Our Story

Texas Pan Company is Ben, his sons Caleb and Connor, and their cousin Jacob. Three of us were born and raised in Gilmer, Texas. Jacob came from Utah, where he has been building knives under his own name — Jagged Mountain Knives — and had wanted to make carbon steel pans for years before we finally started.

The shop is at the house. We are not dressing that up. It is where the pans get made.

Why we started

Two things.

The first was what was in our own kitchens. Non-stick pans that flake into your food and get thrown out every two years. We wanted to cook on something that gets better the longer you own it instead of worse.

The second is what we value. We would rather own one thing that was made well, made in America, and made by hand than five things that weren't. Jacob already builds knives that way. We wanted to build a pan the same way. So every part of it is American: the steel, the copper, and everything in between. That is the one line we won't cross, and we won't cross it later either.

How a pan gets made

Every Texas Pan is built here in Gilmer by our team:

We pick up the steel ourselves. Cut the blanks on the CNC table. Sand the cutouts. Press the pan body and the handle in the hydraulic press. Sand again. Season with grapeseed oil for a full hour. Set the flathead copper rivet in the handle and laser-engrave the logo. Then join the handle to the pan with three copper rivets, a hammer, and an anvil. That last step is exactly what it sounds like. Somebody stands at the anvil and sets every rivet by hand.

The part most companies leave out

We didn't get this right immediately.

Of the first fifty pans we built, about twenty weren't good enough to sell. Forty percent. They taught us something every time — about the press, the seasoning, the rivets, how long to sand — and every one of them made the next pan better than the one before it.

The pan you can buy today is the one that came out the other side of that. We are still finding things to improve, and we expect to be at it for a long while.

What you're buying

A pan made by people whose names you now know, from American steel and American copper, in a shop in East Texas. A piece of quality craftsmanship that only gets better as time goes by. An heirloom that you will be able to pass on to future generations.