Equipment Reviews: The Best Ceramic Nonstick Skillet

[Music] in the test kitchen we like using a non-stick pan for cooking delicate foods like fish and eggs but we know that traditional non-stick skillets coated with teflon and similar materials have faced allegations of being harmful to cooks and the environment especially when they're heated above 500 degrees ceramic nonstick skillets are marketed as safer healthier alternatives unfortunately we've never found ceramic skillets that were very good nearly all the ones we've tested in the past couldn't cleanly release food even when they were brand new and as soon as we started cooking in them even the slightly better ceramic surfaces went right downhill way too fast but we wanted to give these pans another shot we had two questions is there a new ceramic nonstick skillet out there that's both truly nonstick and stays that way and if so how does it compare to our winning regular nonstick skillet we bought seven ceramic nonstick skillets all 12 inches priced from about 20 dollars to about 80 dollars and we gave them a workout our first test involved a lot of eggs we fried eggs one after another in each skillet dry with no fat we didn't stop until eggs began to stick or when we'd fried 50 eggs without sticking whichever came first this test tells you how well the slickness of the pan is holding up and we did this at the beginning and at the end of testing so we could see if the coating is deteriorated after being used and in between we made some recipes we typically cook in a non-stick skillet including beef and broccoli stir-fry frittata with peppers and onions and pan-fried soul along with giving the pan some practical use these tests also helped us rate each pan as a pan we looked at its capacity browning ability comfort and maneuverability we also recruited three more testers who were completely unfamiliar with these pans to saute peas and give us their opinions and finally to test the structural durability of the skillets we cut them with knife we heated them and plunged them into ice water and finally we whacked them three times on a hard surface now before we get into results i want to take a second to talk about the difference between ceramic and regular non-stick both are coatings applied to metal pans in regular non-stick manufacturers use a substance called polytetrafluoroethylene or ptfe this makes a super strong fairly flexible and very slippery coating ptfe is inert which means chemically inactive so eating a flake of it isn't going to hurt you but it can degrade and release dangerous fumes when it's heated above 500 degrees and that's always going to be a limitation of traditional non-stick pans another concern until about 2015 ptfe was processed with the help of a compound called perfluorooctanoic acid or pfoa which was discovered to be dangerous to the environment and human health that's been phased out and nobody uses it anymore our former recommended pan by scanpan did not use pfoa but it did use ptfe so we did not include it this time now ceramic nonstick doesn't use pfoa and instead of ptfe the pans are spray coated with a liquid material that when heated hardens to a slick ceramic surface there's no risk of it releasing toxic fumes even at high temperatures but here's the problem ceramic surfaces are brittle so ceramic coatings are more likely to develop tiny microscopic surface cracks during normal use it's a problem that quickly goes from bad to worse the rougher that cooking surface becomes the more likely food is to stick to it and then scrubbing off the stuck on food degrades the ceramic more but while all ceramic non-stick coatings have those same challenges they're not all made alike ceramic is a broad family of materials so their formulation can vary significantly as well as the thickness of the coating how the layers are applied and how long the coatings cure so given that they're not all alike how do these new pans do sadly most were still not non-stick over the long term remember that in our first dry egg test we set the benchmark of 50 eggs of our seven pans one of these pans released just 28 eggs then stuck the other six skillets passed but when we repeated the dry egg test at the end four more pans failed one of those choked after is nine eggs others quit between 15 and 32 eggs now since slickness is the only reason you buy a non-stick pan we automatically disqualified any pan that failed the egg tests and that left just two of the seven pans that's a big contrast to our most recent review of traditional nonstick skillets where all 10 pans pass both egg tests fortunately we liked cooking with the two top performing ceramic pans both of them had wide interior cooking surfaces nine and a half and ten inches across so there's plenty of room to brown beef for stir-fry and sear fish fillets we did notice that food was cooking more quickly than it might in a regular non-stick skillet but everything we cooked turned out well and nothing stuck to the pan's cooking surfaces now one of the two had fairly steep sides that got in our way but the walls of the other were more gently sloped and that let us easily flip or remove food both had handles that were comfortable to grab but both pans felt a little heavier than ideal that steep sided pan is oven safe to 400 degrees while our preferred pan with the sloped walls is oven safe to 600 degrees so we had some possibilities in the ceramic world but how did the best one compared to our favorite regular nonstick skillet from oxo we bought new copies of each and we did five side-by-side cooking tests pancakes fried eggs caramelized onions more beef and broccoli stir-fry and pan-seared salmon we took care to use the same burner and heat level and strictly stuck to the cook times listed in the recipes pancakes and eggs both cook at a fairly low heat and they were hard to tell apart but recipes that called for higher heat levels told a really clear story the ceramic pen ran hotter foods cooked faster and they were a little more prone to sticking some of the caramelized onions came a little too dark sauce in our stir-fry reduced a little bit more and made dark sticky patches on the skillet surface salmon skin stuck cleanup was still pretty easy we just had a quick soak in hot water and that was enough to loosen any bits of sauce or caramelized sugars but the experience was clearly different than using our traditional skillet where food never stuck to the pan and it was a breeze to clean we looked closer both pants are made of aluminum and they have similar weight and thickness so we focused on the coatings ceramic conducts heat which means that skillets coated with it heat up faster and stay hot by contrast ptfe is a type of plastic and it acts as a thermal insulator it slows the transmission of heat to the food so our takeaway when you're cooking with ceramic pans it's really important to pay attention you might need to lower the heat or take it off the heat a little sooner than called for in a recipe food might stick slightly and the pan may take a little bit more effort to clean and you better be gentle when you're cleaning it if you want to avoid ptfe you'll have to make that trade-off of ease of use but if you love the super slick ultra reliable results provided by our favorite traditional non-stick skillet and you're careful never to heat it while it's empty or let it go over 500 degrees you're probably going to want to keep using that while ceramic skillets have improved dramatically since we first tested them several years ago they still can't quite match the performance of ptfe skillets but if you're interested in the potential safety benefits of a ceramic coating and you're okay with making adjustments as you cook we can recommend two good pans our favorite is the green pan valencia pro hard anodized nonstick fry pan it's shaped well with plenty of flat cooking surface so food has room to brown evenly instead of crowding and steaming it's gently sloped walls help keep food in but don't interfere with a spatula or spoon its handle is comfortable and the pan is oven safe up to 600 degrees it's even broiler safe and the pan's base contains some copper and iron so it's induction edible at about half the price of our winner the kyocera ceramic coated 12 inch nonstick fry pan is our best buy we're not as fond of the design with the steeper sides and it's a little heavier which makes it a little harder to use but it's ceramic nonstick surface stayed slick and durable on one final note although we're thrilled to find ceramic nonstick pans that work better than we've ever found before we really can't fully vouch for their long-term durability we'll be stocking them in the test kitchen and updating our findings on our website for more information on these pans and all the testing we did check out the links below and please ask your questions in the comments section and be sure to subscribe

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 581,281

Keywords: cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen, cooks country, equipment reviews, kitchen equipment, ceramic skillet, ceramic nonstick skillet, nonstick skillet

Id: G21f_ny_lxs

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021