Building Cool Stuff With Cool People: Why Partners and Not Sponsors

For the past several years, I’ve been working closely with a handful of individuals and companies to create products that I believe solve real problems, spark joy, and hopefully even change the game for home cooks. Over the next few months, you’ll start seeing me introduce several of these new products to the world.

From Ideas to Reality

You may have already seen (or purchased!) some of my earlier collaborations, like the Shitoku knife, the Kenji x Leone salt box, and the Earlywood wok spatula. Each was born out of deeply personal partnerships with small-scale makers. I hand-forged the first prototype of the knife of my dreams with master bladesmith Gordon Hanson of Vonhelmick knives who now crafts each one by hand in his Oregon forge. The salt box came to life with my friends Brad Leone and Adam Papanestor, and is cut and assembled in small batches by 3-Dot Wood Design in Connecticut. And the spatula took countless iterations, prototypes, and test runs before finally landing on the design crafted by the folks at Earlywood in Montana.

Because these pieces are handmade in small batches, they’ve often been available only in limited numbers—especially the knife and salt box—and typically sell out within minutes. Even so, the process has been immensely rewarding: not only the design work itself, but the joy of seeing these tools in the hands of happy home cooks. That joy has only fueled my desire to keep creating.

Which brings me to what’s next. Most of the new tools and food products I’ve been working on will be priced and produced with everyday home cooks in mind—meaning they’ll be easier to find and more consistently available, while still carrying the same thought, care, and obsessive testing that went into the smaller-scale productions.

Every one of these collaborations has been a true labor of love, involving endless rounds of brainstorming, tinkering, designing, rethinking, and re-testing—all to ensure they’re not just beautiful tools and delicious ingredients, but the most functional, most empowering, and longest-lasting ones you (or a lucky someone in your life) will ever own.

Sponsorships: Why I Tried—and Why I’m Done

Let me start by being clear: When I recommend a tool, an ingredient, or a restaurant, it’s because I believe in it and the people behind it. And I’ll always be transparent about any relationships—whether friendly or professional—that I have with them.

This basic no-sponsor policy has been central to the trust I’ve strived to build with you over the years. It was instilled in me at Cook’s Illustrated and carried through to my work shaping editorial policies at Serious Eats. Even though Serious Eats is an ad-supported site, we drew a hard line between editorial and advertising, ensuring that no amount of ad dollars could sway the outcome of a taste test or product review. As far as I know, my friend and former colleague Daniel Gritzer continues to uphold those standards today. Both Cook’s Illustrated and Serious Eats, along with The New York Times, remain my go-to sources for unbiased, in-depth product testing, recipes, and recommendations.

In my own solo work, I’ve done my best to maintain those same principles. I buy my own equipment, I pay for my own ingredients and meals, and whenever possible, I turn down freebies or extras. That independence matters to me, and I know it matters to you.

That said, some of you may have noticed that over the past year I’ve made a few exceptions to my long-standing policy of not working directly with sponsors or advertisers. Why?

The truth is, both my work and personal life were stretching in new ways, and I knew I’d need help to keep everything sustainable. That help came in the form of my incredible Production Manager Lena Davidson and my equally incredible assistant Akari Hatenaka, along with several wonderful freelancers, like videographer Michael Weiner and editor Alex Oh. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to work with such brilliant people.

To help support and fairly compensate this new team, I experimented with a few carefully chosen sponsorships—products I genuinely use and believe in. But even with companies I love and a supportive and understanding audience, the experience still left me wanting. Not because of the sponsors themselves—they were great—but because it ran counter to the ethos I’ve held my whole career. The feeling was enough to confirm for me that direct sponsorships aren’t the way I want to interact with my audience or my industry peers. I have no plans of accepting any more sponsorship offers in the future.

Why Partners over Sponsors?

So where does that leave me now? Well, after decades of testing, reviewing, and cooking with countless products, I’ve developed strong opinions about what works, what doesn’t, and how things could be better. So it occurred to me: Instead of waiting for the perfect tools or ingredients to show up, why not build meaningful partnerships to design and produce them?

My one criteria for the collaborations I’ve been building are that they are relationship-first. Anyone who’s ever worked with me can tell you: I’m not wired for purely transactional exchanges (just ask my accountant). I like building cool stuff with cool people. My goal has been to partner with folks who share the same passions I do—empowering home cooks, making things that meet strict standards of performance, value, longevity, and usefulness, and doing it all with integrity. That means prioritizing the planet, the well-being of workers, and the value delivered to customers.

The result? A line of tools and ingredients that span the everyday and the extraordinary—from staple seasonings to innovative designs built with cutting-edge materials, all produced with folks who I genuinely love working with and believe in. Folks who are the best at what they do and who are passionate about making your cooking experience more productive and joyful.

My North Star in the Kitchen

At the end of the day, my north star hasn’t changed: I want to make your time in the kitchen easier, more joyful, and more rewarding. Whether that’s through a recipe, a book, a video, or a tool I’ve helped bring into the world, my goal is always the same—empowering you to cook more, stress less, and share better meals with the people you love.

These projects aren’t about slapping my name on products or cashing in on a trend. They’re about doing the slow, sometimes messy, always rewarding work of designing things that actually solve problems for real cooks. They’re about taking the trust you’ve given me over the years and putting it into practice in a tangible way. And, hopefully, they’re about building a little more joy into your everyday cooking.

I hope you are as excited as I am to see what's on the horizon.

P.S. thank you so much for supporting and following me here on Patreon. As a thank you, folks who are signed up here will have first crack at any limited-run products as well as access to discount codes and special offers from the producers.