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I bought a new non-stick pan yesterday which is stone/ceramic non stick. I triple checked it before I got it home to see that there are no scratches already from shop etc etc.

After I heated it, and fried some chicken, using plastic equipment to flip and remove food etc etc, then I cleaned it with a sponge (not from the harsh side) and after I dried it I noticed some light scratches on the pan. No deep scratches that you can notice on a quick look but when you examine it under the light they are there, tiny ones.

I noticed that after using it a second time they kinda increased. Remembering.. something similar happened with my Weber Kettle bbq which is ceramic coated. I took really great care of it cleaning it etc etc only then to find these type of scratches when I examined it under light.

Is this something to do with ceramic after heating or am I doing something wrong unknown off?

Seamus Riolo
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    Are you sure that they are scratches? I'm asking because, with a "ceramic" nonstick pan, it can be the case that the *plastic* of your untensils rubs off on the pan and looks like scratches (but actually isn't). – FuzzyChef Dec 10 '18 at 21:44
  • Is there a way to confirm this is the case? I'm not 100% sure as as I said, the they are like light scratches nothing deep or that can be seen with a quick look it needs to be seen under bright light which I'm sure were not there when I bought it :/ – Seamus Riolo Dec 10 '18 at 22:31
  • Try feeling it with your fingers? Does it actually feel like a scratch? I'm going to add this as an answer and you can accept it if it turns out I'm right. – FuzzyChef Dec 13 '18 at 19:40

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There are two different substances that are known as "ceramic nonstick". One is a coating of ceramic material and silicone, offered as an alternative to PFTE (Teflon), and the other is actually a PFTE coating with tiny ceramic "buttons" that protects the PFTE against abrading off when you use metal utensils.

For either coating, one possibility is that you're not actually scratching off the coating. Instead, your plastic utensils are themselves scraping off tiny bits of plastic from their edges on the ceramic material and leaving a "smear" of plastic on the pan. This is similar to scraping the edge of an American dime on granite; it leaves a mark, but that's the metal scraping off on the stone, not the other way around.

The way to verify if that's the case would be both a touch test of the "scratches", and trying some utensils made from other materials (like wood or fiberglass) and see if they also leave marks.

The second possibility is that your plastic utensils in fact have fiberglass, bamboo fibers, or something else extremely hard in them. This could actually scratch the underlying nonstick substance (PFTE or silicone), which is quite soft, especially if the plastic untensils consist of something like fiberglass encased in relatively soft plastic.

FuzzyChef
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My roomate has killed at least 3 ceramic pans with overheating. Ditto with another friend. They start sticking and never stop. In theory I like ceramics, in practice...

rumtscho
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    Can you explain what overheating might have to do with the scratches? I'm not sure I understand the connection. – Erica Dec 11 '18 at 09:58
  • @Erica related: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/37170/36704 – Mołot Dec 11 '18 at 11:49
  • @Mołot I saw that post but it doesn't explain or relate much to mine. 1 person said about cracks due to expansion, I don't have any cracks. Another person he said he had scratches which were removed with the rough side of a sponge, but if they were removed with cleaning and sponge, I highly doubt they were scratches to begen with, which still doesn't explain what they are and how they came there.. – Seamus Riolo Dec 12 '18 at 21:33
  • A network of small cracks can look like scratches, except that it'd be fairly even, not random swaths like if you were really scratching the pan. –  Dec 12 '18 at 22:19