Born at the family table.
Every family has one. The old frying pan at the back of the cupboard. It made a thousand Saturday breakfasts and the pancakes everyone fought over. Somewhere along the way, the coating started to go. First a scratch, then a dull patch, then little dark flakes. Someone said, “It’s fine, just use the other side.” And then one day it went in the bin, and a new one took its place. Again, and again.
How we got here
It started with a happy accident. In 1938, a DuPont chemist called Roy Plunkett discovered PTFE, a material nothing would stick to. In 1954, in France, Colette Grégoire asked her husband Marc to try it on her pans. The first non-stick frying pan was born in a family kitchen, and by the 1960s it was in kitchens everywhere.
But non-stick was never really the pan. It was a thin layer sprayed on top. And thin layers wear. Most non-stick pans last only around two to three years before the coating gives up.
The question families started asking
In the 2000s, people began asking harder questions about the chemicals behind non-stick. PTFE belongs to a family called PFAS, often called “forever chemicals”. By 2006, the US Environmental Protection Agency was asking manufacturers to phase out PFOA, one of the chemicals used to make it.
At family tables, the question became simple: why does the pan we cook our children’s dinner in need a coating at all?
Casora, made for the family table
Casora is our answer. A hammered titanium pan with no PTFE or PFAS coating, so there’s nothing to scratch off and nothing to flake into dinner. Metal spatulas are welcome, so the kids can help. The dishwasher is fine, because nobody has time to baby a pan. It works on every hob and goes straight into the oven for Sunday’s roast.
The name says it too. Casa means home in the languages of the Mediterranean kitchens that inspired us. Casora is a pan for the heart of the home: the weekday eggs, the birthday pancakes, the Sunday roast and the late-night cheese toastie.
A pan that doesn’t need replacing. One you might even hand down.
Casora. The pan that can’t peel.