Nylon vs. Stainless Steel Kitchen Tools: Which Is Better?

Elizabeth Passarella
Elizabeth Passarella
Elizabeth Passarella is the author of the essay collection Good Apple and a contributing editor at Southern Living. A former editor at Real Simple and Vogue, she has spent more than 20 years writing about food, travel, home design, and parenting in outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Parents, Martha Stewart Weddings, Coastal Living, Airbnb, and The Kitchn. Elizabeth grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and now lives with her husband and three children in New York City.
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published Mar 22, 2011
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

If you’re like us, you have a mix of both (plus a

wooden spoon or two

stocking a kitchen for the first time? Here are our pros and cons.

Our bottom line advice: No one needs a full set of either nylon or stainless steel cooking tools. We’re not big fans of sets of anything (pots and pans, knives—buy those individually), but those already-stocked crocks of utensils are overkill. Here are our opinions on plastic vs. metal.

Nylon/Plastic: PROS
• If you use

nonstick cookware

dutch ovens, or

cast-iron skillets


• Nylon utensils are flexible. We find they scrape corners better, and if you cook a lot of fish, you probably want a

flexible fish spatula

Nylon/Plastic: CONS
• They’re hard to clean. Eggs, cream sauces, and rice tend to stick to them, and we often end up using a fingernail to scrape them off (a scrub brush doesn’t always work on ours).
• They’re plastic. They can be ugly, and they can melt.

Stainless Steel: PROS
• Thinner and sturdier, which makes them better for sliding under cookies or lifting a heavy piece of meat.
• Easier to clean than plastic.
• Better for scraping pans, if necessary. We find a wooden spoon is great for deglazing, but if we’re, say, tossing a pan of roasted vegetables and want to scrape bits off of the bottom, a metal spatula helps.

Stainless Steel: CONS
• Sometimes the sound of metal scraping metal makes our skin crawl (are we alone?).
• Usually more expensive.

As annoying as it can be to clean our nylon tools, we use them much more often, along with wooden spoons. Here’s what we’d buy if we were starting from scratch:

• One metal spatula
• One nylon spatula
• One nylon slotted spoon
• Two pairs of tongs (one nylon-tipped, one metal)
• Wooden spoons

What would you add? Which tools do you prefer?

Related:

Good Question: What is the Best Pancake Spatula?

(Images: Calphalon)

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