About Us

Who we are

U Design is a New Zealand based company run by Jeremy and Anna they are an Engineer and a Project Manager who enjoy good food.

Why we made the UPAN

A few years ago, we were at a family BBQ and saw the weekly summer tradition of undercooking, over cooking and then charring of a large range of sausages.
Following that fateful weekend, we set about addressing the uneven cooking of a sausage that a plate BBQ gives, this resulted in the 8mm Grill.
While this worked well on the BBQ in the summer, when the winter came the 8mm Grill ended up in the kitchen being used across two elements. At this point we decided to begin the process of designing a pan, that can be used both inside, on the stove top or outside, on the BBQ.
The end product, the UPAN is the result of 4.5 years work of designing, prototyping and finding a company that can manufacture the pan up to a standard that we are happy to put our name to.

How the UPAN works

The UPAN has been designed to address the 2 main issues that you’re faced with when cooking sausages, that sausages are round, and that natural case sausages will curve while cooking.
The U shape design means that as soon as the sausage is placed in the pan it will immediately begin to evenly cook half of sausage.
Once the sausage begins to cook it will start to curve, if you then turn the sausage so the curved side is down, that side will begin to cook and contract, straitening the sausage, allowing for even cooking all the way round.