The best nonstick pans for eggs

Ceramic or PTFE for eggs?

These are the two coatings on the market, and the trade is simple enough to state in one line: ceramic is slicker when new, PTFE stays slick for longer.

For eggs specifically, ceramic wins, because the thing you want is a pan where a fried egg slides out with no fat at all, and a new ceramic pan does that better than anything. The honest counterpart is that it will not do it forever, and a ceramic egg pan should be thought of as a consumable you replace every couple of years rather than an heirloom.

The broader coating argument — including when to ignore nonstick entirely and buy steel — is in nonstick versus stainless steel.

Why 8 inches, and when to go bigger

An egg wants to be about three-quarters of an inch deep in the pan. Put two eggs in an 8-inch pan and they sit against each other at roughly that depth, cook evenly, and come out as two round eggs. Put the same two eggs in a 12-inch pan and they spread into a thin sheet, the whites set in seconds and the edges go brown and lacy before the yolk has moved.

• 8 in — two or three eggs, a two-egg omelet, one grilled cheese. The right default.
• 10 in — four eggs without them running together, a flat three-egg omelet, and it doubles as the general-purpose pan.
• 12 in and up — not an egg pan. It is a searing pan that will also hold eggs badly.

In a small kitchen there is a second argument for 8 inches: it fits in the sink, it fits in a compact dish rack, and it hangs on a hook. A 12-inch pan does none of those things.

How to not ruin a nonstick pan in the first year

1. Never preheat it empty. This is the one that kills pans. An empty nonstick pan on a high burner reaches coating-damage temperature in under two minutes. Butter or oil in first, then the heat.
2. Medium is the top of the dial. Eggs cook at well under boiling point. If the pan is hot enough to brown butter instantly, it is too hot for an egg and too hot for the coating.
3. Hand-wash, even when the label says dishwasher-safe. Dishwasher detergent is abrasive and alkaline and it dulls both ceramic and PTFE. Hand-washing roughly doubles the useful life of the coating.
4. No cooking spray. Aerosol sprays contain lecithin, which polymerizes into a sticky brown film that is almost impossible to remove and that makes a perfectly good pan behave like a ruined one.
5. Do not stack it bare. Another pan’s rim grinding on the coating in a cupboard does more damage than a year of spatulas. A paper towel between pans is free.

The method, briefly

Pan on a medium-low burner. A teaspoon of butter in cold, swirled as it melts, and the egg in when the butter stops foaming but before it colours. Lid on for forty seconds if you want the white set over the yolk. Off the heat before it looks done, because the pan keeps cooking.

For an omelet, same pan, slightly more butter, eggs beaten with a fork for ten seconds and no more, and a silicone spatula pulling the set edges to the middle for the first thirty seconds. In an 8-inch pan that is a two-egg omelet; in a 10-inch pan it is three.