Why your Always Pan is sticking, and whether it can be fixed
Ceramic nonstick is a consumable, not a permanent surface. Three things make it fail early and you can stop all three; one thing makes it fail eventually and you cannot. This page tells you which you are looking at, in Our Place's own care wording.
We earn a commission if you buy through the links on this page. It has not changed a figure.
Ceramic 10.5-inch $135, titanium $179, on 20 October 2026. Images: Our Place.
What owners report
The timeline is the same everywhere. The pattern across owner reviews and Cook's Illustrated's test is one story: the pan arrives, eggs slide, and for a while it does what the box says. Then one morning the egg holds on, and more oil stops helping.
That is ceramic, not Our Place. Cook's Illustrated's description of what goes wrong: a ceramic coating “is more brittle and likely to develop microscopic surface cracks with use”. Heat, abrasion and burnt-on oil roughen the surface, and once rough it grips.
The three causes you can fix
1 · Heat too high. Our Place's rules: “Use low-to-medium heat for optimal results” and “Never heat an empty pan”. An empty pan on a high burner passes the 450°F oven rating before the food goes in. Check: does the pan smoke before the food goes in? That is the ceiling.
2 · Cooking spray. “Avoid aerosol sprays to protect the nonstick coating” is on the page. Spray builds into a varnish on top of the coating. Use a teaspoon of oil or butter from a bottle: Our Place says a little high-smoke-point oil “enhances performance and extends coating life”. Check: after a hot-water wash, is the surface tacky? That is residue.
3 · Abrasives and the dishwasher. “Hand wash only, not dishwasher safe”, “Do not use metal utensils”, “No harsh scrubbing or abrasives needed”. Check: under a bright light, a matte, chalky patch where it used to be glossy is abrasion.
Fix the cause and most pans come back — not to new, but to usable. The routine is on how to clean the Always Pan.
Our Place's page states the two rules that matter most: “Oven safe up to 450°F” and “Hand wash only, not dishwasher safe”. Its warranty is conditional on them: “If you follow our easy care instructions, we'll help out if anything goes wrong within 3 years from your date of purchase.”
The one you can't
Wear has no fix. If you have done none of the above, the coating is wearing out, and nothing restores it. The videos that “re-season” a ceramic pan lay down a film of polymerised oil, the carbon-steel trick; on ceramic it works for a few meals, then flakes.
How long it takes is the three causes again. Our Place publishes no expected lifespan for the coating; its one figure is the warranty, three years.
Our Place backs the ceramic Always Pan with “a 3 year limited warranty” and publishes no expected lifespan for the coating. Whether gradual loss of nonstick counts as something going wrong under that warranty is a question for its terms, on Our Place warranty and returns.
The egg test
Eggs are the diagnostic because they are the hardest thing a nonstick pan does. If eggs stick and pancakes do not, the coating is going. If both stick, it has gone.
Cook's Illustrated's count. Method: “Fry eggs with no oil, one after another, until they begin to stick (up to 50 eggs)”. Result: “the Always Pan lost its nonstick qualities after we cooked just 44 eggs in it”; its favourite nonstick and ceramic skillets “stayed perfectly slippery even after cooking 50 eggs”; the Perfect Pot, same coating, “started to show signs of sticking after we cooked 39 eggs”.
Which pan it tested. Cook's Illustrated says its pan “wasn't ovensafe”. Today's pan is “oven safe up to 450°F”, and Our Place lists oven-safety among what its newer version changed. So the 44-egg figure belongs to the earlier pan; no count for the current one has been published that we could find. The versions are untangled on the Always Pan 2.0 page.
A fair reading: the Always Pan is a well-designed pan with an ordinary ceramic coating. The design is why people buy it. The coating is why they stop using it.
If you want a pan that never does this
Our Place's own answer is the Titanium Always Pan Pro. It has no coating: “3 mm fully clad tri-ply construction” with a “Titanium pan interior with patent-pending NoCo nonstick technology”. Nothing is sprayed on, so nothing wears off. “Dishwasher safe”, “Metal-utensil safe”, “Oven safe up to 1000°F” (Gold 750°F), “Limited lifetime warranty”, all read from its page on 20 October 2026. Full detail in the titanium review.
It is not the same pan. Our Place's instruction: “Each time you cook, gently preheat the pan over low-to-medium heat and coat the interior with a little oil or fat”. Skip the preheat and food sticks. It weighs 4.6 lb with its lid to the ceramic's 3.9, the box holds pan and lid only, and it is $179 in Chrome or Brushed ($199 Gold) to the ceramic's $135: the $44 premium. The surfaces are compared on titanium vs ceramic.
Sticking after months: fix the three causes and it will likely come back. Sticking after years: the pan has done its job.
Gentle cooks who hand-wash, cook on medium, oil from a bottle and want colour on the hob. Buy the ceramic again if you like how it cooks: $135, three years.
You cook on high, use the dishwasher, or have already replaced one ceramic pan. Pay the $44 for the surface that does not wear.
The pan that does not wear, priced
Price verified on the date shown. The ceramic Always Pan, every size and version, is on the Always Pan hub.
The questions people actually ask
Can you restore an Always Pan's nonstick?
Not once the surface has roughened. Spray residue is different: it sits on top of the coating and comes off with hot water, a soft sponge and a paste of baking soda.
Does the Always Pan 2.0 stick less than the original?
Our Place calls the current coating “50% longer-lasting” and gives no baseline. Cook's Illustrated's 44-egg count was of a pan that “wasn't ovensafe”, so the earlier one. No count for the current pan has been published that we could find.
Does the Titanium Always Pan Pro stick?
If it is cold. Our Place: “gently preheat the pan over low-to-medium heat and coat the interior with a little oil or fat”; “Food will naturally release from the interior when properly cooked through.”
How were these figures verified?
Care wording, oven ratings and warranties from Our Place's pages, prices from its product data, read 20 October 2026; egg counts from Cook's Illustrated's review (last updated 24 June 2025), read the same day. How we check these pages.
Our Place prices and specifications last verified 16–26 October 2026; competitor prices re-read 26–28 October 2026 (All-Clad 25 August).
How we check these pages