, but I’ve always found them to be too shallow, and this pan comes in at a whopping 2.7″ deep, which makes it easy to also stir fry and mix things around without the fear of anything falling off over the edge.

Now due to the size and material (aluminum body with ceramic coating), it can get a little heavy to maneuver around with one hand, but it’s still lighter than a cast iron pan. For the purpose that it serves, we’re quite happy with the size! It’s great for cooking meals that serves 2 with a bit leftover extra, but not too large that it’ll take up your entire sink every time that you wash it.

Material

Like I had mentioned in the size review, the pan itself is made out of aluminum and is covered with a ceramic nonstick coating that is void of toxic materials (from their site: PFOAs, PTFEs, other PFAs, lead, cadmium, toxic metals, and nanoparticles). We recently also noticed that the newer editions of the pan have an updated base made out of aluminum designed for a faster heat-up process specifically for induction stoves. We have a glass-top induction stove but didn’t notice a difference in the speed of heating up for our old (didn’t have the new base) vs. new pan (had the new base).

Does the coating scratch?

The million dollar question that I constantly get asked is if the inner coating of the pan gets scratched easily? And the answer for us is no. We don’t use anything else besides the beechwood spatula that comes with the pan when it comes to cooking, or other silicon spatulas, and that could be why. I’ve read reviews from other people that their pan scratched easily, which I can’t personally speak to, but I would recommend using the supplied utensils that comes with the pan to prevent any unwanted scratches. I’m definitely a lot more careful with my cookware now that I’m older compared to when I was younger and literally took stainless steel forks to my teflon pans and scratched the life out of them, which is probably also why we don’t have any issues with scratches.

Design

This all-in-one pan boasts that it has 9 uses in one (from their site: fry pan, saute pan, steamer, skillet, saucier, saucepan, non-stick pan, spatula, and spoon rest), to which I do agree to an extent, and we’ll touch base on it in this section.

Besides a new pan, I’ve been considering getting a spoon rest because we’re constantly using small dishes and plates to rest our cooking utensils with and I loved the fact that there’s a small knotch on the side of the pan to rest your spatula on. The only issue being that the knotch is specifically designed to rest the Our Place spatula on and no other ones, so it isn’t as easy as placing any spoon or cooking utensil on. You can only use the Always Spatula. That being said, we try to only use that spatula because it’s the safest for the pan and doesn’t cause scratches.

I do really like that there are pour spouts on either side of the pan, making it an extremely convenient saucepan, or just a pan that you can pour things out of without risking it splashing all over the place. You can only imagine the amount of times I’ve attempted to pour out leftover spaghetti sauce into a glass box to store in the fridge, only to have an entire slurry spill all over our counters. The pour spouts on the side of the pan completely eliminate this mess and is actually a really thoughtful and valued design that they’ve integrated into the pot.

Another design function that I truly love is the lid. It has a slot solely for the spoon to slip into when it’s being rested onto the spoon rest, and when your spatulas aren’t in use, you can simply turn the lid to seal off the entire pan to prevent any steam from being released. Quite genius if I say so myself—it also acts as a steam release without needing to prop your lid up slightly to the side and creating a gap for it to escape. Honestly the entire pan design has been so thoughtful and you can tell that it was done by someone who cooks frequently enough to pick up on all of these small cooking nuisances and I truly appreciate it.

Accessories

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of the great accessories that the pan comes with on its own, along with additional ones that you can purchase from Our Place. First off, it comes with the spatula and lid as I had previously mentioned. But inside the pan is also a stainless steel basket steamer that makes it easy to steam vegetables and other things without having to fiddle around to find the perfect sized basket. We actually upgraded to their spruce steamers but I’ll touch on that next. With the purchase of each item from Our Place, they also include a little natural loofa to scrub your cookware with that’s gentle enough to prevent scratches and scrapes.

Besides the items included within the packaging, you can also purchase additional add-ons as well. They have a full range of dinnerware that you can purchase (from plates to bowls), but the one that intrigued us the most were their Spruce Steamers. We frequently make dim sum on the weekends for breakfast and have yet t find steamers that work as well as the ones that they use in restaurants, so you can only imagine how excited we were to find out that Our Place sells their own custom sized steamers to use with the Always Pan. In fact they also release limited edition add-ons here and there throughout the year as well which makes this pan literally something that you can cook everything with and because of that, I feel more in love with it.

Final Thoughts

All-in-all, I truly love this pan. We use it almost every night and we haven’t run into a single issue with it. We have yet to incur any scratches, scrapes, or nicks on the ceramic coating (contrary to what many reviews online may have stated) and I’ve loved how easy it is to clean everything. Food literally slides right off of the pan (when being cleaned properly) and we’ve yet to run into any issues with food sticking to the coating. Would I recommend it? Yes, completely. Whether it be for yourself, a gift to a friend or a family member, I think this pan truly does live up to its claims and more. Does it necessarily replace every single other pot and pan in your kitchen? Not exactly, because if you’re cooking for a large family (think 4+) you’re going to need a larger pan/pot regardless of the brand. But between myself and Peter, this pan is more than sufficient size wise!