Best Popover Pans of 2026

One of the least expensive six-cup pans here is also one of the most capable. Chicago Metallic uses aluminized steel, a steel core under an aluminum skin, with six deep tapered wells set apart so air circulates between them. It is rated to 450 °F, the blast of heat a popover needs at the start, and it carries a 25-year warranty.

The finish is the trade-off, and it is the part to think about before you buy. Release is good, and a tip of the pan drops the popovers out, but the coating is what ages here, with flaking and peeling turning up over years of heavy use. We treat the nonstick as the wear item: hand wash, no metal utensils, no scouring pad. At this price, replacing the pan a decade from now is a reasonable deal.

Cups measure 2.75 inches across and 2.25 inches deep, a little narrower than the Epica's, and that narrower well pushes the batter into a taller, more tapered shape, closer to the classic tea-room popover. If how the thing looks on the plate matters to you, that is not a small point in its favor.

Grand is the right word for it. The Nordic Ware's wells are oversized and cast aluminum sits underneath, so the popovers come out closer to small towers than to muffins, with dark crusty sides and a deep hollow middle. Of the pans we baked with, this one gave the most dramatic rise, and it is the one we reach for when the popovers are the point of the meal.

Cast aluminum does the work. It spreads heat more evenly than the steel pans here and does not lose temperature the moment the oven door opens, which is precisely when a popover decides whether to keep climbing. The cost of that is a lower ceiling: Nordic Ware rates this pan to 400 °F, so a recipe that starts at 450 °F needs its first stage adjusted or a longer preheat at the lower setting.

The nonstick is good rather than exceptional. Grease the wells properly, as you should with any of these, and the popovers drop out with a shake. It also sits in the top price tier here, which is the honest reason to pause: you are paying for size and heat, not for convenience.

Shellwei sells these as a pair, and that is the whole idea: twelve cups across two pans, so a dozen popovers go in at once, or two batches side by side, plain in one and Gruyère and black pepper in the other. For a household that empties a six-cup pan before the butter reaches the table, it is the practical answer.

Each pan measures 15.9 by 9.1 by 2.36 inches, so two sit side by side on a standard rack without touching. The wells are separated the way the better pans here separate theirs, so hot air moves between them and the sides of each popover crisp while the middle stays airy. The carbon steel carries a silicone-based nonstick coating, the pans are dishwasher safe, and they stack for storage.

Refinement is the part you do not get. The wells are standard size rather than grand, and there is no published warranty or cup dimension to weigh against the leaders, so you are buying capacity rather than precision. Two pans also take twice the cabinet space. What balances that is the math: a dozen popovers for the price of one premium pan, which is the better use of the money if your oven runs two racks anyway.

A limited lifetime warranty is unusual on a pan in this price bracket, and it is the first thing we point to on the Cuisinart. The second is the care label: Cuisinart does not hedge about the dishwasher the way most nonstick bakeware does, and after a holiday season of batches that stops being a footnote.

In the oven it does the job without drama. Tapered wells let air move, heavy-gauge steel browns evenly across all six cups, and the nonstick interior lets the popovers slide out with a shake. What we appreciate most is how little fuss surrounds the pan: no hand-wash ritual, no special treatment beyond the greasing every popover pan wants, and a warranty that covers it for as long as you own it.

It is not the pan for someone chasing the biggest possible popover. The wells are standard size, and the drama of the Nordic Ware's oversize cups is not on the menu here. What it is, is the pan you can hand to a beginner without a lecture, at a price that leaves room for a second one.

The only pan here made in the United States, the USA Pan comes out of Pittsburgh with a commercial-grade aluminized steel body and a fluted surface rolled into the frame for stiffness. Pick it up and there is no flex at the corners. The wells sit deep in a frame that does not rattle when you slide it onto a rack.

The fluting is not decoration. Corrugation stiffens the steel so the pan can stay relatively light without warping at 450 °F, and the wells are formed to promote the air circulation a popover needs to climb. Our batch rose high and released cleanly, which is the maker's claim about not needing grease, and it held for us on a first bake.

Cleaning is the small tax. Hand washing is required, and the fluted underside gives grease somewhere to sit, so it takes a brush and a minute rather than a rinse. That is the difference between this pan and the smooth ones here, and it is a real one if you bake often.

The case for it is what happens in year five rather than year one. Nothing about the build suggests an early retirement: the frame is rigid, the coating is evenly applied, and the wells are formed rather than stamped thin. Pick it up by one corner and the opposite corner comes with it, with no twist.

Fox Run suspends its six wells in a wire frame, which sounds like a gimmick until you see what it does: air reaches the sides of every cup, not just the top, and the popovers come out with crisp walls instead of a pale band where the batter met metal. That is the detail that kept this pan in the roundup after the first bake.

The wells are steep, which pushes the rise upward rather than outward, and the pan is rated to 446 °F. Carbon steel holds heat well and the pan has real heft at 1.8 pounds, so it sits still on the rack instead of skating when you reach in with a mitt.

It is dishwasher safe on the top rack, though hand washing keeps the coating happier, and the frame leaves gaps that collect batter on the way to the sink. A small annoyance you meet every time, and the only one this pan hands you. The popovers themselves come out classic: crisp-sided, golden, and light.

Six loose molds are not a popover pan in the usual sense. There is no frame, no handle, and nothing keeping the cups upright except the baking sheet you set them on, so you arrange them deliberately, slide the sheet in level, and accept that a mold knocked sideways bakes a lopsided popover.

The molds themselves are hard-anodized aluminum, 3.34 inches across the top and 2 inches deep, rated to 446 °F and hand wash only. They are explicitly not nonstick, and the maker describes the coating as easy-release rather than nonstick, so greasing each cup generously is not optional. Anodized aluminum browns beautifully, and each mold doubles as a single-serve pan for a baked egg, a molten cake, or one very large muffin.

For popovers specifically, this is the fussiest route to a decent result, because release depends entirely on how well you greased and loose molds give you no help with that. What they give you is flexibility: two popovers for a weeknight, six for company, and no dedicated pan taking up a shelf.