This is what I have, and there is a sweet-spot temperature. For most things, olive oil or butter solves the sticking trouble. There are a few things that I haven’t been able to get to work though…especially hashed/shredded potatoes–they turn into epoxy on the pan surface.
Pores in formed stainless steel? Uh-uh. In cast iron, yes, but not steel.
The big upside to stainless steel is its durability; that is why (despite all of the copper-clad pots hanging that you see in Food+Wine adverts, or the fancy, bi-metal, enamel-coated pans for sale as the Sur La Table, if you walk into any commercial kitchen you’ll see stainless cookware all around. You can scrape at it with a steel spatula or a knife, you don’t have to worry about non-stick coating scraping off, you can throw it in the oven, and they survive a hell of a lot more high temp commerical dishwasher cycles than aluminum. Plus (I suspect) they just throw better, which is always a fun hobby for line cooks. “Hey, Pedro! Duck!” (Yeah, line cooks are mostly coked-up assholes…what are you going to do?)
But what goes well in a commerical kitchen, where the burners are all left on at a constant temp, the cooks are used to cooking on steel, and nobody is adverse to throwing an extra couple of squirts or a tablespoon of butter in the pan to prevent sticking. (Low-fat cooking in a restaurant? Hah!) Also, stainless will heat much less evenly than aluminum or even cast iron, especially thin stainless. This contributes to sticking, especially with something like omlettes that you can’t keep moving.
At home, a good, hard-anodized, non-stick pan like Caphalon is much easier for the typical cook. I’m not talking about their stainless stuff, of course, although they do make an excellent heavy-bottomed skillet for sauteeing. And dear Martha doesn’t know Dick Cavett about cooking or cookware. Go buy yourself a good non-stick pan for the low-oil cooking and save the steel for sauteeing or simmering.
Stranger
No kidding? Well, damn that bastard of a cooking school teacher for making me look stupid…
The pans do make wonderful pet dishes when you get sick of scraping. There heavey duty and don’t bend under the roughest dog play. They last years outdoors for water or food dishes, and the 2 Quart pans are good for cracking nuts on the sidewalk.
Once stuff DOES get stuck, if you have a hard time getting it off, here’s the trick that has worked for me every time: pour baking soda all over the burnt on food. Let it “rest” for at least 15-20 minutes (I usually let it sit longer). Then, add water and start scrubbing. I don’t know why it works, but I keep the giant sized box of Arm and Hammer in the cabinet right near the stove. Hubby is a big fan of pan-fried stuff.
good luck!
I second the Bar Keeper’s Friend suggestion. In fact, All Clad recommends it for use on their pans.
I always soak eggs in cold water. Something about the proteins makes eggs cling like limpets if soaked/washed in hot water. If anything didn’t respond to that, my mom would delegate the cleaning to us fonts of elbow grease. Best cleansers on the market, kids are.
All these posts just make me happy that I gave up on all the stainless and non-stick and enamel years ago, and use almost nothing but cast iron.
This thread really demonstrates the idea of everyone’s mileage varying. I swear by good quality non-stick pans (this is one of those things where you really do get what you pay for) - I’ve tried cast iron, and aside from not having the upper body strength to actually lift the stinking pan, I didn’t like the way it cooked at all. I haven’t tried stainless steel recently, but I do remember my mom’s stainless steel pans from childhood, and what a pain in the ass they were to clean (your mom and mine both, Ashes).
If I had kids or someone in the house who was hard on frying pans, I might not love non-stick so much, but my husband and I are both very careful with them, and they last us a looooong time.
As a small aside, I recently bought a huge, deep frying pan, and a tiny little one (fits about two eggs). I wish I had done this years ago - anybody who hasn’t done this yet, RUN out and get them.
Amen! Nothing but cast iron frying pans/skillets in the household! One of my skillets is probably close to 50 years old, maybe older. It was my grandma’s. It’s my favorite pan. Never sticks.
Place burner on high.
Put pan on burner.
Turn vent on.
Come back in five minutes. Dump the ashes into the sink, and the pan will be clean.
I have an assortment of cast iron pans in various sizes that I adore. They’re not right for EVERYTHING, and I do have a similar assortment of non-stick pans (that I hardly ever use) and an electric griddle (which I used to make pancakes today), but NOTHIN’ beats cast iron in my book for general purpose cookery. My mom has a cast iron skillet that she got from her mom, and if I ever get that the electric griddle is going right out the door… I remember being Very Short and watching her make me pancakes on it…
I wouldn’t mind a few reasonably-sized well-made stainless pans for the aforementioned pan sauces though… Kinda hard to get the fond off cast iron, and deglazing I think is right out…
Heh heh. All you kids understand this is a joke, right? This is a very bad idea and has the potential to involve a charred black hole where your house used to be. So only do this if you’re at Scylla’s house, K kids?
As Zsofia said, don’t try to fry an egg in stainless steel. Stainless is great for sauteing onions and other veggies. It does a good job with meats and such where you want crunchy bits sticking to the pan (called fond) to make a pan sauce with. It is deliberately not a non-stick surface, because that makes it harder to create fond.
Every kitchen needs at least one non-stick pan to do eggs and pancakes with. Stainless makes for a good durable pan that can do a lot, but it can’t do it all. Cast iron comes closest to doing it all, but you have tradeoffs there too.
Yep. As mentioned here, I have a small, cheap, teflon omelette pan, used exclusively for eggs, omelettes and pancakes; everything else is stainless steel(for boiling/simmering/stewing) and seasoned cast iron(for frying breaded items, sausages and steaks/chops, or when I intend to deglaze the pan for gravy/sauce).
So a stainless steel frying pan is great for frying items that you intend to incorporate into a sauce or gravy. Not much use for anything else.
You can also season the pan, but that only helps a bit. Two ways to season, with oven or just on the grill.
Oven: Heat the oven up to 500F+. Coat inside of pan with cheap cooking oil (do not use olive oil) and stick in the oven. Open windows and turn on vent. Wait until the smoke clears, then turn off the oven. Let the pan cool down inside.
Burner: Turn to highest setting. Coat pan with cheap cooking oil (do not use olive oil). Leave on the burner. Open windows and turn on vent. Wait until the smoke clears.
What you will be left with is a black coating on the inside that pretty much resembles plastic. You might have to season it twice to get an even coating. The bottom will be darker than the sides (sometimes the sides don’t turn black at all). Don’t scrub or use a brillo pad when cleaning. Just get the big stuff off.
Seasoning will help, but it won’t be perfect.
I sold my stainless to my friend who owns a restaurant. I buy teflon pans every year or two and just live with replacing them when they get scratched. They work great, no problems, and plastic spatula’s and spoons are almost as good as metal ones these days.
-Tcat
I keep all three types of fry pans: stainless, cast iron and non-stick. Eggs, pancakes and some other high stick items cook in the non-stick. However, I feel that the non-stick inadequately browns meats, and is not good for gravy. Out come either the stainless or non-stick. Stainless is non-reactive, so tomatoes and citric foods can cook in there. I use the “hot pan, cold oil” method and a few other tricks. Stainless can also go under the broiler (I make sure I have metal handles) for fritattas and other dishes that I like to finish there. Lastly for stainless, I can cook items like clams and mussels in it, which would tear up my nonstick. When I want a super sear, and I’m not using reactive ingredients, out comes the cast iron, or that the handle gets as hot as the shuttle on reentry. Nothing indoors beats cast iron for steaks, fried chicken, tuna and a host of other dishes.
It’s all a matter of the right tool for the right job.
He said 5 minutes, not 5 hours. If your pan catches fire after 5 minutes, then you have a real problem. I do something very similar. I get the pan smoking hot, then I deglaze it with water and scrape the bottom with a wooden spatula. Usually works very well.
I like to take a piece of leather, stretch it tight across the top of the pan, and lace it tight. Add some feathers and beadwork and voila! you have a festive native-american holiday drum. Use it to call the guests to the table when you serve your holiday feasts. Just like mom used to make.
My most prized possession is a cast iron pan that belonged to my great-great-great grandmother. It dates to before 1850, and I use it all the time. It’s so perfectly seasoned that I actually think that food hovers a few nanometers above its surface. No stickage ever.