The Best Nonstick Pans Without Teflon

Nonstick cookware makes a powerful case for not believing everything you read on the Internet. There is SO much misinformation out there about nonstick pans. Some sites actually recommend Teflon-coated pans as pans without Teflon, and give you "alternatives to PTFE" that contain PTFE!

We know anyone looking for a Teflon-free pan is concerned about their health and safety, so it's a huge miss to get this wrong. We HATE that people are getting bad information. 

Here, we're setting the record straight. The TRK team has years of experience in the cookware industry, and our research is science-based and thorough. We know the facts about Teflon (PTFE), and you can trust us to tell you the truth about it.  

What is the truth? Well, there are no nonstick pans that compete with PTFE. But it's not durable, and the PTFE industry is one of the worst polluters on the planet. So the good news is you can find something that's close--and also much safer, longer lasting, and better for the environment. 

Best Nonstick Pans Without Teflon (PTFE) at a Glance

These are the best nonstick pans without Teflon (PTFE). Note that none of them are truly nonstick, including the ceramic nonstick, which requires oil for best results. But if you want to avoid Teflon, these are your only options (sorry, but facts are facts).

We get into more detail about each Teflon alternative below.

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The Two Kinds of Nonstick Coating Found on Cookware

Many sites list several types of nonstick coatings (we've seen as many as 8), but the truth is that there are only two: PTFE and ceramic nonstick.

Of these two, only PTFE is truly nonstick. Ceramic coatings require cooking oil to work best, and food will usually stick without it except when the pan is new out-of-the-box. (Check the fine print on the website of any ceramic cookware brand, and you'll see what we mean: they all recommend using oil or butter to prevent sticking.) 

Ceramic nonstick is close to Teflon, especially when it's new, but it doesn't last as long and it has many of the same problems (low heat, non-metal utensils, and wash by hand, for example). It may also have some health hazards like PTFE, but the body of research is small. 

We will discuss some of the other confusing types of non-nonstick in a minute.

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What Is Teflon?

Teflon® is the brand name for the PTFE molecule. Teflon was discovered by Dupont scientist Roy Plunkett in 1938. Dupont's spinoff company Chemours still owns the trademark for Teflon today, as well as several other brand names of PTFE (Autograph, for example). Teflon and other Dupont/Chemours brands are used on many popular cookware brands, as well as bakeware. (It doesn't really matter which brands, as it's the PTFE and not the brand name that you need to look out for.) 

PTFE stands for polytetrafluoroethylene. It is a long-chain organic molecule (yes, PTFE is organic, in the sense that it's a carbon-hydrogen based compound, which is very far from saying it's safe and healthy).

PTFE is a member of the PFAS family of chemicals (Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances), which contains thousands of chemicals, including PFOA, PFOS, and GenX. 

One of the first uses of Teflon was in the Manhattan project "as a material to coat valves and seals in the pipes holding highly reactive uranium hexafluoride." It wasn't used for cookware until the 1950s.

Today, there are hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of brand names of PTFE on the market. So it is possible for a pan to be Teflon-free, yet still contain PTFE.

In fact, the only nonstick cookware that doesn't contain PTFE is ceramic nonstick cookware--and even that may sometimes contain PTFE.

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What Are the Concerns About Teflon?

Concerns about Teflon fall into three main categories: health, environmental, and cooking.

Health Concerns

Many websites are fond of saying that "Teflon and other PTFE pans are perfectly safe when used correctly." This is true, but it is far from complete. Teflon and PTFE are extremely stable and non-reactive at temperatures below about 390F. You could eat a spoonful of Teflon, and it would pass through your body without doing any harm. For this reason, people love to say how safe Teflon is.

But at 390F, Teflon and all PTFE begins to break down. By about 500F, it releases toxic fumes that cause flu-like symptoms in humans are are lethal to birds. 

The thing is, it is extremely easy to heat a pan to 500F. We heated an empty pan on a medium gas flame and it took less than 5 minutes for the pan to reach 505F!

So, you have to be extremely careful with your Teflon and PTFE pans. 

PFOA is another concern, which we talk about in the next section.

Environmental Concerns

Environmental concerns about Teflon and PTFE cookware are, we believe, the biggest reason to not buy or use it. 

If you are careful about using your Teflon pan and never overheat it or scratch it, then you probably aren't going to expose yourself or your family to toxins. That's true.

However, the nonstick cookware industry itself is a huge polluter of the planet. They have been dumping PFAS into local water supplies since the 1950s. Now that PFOA is outlawed, they continue to dump other PFAS chemicals that haven't (or haven't yet) come under as much scrutiny, such as GenX. 

This is extremely unethical. These chemicals are terrible for all living creatures and they stay in the environment for a very long time, possibly forever. 

Some regulations have been put in place in the US, which is good. But the majority of nonstick cookware is made in China today, which has very few laws or regulations to protect the environment or the workers who make this cookware (if any at all).

So even if Teflon is safe when used correctly, there is a much larger issue to consider: When you buy Teflon or other PTFE cookware, you are condoning these unethical practices and contributing to the pollution of the planet. 

Cooking Concerns

Finally, Teflon and other PTFE pans simply do not provide a great cooking experience.

You have to be super careful with these pans. You can't use high heat, metal utensils, or put them in a dishwasher if you want the nonstick to last (true even if the manufacturer says you can). If you use aerosol cooking spray, you'll denature the PTFE and destroy the pan.

And because you can't use high heat and because the pan is so slippery, it's almost impossible to get a delicious brown crust on your food. Browning adds flavor, so food that doesn't brown very well doesn't have as much flavor. 

It's also hard to make a good pan sauce because there are very few bits of crunchy goodness that stick to the pan. 

We think these are huge sacrifices to make just to have a pan that cleans up easily when you're done cooking. 

Largely for all of these reasons, nonstick cookware is touted as the best cookware for beginner cooks. But why start with a type of cookware that doesn't produce excellent results? Why not just learn from the get-go how to cook on more durable surfaces--surfaces that can take high heat (when needed) as well as abuse like metal utensils and abrasive scrubbing pads--that are so much easier to make delicious food on?

If you think stainless steel is sticky and a pain to wash, it's because you haven't learned how to use it properly. If you want to avoid Teflon pans, this is one of the most important things to learn--and it's not hard!

See the section below on how to cook with stainless steel. Once you know how to do that, you can confidently cook on any surface. You'll probably never want to use nonstick cookware again.

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Why "PFOA-Free" Does Not Mean a Pan Is Safe

Makers are fond of saying their pans are "PFOA-free." Well of course they are, because PFOA was outlawed for use in cookware in the US, so no pans made or sold here after 2015 contain PFOA. It's kind of like saying "we make safe cars because they have seat belts." 

PFOA is another PFAS chemical, but unlike Teflon, it's pretty reactive. PFOA was used as an adhesive to help Teflon or other PTFE brands adhere to the base of the cookware, usually aluminum or stainless steel. PFOA was almost completely used up in the adhesion process, so the truth is, despite all the bad press, you are more likely to get PFOA in your drinking water than from your nonstick pan. 

But that's not the end of it.

PFOA was found to cause health issues in workers at cookware plants, and in people who lived downstream from the plants because makers dumped their waste materials into local rivers. (To this day, there are no EPA regulations covering PFAS, so industries that use it are still free to dump these chemicals without repercussions. PFOA is the only exception we know of so far.)

PFOA, also called C8, is what's become known as a "forever chemical." It takes a very long time to decompose into safe chemicals, and may not do so at all. Largely because of the nonstick cookware industry, PFOA is found in nearly every water source in the world. Numbers have been declining since it was outlawed, but a staggering 99% or more of Americans have traces of PFOA in their blood. 

Besides being terrible for the environment, PFOA is a cause of several health problems, including liver function, thyroid disease, decreased immune response, high cholesterol, and at least two types of cancer (kidney and testicular). It may also be associated with birth defects. 

When PFOA was finally outlawed (it took almost 20 years of activism and legal fights), Dupont, the maker of both Teflon and PFOA, replaced it with a chemical called GenX. Today, GenX is used by most makers of Teflon and other PTFE cookware (and if they're not using GenX, they're using a similar chemical, almost certainly another PFAS). GenX has been determined to cause many of the same problems as PFOA. 

So you see, PFOA-free does not mean a pan is safe or non-toxic. It just means that the makers are using a different PFAS in their manufacturing process--one that hasn't yet gotten public scrutiny for being unsafe, even though it is.

The best way to reduce your exposure to PFAS is to install a reverse osmosis filter on your drinking (and cooking) water. See The Best Reverse Osmosis Systems for Your Home for more information.

You can also read What Is PFOA? A Guide to Nonstick Cookware Chemicals for more information.

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What Is NOT a Nonstick Alternative to Teflon?

Because there's so much misinformation out there about Teflon and nonstick pans in general, we're including this section on what pans, specifically, are not an alternative to Teflon or other PTFE pans.

All of these are frequently recommended as alternatives to Teflon, but none of them are actually a viable alternative: they either contain PTFE, or they aren't nonstick.

Hard-Anodized Aluminum Cookware

Hard-anodized aluminum would make a decent alternative to Teflon, but as far as we know, there is no such cookware on the market. Because anodized aluminum cookware has an exterior of anodized aluminum and a nonstick-coated cooking surface; usually PTFE, sometimes ceramic.

Calphalon made a line that was 100% anodized aluminum called Calphalon Professional, but it is now discontinued. Too bad. Although anodized aluminum is not truly nonstick, it is stick resistant, and a pretty good surface to cook on. 

Viking makes a hard-anodized line with a stainless steel cooking surface, which is excellent cookware that we recommend--but not nonstick.  (Viking also makes a hard-anodized line with a nonstick PTFE cooking surface--don't buy that one by mistake.) All-Clad had a line of anodized cookware (LTD) with a stainless cooking surface but discontinued it a few years ago.

So when you see cookware advertised as anodized or hard-anodized, it will almost always have a nonstick cooking surface.

In fact, we know of no other anodized aluminum cookware that does not have a nonstick coating. So if cookware is labeled "anodized aluminum," it almost certainly has a nonstick coating: if it's ceramic, then it doesn't contain Teflon or other PTFE, but you have to dig deeper to find out. 

Enameled Cast Iron 

Contrary to information found on several websites, the enamel used on cast iron is NOT nonstick. It is at best stick-resistant. It is a traditional, glass-based enamel, unrelated to the sol-gel ceramic nonstick coatings found on nonstick cookware like GreenPan. 

This doesn't mean this enameled cast iron is a bad choice. Enameled cast iron Dutch ovens are a must-have item for any cook who likes to do oven braises, stews, or make sourdough bread.

Enameled cast iron is durable, doesn't require seasoning, and is fairly easy to clean. It's best for Dutch ovens, but is available as entire cookware sets. 

It just isn't nonstick.

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