Lacor

Lacor is a Spanish catering-grade housewares brand, the sort you see more often in a restaurant kitchen than in a shop window. Its own listings describe it as one of Spain's leading makers and distributors of equipment for the hospitality trade and the home, with several decades behind it — though its product pages do not agree on the exact number of years — and it claims something increasingly rare: that much of its catalogue is still produced in Spain. Its paella pans and bench tools carry "Spain" as the stated country of origin on the listing itself.

What makes Lacor interesting to a kamado cook is exactly what makes it unglamorous: bare or stainless steel with no flourishes, thin sheet, plain handles and the outlook of a catering supplier. These are pieces built to be abused by a professional kitchen, not to look good on a designer worktop. The trade-off is honest enough: the carbon steel of its paella pans has to be dried and oiled after every use, and its Amazon listings carry catalogue errors — crossed-over materials, measurements that disagree from one block to the next — worth reading carefully before you pay.