STRADA makes cookware out of two materials — grey iron and carbon steel — and a small number of tools that go with them. That's the whole business. We are not trying to sell you a kitchen system.
Why the surface matters
Most cast iron sold today comes out of the mould and goes straight into a box. The pebbled texture you can feel with a thumb is raw sand-casting; it was smoothed by hand as a matter of course until the middle of the last century, and then it stopped being, because machining a cook surface costs money and the pan works well enough without it.
We machine ours. It's a slower, more expensive way to finish a pan, and it's the difference between iron that is slick on the first cook and iron that becomes slick after a year of patient seasoning. Everything else we do follows from taking that step seriously.
How things are made
- Cast pieces are poured in grey iron at around 1,150°C, shaken out, machined flat on the cook surface, then seasoned in grapeseed oil across three passes.
- Carbon steel is spun from French sheet stock, 1.5–2.0 mm depending on the piece. Handles are hot-forged and riveted, not spot-welded, because a weld is a seam and a seam is where things fail.
- Fire pieces are drawn out and hot-riveted by hand from square and round bar. No two twists on a poker are identical, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
- Wood is black walnut and hard maple, finished with a food-safe oil and wax.
What we claim, and what we don't
We are careful about this, because cookware attracts a lot of nonsense.
- We do claim our pans are heavy, hold heat well, have machined surfaces, and carry a lifetime warranty against manufacturing failure. Those are checkable facts and the specs on every product page are the real ones.
- We do not make health claims. Cast iron is not a nutritional supplement, it will not "detox" anything, and we won't tell you it leaches a useful amount of dietary iron into your food. If you need iron, talk to a doctor, not a pan company.
- We do not claim our cookware is medical, therapeutic or protective in any way, and we don't market against other materials with scare stories about them.
- We do not claim any of it is unbreakable. Iron cracks if you shock it. We tell you how to avoid that on the care page and we replace genuine defects regardless.
The company
STRADA is the trading name of PHUMADE INC, a company registered in the United States. We sell directly from this website — there is no reseller network, so if you have a problem you are talking to the people who made the thing.
Our operating address is 1200 Riverfront Parkway, Suite 210, Chattanooga, TN 37402, and the phone number on our contact page reaches a person during business hours.