Checkered Chef Cooling Rack vs GoodCook Nonstick Racks

I have baked for my family and the parish bake sale for about thirty years, so I have cooled a lot of cookies in my time. When I needed a new cooling rack, I went back and forth between the Checkered Chef Cooling Rack and the GoodCook Nonstick Racks. The short answer is that I kept the Checkered Chef on my counter and I would buy it again. But the GoodCook does one job better, and for some bakers that one job is the whole ballgame. I will tell you exactly which job, and exactly who should buy which.

Both racks will cool a batch of cookies, and both are priced about the same. The difference shows up after months of heavy use, and in how much fussing you want to do at cleanup time. I bought both, used both for a full month of weekend baking, and kept notes the way I used to keep the cafeteria menu. Here is what I learned, tested in my small kitchen with one electric oven that runs a little hot.

How I Tested Both Racks

I tested them the way I actually bake, not the way a lab would. The first Saturday in October I baked a double batch of chocolate chip cookies, 48 in all, and cooled them in batches of twelve on each rack, switching the racks between batches so neither one got the easy cookies. I put a small piece of masking tape on the underside of each rack so I could tell them apart, and I wrote down what I saw in a spiral notebook I keep in the kitchen drawer. Over the month I also made a sheet cake for Sunday dinner, a batch of glazed cinnamon rolls, and a pumpkin pie for the Thanksgiving practice run. I roasted a chicken on the Checkered Chef rack, because the listing says it is for cooking and baking, and I wanted to see if it could hold up to a hot oven without bowing.

Both racks went into my oven at 350 and 375 degrees, and because my oven runs hot, I used my oven thermometer to keep things honest. I cooled cookies on both racks, slid them onto plates, and washed both by hand and in the dishwasher. I did not treat them gently, because I do not treat my bakeware gently in November and December.

I also paid attention to the small things. Which rack wobbled on the counter. Which one let small cookies fall through. Which one needed soaking after a glazed batch. Those small things are what decide whether a rack gets used or shoved to the back of a cabinet.

	Checkered Chef Cooling Rack	GoodCook Nonstick Racks
Material	Heavy-gauge stainless steel, no coating to chip or flake	Coated steel, the nonstick finish does the work
Sticky release	Good release, but glazes and drips can cling to the wires	Glazed rolls and sugar cookies come off without a fight
Cleaning	Dishwasher safe, nothing to protect	Hand wash to keep the coating intact
Durability	Resists rust and corrosion, built for years of heavy use	Coating can scratch and wear with time
Price	Costs a little more up front, meant to last	The budget-friendly pick
Best for	Bakers who want one rack for cookies, cakes, and roasting	Bakers who mostly bake sticky, glazed things

If you look at the chart, you will see I gave the GoodCook the win on sticky release and on price. That is not me being polite. Those are the two real reasons someone should pick it. Everything else, the stainless steel wins on the things that matter over time: no coating to fail, dishwasher safe, and one rack that does more than one job.

Where Checkered Chef Wins

The Checkered Chef rack is stainless steel, and that is the whole story. It has no coating to scratch, chip, or wear off, so I do not have to think about it. The wire pattern is tight, so small cookies and biscotti do not fall through, and the rack did not bow or wobble under a heavy sheet cake. After a month of use, including more than one trip through the dishwasher, it looked exactly the way it did on day one. That is not a small thing. I have thrown away more coated bakeware than I care to count because the finish gave out before the pan did.

It also does double duty, which matters in a small kitchen. Because it is plain stainless steel, I can use it to cool a pie and then roast a chicken without worrying about the finish. The quarter rack measures 8 by 11 3/4 inches and fits my toaster oven, and the jelly roll rack measures 10 by 15 and sits right on top of my sheet pan, so I can match the rack to the pan instead of making do. One Sunday in October I used the jelly roll rack three times in the same day: a sheet cake came off it at noon, a pumpkin pie at three, and a pan of brownies at six. I never gave the surface a second thought, and that is exactly the point. The box comes with two racks, so I keep one in the cabinet for the big November run. For me, that is the real argument. One rack that handles cookies, cakes, and a roast saves me from owning three different things, and I do not have the cabinet space for three different things.

Where GoodCook Wins

The GoodCook rack has a nonstick coating, and that coating is genuinely easier for sticky things. When I glazed cinnamon rolls and let the glaze drip and set, the GoodCook released them without a fight. I made that batch on the second Sunday of October, let the glaze set for a full hour, and every one of the twelve rolls lifted off with nothing but my fingers. The Checkered Chef needed a little coaxing with a spatula, and the worst drips left a sticky map of the wire pattern behind, so I spent ten minutes at the sink with hot water and a scrub brush. That is the difference the coating makes, and it matters. If you bake a lot of glazed donuts, lemon bars, or delicate sugar cookies, the GoodCook will save you time and frustration. That is a real advantage, and I do not want to wave it away.

The GoodCook is also the budget pick, and it is lighter, so it is easier to lift one-handed. If you bake a few times a year and you want a rack that releases cookies cleanly without costing much, it is a perfectly good rack. You just have to hand wash it and treat the coating with respect. The coating is the whole point, so you cannot let it get scratched by metal utensils, and you should not put it in the dishwasher. That is the trade, and it is a fair one if you know it going in.

How They Handle a Hot Oven

My oven runs a little hot, so I keep an oven thermometer inside and I am used to pulling things out a few minutes early. Both racks handled the heat fine. Neither one warped, and neither one smelled like hot metal. The Checkered Chef came out of a 400 degree roast looking the same as it went in. The GoodCook also held up, but I kept checking on it, because coated pans make me nervous in a hot oven.

The real difference showed up when I used the racks for roasting. I roasted a four-pound chicken on a Sunday night in late October at 400 degrees, and the Checkered Chef sat flat under it the whole time. The drippings fell through the wires to the sheet pan below, so the bottom of the bird was not sitting in its own fat. I let the rack cool, wiped it with a damp cloth, and put it back in the cabinet without a second thought. I would not roast on the GoodCook, because the coating is not made for that kind of heat, and I did not want to ruin the one thing it does well. So the hot oven test came down to this. The stainless steel rack did everything I asked, and the coated rack did the one job I gave it and then went back to the cabinet.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Checkered Chef if you bake most weekends, if you want one rack that can cool cookies in August and hold a roast chicken in December, and if you are tired of coatings that flake. Buy the GoodCook if you mostly bake sticky, glazed things, if you want the lower price, and if you are willing to hand wash a rack to protect its coating. Neither answer is wrong. They are just different jobs, and knowing which job you are hiring for is half the battle.

For me, the stainless steel won. I bake too much and I am too hard on my equipment to worry about a coating. But I will say this. If my mother were still baking her lemon bars, I would buy her the GoodCook, because she baked once a month and she hated scraping glaze off wires. The right rack depends on how often you bake and what you bake, not on which one looks better in a catalog.

A Few Things Nobody Tells You

Nobody tells you that a cooling rack takes up more room than you expect. The Checkered Chef jelly roll size is 10 by 15 inches, and it does not disappear when you are done. I keep mine leaning against the backsplash behind my toaster oven, and it is always a little in the way. The GoodCook is lighter and slipped into a drawer, but I did not trust it in the drawer because I did not want the coating scratched.

Nobody tells you that cookies cool faster on a rack with more airflow, and both of these let air move. The difference between them is not speed. It is cleanup and longevity. And nobody tells you that a rack you are afraid to scratch is a rack you will not use. That was the deciding factor for me.

Nobody tells you that you will probably end up owning more than one rack anyway. I use the quarter size for toaster oven cookies and the jelly roll size for sheet cakes, and I still borrow a second rack when I do a big bake sale run. If you are just starting out, buy the size that fits your sheet pan first. You can add the smaller one later.

After a month of heavy use and more than one trip through the dishwasher, the stainless steel rack looked exactly the way it did on day one.

The Bottom Line

If you are standing in the aisle trying to decide, here is the simplest way to think about it. The GoodCook is a rack with a coating that makes sticky things release easily. The Checkered Chef is a rack with no coating at all, which means nothing to scratch, nothing to flake, and nothing to hand wash around. I roasted a chicken on mine, cooled a sheet cake on it, and ran it through the dishwasher, and it did not bend, rust, or complain.

I have been baking long enough to know that the tool you reach for is the one that works without thinking. For me, that is the stainless steel rack. It does not need kid gloves, it does not need a special sponge, and it does not need me to remember which side is up. If that sounds like the kind of rack you want, the Checkered Chef is the one I would buy again. If you mostly bake glazed things and you want the easy release, the GoodCook will do right by you.

What I Would Tell a Friend

If a friend asked me which rack to buy, I would ask her one question first. How often do you bake? If the answer is every weekend, buy the stainless steel. If the answer is a few times a year, buy the cheaper coated rack and enjoy the easy release. Most of the arguments about bakeware come down to that one question, and most of us already know the answer before we ask.