The Best Nonstick Rimmed Baking Sheets

Rimmed baking sheets are some of the most-used pans in our kitchens, as essential for everyday tasks such as sheet-pan dinners as they are for baking batches of holiday cookies. These pans are sturdy and durable. You can use them in 500-degree ovens and put them under the broiler to char roasted vegetables or crisp the skin on chicken thighs. They’re workhorses that we think no kitchen should be without. Some people also like to have a nonstick-coated baking sheet on hand for especially delicate or sticky foods. With these pans, the nonstick surface allows you to skip the parchment paper, silicone mats, or nonstick baking spray that you might otherwise have to use.

Like traditional rimmed baking sheets, most nonstick models come in a standard size that first originated in professional kitchens, with cooking surfaces measuring about 16.5 inches by 11.5 inches. Some coatings contain polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a chemical component used to make strong, slick, and flexible nonstick coatings. It performs reliably, but it can release harmful fumes when exposed to high temperatures. We don’t recommend using cookware with coatings containing PTFE at temperatures above 450 degrees, and some cooks prefer to avoid PTFE altogether. PTFE-free nonstick baking sheets—which are often marketed as having “ceramic” coatings—are an increasingly common alternative.

All types of nonstick coating wear away with time and use and will eventually need to be replaced. You should take care when using metal utensils or placing a wire rack inside these pans, as the nonstick coatings can become scratched. To get the most use out of them, we recommend hand-washing them, using nonstick-safe utensils, and staying within the temperature limits set by the manufacturer. PTFE-free coatings are especially fragile, so take particular care with those products.

One final note: Baking sheets marketed as having ceramic nonstick coatings sometimes contain PTFE, so check all of the details of the product before purchasing.

• Straight Sides: For rimmed baking sheets in general, we like straight, smooth sides that are at least 1 inch tall. Sides this height ensure food stays in place when stirring it and produce straight-sided cakes and focaccia that look tall and attractive. They are also easier to grip using oven mitts, towels, and pot holders.

• Standard Sizing: The flat cooking surface of a standard rimmed baking sheet measures 16.5 inches by 11.5 inches. Most pans in our lineup matched the standard sizing and provided enough space for the cookies to bake without running into one another and for the cauliflower to brown rather than steam. But one brand’s pans were consistently irregularly sized; its medium-size pan was a little small and the large was oddly oversized.

• Low, Sloped Walls: Pans with walls that were less than 1 inch tall didn’t provide sufficient guardrails when we turned foods halfway through cooking. When we slid our spatula under the cauliflower to flip it, we lost a few florets over the low walls. Pans that combined low walls with a gentle angle were especially annoying, as the slope served as a launchpad for the foods to fly out.

• Irregularly Sized Pans: When we baked cookies in smaller rimmed baking sheets, the cookies ran together. To use these pans successfully, you would need to bake fewer cookies at a time, adding to the number of batches you must bake and the amount of time needed to finish the recipe. While we could fit all the cauliflower florets in the pans, the pieces were crowded. The florets didn’t brown properly or get crisp. Instead, they steamed and turned out soft, pale, and bland.

• Too-Big Handles: One larger-than-usual pan had big handles on both sides, making it even longer than standard pans—a full 3 inches longer, to be exact. The handles extended so far that they nearly reached both oven walls, which meant that there was no room for us to slide in our hands and access the handles. Instead, we had to grab at the walls of the pan to slide it out far enough to rotate or remove it. We liked the idea of handles, but they were impractical.

• Textured Surfaces: Most nonstick rimmed baking sheets have smooth surfaces much like their uncoated siblings, but several had corrugated patterns. We did not observe meaningful differences in the outcome of our cookies (or anything else) we prepared using those pans. We liked cookies baked on sheets with both textured and smooth surfaces.