Some recipes make no sense in small pots. Sunday ragù, beans with pork rind cooking since morning, August tomato passata filling the whole house with an aroma you remember for years. These things need space, time and a pot that holds the heat without letting anything down. The 26 cm terracotta pot is made for exactly this.
 
 
 
Maurizio makes it in Altomonte, in the province of Cosenza. It's the largest size in the range, for families and long cooking. Thrown on the wheel with clay from the Calabrian hills, glazed by hand with non-toxic glazes and fired in his workshop kiln. At 26 cm across it has room for everything you need without losing anything: neither the liquid that evaporates too fast in metal pans, nor the flavours that fade when heat isn't evenly spread.
 
 
 
Terracotta works differently from metal, and in this large size the difference is even clearer. Heat doesn't just rise from the base: it spreads slowly through all the walls, so every part of the contents gets the same treatment. In a ragù cooking for three hours, that means the meat at the bottom doesn't burn while the meat on top is still raw. It means the tomatoes break down at the right moment, the wine is absorbed without leaving sharpness, and the fat blends in instead of separating. These are things you notice on the plate, even without knowing why.
 
 
 
This large pot is the Sunday pot. For the ragù that goes on the heat at nine in the morning and comes off at one. For meat stock simmering gently while you get on with other things. For borlotti beans with pork rind, which in Calabria cooked for hours beside the embers and in terracotta find the same indirect, steady heat. It's also the one for large quantities: for cooking for four or six, making sauce for several days, or putting up preserves.
 
 
 
Use it on gas, on a cast-iron plate and in a conventional oven. It needs just one precaution: let it cool before washing. Hot clay and cold water don't get on, and the sudden change in temperature can crack the material. It's a simple thing, waiting. The same patience you give a ragù that cooks for hours, you give here too, at the end.
 
 
 
In Calabria the large terracotta pot was the one for feast days, brought out for special occasions. Not because it was valuable in terms of money, but because it had a particular place in the home kitchen: it was there for the things that mattered, for dishes that needed more time and attention. Braalla offers this pot because we believe those things still matter, even in a modern kitchen, even when there never seems to be enough time.
 
 
 
A large terracotta pot isn't a collector's item. It's something you use, that gets stained over time, that grows darker and more beautiful with every dish. It ages with the person who uses it, carrying the memory of everything ever cooked in it. There's nothing like it in any kitchenware shop.
 
 
 
Diameter: 26cm Ø. Handmade in Altomonte. Non-toxic glazes. Suitable for gas, cast-iron plates and conventional ovens.