It's Time to Give Up on the Nonstick Pan as We Know It

Wirecutter does not recommend ceramic nonstick frying pans. That’s on me.

Earlier this year, I spent weeks trying (and failing) to find a ceramic nonstick pan that I could recommend to you. I made stacks of pancakes and piles of fish fillets on 10 ceramic nonstick pans — and I slid, like an egg across Teflon, from tentative hope into something resembling despair.

Back in April, in the thick of this frustrating testing, I was riding the subway home from Wirecutter’s test kitchen, and I found myself gazing up at an ad showing a sleek, cream-colored sauce pot paired with the text, “You deserve clean kitchenware.” The ad didn’t say the pan was ceramic-coated, but I’d tested enough of these things to recognize one when I saw it. Besides, the ad told me the pan’s coating was ceramic simply by using a signature marketing term: “clean.”

The clean concept is the primary selling point for ceramic nonstick cookware. The promises go something like this: Ceramic is a clean, healthy, green, nontoxic alternative to the cheaper, more prevalent nonstick coatings that use chemicals called PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or forever chemicals). Ceramic purveyors assure us that the slippy, slide-y nonstick function of PFAS-coated pans can still be had via their “clean” alternatives.

If that promise is to be believed, then we can have our easy-flip pancakes and eat them, too — all while avoiding a class of chemicals that has polluted the environment and is associated with increased risk for health issues like reduced immune-system function, reproductive and developmental changes, and even some cancers.

Now, there’s a reason why PFAS-based coatings are so common, despite what we know about their impact on the environment and our health. They’re incredibly good at what they do. These coatings have been the undisputed standard in nonstick cookware since the mid-20th century.

To find out whether ceramic could be just as slippery and easy to use (or at least acceptably close), I set out to test a bunch of popular ceramic pans against our top-pick nonstick pan, PFAS-based coating and all. It was the kind of assignment that came with a sympathetic glance and a loaded “good luck” from my editor.

Our kitchen team first tested ceramic pans in 2021, as Insta-famous ceramic cookware — like the Always pan — was rising in popularity. Back then, we dismissed ceramic pans because of their high price, poor nonstick performance, and lack of longevity.

Recently, we decided to revisit them. We’d been getting reader requests to review ceramic nonstick cookware for years. And we were curious, wondering whether, in our new testing, a ceramic pan might dethrone the top-pick nonstick pan we’d recommended for nearly a decade. With an explosion of ceramic cookware popping up everywhere from TikTok Shop to Tramontina — and with even Stanley Tucci getting in on the action — it seemed like we’d at least have plenty of options to choose from.

So I tested 10 ceramic pans. And the results were mediocre.

These ceramic pans just don’t provide the slick, lasting nonstick cooking that PFAS-coated pans do. As I flipped the zillionth pancake, I began to wonder: What’s this stuff we were being told was such a healthy, sustainable alternative? And was it foolish to try to swap out PFAS?

After digging into the research and talking to scientists and other experts about ceramic nonstick cookware, I am not convinced that it lives up to its claims of nontoxic nonstickiness enough to justify the cost.

Instead, I’m thinking that the era of nonstick might simply be coming to an end.

Here are the key lessons I learned as I worked on this story:

I asked eight different ceramic-cookware makers to disclose what’s in their pans. Most of the ones that responded declined to provide details about the contents of their pans beyond the state and federal laws that they follow. You can read more of their responses in the section titled Are ceramic pans actually nontoxic?

For millions of home cooks, the use of nonstick pans is a complete given. We’ve come to expect that we can quickly throw a pan on the stove with a tiny bit of oil and easily cook anything in a flash — with no careful heating beforehand or any strenuous scouring afterward.

But there was a time, not so long ago, when nonstick cookware didn’t exist at all.

Around the middle of the 20th century, aluminum cookware was king. These uncoated metal pans were advertised as natural, easy to cook with, and simple to clean.

Before the advent of nonstick coatings, metal pans made from stainless steel and aluminum were advertised as being easy to use, much like Teflon pans would be decades later. eBay A 1930s advertisement for “Wear-Ever” aluminum pans calls the material “nature made.” And a Farberware advertisement from the 1950s says you can “show it with pride, use it with pleasure, [and] clean it with ease!”

In the mid-20th century, DuPont, an industrial chemical and materials company, was known for producing gunpowder as well as synthetic polymers — manmade chains of bonded molecules in repeating structures, such as those that comprise plastics like PVC or nylon. DuPont created PTFE, a polymer under the PFAS umbrella, and with General Motors, DuPont trademarked it as Teflon in 1945. They had developed its unique fluorine and carbon bonds for the US’s nuclear efforts during World War II. And after the war, they partnered with an inventor who began applying it to cast iron pans.

The Teflon-sealed pan was called the “ Happy Pan .”

Teflon-coated pans promised fast, hassle-free cooking as the big new thing. Wikimedia, Alamy Teflon soon dethroned aluminum as the king of easy cooking. Fast, clean, and fat-free — some of the same advantages touted by ceramic nonstick marketing today — were stated advantages of nonstick cooking from the start. Ads exclaimed , “Ladies … no more scouring!” and they exalted cooking “without a drop of shortening of any kind.”

Today, PFAS nonstick cookware is ubiquitous in US kitchens. And nonstick cookware is a $20 billion industry. In 2020, America’s Test Kitchen reported that 70% of all skillets sold in the United States were nonstick.

For decades, many of us have happily enjoyed chemical-coated pans, cooking anything and everything in the dark-coated cookware until the nonstick layer flaked and chipped beyond recognition. I grew up thinking that a nonstick pan’s normal appearance was a striped-and-scoured pattern of scratched-off black. I almost thought the pans came like that!

Now I know better. Those scratches, chips, and flakes are evidence of our (limited) exposure to the chemicals coating our nonstick pans. And high exposures to PFAS — like what someone might be exposed to from firefighting or industrial and agricultural pollution — have been associated with a heightened risk of serious health issues.

PFAS chemicals accumulate in the body and stick around (this is one reason why they’re called “forever chemicals”). So smaller exposures from multiple sources, over enough time, may still pose health risks. And some PFAS, like PFOA and PFOS, are considered harmful if they’re ingested in the tiniest concentrations. But PFOA and PFOS are no longer manufactured in the United States.

NYT Wirecutter; source photos by Wikimedia, Adobe Stock, Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times If your nonstick pan was manufactured before 2015, you should toss it. That’s the year when the largest producers of PFAS in the US agreed to stop using PFOA.

And even if a nonstick pan is newer, there are some things you should remember to further reduce your risk of PFAS exposure. You should never use metal utensils in nonstick pans because they can damage the surface, and you should toss nonstick pans when they’re scratched or chipped. It’s also not safe to heat PFAS cookware beyond 450 °F, which could happen if you leave a pan unattended or use it to sear something. (Beyond that temperature, PFAS can release harmful fumes that cause polymer fume fever, a temporary condition that’s sometimes called Teflon flu.)

Even so, experts say that when PFAS-coated pans are used as directed, they do not pose a high health risk.

The NIH lists products made with PFAS as one route — among a list of potential routes — to PFAS exposure. Yet studies have found that only negligible amounts of forever chemicals can migrate to food from non-scratched cookware.

Now, look, I know that when you add everything up, it’s all kind of … confusing. When it comes to PFAS, I’ve found it difficult to wrap my head around what I should and shouldn’t worry about.

Amid all of this uncertainty, ceramic has emerged as Teflon’s supposedly cleaner, greener, less complicated successor.

In 2007, cookware company GreenPan started producing nonstick pans using a coating made from silicon dioxide that’s derived from sand, according to the company. The coating was smooth and gray, with a slight sheen. A groundswell of buzzy companies followed, including Caraway, Our Place, and Made In.

Now the ceramic cookware category is bursting, with companies billing their wares as “nontoxic,” “healthy,” or “sustainable.” Some companies seem to insist that if you’re cooking with Teflon and not ceramic, you’re cooking with poison. In a chart on Caraway’s site, next to the question “Are the materials used in the non-stick coating safe for my family?” there are checkmarks next to Caraway, stainless steel, and cast iron, and there’s an X next to “PTFE Nonstick.”

Marketing copy for ceramic cookware often asserts that these pans are nontoxic, including in these Instagram posts on accounts for GreenPan (left), Caraway (center), and CeramiClad (right). GreenPan via Instagram, Caraway via Instagram, CeramiClad via Instagram Even companies selling PFAS-based nonstick cookware also sell ceramic versions, perhaps in response to consumer demand. And a number of appliances we recommend — like rice cookers and bread machines, which rely on nonstick coatings to keep starchy food from sticking to their interiors — are shifting toward ceramic coatings.

The Cookware Sustainability Alliance is a nonprofit that represents cookware heavy hitters like Groupe SEB, Meyer Corporation, Tramontina, Breville, and Scanpan. It is opposing state bans on PFAS, such as the one that failed last year in California, and it is asking lawmakers to “ensure that non-stick cookware specifically, and PTFE more broadly, are not included in this overly broad regulation.” This group insists on the safety of PFAS-based cookware and warns against a full-scale shift toward ceramic.

But there are other reasons to leave PFAS behind besides personal health. Experts say that PFAS pose a far greater threat to our water, soil, and food, as well as to workers and communities surrounding its industrial production, since they are exposed to these chemicals at higher levels.

As a home cook, I totally get the impulse to make the switch. Ceramic cookware markets itself as being the solution — without having to kick our reliance on the nonstick performance that Teflon sold to us 65 years ago.

As I embarked on ceramic-pan testing, I tried to be optimistic. Maybe I could find a ceramic pan or two that I’d love to cook with. Maybe this would be the year that I’d get really into omelettes and crepes.

I felt hopeful as I scoured the product pages of legacy brands whose cookware and kitchen tools we’ve recommended for over a decade. Eventually, I selected 10 pans, ranging in price from $40 to $115. I bought lots of eggs, grabbed a silicone spatula, and dove in.

Like any nonstick pan, a ceramic nonstick pan worthy of our recommendation had to heat evenly, release food cleanly, maintain its slick surface over the course of cooking, and be easy to clean. These are the considerations that make people shop for nonstick pans to begin with, versus the many other , more durable pans we recommend. I also considered design factors including feel, weight, and balance.

I tested the