Episode 18: From a Napa Valley Barn to the World's Kitchens (with Pamela Stafford of Hestan Culinary)

Now let's talk materials.

I love to get to this.

Be very specific.

Stainless steel versus titanium.

Why does that distinction matter, Pamela?

This is important because it really depends on how one is cooking.

How does this vessel need to serve the user? So stainless steel clad is a fantastic material.

And when I say clad, that means a stainless interior with an aluminum core because stainless is a poor conductor of heat and you need to pair it with a great conductor, which in this case would be aluminum, and then stainless steel on the outside.

So the stainless steel is going to give you a really clean surface to work with a non-reactive surface, but it's a poor conductor of heat.

So you use thin layers of stainless and then combine that with a great conductor, which would be aluminum in this case.

So this has been out there and there's a great brand called Allclad, which is where I started my cookware career that was really the inventor of that technology.

And for many decades, they were the only one.

And it's a great material, but there were a lot of pain points with that.

And there still are today because stainless steel is actually somewhat porous.

It has micropores, so it can stain or scratch.

You have oxidation if overheated because most people don't understand how to manage heat control, which can damage it.

And it can be also difficult to clean.

And then the sticking with say a fried egg, for example.

So that's where Heston got to work some 20 years ago in our think tanks with our team of engineers, which is another distinction of Heston.

We have our own engineers in our own factories and said, here are all the pain points we're hearing.

How do we improve? And so we developed molecular titanium, which is 14 global patents.

And this process completely seals and encases all those pores in this beautiful black pearl color called titanium brilliance that completely seals those pores and creates a surface that's five times harder than stainless steel, much more durable and easy to clean.

and has incredible lasting beauty.

That's how we launched when we first came to market about nine years ago.

And we said, let's really start out with a game changing innovation.