Removing Teflon non-stick coating from pots & pans

A. Hi Julia. This thread offers many different perspectives on that; but if you'd like it distilled down to its essence, some people including me don't think it should be done, but Kimberly Huseman claimed success and offered full instructions in one short paragraph :-)

Luck & Regards,

A. Paul,

Teflon can be effectively removed by abrasive blasting with aluminum oxide blast media. I trust that your part is able to withstand the rigors of abrasive blasting.

A. Paul As Dan said, you can do it by grit blasting with aluminium oxide, but depending on the thickness it will deform the substrate. You can use a plastic media to do it like "aerolite" is the abrasive that is used for the airplanes paint stripping. If your Teflon is a thin coating, you can try with n-methyl-pyrrolidon solvent.

A. Paul, I have used the chemical method to remove Teflon from lock nuts.

A. Yes, it can be burned off or blasted off.

A. Most people want to keep Teflon on their pans as it stops food sticking to the metal. The usual complaint about Teflon is that it comes off when scrubbed with a very abrasive scourer, so you could do that. Depending how good the Teflon was put on, you may be able to remove it by sand blasting the pan, but this may also damage the inside of the pan. However, removing the PTFE may well adversely affect the performance of the pans, so perhaps you will be better off getting some good old cast iron pans with no Teflon (or PTFE as it is also known)

A. Hi Sigurd. Unfortunately Teflon is a largely non-reactive substance, Teflon is "baked" on to pots and pans at a relatively high heat (the surface of the pan is still semi molten). I cannot think of a way to get the Teflon coating off without an abrasive (suggest sandblasting).

As for chemicals? Well you are kinda out of luck, most of the chemicals that would eat off the Teflon would either heavily stain or destroy aluminum or steel.

A. Teflon can be burned off in a high temp oven. I think you'll need about 900-1000 degrees (no higher, as you may melt your pans). A small blowtorch might work too, I'm not sure. Be very careful not to inhale any fumes, as it will make you sick (similar to metal fume fever).

A. The way to strip Teflon coatings is burning off. The temperature must be from 480 °C to 550 °C. This temperature burns the plastic and it becomes ash powder. Then you will need to coat again the metal part or polish it.

Regards,

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Ed. note: Jordi is an industrial specialist in this and is surely right. However, burning is probably quite unsafe for homeowners and hobbyists who do not have industrial ovens and fume extraction systems.

A. It's going to depend on the details of your situation, Mark: the quantity in question, what you are going to do with the parts after teflon removal, their size and shape, whether abrasives can get to the recesses, etc.
We appended your inquiry to a thread where you will find details & recommendations for the three different approaches of 1). abrasive removal, 2). solvent/chemical removal, and 3). burn-off. If you can describe the parts and quantities, someone may be able to suggest which of the three methods sounds most promising for your particular case. Good luck.

A. Deanne, that reference was for removing the non-stick coating from Visions glass cookware, and I'm not confident that the non-stick coating on visions is even teflon anyway. If you are concerned about Teflon, please buy pyrex or plain cast iron or hard anodized aluminum instead of trying to strip the Teflon from your pots and pans.

Are you sure that you know the difference between cast iron and cast aluminum? There is no danger to cast iron from lye, but aluminum can react rather violently with lye, rapidly dissolving. And there is potential danger to you. Lye is designed to dissolve animal tissue, and children have died from putting a lye-covered spoon in their mouth that their parents forgot to immediately wash. Please wear goggles and be careful. Good luck.

A. Since aluminium doesn't rust, rather it forms a protective oxide in air (Al2O3), then the problem of scratches that go rusty doesn't apply. Even applying Teflon to aluminium is an overkill. So if it ain't going rusty in the scratches in the Teflon, then it ain't iron!

It's the caustic soda ⇦liquid caustic soda in bulk on Amazon [affil link] (or lye) in Drano that lifts the teflon layer. I had success removing a scratched teflon coating from a George Foreman grill by spraying it with oven cleaner ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] which also has caustic in it.

Cheers,
Tony

A. Hi Dearina. You surely can! But one of the readers was looking for a non abrasive method, and burning seems to be the alternative to abrasion. Further, while homeowners might have no problem spending two hours sanding a pot, that investment in time may be impractical in industry -- a consumer won't pay a shop $325 to have the teflon sanded off a pot, so burning may be more practical for them. Thanks!

Regards,

Hi, Ed. Thanks for the interesting and informative posting.

But funny, I was just about to say that you may be a little over the top with your alarmist views of halogens  :-)
Iodine is a halogen and a vital nutrient; the oceans are sodium chloride dissolved in water, and chloride is a halogen. Maybe your concern is fluorides, halogenated hydrocarbons or chlorinated fluorocarbons?

Regards,

Thanks y'all for giving me some ideas for my problem. My pots and pans are heavy gauge aluminum and are about 40 years old, but I love them and hate the thought of just getting rid of them. Have been looking for others for replacements, but have not found what I like yet, so will try one of the suggestions on my little frying pan to see how it works, then if needed will try another method. Thanks again.

A. My husband removed the teflon from our stainless steel frypan with great success. If I am allowed to post the website where I have given these instructions then you can read how to do it successfully.

We removed ours about 8 weeks ago and have used this s/steel pan with success ever since.

This is the link to learn how to remove teflon ... www.squidoo.com/buying-a-new-frypan-which-to-buy-scan-pan-stonedine-or-flavorstone On second thought I will just post the name of article: "buying a new frypan: which to buy scan pan stonedine or flavorstone"

I hope this will help anyone looking to do this. Thanks, Eileen.

Thanks Eileen.

It's true that we don't much like to post links because almost all break within months whereas this site (on line since 1989) is trying to be a permanent reference, and broken links leave readers wasting time reading a paragraph of introduction here about where to go to read an answer, only to have 99%+ of those links break :-( Your answer on that page is one sentence of 13 words. Wouldn't it have been better to simply re-post that single sentence here? :-)

Regards,

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Ed. note, Dec. 2013: Sorry, that link is now broken.
Ed. note, May 2016: Sorry, there is no squidoo.com anymore, and google doesn't seem to find any article with that title.

! I just cleaned off the flaking Teflon by using a mouse sander and a Multimax sander to get into the curvy spaces. Then I used clean sandpaper to polish the shining metal. Works fine. I get to keep using a skillet which is exactly the right size for me, and I didn't add to landfill. Just be sure to wear a mask when you sand off the Teflon.

A. Hi, Greg. The reason such a slippery thing as Teflon was able to stick to the pan in the first place is due to mechanical interlocking; the surface of the stainless was specially etched to look like a sponge.

Personally, I don't like the idea of using that etched surface, that was not intended to be a cooking surface, as a cooking surface, but you can read about the removal techniques above, and sand it smooth. There is no good chemical removal technique. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Avoid burning off PTFE due to highly corrosive byproducts liberated at temperatures over 800 °F. Can damage oven internals and substrate.

A. Hello,

I could remove Teflon from aluminium by NMP (n-methyl-pyrrolidon). Rinsing 1-2 h and flush with water. Before using it, check MSDS. Good luck.

Zoltan

A. Hi. There is a mixing of home and industry in this thread :-(

N-methyl-pyrrolidon is an industrial chemical you shouldn't even dream of for home use; and burning off the teflon in a high temperature oven is also an industrial science, not a home project. If you want to do it yourself at home, sanding is the way to go, but new pots & pans often sounds better :-)

Regards,

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Ed. note, Sept. 2016: That link now redirects to www.geeksonhome.com/how_6971990_remove-teflon-coating.html
Ed. note, July 2018: Now the newer link doesn't work either.
Ed. note, August 2021: The original link now redirects to an article on "How to Cook Eggs" on another site.

Thanks Mary. In case that link also breaks, it tells us to scrub the teflon coating off with steel wool ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] and soapy water.

It also claims "Scientists have researched effects of cooking with Teflon ... Due to these negative findings, they recommend that you not use Teflon products ... Removing the Teflon from your cookware is essential to maintaining your health." Yes, there are probably scientists who say that (no matter what can be said, someone will say it, and they are welcome to their opinion), and many people are rightly concerned about "forever chemicals", but the implication that most scientists (as opposed to some) feel that removing Teflon is essential to maintaining your health is probably overstated.

Regards,

A. PTFE Coatings can be burned off to a certain extent. Takes about 800 - 1000 °F for a good while depending on the mass of the object you are removing it from. As mentioned previously, the fumes and particles that are produced from the burn-off are toxic, so make sure your oven is ventilated. Common practice for us is to burn off then blast, but generally we are re-coating afterwards.

A. Hi Terry. The steps you posted are taken from www.geeksonhome.com/how_6971990_remove-teflon-coating.html -- one of the three previously mentioned, but broken, 'instructions' sites. Have you actually tried it? -- because beyond simply telling you to scrub off the Teflon with steel wool, I doubt that it has much usefulness!

Please remember that the authors of those kinds of article usually are not widely versed in their subject -- rather, they work for sites that often are in the business of:

1. computerized scanning for widely used internet search terms,
2. paying people to write a brief article that will be found when people google those search terms, and
3. earning money from clicks on the ads on the page they wrote. But when a topic starts fading in popularity, they often just let those page die rather than maintaining them as we can see repeatedly above :-)

I understand this because I earn my living from ads on our pages too :-)
... but I like to hope that the lively public participation here, my 50-year career in metal finishing, being on line for over 25 years, and our relentless efforts to not let stuff break when the topics cool, makes us at least a tiny bit different :-)

Regards,

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Ed. note, July 2018: That page is no longer on line.

A. I found out how to remove it by accident. Left some high acid homemade tomato soup and forgot it a week in the refrigerator. Now I gotta do it again because it didn't get rid of all of it because it was only half full. Hopefully I can redo the recipe; it was crushed tomatoes in a can cooked down with water and lots of tomato is all I know because my husband made it.

A. Hi Rodrigo. Thanks for the kind words. I am just the curator of this website, not an epidemiologist nor an epicurean :-)

At high enough magnification all surfaces are rough, and I suspect that your polishing dug deep enough to level out most of the surface but not the very deepest pits. I suppose it might be possible to re-polish deeper to get to the black spots. Still, a general way of looking at things is: if you can't remove something when you're trying quite hard to remove it, the idea that it's spontaneously going to come off into your food by itself seems awfully unlikely.

I am not qualified to comment on the safety of Teflon, and feel that 'forever chemicals' are inherently dangerous to the environment. But in a world of risks everywhere, I continue to use mine. And if those black spots which you can only see with a magnifying glass are in fact Teflon rather than pits, and if it were in fact dangerous in any way, the remaining amount seems so minuscule that you're ten thousand times safer than the rest of us :-)
Be well.

Regards,

 Hi Ted,
Thanks for your words.
I think you are right. The spots are probably the result of intensive use, being myself a retired chef. I think the inside structure changed the bottom and has nothing to do with Teflon because I polish it very accurately!
I will visit your site regularly in the future.
Greetings from sunny Algarve,
Rodrigo

A. Hi R. Sorry to hear about your birds. Indeed I've heard several times before that parrots and parakeets and maybe other household birds are especially vulnerable to teflon fumes. Overheated, gassified, teflon might be dangerous to people too; I don't know. But I think I agree that 'forever chemicals' should be minimized.

opinion!The video you suggest may or may not prove that teflon is dangerous ... but it certainly proves that, shamefully, Dupont achieved corporate capture of the EPA.

And that corporate capture of our regulatory agencies continues. Verizon's lead attorney was chosen to chair the FCC, and Dupont's lead attorney, W. Michael McCabe, went on to serve as Deputy Administrator of the EPA in 2000. Incredibly, even after all these years of scandal, he was appointed by President Biden as his "special advisor on EPA issues". Again, I don't know for sure whether teflon is dangerous, but our corrupt government constantly appoints the fox to guard the hen house so we will probably never know -- and these things are absolutely typical, not exceptions :-(

Luck & Regards,

A. People here suggest sanding or sandblasting the teflon coating from a pan to make it still usable.
Some suggest lye, but don't do that, lye is very caustic, nasty stuff.
Q. Has anyone here tried a drill mounted small wire wheel or wire cup (image search term "multimax sander") or a drill sander (search term "drill mounted sandpaper disc")?

A. Be careful using lye. Aluminum reacts with it. When I was making anodized aluminum jewelry, I used it to remove the surface so that the piece could be selectively oxidized in the anodizing process.

Petra, I would strongly advise against doing this in your house. The fumes from the Teflon can make you very sick. Also, depending on the kind of teflon, even on the self cleaning cycle may not be hot enough to burn the coating off. We don't apply food grade teflon in our shop, but the kind we do apply cures at > 700 °F.