I’ll admit, I was all ready to write about Masterpan’s Kickstarter campaign mostly to mock it. That mocking was mostly because the email pitch for it had the subject line “Millennials make cooking more creative” and went on to say that a millennial co-invented the product.
Ugh.
But honestly, after reading about Master Pan (and its previous incarnation), I just can’t get that worked up over it. It’s fine, and probably fine for millennials. We know they cook, and that companies are targeting them to get them into the kitchen. Why not give them a sectioned pan so they can cook everything at once?
The first generation MasterPan had five sections and a viral campaign that, according to the company, “broke the internet” (double ugh) resulting in sales of 100,000 sectioned pans.
Now the makers of the Master Pan are back, but have toned things down a bit, opting for fewer sections. The new line of Master Pans features a three (grill + two small griddlle sections), two (grill + griddle) and one (grill) configuration.
The pans are die cast aluminum, a “double layer PFOA free and chemical free non-stick Xylan Plus coating,” and an induction base that allows you to cook on any stove and distributes the heat to all the sections. There’s also a detachable Bakelite handle so you can put the Master Pan in the oven for extended periods of time, and also for easier/smaller storage.
The idea of a section pan isn’t exactly new. A quick search on Amazon reveals a number of sectioned pan options. And I can’t speak to the quality of the pan, or how successful it is as cooking various items which require different levels of heat at once. A review of the first gen Master Pan in The Guardian from 2016 was less than stellar, but your mileage may vary.
I don’t want to paint that younger generation with too wide a brush, but I guess the appeal of the Master Pan is that you you don’t have to buy multiple pans to make one meal (or clean up afterwards), and you can have your whole meal cooked at once so you don’t have to wait. Those seem like perfectly good reasons, though not necessarily limited to millennials.
Master Pan is looking to raise $45,000 from its Kickstarter. If you’re interested, you can pick up any one of the pans for a pledge of $34 with a scheduled delivery date of November of this year. Unlike the Solidtecknics unibody wrought iron skillet I backed earlier this year, I won’t be giving any money to the Master Pan. I have enough pans and no real need to segregate my food into tiny compartments while cooking.
But for all you millennials out there, maybe it’s worth a shot.
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