The Kilne Everything Pan vs. the Always Pan 2.0: which is better?

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Unless you’re some kind of storage wizard, chances are you have a teetering stack of pans tucked into one of your kitchen cupboards. We certainly did — from 50-pound cast–iron skillets to small saucepans, pulling out the frying pan we needed from the leaning tower was consistently our least favourite part of our daily cooking experience.

Non-stick pans are versatile tools with a range of features, designed to help you get rid of your collection of old, oil-caked skillets. We got the chance to compare Kilne's Everything Pan to Our Place's Always Pan 2.0, two leading products in the non-stick game. To get a sense of how they hold up in the kitchen, we put them head-to-head in the most rigorous test possible — cooking on hectic weeknights. 

Kilne Everything Pan

Kilne's Everything Pan: The pros

The Kilne Everything Pan instantly made our lives easier in the kitchen. As soon as we picked it up, the quality was evident; it's a ceramic, non-stick and non-toxic pan that’s crafted by makers in Italy. It feels solid, with a good weight to it — but it's nowhere near the wrist-straining burden of a cast iron or wok.

Kilne Everything Pan

The design

Despite the occasional chaos that occurs, our kitchen is our happy place, and we like it to look good. The Kilne Everything Pan comes enrobed in Sage, Peppercorn and Meringue matte colours, which are stylish and fit in perfectly with the rest of our kitchen tools. We never want to hide it away in a cupboard.

The function

The Everything Pan claims it's able to replace nine pieces of cookware, including serveware. Since introducing it into our kitchen, we found it can fry, sear, sauté, braise, broil, boil and roast with ease. We were a little skeptical at first about presenting meals in the pan, but it turned out to be a great option for family-style dining.

The self-basting lid is a neat feature, too. It keeps your covered dish moist as it cooks, meaning proteins stay juicy and flavourful and never dry out. Begone, annoying basting timers!

In a triumphant win for reducing the dishes we had to clean after cooking, the Everything Pan is also oven-safe up to 400C/750F (or 250C/480F with the lid). We love being able to pop a vegetable ziti directly into the oven to bake after pan-frying the veggies. There was no need to transfer to another pan to get that browned, gooey Italian cheese finish. 

Kilne Everything Pan

The Everything Pan’s sleek, rounded ergonomic handle slides into our palm and rests there nicely, keeping the weight off our wrist while still providing excellent control of the pan. It feels like an extension of our arm when we hold it. Then, its 28-cm (11-inch) diameter cooking surface and 2.6-litre capacity mean you can actually make a meal for multiple hungry mouths.

Kilne Everything Pan

While we were impressed with how scratch-resistant the Everything Pan's ceramic surface is, it's also non-toxic and free from all PFAs (including PTFEs, PFOAs, nickel and heavy metals). As we're always cooking for family and friends, it's nice to have the peace of mind that it's a safe pan to use.

The incredible non-stick surface means you can use very little or no oil when cooking, which is great for our earnest attempts at building healthy eating habits this summer. Melted cheese, chicken cutlets and eggs — all notoriously sticky foods — slide right off the Kilne Everything Pan with no resistance. (Just make sure you catch them with a plate when they do!)

What else?

A small bonus is that Kilne's Everything Pan is produced by a Canadian company, which is always nice to support. The impressive 10-year warranty isn't something to bat an eye at, either. Finally, we were delighted to find out that producing the pan requires very little energy, resulting in a much lower CO2 output when compared to traditional non-stick coatings. Eco-conscious shoppers, this is the pan for you.

Kilne's Everything Pan: The cons

For its size, Kilne's Everything Pan is surprisingly light — however, it is ever-so-marginally heavier than Our Place's Always Pan.

Its lid does heat up when in use, so make sure to use an oven mitt or tea towel when you're lifting it off the pan.

The thinner handle, while extremely ergonomic for the hand, isn't the easiest to rest a spoon on. However, we usually cook with wooden spatulas and try not to leave them in the pan, so this didn't impact our cooking experience too much.

Our Place's Always Pan 2.0: The pros

The design

This Instagram-famous pan has caught the attention of social media users everywhere, and it's clear why. Like the Everything Pan, the Always Pan is sleek and stylish, and comes in a large variety of colours to match your kitchen. We like how many styles there are to choose from.

The function

While it has a smaller cooking surface than Kilne's Everything Pan, the rim on the Always Pan is higher which prevents your dish from spilling out as you stir. A square, beefy handle also provides more space to rest cooking utensils, and there's even a little button that hooks onto the spatula that comes with the pan to keep it secure.

The lid's steam-release function means we don't have to anxiously stand beside the stove as our meals cooks, praying it doesn't boil over. 

The Always Pan 2.0, unlike previous versions, is oven-safe up to 425F with the lid, and 500F without. We're able to switch the oven to broil to get that final blast of crispiness or char before serving.

What else?

The Always Pan also comes with a steamer basket to be used in-pan. In practice, it's not the most effective steamer for large quantities of veggies as it sits quite low in the pan, but it gets the job done for smaller portions.

We found the Always Pan to be lighter and a bit more mobile, though that does come at the expense of a smaller cooking surface. 

Our Place's Always Pan 2.0: The cons

Our Place's Always Pan is better suited for smaller-batch cooking than Kilne's Everything Pan. Its smaller surface did make it harder to get that wonderfully crispy, golden-brown sear when cooking in larger portions.

The lid doesn't feature a self-basting function, which we really loved about Kilne's Everything Pan. 

While there are some benefits to the Always Pan handle, its square shape and thickness weren't optimal for extended handheld use and ended up fatiguing our palm quickly. The knob, while convenient for securing the supplied bamboo spatula, gets in the way when trying to rest our own favourite spatulas on the pan.

Lastly, the Always Pan's warranty is only for one year, which isn't ideal for us given the steeper price tag.  

The verdict

Kilne Everything Pan

Kilne’s Everything Pan offers the most real, immediate and practical benefits compared to its non-stick competitors. While the Our Place pan is definitely an efficient kitchen tool, the Everything Pan was the ultimate winner. It's built for robust, daily use which means less fussing in the kitchen and more time actually enjoying the food you're making with your loved ones.

To get your Kilne Everything Pan, head to kilne.com.