Never Do This When You Wash Your Pots and Pans (and How to Avoid Warping Them)

Almost anyone I talk to says that washing dishes—especially the pots and pans—is their least favorite part of cleaning up after meals. Often it feels like it takes as long as the cooking itself. 

So naturally you want to get it over with, hustling dirties over to the sink. However, being in too much of a rush can lead to your pots and pans getting ruined forever. I know, it’s happened to me! But how? And what can you do to avoid it?

The One Thing You Should Never Do When Washing Cookware

No matter how much of a hurry you’re in to get the heck out of the kitchen, never submerge hot cookware in water. You might finish up faster, but it can make a permanent mess of your pots and pans.

Back when I worked in restaurants, the line cooks would stack up dirtied skillets as they finished orders, and the dishwashers would ferry them back to the dish tank. If we were in dire need of skillets, sometimes hot pans got plunged right into the big, soapy basin, where they’d hiss testily as they suddenly cooled.

This habit is why, in lots of foodservice kitchens, many of the skillets and stockpots are misshapen. Taking a hot pot or pan and thrusting it into a sink full of water can cause it to warp, never to sit flush on the burner again. And sheet pans? Don’t even get me started.

Your kitchen is not a bustling restaurant, but perhaps cookware straight from the stove or oven goes right into a wet sink. Why, exactly, is this a no-no? Thermal shock.

Abrupt temperature changes can cause cookware materials to contract or expand. For metal cookware, such as aluminum or stainless steel, the result is warping—the bumpy, buckled look. Warped pots and skillets never sit flat on burners, making them unstable and prone to wobbling. The wavy bottoms can lead to hot spots and oil or butter pooling in one part of the pan, which results in uneven cooking. My favorite cast iron skillet is warped from thermal shock and now it’s only good for baking instead of stovetop cooking.

For roasting pans and metal bakeware, thermal shock can render pans rickety and awkward to get in and out of the oven, plus make breads and cakes trickier to unmold. Appearance-wise, it’s unpleasant to have your nice cookware look like someone went after it with a sledgehammer.

As a young and naive cook, I damaged a fabulous set of AirBake insulated cookie sheets by running water over them just after I ferried the cookies to a cooling rack. They’ve been gently curved ever since, and while I still use them, larger cookies tend to slide to the center as they bake.

Thin, inexpensive metal pans are more vulnerable to thermal shock, but even costly clad cookware is defenseless. I’ve seen the cladding buckle up in skillets that got thrust into a full sink.

Metal is flexible, so worst case scenario, it’ll look beat-up if it suffers thermal shock but still be mostly usable. Ceramic and glass cookware, meanwhile, is brittle; thermal shock can trigger cracks or even minor explosions.

How To Prevent Thermal Shock

It’s simple to keep this problem from ever happening. Let your ripping hot cookware cool down to warm before you put it in a sink full of water or slide it under a running faucet. 

Letting cooked-on food soak for a bit is always a good idea; time often loosens food debris and makes for easy washing up. Just be mindful and avoid filling your pots and pans with soaking water until they’re warm, not hot.

And if you have multiple cooks in your household, warn them about thermal shock. That way they won’t spoil your beloved pans the way I did when I was young!