The Best Electric Skillets of 2026

An electric skillet can be a lifesaver when company is coming and you don’t have enough room on your stovetop to cook a full meal. Most are generously sized, so they're definitely useful for entertaining, bringing a family-sized meal straight to the table, or keeping food hot on a buffet.

An electric skillet is also a convenient way to toss a hot meal together when you don’t have access to a stove but do have an electric outlet. (Think in an RV, school function, church, or community rec room.) You can think of them as a pan with a built-in heating element.

After putting popular models through a battery of cooking tests, we found that the best electric skillet is the beautiful stainless-steel Cuisinart Electric Skillet (available at Amazon) . If you don’t want to spend much and aren’t too concerned about looks, our best value pick is the Black and Decker 12-by-15-inch.

Other Electric Skillets We Tested

What to Know About Buying an Electric Skillet

Is an Electric Skillet Worth it?

An electric skillet is a great tool when you don’t have room on your stove for all the pots and pans you need to cook a meal. It can also be a lifesaver when you don’t have access to another cooking method.

An electric skillet can be particularly useful during the holidays or any time you’re entertaining. That's because it gives you a nice wide cooking surface for pan-frying, sautéing, or stir-frying items like eggs, pancakes, vegetables, steaks, and chops.

On the highest setting, it produces the kind of browning that gives lots of flavor; and as it cycles the temperature on and off, it doesn’t easily overheat and burn foods.

While these small kitchen appliances can handle a large volume of food for simmering chili, stew, or pot roast, our tests showed that even at lower temperature settings, most tend to cook food at higher-than-ideal temperatures for simmering. This means that food is ready quickly, but maybe less tender than if it was cooked in a Dutch oven on the stovetop or oven.

Most of our test samples came with a tempered glass lid, and all of them had a nonstick surface, making the products easy to clean. Even though some manufacturers claim their skillets are dishwasher safe, these are large products that don’t easily fit into a machine. Their size also means they require a lot of storage space, so if your cabinets and closets are already cluttered, make sure this is something you really need.

Can You Deep Fry in an Electric Skillet?

You will see many recipes for deep frying in an electric skillet, and many casually call these appliances electric frying pans. However, the user manual for every model we tested warned against this, and we don’t recommend it either.

Electric skillets are wide and shallow. If you heat a significant amount of oil in one, the oil can easily spatter and boil over when you add something like battered chicken pieces. In addition, a skillet’s interior finishes may not be formulated to withstand the high heat of deep-frying.

Can You Bake in an Electric Skillet?

There are an abundance of recipes for using an electric skillet to bake a cake. In several trials, all of our cakes came out with wet and gooey underbaked tops and thick crusty bottoms. Therefore, we don’t suggest using these appliances for baking.

How We Test Electric Skillets

In each electric skillet that we test, we heat flour to see the skillet’s cooking pattern. Next, we make hamburgers to see how well the skillet pan-grills them, and then potatoes to check for even cooking and crispy surfaces. Lastly, we cook up chicken cacciatore in each skillet, to evaluate how it browns chicken pieces, sautes onions and mushrooms, and simmers tomato sauce.

As we cook, we note how easy it is to use the controls, the amount of food that each skillet can hold, whether the handles become hot, and how easy it is to serve from each one. Not least importantly, we also consider how much effort is needed to clean each model and how much space it would require in a cabinet or closet.

Things to Consider in an Electric Skillet

Capacity

Just like standard skillets meant to go on the stove, electric skillets come in a variety of sizes, from family-sized options that can cook chicken for a family of six in one batch to more portable versions that are best for single-serving meals. The shape of the pan — including how deep the skillet is and whether it’s rounded or rectangular – will also affect how much you can cook at one time. Look for more depth if you know you work with sauces or recipes with a high volume of ingredients or liquids, and consider a rectangular skillet if you want to maximize the space for cooking things like burgers all at once.

Ease of Cleaning

The good news is that many of the electric skillets we tested are dishwasher safe, even if some caution that cleaning them in the dishwasher may cause discoloration. If being able to throw your skillet in the dishwasher after use is important to you, look for versions with detachable cords or bases — but it’s worth noting that if the manufacturer doesn’t specifically call it out as dishwasher safe it’s safer to stick with handwashing. In that case, or if you prefer to handwash your skillets no matter what, fully submersible skillets are easier to clean more thoroughly.

Nonstick Cooking Surface

Whether you’re using your skillet for eggs, pancakes, steaks or anything else, cooking on a surface that releases food easily makes everything a little easier. While not all electric skillets feature nonstick coatings, many use a PTFE coating (better known by the brand name, Teflon) or a ceramic finish to keep things from sticking as you cook, even if you use less oil.

Read More About Kitchen and Cooking Tools on Reviewed

• The Best Electric Griddles: Making pancakes, eggs, and grilled cheese for a crowd is faster and easier on an electric griddle, and we tested the top brands to pick the griddles with the best performance at the best prices.
• The Best Air Fryer Toaster Ovens: If space is at a premium on your counters, an air fryer toaster oven is the multifunction kitchen workhorse you’ve been looking for, and we tested 10 of the best.
• The Best Cookware Sets: Take it from our years of testing expertise — these cookware sets, including options from GreenPan, Cuisinart, and All-Clad, are the best around.
• The Best Nonstick Pans: Nonstick pans are easy to use and a cinch to clean. Upgrade your kitchen with our picks.