Gear Heads | Hannah and Lisa Put Nonstick Skillets to the Test

[Music] there's nothing like a good 12-inch non-stick skillet you crack an egg into it and just a few minutes later a beautiful fried egg slides out we also love them for stir fries seared salmon quesadillas and more we've spent hundreds of hours testing non-stick skillets over the years we bought these nine skillets and we tested them in three areas performance ease of use and durability to find the best we did 50 eggs at the beginning and end of testing beef and broccoli stir-fry frittatas sauteed peas with different users of all different hand sizes and skill levels and we also did our durability testing oh yeah and whacking them on a cinder block we're going to show you all why the winner won lisa let's start breaking some eggs our first test with non-stick skillets is a dry egg test this is an industry standard test and it really tests the durability of the coating and the releasability of the coating it's a performance test so hannah's just checking that at the center of the pan hits 350 we're gonna drop an egg there's no fat in the pan it gets cooked for two and a half minutes and then we're gonna try to lift it out and we're gonna repeat this 50 times in each pan and make sure that it continues to release we do other cooking tests and we come back and do it again at the end to see how good that coating is people always ask us too like what do we do with all the eggs we eat them can we send all staff emails like come get your eggs and people people love eggs oh yeah yeah definitely all times of the day so we've got the timer going this egg is frying and then we're going to see how it releases this first pan is by oxo look at that so the oxo is great released perfectly no fat needed let's go on to the next pan all right so we've got the cow full on here it's got a lid which is nice not bad not bad all right excellent release from decathlon onto the next pan so this is the all clad it's a fully tri-ply pan under a coating of non-stick tri-fly is two layers of stainless around a layer of aluminum and that gives you really even heating and no hot spots the way a thinner pan might give you oh gorgeous release nice remember there's no fat in these pans so that really is impressive it's really all on the coating all right so we have a cuisinart here there we go yeah smooth release there no surprises here because this is what we saw in our in kitchen testing all of the pans did great on performance but we didn't like all of these pans it really came down to ease of use and durability so let's go on to our next round ease of use [Music] okay so we are in the ease of use round here we are making beef and broccoli stir-fry because there are a lot of stages here you're adding stuff to the pan you're flipping food you really can look at how the pan is to handle so this is the t-fal professional non-stick it has this red dot in the center and one of the nice things about it is that when the pan is at 350 it turns a solid red and that lets you know the pan is preheated and the thing that's actually dangerous about nonstick the fumes that it gives off when it gets past 500 degrees are dangerous so by putting oil in which has a smoke point around 400 in general for vegetable oil you're not going to hit the 500 without knowing about it when this oil starts to smoke you're getting into that danger zone okay so we're going to add some beef to our oil which is hot and this has a sauce on it so it's going to brown and thicken this isn't bad it's a real comfortable silicone coated handle although we prefer a metal handle um this isn't bad to hold you give that a lift yeah no it's nice and light yeah the sides are a little bit low but they're flaring and that helps evaporation so they kind of tilt outward ready yep okay so now we're seeing a little more of capacity issue and you have to be a little cautious when you're stirring right right yes i'm moving food around but i'm trying to make sure that it doesn't just end up on the stove instead of on our plate let's see this feels feels pretty good it feels like i can really rotate things around in there it has a great shape the balance feels good i got to say the capacity is a little it's a little yeah you're on the edge all right we've got the oxo here this is a nice shape the sides are about the right height i think it's nice visibility like i can see you know some of the more cupped ones you kind of have to look straight down at it now here you see everything there's good evaporation nice broad surface area this hand is a little shorter and i like that yeah sometimes we found some of them the handles are so long that while you're lifting it it's like poking you in the forearm or you have to hold your arm up in some funny way to avoid the length of that handle this brushed steel so there's like a slight grip to it and look at that this is nice and light i like when they just have economy of design they don't put a lot of extra junk on it it's just what you need and no more and that's a real art and pan design that you don't see often enough wow this one is more bowl shaped it's got very high straight sides almost like a saute pan this is half v my wrist is killing me and it digs into me there skillets are supposed to be very maneuverable when you see a helper handle that's a sign this pan is pretty heavy and you kind of need to use both of them to lift and move the pan but most of the time when you're using a skillet you're using your other hand you're moving the food that just adds weight on that side of the pan for no reason fast take lisa hates helper handles i don't need the help [Laughter] yeah it's got a decent shape the walls are a little bit on the higher side which you know makes it easier to stir i gotta say though yes handle this man overboard is ridiculous yeah it's so long you can't stand next to it bumping into it i mean i am pregnant but still i feel so far away when i'm tossing this like i don't have the best control it's awkward it feels like see how it's hitting my arm okay well that was it for our ease of use round let's go to my favorite part durability time to get out some rage all right so we are looking at durability now now we're heating the pan up we're gonna heat it up to 400 and then we're going to plunge it in this bucket of ice water and that is going to simulate thermal shock which we all do again when we're cooking and then we run the hot pan into the cold tap but metal does not like to be thermally shocked to go from hot to cold or cold to hot very quickly it makes it warp and it also tends to in these cases sometimes loosen the handles no one is going to heat their pan to 400 and plunge it in ice water this is an extreme example we're trying to accelerate what's going to happen over years of use here we go yeah for the most part it looks pretty good this one held up rock solid yeah handle is good too just bouncing a little yeah just natural flex of the metal i'm feeling i'm feeling a little bit of a rocket a little rocking a little roll in rock and little rolling kind of warped so the cuisinart as far as the ice bath doesn't do that well okay so we have our third and final durability test here we are going to be banging these pans three times each on a cinder block this is an accelerated durability test like lisa was explaining with the ice test this really tests the metal metal of the pans line it up so even though this pan is really heavy it's got some denting here denting isn't completely the end-all be-all but we want something that dense minimally but it's still maneuverable we're looking at like a fair here for cuisinart and durability definitely one two three wow that's pretty good we have la crosse here we go one two three wow okay darn yeah i see the tiny pretty pretty good wow okay that is not so hot compared to the last one uh definite bumps definite little whiskers here you see the lines you can feel them as much as you can see them across here all right so in the end we have a winner it did an awesome job and we really put this thing through its paces and our winner is the oxo good grips non-stick 12-inch pro it really bested the rest for a couple reasons i would say shape was a major factor we like that broad cooking surface gently flared sides it was easy to lift and it didn't feel like it was tugging out of our hands it's also you know it's on the less expensive side of things definitely and with a non-stick skillet we appreciate that we understand that this is not a lifetime pan you know best case scenario this might be a three-year pan if you treat it really well now the one thing about this pan that you need to know it's not induction compatible so we do have a runner-up that is the all-clad so for more information on our winner and all the other pants we tested check out the links below yes and make sure to leave us your equipment questions in the comments and hit that subscribe button [Music]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 337,985

Keywords: nonstick skillets, oxo nonstick skillet, cookware, nonstick, non stick pan, equipment review, non stick skillet, gear heads, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen

Id: l6YsYvNrEB0

Length: 9min 29sec (569 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019