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

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.

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 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.

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.”

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.

If only it were so simple.

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 ceramic pans alongside our top-pick PFAS-coated pan, the Tramontina Professional. At first, things seemed okay. I fried half a dozen eggs in a row in each pan, and all of the pans released the eggs just fine, especially at first. But by my third round of testing, the eggs had stopped sliding on the ceramic pans, and they didn’t release as readily as the first eggs that hit the heat did.

It isn’t hard for a ceramic nonstick pan to be nonstick out of the box. But it is very hard for it to stay that way.

Still, only the worst ceramic pans I tested had noticeably deteriorating coatings early in testing. So I made pancakes, and then I cooked some fillets of flaky white fish.

The fish test thinned the pack even further, with more of the ceramic pans having sticking problems. In many of the pans, when the fillets were flipped, they left a thin sheet of cooked flesh behind, with a weird skin that I had to coax up with my spatula (this is extra annoying in a nonstick pan, since you can’t use a metal fish spatula). Compared with the Tramontina pan, which cleanly released fillet after fillet, the difference was glaring.

Why is this? PFAS chemicals are created by building a chain of bonded carbon and fluorine atoms. Imagine that a molecule is made by atoms holding hands. A PFAS molecule is like two centipedes holding hands, where each and every little hand of the carbon centipede is locked with a hand of the fluorine centipede — no empty hands left. Those two guys, in their many-handed embrace, will slip right through anything, with no free hands to grab onto the electrons of other (food, oil, water) atoms.

All of that translates to sautéed fish fillets that keep their flaky bits to themselves, with nothing left behind in the pan.

This type of nonstick performance is incredibly hard — if not impossible — to replicate without PFAS.

Ceramic tries, and it does an okay job initially.

These coatings aren’t ceramic in the traditional sense, where clay and pottery are fired at high temperatures. Brands are not required to disclose complete lists of what’s in their cookware, and they may wish to protect their sometimes proprietary nonstick concoctions. So we don’t know exactly what goes into these coatings (and trust me, I’ve asked). But we do know that they’re a bit like glass, made mostly of silicon and oxygen, with some mix of silica, silicone oil, metal oxides, and other chemicals.

Ceramic’s nonstick properties come not from unique molecular bonds, as they do with PFAS, but from the characteristics of silica and how the surface is engineered.

To understand how ceramic nonstick works, I spoke with William Carty, a ceramics engineer who teaches at Alfred University and has a ceramics consulting business. Ceramic surfaces appear to be smooth, but they’re actually rough when viewed under a microscope. That factor along with silica’s chemical properties lead to the surface being what Carty described as “non-wetting.”

Think about a freshly waxed car. Water beads on the surface of the car (non-wetting), instead of stretching out in pools (wetting). We noticed this characteristic when we were using ceramic nonstick cookware. On PTFE or cast iron cookware, oil spreads in sheets, but on ceramic cookware, oil collects on the surface in sweat-like little droplets.

And ceramic pans’ non-wettability is their primary source of nonstickness. But some ceramic coatings also contain a layer of silicone oil — a common component of nonstick cooking spray — that’s released in microscopic amounts when a pan is heated, adding to the effect. I asked all of the companies whose pans I tested whether their ceramic cookware contains silicone oil. Tramontina and Quince told me that their ceramic nonstick coatings contain silicone oil, GreenPan and OXO said they didn’t, and T-Fal and Caraway declined to answer.

Both of those characteristics — the non-wettability of the surface and the possible silicone oils — can start to deplete from the moment you start cooking. PPG, a manufacturer of ceramic nonstick coatings, highlights silicone oil as a release agent in some of its coatings, acknowledging that it runs out eventually. But I could not confirm whether silicone oil is commonly released by ceramic pans during cooking.

Either way, it tracks that ceramic nonstick cookware has a poor lifespan. When you cook on ceramic, you gradually wear away the surface, even if you can’t see it happening.

The ceramic pans I tested were still somewhat slick, but even out of the box they were considerably less so than the PFAS-coated pans. Fine: a slight performance downgrade from the chemically miraculous properties of PFAS in exchange for peace of mind.

But the ceramic pans’ nonstick properties degraded faster than I could be comfortable recommending. In the worst cases, it happened after pans were used only a dozen or so times. In the best cases, the pans might last a handful of months before having a noticeable drop in their nonstick quality.

Many buyers of ceramic nonstick cookware agree. I have never worked on an assignment where the most promising models I tested had such high percentages and volumes of negative customer feedback. The pans I’d liked the most — the best of the worst — had hundreds of one-star reviews, all of them saying some version of the same thing: This pan was good at first, but it lost its nonstick quality in one to four months.

Have I mentioned that ceramic pans are, across the board, more expensive than PTFE-coated ones — with some pans that might last less than a year costing more than $100? There is no way I could recommend that.

Ceramic pans don’t perform as well as PTFE pans. And they’re more expensive. But maybe neither thing is a dealbreaker for you.

Forever chemicals are a concerning environmental and public-health issue. In previous reporting, we’ve recommended replacing nonstick cookware if you want to take a precautionary approach to lowering exposure, though doing so is not likely to have the biggest impact.

Many companies that sell ceramic cookware claim it’s everything Teflon cookware is not, particularly surrounding health. GreenPan boasts, “Healthy cooking starts with GreenPan,” citing its “toxin-free” cooking. An ad for CeramiClad displays the words “cutesy,” “trendy,” “PFAS,” and “China,” all of them struck through and replaced with the words “classic,” “durable,” “nontoxic,” and “USA.” Caraway’s pan specs promise “worry free” cooking and “peace of mind.”

Unfortunately, the idea that PFAS cookware is simply toxic — and that ceramic cookware is simply nontoxic — is empty marketing.

The term “nontoxic” isn’t regulated in cookware. “There’s no standard definition, no certification body, and no testing protocol that a product has to pass to carry that label,” said Vincent Cheng, chief operating officer at Meyer, a cookware group. “It’s a marketing claim.”

Toxicity is relative, since almost any substance can be harmful at a high enough dose, said Jahred Liddie, an environmental health scientist doing postdoctoral research at The George Washington University. A PFAS-coated pan could be considered nontoxic because you’re not likely to be exposed to a harmful amount of PFAS by cooking with it (as long as the pan is not scratched and not heated above 450 °F, and you are not a bird).

Companies that make nonstick cookware are fighting among themselves about the malleable nature of the term “nontoxic.” Groupe SEB and Meyer, which make a slew of cookware brands, are suing Caraway for false advertising. In turn, Caraway’s founder and CEO, Jordan Nathan, has circulated a Change.org petition to eliminate PFAS from household products, and Caraway has filed a motion to have the lawsuit against it dismissed.

This is not the first time that Caraway’s marketing has come under criticism. In 2025, the National Advertising Division, a nonprofit connected to the Better Business Bureau, ruled that Caraway could say its cookware is “PFAS-free” and “nontoxic,” but it couldn’t say that PFAS nonstick cookware is toxic and releases toxins into the home during normal use.

Bailey Bowers, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Oberlin College, told me that for a claim of nontoxicity to be accurate, a company would need to complete in-depth testing on its cookware over time, replicating heavy repeated use over a pan’s life cycle.

Some ceramic-cookware companies complete third-party lab testing, though we don’t know whether they are doing the kind of repeated testing simulating use that Bowers suggests. Made In tests its ceramic cookware for 30 different PFAS chemicals (the most recent testing results on its site are from June 2026). Caraway has tested its cookware for over 600 PFAS chemicals (its most recent testing results are from January 2026), as well as for other substances.

Extensive testing is nice to see, but it isn’t everything. There’s no oversight, and there are no standard guidelines to abide by. A company could test for 30 PFAS and technically call its product PFAS-free, even though there are thousands of PFAS chemicals.

Meanwhile, we simply don’t know much about the safety of ceramic coatings. Compared with what we know about PFAS, there’s a lot less research about the relative health impact of ceramic nonstick. PFAS had about a 50-year head start on ceramic coatings, so there’s a lot less research and understanding about them as a material.

I asked representatives at each of the brands whose pans I tested to provide more specifics about the materials used in their pans. None of them shared specifics, beyond relatively generic information on using proprietary ceramic formulations. But according to Cheng, there are a “handful” of major ceramic suppliers worldwide, and most cookware manufacturers work with them.

Some companies disclose the type of ceramic nonstick coating and even its source. (For one, GreenPan told me it uses Thermolon ceramic nonstick coatings from Thermolon Korea Co., Ltd.) But complete material lists tend to be proprietary. As a GreenPan representative told me, “Full disclosure of ingredients is not a requirement under food contact safety laws.”

Companies seem more keen to list what isn’t in their pans than what is in them. This makes the question of whether ceramic coatings are nontoxic a difficult one to answer, even without the ambiguity of the term itself.

Experts continue to raise concerns about what else ceramic cookware may contain, and they remain skeptical about the claims cookware brands make about ceramic nonstick. Still, scientists I spoke with agreed that it’s a good idea to move away from PFAS.

As Bowers put it, “PFAS are a major threat to human health and the environment, so moving away from PFAS use is a step in the right direction.”

The chains of bonds between carbon and fluorine in PFAS make it an extremely persistent substance in nature, one that’s difficult to remove from water and soil after those are polluted. PFAS production has its own hefty environmental footprint, including carbon emissions and the release of PFAS and other pollutants into the water and air. Even the methods for removing PFAS from drinking water come with environmental costs.

But even through this environmental lens, I still have major reservations over suggesting that we should all swap to ceramic instead.

Ceramic nonstick cookware loses its nonstick quality faster than PFAS-coated nonstick pans do. So if you swap to ceramic cookware, you may have to buy — and trash — far more pans in your lifetime than you would otherwise.

Here’s the good news: Uncoated cookware works, and it lasts.

Is it as easy to clean as nonstick? Of course not. But do we really need that?

For 65 years, we’ve been sold nonstick as the answer to the hardships that come with cooking and feeding while working and living. And that’s real, when you’re making dinner for kids, hustling to create a weeknight meal, cheffing it up in professional kitchens, learning to cook, and more. Chances are good you’ve been there too.

I dearly wanted to find a nonstick pan that would keep things slick, lightweight, and accessible — and that would (on a small, imperfect scale) help reduce our reliance on PFAS.

But I found that the “nontoxic” nonstick pan is a false promise, with one foot in the trash from the moment you start using it to cook.

After examining the field of ceramic nonstick pans and their PFAS-coated cousins, I’ve come to this conclusion: There is no truly sustainable, clean, easy nonstick cookware.

Luckily, people were cooking for a very long time before the existence of nonstick cookware. Maybe it’s time for us to release the expectation that cookware should be slick.

Let me emphasize three key things.

First, don’t panic. Cooking at temperatures below 450 °F with undamaged PFAS cookware that was made after 2015 is considered safe by various health agencies. Yes, the FDA states that “negligible amounts of PFAS” from a nonstick coating can migrate into food. But the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry does not list cookware among the prominent exposure sources. And it says the main sources of PFAS exposure are eating contaminated food and drinking contaminated water, especially near PFAS-contaminated municipal sources.

Second, the most sustainable move is to use what you have until it’s no longer useful. If you just bought a set of ceramic cookware, no sweat — use it! When it needs to be replaced, consider buying something that will last longer. If you have undamaged PFAS-coated nonstick pans made after 2015, keep them on hand for as long as you can. If you have a 20th-century Teflon-coated cast iron skillet — well, actually, don’t use that. The Smithsonian might be interested in it, though.

Third, PFAS is a big problem, but ceramic cookware is not our savior. Instead of making a swap from one to the other, start to rethink your reliance on nonstick cookware.

Here’s what that might look like for you:

Prioritize when you use nonstick cookware. Decide the essential uses for nonstick cookware in your kitchen, if there are any. Maybe you have kids who can’t lift a cast iron pan, but they want to make their own grilled cheese sandwiches. Or perhaps you host crepe parties every weekend or have perfected your omelette technique for omurice, so you need a skillet for that.

Weigh your options and your risk tolerance. Do you want a nonstick pan that’s free from PFAS, and you’re not bothered if it loses its nonstick qualities within a year of regular use? If so, look for ceramic pans from companies that publish recent and robust testing for PFAS and other chemicals. (Caraway is one example.) To reduce the likelihood of accidental PFAS contamination during production, look for companies that manufacture their ceramic cookware on separate lines from PTFE cookware. (Caraway and GreenPan are two examples of brands that we know make their ceramic pans on dedicated lines or in separate factories. If you’re looking to buy GreenPan cookware, the inexpensive Swift pan performed fine in our testing.)

If none of this sounds great to you, do you want a cheaper nonstick pan that will last a few years or more — with proper care — but is definitely made with PFAS? These are individual decisions that only you can make for yourself.

Shift how you cook. My colleague Marilyn Ong has recommendations for pans that don’t rely on forever chemicals and that will last for decades or longer.

None of these alternatives are explicitly nonstick. But they each have different use cases and can (with a little oil and technique) cook food without sticking. And since these alternatives don’t have coatings that wear out and chip, you can even buy them secondhand.

When I use my cast iron skillet, which is basically anytime I cook, I know that if I mess up and burn something or things get a little sticky, I can scrape the pan with a fish spatula or scrub it with chain mail and quickly get back to cooking. I know that doing this does not harm the pan, and it doesn’t introduce anything synthetic into my meal. And I know that the cooking I’ve done enhances the pan, as opposed to chipping away at its lifespan.

So when I cook, forever chemicals are not on my mind, and they’re not on my plate — at least not from my cookware.

This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Ben Frumin.