How do i cook without everything sticking to these damn pans?

+1 on the Barkeeper's Friend. Wife uses it on her remarkable expensive stainless cookware (she calls them "kitchen tools" so I'm not allowed to complain about the cost) and it works gloriously.

JThw8 wrote: Going lower with your heat is exactly what you don't want to do. Pan hot, add oil (I use olive too, no issues), oil hot, add food. Dont add oil to a cold pan then heat it up. Hot pan, then oil, hot oil, then food. Oil should be right near its smoking point. That will keep darn near anything but eggs from sticking.

Spot on. Gotta get the pan good and hot before adding the oil, that's the secret. I love my cast iron and enameled pots and pans, but stainless has been my workhorse for about a decade now.

And yeah, you can do eggs if you're really cool.

Swank Force One wrote:

EvanB wrote: Switch to cast iron?

I'm honestly really bad about cleaning cast iron stuff and we don't have room for another set of pans at the moment. I like the idea of cast iron, but don't have the discipline for it.

What discipline? CI is the ultimate lazy mans cookware. You use it, scrape any stuck on crap loose real quick with the (metal) spatula and leave it a greasy nasty mess till you need it again, at which point you wipe it out with a paper towel, maybe rinse it out real quick and go.

The only thing I don't make in my cast fry pan is most meat(I subscribe to the sear the E36 M3 out of it steak method, that much heat will berkeley the seasoning) which I have a dedicated even more neglected raw cast iron "grill pan" for, and sausage gravy because the moisture tends to lift the seasoning.

I have found that rear types of pans work best with a layer of fat. More-heat the fat, but don't let the fat start to smoke. With butter, put the pat of butter in the pan when they are both cold. Turn the pan into hear. Swirl the butter around as it melts. Once the butter starts to bubble off the water and just starts to turn color, add your meat or vegetables.

Meat: let one side cook completely before flipping; only turn once. As a bonus, after taking the meat out, put a cup of wine in the pan, and allow the alcohol to burn off. Use a whisk to loosen up the bits stuck to the bottom. Voila, pan sauce.

Once you are done cooking, immediately stick the pan in the sink under hot water. The pan should have enough residual heat to loosen up anything that stuck from cooking.

If ECM's suggestion doesn't work, and if you really want to keep these pans, I'd look for an industrial coatings place in the Thomas Register and see if you can get them Teflon or ceramic coated at a reasonable price.

Kenny_McCormic wrote:

Swank Force One wrote:

EvanB wrote: Switch to cast iron?

I'm honestly really bad about cleaning cast iron stuff and we don't have room for another set of pans at the moment. I like the idea of cast iron, but don't have the discipline for it.

What discipline? CI is the ultimate lazy mans cookware. You use it, scrape any stuck on crap loose real quick with the (metal) spatula and leave it a greasy nasty mess till you need it again, at which point you wipe it out with a paper towel, maybe rinse it out real quick and go. The only thing I don't make in my cast fry pan is most meat(I subscribe to the sear the E36 M3 out of it steak method, that much heat will berkeley the seasoning) which I have a dedicated even more neglected raw cast iron "grill pan" for, and sausage gravy because the moisture tends to lift the seasoning.

Exactly. I had some issues with my cast iron until I stopped trying to clean it. Just wipe it out before use and I have no problems with sticking. Eggs just slide right off.

Burnt stainless pan cleaner:

Way to keep it from happening:

Order take out until you get a heavy-bottomed skillet and/or learn to cook

Something I learned for cleaning non coated pans was to fill it up with enough water to cover the stuck on goo and put it back on the burner on high for a few minutes until you start getting a bit of steam, then scrape the crap off with a metal spatula. Make getting the rest of the crap off a breeze

Spoolpigeon wrote: Hey Swank, shouldn't your SWMBO be asking these questions?

She struggles to make a bowl of cold cereal.

Swank Force One wrote:

Spoolpigeon wrote: Hey Swank, shouldn't your SWMBO be asking these questions?

She struggles to make a bowl of cold cereal.

My wife knows how to cook, but I do all of the cooking in my house because of scheduling. I season food better than she does, though.

Make sure the pan is good and hot before adding any food.

Make sure your stainless is good and thick so it heats evenly, a lot of stainless pots are thin junk that won't heat properly.

A trick for getting the burnt stuff off is: Put in enough water to cover all the burnt stuff, bring to a rolling boil, shut off the element and let it cool. This should un-stick most of the burnt stuff.

Did you season the skillet first? What works for us is to put a 1/4" layer of olive oil (canola, whatever you use the most) in the skillet. turn it on to low-med heat and leave it sit until the oil just starts to smoke, pull it off the heat immediately, then let it cool to room temp. wipe it out, wash with mild soap/rinse/dry and it's good to go. When it starts to stick again, repeat the steps.

All this talk of seasoning stainless is intriguing. I never heard of such a thing. Problem is, I run all my stainless pots through the dishwasher, and that is bound to eat the seasoning right off of it. It would seem that we have reached an impasse....

I didn't season it, as this is the first time i've ever heard of such a thing.

Even heat isn't a problem, they're quite thick on the bottom, have a bigass aluminum "slug" inserted in the bottom of them.

1988RedT2 wrote: All this talk of seasoning stainless is intriguing. I never heard of such a thing. Problem is, I run all my stainless pots through the dishwasher, and that is bound to eat the seasoning right off of it. It would seem that we have reached an impasse....

You season black iron. Stainless needs nothing except a little oil... the thin pans are hard to manage heat in if you don't have a great cooktop. I have these industrial fat bottom pans/skillets (like... an inch thick) that I use and once you get used to the slow hysteresis between knob and pan temp it's easy not to burn the E36 M3 out of stuff over a gas flame. I'm not much of a cook but I'm superb at making a perfect omlet. It's all in the pan. I just stand there until it's done.

I just buy non-stick pans from the Family Dollar.

Heat pan, add fat (oil, butter, PAM, lard, whatever), add food. I've done eggs in a SS pan but sprayed the E36 M3 out of it with PAM. After a decade of SS, we've gone back to nonstick pans.

the trick to cooking eggs (at least omlets) is to add water to the eggs and mix. Hot oil and pan and let it cook with a lid on untill done almost all the way through, flip add fillings, flip half on top and shut off heat. I think the water turns to steam and stops any sticking......it usually works for m 90% of the time.

alex wrote:

JThw8 wrote: Going lower with your heat is exactly what you don't want to do. Pan hot, add oil (I use olive too, no issues), oil hot, add food. Dont add oil to a cold pan then heat it up. Hot pan, then oil, hot oil, then food. Oil should be right near its smoking point. That will keep darn near anything but eggs from sticking.

Spot on. Gotta get the pan good and hot before adding the oil, that's the secret. I love my cast iron and enameled pots and pans, but stainless has been my workhorse for about a decade now. And yeah, you can do eggs if you're really cool.

+2. AND LET IT COOK for God's sake. It will go from stick, to cook, to a surface that will come off if you start hot and let it do the job.

I've use the same kind of pans, and don't really have a problem.

When you saute, you do that over high heat, and move it all the time. When you do meat, stick it, leave it. Once it crusts, then move it.

When you want them to stick, the recipe will lead you that way. Like when you are making a soup base with onions, and you want them to carmelize, and leave a crust on the pan that you will later pick up with wine.

Eat out-----

Here is my input....

When you are cooking with stainless, iron, or anything that isn't non-stick, you need fat. Period. Go to a swanky brunch buffet where they make omelets and they use aluminum or stainless pans with a ton of fat.

The good news is that the amount of fat you use in the pan does not necessarily translate to higher fat in the food depending on the temperature you use. With stainless pans, use higher cooking temps. It takes a wee bit of practice to get it just right, but higher temps will get better results. Take some time and learn about Maillard reactions, caramelization, and a lovely french word, "fond". You'll thank me later.

Many of the foods you eat that please your palette involve these reactions and it is very hard to get them in a T-fal, teflon, non-stick, George Foreman way.

I have many non-stick pans and I use them sometimes to make things like omelets or pancakes, but when I truly want to make culinary things that I would serve to my friends I like to use traditional means.

Another tip... protein is sticky. Period. If you put an egg in a pan it will stick. Super high protein and not much fat. Put bacon in a pan and let it cook? Tons of fat, but still very sticky proteins.

The more protein a food has, the more it will stick. The more fat you have between the protein and the pan, the more it will release.