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A griddle – also known as a griddle – is a versatile griddle perfect for frying bacon, roasting vegetables, making a full griddle dinner, and even making cookies.They can even be used as trays to bring meat to the grill, or as pot lids in a pinch.
Pans are made from a variety of metals, with textured surfaces in a variety of colors, with or without a non-stick coating.We roasted a few pounds of carrots and tomatoes on 10 different pans and roasted dozens of snickers to find the right option for you.Read on to discover the best baking pans.
In our tests, the durable, affordable Nordic Ware Uncoated Aluminum Pans performed as well as more expensive pans and stayed flat without warping, even above their rated temperature.
The attractive Willams-Sonoma has a true non-stick coating that avoids warping even at high temperatures and is dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.
The low-profile Le Creuset carbon steel pans with bright orange handles are perfect for roasting vegetables and have wide rims for easy removal from the oven.
Nordic Ware has earned a lot of accolades online, and for good reason: it strikes an excellent balance of function and form.Like a pajama party classic, the aluminum pan is as light as a feather and as hard as a plank.But what makes this effortless?This is one of the cheapest pans we’ve tested.
Nordic Ware’s half sheets are rated at just 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but won’t warp even at 450 degrees Fahrenheit.A possible explanation?The rim of the pot is internally reinforced with galvanized steel wire, which helps maintain its shape.
The bottom of the pan stays flat on the heat, which is great for preventing the tomatoes from rolling or the cookies sliding in one direction.The embossed logo on the bottom of the pan is slightly raised, so it does catch some tomato juice and grease.
The pan gave the carrots a lovely char and roasted tomatoes without leaving a darkened skin.The cookies cook evenly and the bottoms are golden brown.There are no hot spots and the quick cooling of the pan means the cookies don’t get too crispy.
Uncoated surfaces must be hand washed; however, the brown chips come off with water and a soapy sponge.There are some minor scratches and some slight discoloration, but it doesn’t affect the performance of the pan.
This griddle gets top marks for roasted tomatoes and looks like it’s well done.Williams Sonoma pans are dishwasher safe, but the effective non-stick surface means you can easily scrub them clean.
If you’ve been baking for a while, silver pans that aren’t dull or shiny are hard to resist.The gold-aluminized steel pan is razor-sharp—a baking sheet that goes straight from the oven to the table.Make sure you have a good tripod though, as this pan is a wonder at keeping warm.
Goldtouch Pro half sheets never warp.It’s one of only a few models available out of the box.What’s more, it performs brilliantly — as if it’s been given all the tasks it’s been given.The center and sides of the carrots browned evenly, while the cookies were golden brown without being too dark on the bottom.
The non-stick coating makes scooping carrots and tomatoes easy.While it’s dishwasher safe, just a minute of gentle scrubbing and the surface is clean.
The Goldtouch Pro weighs about 3 pounds, which adds up as you deliver food.We can definitely feel it compared to the lighter sheets, if you find yourself cooking a few pounds of chicken thighs, you’ll need some arm strength and definitely need two hands to get this sheet out of the oven.
The angle of the sides means that when we roast the carrots, a bit of oil is left in the corners, and the inner ridges below the edges can make it a little harder to pour off things like bacon grease.
Based on its excellent performance alone, the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch would easily be our top pick, if not for its weight and price tag – we think most home cooks and bakers would prefer a few lighter, less expensive roasts plate.But those looking for a pan that doubles as a tray may find it worth the added investment.
Le Creuset’s Large Sheet Pan is a smooth nonstick pan with wide handles from a brand known for its griddle pans and cast-iron cookware – a great tool for roasting vegetables.It heats evenly and has enough style to be the centerpiece of your dining table.
The dark carbon steel pan with orange silicone handle is as distinctive as Great Jones’ bright pink baking pan.The stylish pan also makes beautifully roasted vegetables.
The carrots caramelized where they touched the pan, while the snickers browned on the bottom without getting burnt.The non-stick surface makes it easy to remove tomatoes and cookies.The surface can be wiped clean with just a few swipes with a sponge.
At two pounds, this pan is definitely heavy, but the wide rims and silicone inserts are easier to pick up than some of the rolled edges on a pan of the same weight.
The wide sides may also make this pan more difficult to stack in a cabinet, but this pan is slightly smaller than the other models we’ve seen — 16.75 inches long and 12 inches wide.If you want to make a sheet pan dinner for a family of four, you may want to opt for a larger surface area.
This pot is hand washable only, and the border between the rim and the bottom of the pot tends to get trapped with food debris and soap, requiring extra cleaning.After stacking the coating in other pots, the coating scratched on a small part of the edge.
Finally, at full retail price, the Le Creuset Large Pan is the most expensive pan we’ve tested.As we pointed out when we talked about Williams-Sonoma pans, since you may want to have more than one pan, the cost of the collection can add up quickly.
There are three sizes of baking sheets or pans: full, half and quarter.What you see in commercial bakeries and restaurants are full pans.A typical full bake pan is 26 inches long, and when you bring it home, you may find it’s too big to fit in your home oven.
When you see a recipe for a sheet pan dinner, you think of half a sheet of paper.Usually around 18 inches long, they fit in most cabinets and ovens, but still have plenty of room to spread out your veggies for roasting.A quarter pan is usually 13 inches long and 9 inches wide, a little larger than a sheet of printer paper.These are handy when you want to roast a few peppers or keep a drip tray under a steak thawed in the fridge.
You may also come across jelly roll pans or cookie sheets in the baking aisle.Jelly roll trays, which get their name from the dessert, are usually between a quarter and a half in size.Cookie sheets don’t have rims like baking sheets, but instead usually have one raised side and three flat sides to allow airflow and your spatula to slide easily under your cookies.However, many home bakers use baking sheets to make cookies with great results – so we went the extra mile and made a ton of cookies as part of our testing.Just to make sure we’ve accurately reproduced the conditions under which these papers might be used, of course.
We put the pans to the test over a few weeks to test their durability.We washed each sheet and made three different recipes.
We baked Snickers biscuits on parchment paper (we weigh the dough of each cookie to keep them as even as possible) to test for evenness of heat distribution and browning.We roasted the carrots over high heat to check for warping and for browned bits to stick to the bottom of the pan during the cleaning process.We also bubbled the cherry tomatoes to see if the juices would discolor the pan and be easily contained.
We hand wash or rinse the sheets with a non-abrasive sponge and dish soap and run them through the dishwasher according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.We noticed if brown chips were difficult to remove, if food or soap got trapped under the edges, and if there were scratches or spots after washing.Once the pans are clean and cool, we lay them flat on the counter to see if there are any deformed shapes from the heat.
We looked at the design, materials and weight of each pan.We checked textured surfaces to see if they would interfere with the cooking process or make it harder to clean.If it’s coated with a non-stick material, we also considered whether this would have an impact on baking and cleaning.We also took each pan out of the oven with only one hand (with a pot holder) to see if a full hot pan was difficult to lift or carry in the kitchen.
We then compared the performance of each pan and weighed all factors, along with price, to determine our recommended pan.
This aluminum baking pan is beautiful – standing out in a pile of silver and gold.We opted for raspberries (bright pink) – as well as blueberries (blue) and broccoli (green) – the non-stick ceramic surface glows.
Of all the pans we’ve tested, the Holy Sheet (you get the pun?) offers the most cooking space (slightly larger than the Oxo and Williams Sonoma pans) when you try to squeeze in a single time This is an important layer when there are lots of vegetables.At 2 pounds, it takes a little wrist strength to lift a loaded pan from the oven with one hand.
The pan heats evenly without warping.The carrots and tomatoes were obviously roasted, but they lacked some of the color and slight charring of our favorite models.The non-stick surface works especially well for tomato juice on the pan without evaporating and leaving scorch marks on the surface.The cookies are light and fluffy and have a nice chew.
The manufacturer says it’s dishwasher-friendly, but because of the non-stick coating, it makes sense to hand wash it.The oil and dried tomato skins came off the surface effortlessly, although there was still some slight discoloration after a few oven runs.
The Checkered Chef’s stainless steel pans – complete with wire racks – look just like the pans you’d expect to find in bakery and restaurant kitchens.No stamp or obvious branding makes us hope this might be the kind of bakeware that people like, but don’t quite remember how it got into the kitchen.
That hope was dashed on the first tomato test, as the right front half of the pan cocked up (it did come back up a few minutes after being removed from the oven).The tomato juice gathered on the other side and there was a lot of burnt skin on the pan, which loosened with a quick rinse.
The carrots were nicely colored and the cookies were even, if slightly flatter than the other batches.This is one of the few pans that can be cleaned in the dishwasher, but after only a few uses, a slight scratch on the top and wear on the sides of the pan can raise concerns about durability.
Right out of the box, the Oxo half-open weighs just over 2 pounds, making it one of the heaviest pans we’ve tested.But in a 450°F oven, the right side of the stainless pan warped significantly.
As a result, the tomato juice pooled on the left, leaving some tomatoes blackened while others were slightly cooked in the juice.On the plus side, the rolled-up rims manage the juices effectively.
At lower temperatures, the pan works well: the roasted carrots get a little char, and the snickers bake evenly (and crispier than the biscuits in other pans).The pan was still hot to the touch for a few minutes after it came out of the oven.The keep warm is great for keeping roasted vegetables warm, but we need to keep an eye on the cookies to make sure they don’t get too brown on the bottom.
While the ceramic nonstick surface – a striking gold color similar to a Williams Sonoma pan – is easy to clean because the burnt bits only need to be scrubbed gently, grease does get trapped in the small grooves between the diamond patterns Bottom of the pot.
This aluminum pan is a moderate weight at just over 1.8 pounds – sturdy without feeling difficult to lift.It’s about half a pound heavier and more expensive than Nordic Ware’s pans.
The extra weight didn’t stop the pan from warping at higher temperatures, although it regained its original shape because the heat dissipated quickly once it left the oven.Warping means the sear and char on the tomatoes and carrots is a little uneven.The pan made browned cookies without burning them.
After a few spins in the sink with dish soap and a non-abrasive sponge, the uncoated surface developed some scratches and lost some of its luster.
This lightweight aluminum pan has an ombré exterior with a dark gray non-stick coating that extends all the way to the shiny aluminum sides and rolled edges above the bottom.Clever design yields mixed results.
The pan warped slightly in the middle of 450 degrees Fahrenheit (its maximum temperature rating), but quickly returned to its original shape as it cooled rapidly.The non-stick surface is prone to scorch marks and tomato husks.
It performs better at slightly cooler temperatures.The bottom of the snickers is always brown, indicating that the heat is evenly distributed.When we took the carrots out of the oven, they were already caramelizing.