Spatula vs. Turner: How to Use Both Tools in the Kitchen

A spatula is a kitchen utensil you can use to mix, scrape, flip, or spread ingredients. The word “spatula” comes from the Greek “spathe.” While this means “blade” in English, spatulas can be decidedly less metallic and intimidating than the original name would suggest. Many people use rubber or wooden spatulas in their mixing bowls.

A turner (or flipper) is a cooking utensil expressly for flipping food items. You might or might not consider turners to be true spatulas, as stores often label them as spatula turners and people who don’t realize there’s a difference will even call a turner a spatula. A turner is a type of spatula designed for one purpose—to turn food over—while the word spatula can refer to kitchen tools that chefs and home cooks use for other purposes as well.

“Spatula” and “turner” are interchangeable nouns for many people, but there are a decent number of technical differences between the two. Consider these four core distinctions:

1. 1. Heat resistance: Both spatulas and turners can have high heat resistance, but the latter is much more likely to be explicitly designed for it. A rubber spatula might do fine in a hot pan, but a metallic turner’s primary purpose is to flip food items over high heat sources. Spatulas are for baking, cooking, and preparation, while turners are more suited specifically to cooking.
2. 2. Material: Rubber or silicone spatulas are common, whereas stainless steel and metal, in general, are more typical for turners. Turners benefit from the higher heat resistance in steel and other types of metal. Still, you can easily find a silicone turner or metal spatula due to how often people use these implements interchangeably.
3. 3. Surface: Spatulas come with many different types of sturdy surfaces, reflective of how many different purposes they serve. They might have a higher notch in the middle where the handle attaches, or they could be completely flat. On the other hand, turners almost always have a flat surface since this kind of surface most easily accommodates their core purpose: getting under something and flipping it over.
4. 4. Use: There’s some overlap between spatulas and turners when it comes to usage. Since turners are types of spatulas, you can also use them to stir mixtures, scrape remnants off of nonstick pans, and so on. But they’re still specifically designed to flip things, like omelets or crepes, on a griddle rather than to stir up their mixtures beforehand. Similarly, spatulas can help you flip foods, but—depending on their design—they might be better suited to sautéing or spreading delicate foods than turning them over.

In the kitchen, the best spatula or turner you can equip yourself with will be the one most suited to a given step in a recipe. Consider these four kinds of spatulas and turners to see what might best suit specific types of meals:

1. 1. Fish spatula: A fish spatula gets its name from how well its slotted, flexible blade cradles a fish fillet (or fish slice)—but it works for other purposes as well. It can just as easily become a fish turner if you need to sear both sides of a fish fillet.
2. 2. Icing spatula: Icing spatulas are metallic or rubber scrapers and spreaders for distributing icing or frosting on pastries. Other names for an icing spatula include palette knife or offset spatula.
3. 3. Slotted turner: A slotted turner—or slotted spatula, depending on how versatile you plan to make use of it—is a flexible turner with long slots running from top to bottom on the rubber or blade. This allows juices and other ingredients to seep out from under patties and other types of food once you pick them up.
4. 4. Solid turner: Solid turners often come with long handles to ease flipping foods over a heat source while you’re standing at a distance. Since they come without slots, they serve as excellent pancake turners—everything they lift should stay firmly on top of the turner itself.

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