4 Foods to Never Cook In Your Nonstick Skillet, According to a Chef

Nonstick pans and skillets are great tools to have in your culinary arsenal. They are our top pick for cooking delicate foods like scrambled eggs, thin fish fillets, and pancakes, and for cooking foods that are prone to sticking, like cheese-based dishes or crepes. But they aren’t necessarily the right tool for everything. Certain foods and excessive temperatures can affect the overall quality of the nonstick coating over time, so some ingredients and cooking techniques should never be cooked in nonstick. We asked a chef and cooking teacher to explain.

Using a Nonstick Pan

A nonstick skillet's durability often depends on the manufacturer and their process. Most nonstick skillets can be heated to about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Shawn Matijevich, lead chef-instructor of online culinary arts and food operations at the Institute of Culinary Education, notes that while that might sound like a pretty high temperature, an empty pan heating over a direct flame can get much hotter than that. Excess heat on a nonstick pan can quickly erode the coating and potentially cause toxic gasses to be released from the pan and should be avoided.

What to Never Cook in a Nonstick Skillet

For your own safety and health, avoid cooking these four foods in nonstick. 

Acidic Foods

Matijevich views nonstick pans as a specialty piece of equipment that he likes to have in good shape for when he needs it—that means he doesn't use it for things it wasn’t designed for. One of those things is highly acidic foods, especially those that cook for a long time. While it's fine to finish some sautéed vegetables with a squeeze of lemon juice or warm-up tomato sauce for spaghetti, avoid heating acidic foods in nonstick if they will be in the pan for more than a few minutes.

“Cooking acidic foods occasionally isn’t going to hurt your nonstick pan, but it’s important to remember that no nonstick coating lasts forever,” he says. Highly acidic foods will shorten the life span of the coating, and if the underlying pan is made of aluminum and the coating is scratched, the acidic food will react with the aluminum. According to Matijevich, this will cause metallic flavors and discoloration.

Seared Meats and Vegetables

While it is technically possible to get a sear on something in a nonstick pan, Matijevich says it won't be at a safe temperature for the tool. A quick sauté of fish, shrimp, or vegetables is fine, but if you have to get your pan really hot, he recommends using a different type of pan. The same is true for any other use where your nonstick pan will get extremely hot—it will quickly render the nonstick coating useless and you won’t have it for when you need it, he says.

To get a nice sear on a steak, pork chop, or chicken breast, Matijevich recommends using a stainless steel or cast-iron pan. If properly used, a stainless steel or cast-iron pan can give you the same benefits as a nonstick he notes, and without having to worry about PTFEs (polytetrafluoroethylene), toxic gas, or pan warping. 

Foods That Require a Lot of Stirring

Constant scraping and stirring on a nonstick pan will eventually degrade the surface of the skillet. That’s why Matijevich almost always avoids cooking foods that need aggressive stirring, such as risotto, in nonstick. He notes that even if you are using the right tools, the nonstick wears away in microscopic amounts over time. 

Anything That Needs Deglazing

Deglazing is when you add a liquid to a hot pan to release the fond (browned bits) from the bottom and dissolve them to capture the flavor from the cooking process. Matijevich notes that since a nonstick pan is designed to inhibit food from browning, it will not give you a good base flavor to work with anyway. He recommends using stainless steel and cast iron for pan sauces and braises, not nonstick pans.