Best Spatulas to Help You Scrape and Flip Your Way to Culinary Success
We flipped pancakes, tossed omelets, turned burgers, and fried fish to find the best turner spatulas for all of your stovetop cooking needs
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Some cooking utensils are nice to have, but you can forgo them and still whip up a decent meal. But without a quality spatula, there is no meal—only half-burnt and half-uncooked ingredients.
The spatula, aka turner spatula, is different from a baking spatula in that it is the cooking workhorse that you’ll use to flip heavy and light foods, chop up ground meat in a pan, sauté vegetables, and create restaurant-worthy omelets. It’s a good idea to invest in a few spatulas of different materials and designs so that you can select the right one based on the food you’re cooking and the pot or pan you’re using, whether it’s a stainless steel cookware set or a nonstick frying pan that should be used only with silicone, plastic, and wooden spatulas and never with metal.
This slotted turner spatula from Williams Sonoma was the fanciest, priciest one on our list, but it has substance as well as style. Its large, wide head is designed with silicone and nylon, which the manufacturer says helps ensure that it is sturdy and flexible, and it is heat resistant up to 400° F. You can wash this one in the dishwasher, but some of our foods got trapped in its slots and it took a bit of scrubbing with a sponge and soapy water to remove food particles. As far as comfort goes, we’d place this somewhere in the middle. It has a stainless steel handle that feels robust and well made, and its circular shape makes it easier to hold than the stainless steel Chef Craft spatula (below), but it’s also more slippery than the spatulas that have silicone or nylon handles. The handle got hot when we left it dangling on top of a hot pan for too long, and it has a tapered end that lacks an integrated hole for hanging.
Despite some of its drawbacks, this is a multitasking dynamo of a slotted spatula that flips and transfers burgers to the plate without carrying over grease from the pan. It handles pancakes and omelets with care, is sturdy enough to break up ground beef in less time than other spatulas, thanks to its wide head, and has a thin enough head to gently flip fish. It comes in white or red.
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Some spatulas are great workhorses, but they aren’t comfortable to hold. This Oxo spatula feels like it was designed with comfort and precision in mind. It has a shorter handle than most of the other spatulas on this list, and this difference made it possible to flip and mix foods with more precision. It has a nylon head that is heat-resistant up to 450° F and is dishwasher-safe but also simple to clean with a sponge and soapy water. The handle is designed half with metal and half with the same soft nylon as its head, which helped cushion our hand. The handle also features a large integrated hole for hanging.
Thanks to this spatula’s curved shape and wide, flat, relatively thin head, it handled flipping all of our foods with barely any effort. It worked best with omelets and pancakes—its head can scrape scraps of food from nonstick and cast-iron pans without scratching them. It also did a commendable job breaking up ground beef in a stainless steel wok and flipping burgers and thin fish fillets. This is an all-around perfect spatula for a variety of cooking tasks.
Safety note: Concerns have been raised that black nylon food-contact tools may seep potentially harmful chemicals into food. Although CR experts say there is a lack of sufficient scientific evidence on this matter, and we do not have proof that this Oxo spatula can pose these dangers, anyone who is concerned about plastics should choose a different material, such as stainless steel or wood. Please see our section on black nylon, below, for additional information.
Oxo also offers a small silicone and stainless steel turner spatula, though CR did not evaluate it.
Don’t let this spatula’s name fool you. We recommend the Figmint Stainless Steel Brownie Turner for a variety of foods, and especially for fish and plating foods. It shouldn’t be used on nonstick cookware because its metal design can scratch the coating. But if you’re cooking delicate fish on a stainless steel pan, as we did, it effortlessly slips beneath the surface of fish to flip it without much effort. It has a flat, beveled head with a sharp edge that performed well under pancakes and had enough heft to handle heavier burgers. This is not the spatula to use when making omelets in a nonstick pan, and though it has a sharp head that breaks up ground beef in seconds, the awful metal-on-metal racket it makes when doing so isn’t worth the headache.
Even though this spatula’s handle is stainless steel, it’s shorter and more square in design than the Williams Sonoma spatula, which makes it more comfortable to hold—less slippery and easier to maneuver for precise movements. Like the Oxo, it has an integrated hole in its handle for hanging. It washes beautifully in the dishwasher and was also a cinch to clean with dish soap and water.
When I unboxed this silicone spatula, I didn’t think much of it. It looks like a lot of other spatulas, with a not-too-thick and not-too-thin head, a singular silicone material covering both the handle and head, and an integrated hole on the handle for hanging. What I soon discovered, though, was that this bargain spatula from Target can handle nearly every flipping and cooking task with grace and ease. Although the handle is bulkier than Oxo’s spatula, its silicone body makes it comfortable enough to hold. It’s great for flipping burgers and pancakes and making omelets in a nonstick pan, and its head is heavy enough to chop up ground beef without any risk of ruining pans. The only task that it was slightly too bulky to take on with precision was flipping and transferring thin fish, but if you have no other spatula, it can do this in a pinch.
The spatula is heat-resistant up to 450° F and cleaned well in the dishwasher, but it was also easy to clean by hand.
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Other Turner Spatulas We Evaluated
These four spatulas all have pros and cons, and we wouldn’t necessarily remove them from consideration. But they also lacked that certain something required to make them multitasking heroes in the kitchen.
We all want to fall in love with a spatula set that includes both a classic flat spatula and a turner spatula so that we can shop once and shop well. For the most part, this set from BundlePro delivers the goods. Both spatulas feature silicone heads and stainless handles with silicone grips for a comfortable hold. The handles also have flexible material hanging holes that don’t seem as long-lasting as the other spatulas that have built-in integrated holes for hanging. Their maximum heat resistance temperature is 446° F.
Both spatulas perform adequately well. They flipped burgers and pancakes, chopped up ground beef, and were fine at cooking omelets in nonstick pans. Here’s where they deviate from several others on this list: They aren’t dishwasher-safe. If you’re willing to wash them by hand, this isn’t a deal breaker. I tried them in the dishwasher anyway (because they are made from silicone), and I don’t recommend it: The spatulas emerged from my dishwasher with hard-to-remove white spots on them—and this happened after the first time I used them.
Pretty to look at, but not the most practical—is how I would sum up the Chef Craft Select Turner Spatula. Its long, flat stainless steel handle isn’t rounded like the Williams Sonoma spatula or square and bulky like the Figmint Stainless Steel Brownie Turner. It’s more difficult to hold, dug into my hand while I was holding it, and wasn’t naturally comfortable to maneuver around foods.
Flipping fish and breaking up ground beef felt awkward and clumsy, not to mention the noise pollution that results from scraping metal on metal (this spatula should not be used on nonstick pans). Out of all our cooking tasks, it handled flipping burgers and pancakes the best, but there are better spatula options out there for that job. As with any metal cooking tool, avoid letting it linger on or adjacent to a hot skillet or pot, because it gets hot to the touch.
One pro: This spatula cleans well, whether by hand or in the dishwasher.
A wood spatula has a homey aesthetic and feel to it, and these can be alluring qualities. This pick from Figmint is made from acacia wood and features a long handle with an integrated hole for hanging. It is heat resistant, though its temperature is not listed, and is safe to use on all cookware, which is a nice plus. It feels fairly comfortable to hold—it wasn’t the least or the most comfy of the spatulas we evaluated—and it did a fair job at flipping burgers and pancakes. Its strength was in cooking omelets on a nonstick pan, and its weakness was flipping fish (the head was too bulky to do this with ease). When it comes time to clean it, you’ll have to hand-wash this spatula, because it is not dishwasher-safe.
We were on the fence about the larger turner spatula from this two-piece set by Rachael Ray (we didn’t evaluate the smaller identical spatula that comes in the set). The nylon slotted spatula has a few pluses going for it: It’s incredibly lightweight and its generous slats are long, so it’s great at transferring foods from pan to plate without dragging oil and grease along with it. It is safe for all pans and pots, feels comfortable to hold, and was a decent pancake flipper. It’s also easy to clean: It is dishwasher-safe, and its slots are wide enough to wash clean with a sponge and dishwasher soap.
Unfortunately, this spatula’s light weight also meant it felt flimsy. It struggled more than the others to handle the heft of hamburgers and was too flexible to chop ground beef well or mix and toss eggs to make an omelet. It performed the best when flipping delicate fish filets.
Safety note: This spatula is made from nylon. Please see our section on black nylon, below, for CR’s expert advice on avoiding plastics in cooking utensils.
Risks of Using Black Nylon Cooking Utensils
Potentially harmful chemicals have reportedly been detected in black plastic utensils and containers, but we don’t always know which ones are contaminated and the level of harmful chemicals in each of these products, says James E. Rogers, PhD, director and head of product safety testing at CR. Rogers says there is a need for clear, accurate labeling so that consumers would know whether the product is made from virgin plastic or recycled (recycled plastic is more likely to leach chemicals). However, given the evidence we have about plastics in general, our experts recommend choosing a different material when shopping for spatulas and other utensils. “Regardless of whether plastic releases small or large amounts of harmful substances, one crucial factor often overlooked is the accumulation of these plastics in human tissue,” says Juan Alberto Arguello, PhD, test program leader for product safety and sustainability at CR. “We recommend avoiding any plastic utensils for kitchen use, because of the possible risk.”
CR reached out to Oxo for comment on its Good Grips Nylon Flexible Turner, which is designed with black nylon. A representative from Oxo responded: “We can assure you that while OXO does seek to integrate recycled plastic into our products, we do NOT permit the use of any recycled black plastic in any of our food contact materials.”
Based on Oxo’s response, it would seem its black plastic products are made from virgin plastic, Rogers says. If so, then consumers should not be exposed to chemicals that come from electronic waste or other sources of contamination. “If consumers are concerned about the use of plastic utensils when cooking and they want to reduce their waste, I would recommend the use of stainless steel utensils or maybe even wood utensils to avoid what could come from the use of plastic utensils,” Rogers says.
How We Evaluated Turner Spatulas
We used each of the turner spatulas to perform the following cooking tasks: flipping burgers in a nonstick pan, flipping pancakes in a cast-iron frying pan, breaking up ground beef in a stainless steel wok, cooking omelets in a nonstick pan, and turning filets of sole in a stainless steel pan. We evaluated how comfortable they were to hold and whether their spatula head design made it easier or more difficult to perform the task at hand. We ran all of the dishwasher-safe spatulas through the dishwasher three times and hand-washed them all as well. We took notes on whether spatulas have features for effortless storage and whether any of their design components cause them to heat up quicker near the stove.
