8-Inch Ceramic Nonstick Skillets

Small nonstick skillets get a lot of use in our kitchens. The manufacturers of our top two 12-inch ceramic nonstick pans, GreenPan and Kyocera, also make 8-inch models, so we decided to test them. We used both pans to prepare scrambled eggs and fried eggs, as well as the sauce and bread crumb topping for Tagliatelle with Artichokes and Olive Oil for Two. To learn more about the pans’ performance and handling, we also used them at home for several weeks of real-life cooking. 

Both GreenPan and Kyocera confirmed that the nonstick coatings on these small skillets are the same as those on their respective 12-inch models we originally tested. These coatings are free of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), the substance present in regular nonstick coatings such as Teflon that can release toxic fumes when heated above 500 degrees. Instead, they contain a material that’s derived from beach sand, so there’s no risk of producing harmful fumes. 

Just like the larger pans, both of these 8-inch ceramic nonstick skillets had impressively slick cooking surfaces. Making eggs was a breeze: Neither scrambled eggs nor fried eggs stuck to the pans, and the eggs were easy to nudge out of the skillets and onto our breakfast plates. Nothing stuck when we toasted bread crumbs and made a cream-based artichoke pasta sauce. However, we did have to make a few small adjustments to the recipes. Ceramic conducts heat very effectively, which means that ceramic nonstick pans get hot faster than regular nonstick cookware and stay very hot throughout the cooking process. We found that starting at slightly lower temperatures than those stated in recipes and shortening the cooking times gave us the best results. 

For those who like the convenience of a nonstick skillet and want to avoid PTFE, we recommend both of these pans. Both have slick 6-inch cooking surfaces that provide plenty of space for cooking small batches of food and making an egg or two in the morning. Their handles are wide and comfortable to hold. Of the two pans, we again preferred the one from GreenPan. Its walls are gently sloped, so it’s very easy to stir food and glide a spatula around its perimeter. In comparison, the walls of the Kyocera skillet are much straighter, forming sharp corners at their base that are hard to access with a spatula. The GreenPan is also ovensafe to 600 degrees, compared with 400 degrees for the Kyocera model. Although the 12-inch Kyocera pan was considerably less expensive than the 12-inch GreenPan model at the time of the original testing, there’s no meaningful price difference between these 8-inch models. In fact, the Kyocera costs a bit more than the... read more