I did the same, and my pot bottom separated badly. I replaced it. This was Cuisinart brand. I love them!
I have never heard of this in my life. I’m assuming the bacon is inedible, having been cooked in a pan full of burnt-on crud?
Depends on the crud. If it’s just a thin hard layer of black stuff the bacon will be fine. If not, make the bacon in another pan and pour the grease in the one that needs cleaning. Whatever you do, please do not waste bacon! 
ETA: Sometimes it takes extra treatment to get rid of the last microscopic spot of crud, so get plenty of bacon and eat it frequently.
So, yeah, most of the stuff (videos, articles) I’ve seen on seasoning stainless steel pans are attempts to get it to be a non-stick surface. But I was under the impression that you want it to stick a little so you can get fond for pan sauces. I’ve also seen videos of someone putting chicken breasts in a cold skillet and then adding heat to help the fat in the skin render down better.
I guess I will just have to experiment with techniques, but again, I am not going to attempt “seasoning” my new skillet.
Thanks.
You’re spot-on correct about building sauce by using the fond. But that happens with tiny bitty browned bits, and where liquid dries away, etc. You don’t really want big honkin’ chunks of food stuck on there.
Chicken thighs in particular benefit from rendering by crisping skin-side down like you saw.
Along the same lines, a stainless pan is ideal for salmon to get a super crisp skin without overlooking the meat.
Here’s a favorite of mine, and it works beautifully in your new pan:
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That’s where enamel coated cast iron dutch ovens come in handy (ie le creuset and the various knock-offs). A little more spendy, but no seasoning and they’re really easy to clean.
Shawn1767, post:9, topic:917938"]
I’ve tried several methods on a cast iron dutch oven I have and, yet, it never seems to come out right.
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People (well, the internet) gets all bent out of shape when I say this, but I just toss them in the dishwasher. I’ve been doing it for 15 years to no ill effect, and they (usually) come out spotless.
Y’all must have larger dishwashers and fewer other dishes than I. I rarely put large things (and never huge things, like a dutch oven) in my dishwasher because I’d rather wash one dutch oven by hand and not have to wash every plate.
My dishwasher isn’t any bigger than a standard one. It’s more a matter of how you get things in there. Besides, I’ve found that if you don’t over fill it, it cleans better anyway.
Congrats on your purchase. We went thru 2 sets of what we thought were OK pans, before tossing them and going 100% All-Clad more than a decade ago. Not a complaint since.
There are other fine brands, but I can’t imagine any legit criticism of All-Clad. Hell, we liked the pans so much, we got the cooking utensils, mixing bowls, measuring cups…
It took me a lot of years to get to where I could afford a set of Le Creuset clad stainless pans. Love them. Even heat, which helps prevent grease spatters from burning onto the sides of the pans. Great for searing meats, scallops, etc. The pans actually have instructions that say “Do not heat the pan without oil”, so that settles that question.
Deconstructing my first use of the pan
Last night, I used my stainless steel pan for the first time and I will tell you about my experience with it and I also hope that you can help me troubleshoot some problems I had.
I prepared to cook two bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts as per the cooking video I watched on YouTube.
According to the video and the directions that came with my pan, I heated the pan first with nothing on it. Then I tested the pan with drops of water until they bounced around due to the Liedenfrost affect. Then I added some olive oil. I waited until the oil began to shimmer and then placed the two chicken breasts skin side down on the pan. I had seasoned them with ground pepper and kosher salt.
I waited a couple of minutes for the breasts to “release” and form a crust, but here’s where things went a bit differently. When I used tongs to move the breasts, there was no resistance. The breasts moved around freely. But there was also no crust or browning. The skin was lightly brown and flabby. I let them sit for a few more minutes. I could also tell that there was nothing on the pan except for oil and rendered-out chicken fat. No brown stuff on the pan. After a few more minutes of trying to form a crust, I decided to proceed with the recipe. I flipped the breasts to the bone side and then placed the entire pan in a pre-heated 400-degree oven.
I waited until the breasts were 160 degrees using a probe thermometer and removed them from the oven and then began to attempt the pan sauce from the video. In the video, there was not much liquid in the pan when he removed the breasts. However, in my pan was a lot of oil and fat swimming around. He did not say to remove this so (I guess because his pan didn’t really have any, his had mostly just the fond and that was it). I went ahead with what was in my pan and added chopped shallots, sherry, chicken stock and chopped sage. I cooked that down until it was very thick but it there was a lot of oil swimming around. I then added some cold butter and lemon juice and whisked in the butter and waited for it to become thick. It never attained the look that it did in the video. Mine came out oily looking and dark brown. His was light brown and creamier in appearance.
However, the chicken came out very tender and moist. It was not tough or chewy at all. So, that part worked pretty well. The sauce, while not attractive to look at, was still pretty tasty. Very lemony and mixed with the shallots and butter tasted very rich. The attempt did not yield much sauce, but I scraped as much as I could from the pan to put on my chicken.
I waited for the pan to cool before washing it. I used regular dishwashing liquid and a soft sponge to clean it. It came out mostly spotless, however, there was a section around the rim where I could feel some sort of barely sticky residue that remained even after I washed it. I plan on getting some the “Barkeeps Friend” or whatever to deal with that.
Overall, I’d rate the success of my first use around 65 percent. The chicken came out the perfect tenderness and the sauce, while not pretty, was still tasty.
These are the issues though: why no crust forming on the skin, why no brown fond on the bottom of the pan, why so much liquid after removing the chicken, why was the sauce so oily.
I think most, if not all, of these issues may have been from adding too much oil to the pan in the first place. I kind of eyeballed it and I think I went a little overboard.
Let me know what y’all think.
Thanks.
Did the chicken sizzle and splatter when you added it? It almost sounds like the oil wasn’t hot enough. So instead of (more or less) pan frying it, you just heated it up.
Did you pat the chicken real dry before seasoning? You may have been boiling surface water instead of maillarding them.
I did wait for the oil to get pretty hot. In fact, I waited for wisps of smoke to emerge before placing the chicken in the pan. They did sizzle and splatter a lot when I first put them down. However, I did NOT pat them dry before seasoning. That was not shown in the video I watched so I didn’t do it. I had seen videos of patting down steaks before searing however, this person did not show himself patting the chicken dry so I did not do it. Maybe that was the reason they didn’t char.
Thanks.
In general, the more dry the surface of the meat, the better it will sear. Any surface moisture has to steam away first.
You can leave skin-on chicken uncovered in the fridge for an hour or so to help dry the skin’s surface even further. (They mention doing this in the salmon recipe I linked earlier, for this reason.)
My best hint about stainless is take the food off the heat earlier rather than later, it keeps cooking quite a while after removal of heat