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Comment by killjoywashere | Hacker News Reader

I have a teflon pan with which I can use butter in to make omelettes and I have a stainless pan that I generally use lard (bacon drippings) because the omelette will stick if I use butter. I am obviously vegawarian at best.

What do vegetarians use for omelette in a steel pan?

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It’s perfectly possible to fry eggs in a stainless steel pan with butter, but it requires a bit of technique. Preheat the pan over high heat (assuming a home style gas range) for a least a minute, it should be almost hot enough to brown the butter. Then add a tablespoon (or more) of butter and swirl it around to coat the pan. Gently add the eggs (one is easier than two) and let them sit for 20 seconds. The idea is that with enough hot enough butter the egg protein on the bottom will set before it touches the metal, ie a very shallow deep fry. Done right the egg will be free to slide around the pan.

The next thing to practice is flipping the egg without utensils. Maneuver the egg to the rear of the pan and tug the handle sharply forwards. Practice and confidence help, but the failures are still tasty so long as they land somewhere you don’t mind eating off of.

I suspect most people don’t get the pan hot enough which will let the egg stick. Sometimes you get a fragile egg that breaks up and sticks anyway. Omelettes work the same way except the eggs are mixed up first. The basics of really hot pan and plenty of butter and the flipping technique all apply.

Just for reference vegetarians are generally "allowed" to eat butter, it's vegans who disavow all animal products.

As neither I personally only ever make eggs with bacon, and bacon goes first and renders down providing plenty of oil :)

The eggs are sticking because the pan isn't hot enough before adding the ingredients. You want at least 320F to reach the leidenfrost effect, then add any fat you want, then the eggs (or try with a super hot pan and no fat).

You could also use different omelette methods, like the french omelette, which is basically microscopically scrambled eggs that are stuck together at the end. Most Americans go for the diner omlette, which I find requires a certain "thickness" to manage the flipping with all the extra ingredients. You can also do more crepe-style omelettes a la Julia Child, but I find these to be the most problematic.

Also, I recommend switching from teflon to anodized aluminum. Besides the fact that the former is toxic, the latter is more durable, can be oven safe up to 325F, and I think it heats up quicker and is slightly more non-stick.

Just never put the anodized aluminum in the dishwasher. We were told that about Teflon because it slowly erodes the nonstick coating but it’s a different reason altogether for the anodized aluminum. They’re great at resisting acidic exposure, unlike seasoned cast iron, but they’ll turn horribly textured all over the exterior and permanently discolored if you stick them in the dishwasher just once as they can’t handle the extremely alkali dishwasher soap, especially at high temperatures.

Teflon/PTFE is not toxic. It's even used for surgical implants.

It can emit toxic fumes if you heat it to very high temperatures, but at room temperature and during normal cooking use it is definitely not toxic.

Thanks for the correction! It looks like PFOA, an additive in pans pre-2015, is considered toxic (though apparently "negligible" according to FDA) and is no longer used since 2015.

Obviously the right answer here is to replace both with cast iron.

Cast irons aren't really convenient for everyday use, i can stick my non-stick in the dishwasher. My cast irons i have to water wash it, dry it, then re-coat with oil, then stick it back on the stove to get it polymerize otherwise the oil will go rancid after a while. Who wants to do that everyday for breakfast?

Once a cast iron pan is properly seasoned 'broken in' (this can take some weeks/months of usage) it shouldn't need to be re-seasoned after every use. My years-old skillet gets a scrub with hot water after a normal use; if I've cooked something smelly (e.g. fish) I might use some detergent (and even then it usually doesn't need re-seasoning as long as I haven't soaked it). Only if I've cooked something acidic (tomato sauce) do I need to re-season after cleaning.

I don't fry every day for breakfast, but if I did, cleaning my skillet would take about the same time as it would to stack it into the dishwasher.

> Once a cast iron pan is properly seasoned 'broken in' (this can take some weeks/months of usage)

Only if you don't season it properly initially.

Despite seasoning it properly the first time, I've definitely found it takes on a different quality (more resilient surface) over a longer period of time.

You shouldn't have to do that often. Certainly not every time.

If you're polymerizing it, using a vegetable oil, and wiping it down before storage (so no pooled oil/fat), you shouldn't have to reseason... well, really unless you need to scour the pan.

More frequent, med-high (e.g. standard breakfast) use also helps.

Think "everyday use" over "everyday clean"

Get a $8 chainmail scrubber and use only water to clean with. Cleaning my cast iron takes the same amount of time as my non sticks, with the exception that I take more care to dry it. Definitely an every day staple cooking utensil in our household.

In general, I find non-stick to be more maintenance than cast-iron. If you're using it every day just wipe it out when you're done.

Most non-stick pans discourage using the dish washer--I see mentions of high-heat [1] and aggressive detergents [2] degrading the coating. Limiting yourself to plastic utensils and even with hand-washing you have to replace it ever few years. I tend to only use non-stick for certain egg dishes and fish.

[1] https://blog.williams-sonoma.com/how-to-clean-nonstick-cookw...

[2] https://www.thespruce.com/nonstick-pans-care-1908563

For my beloved carbon steel pan, I just wipe it out with some paper[1]. If there are burnt-on bits, I use a bit of salt and oil, and a sponge, half a potato or a wooden spatula to scrape it off.

Then a quick wash it with hot water, no soap is needed. I've never had to reseason my pan once the initial seasoning (using the oil+salt+potato peel method) was done properly.

[1] And put the paper+grease in a empty milk carton or something, and then in the trash when it has cooled. Never dump grease down the drain!

> Who wants to do that everyday for breakfast?

My go-to breakfast (literally, maybe once or twice a month I'll do something different) is an egg sandwich, with a slice of taylor ham cooked in a small cast iron skillet, then an egg fried in an egg ring in that same skillet (while that's going on, toast an english muffin, then toast the top half again, this time with a chunk of fresh mozzarella on top). Once I assemble the sandwich I give the skillet a quick rinse with a non-abrasive scouring pad, then set it back on the range (which is off, but still hot).

Without exaggeration, I've made this meal several hundred times, and that skillet is far and away the the best of my cast irons when it comes to the quality of the seasoning, with no more care than what I just described.

You really shouldn't have to reseason cast iron after every use (in most use cases, the seasoning should improve with use).

> My cast irons i have to water wash it, dry it, then re-coat with oil, then stick it back on the stove to get it polymerize otherwise the oil will go rancid after a while. Who wants to do that everyday for breakfast?

No one, and absolutely no guide to cast iron care would recommend that process.

You can invent an unnecessarily complicated maintenance routine for any kind of cookware to make it seem impractical.

The pilot episode of The French Chef, Julia Child's show, in 1962 was making an omelette with butter in a steel pan.

But why not use non-stick? After that original 1962 show, she uses a nonstick pan in all the other videos I've seen. I think we have a tendency to assume the hard way produces the best results, but in this case I don't think there's any reason to think so.

Julia Child 1962, steel (PBS paywall): https://www.pbs.org/video/the-french-omlette-llslnf/

Julia Child 1980, nonstick (she specifically says you should use a nonstick pan): https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/13-1980-julia-child-cooks-o...

Jacques Pepin, nonstick (says nonstick is "ideal") : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1XoCQm5JSQz

Avoidance of non-stick is usually more about the health concerns of Teflon.

Yes, we think it's safe as long as you never overheat it and never scratch it and never let it get to old and always ventilate your kitchen and...

Far simpler to just avoid it, and it turns out few things really require non-stick anyway. (eggs are one)

Eggs don't require a nonstick pan. They require a well-seasoned pan and proper heat control over both pan and fat.

A nonstick pan is a shortcut, which can become a crutch that lets you get away with very sloppy technique. And they wear out quickly, losing their nonstick properties.

This is just inventing difficulties. You need better technique splitting wood with a shovel than an axe, better technique writing web services in C than in Go, better technique storing your data in files instead of Postgres. Good nonstick pans last for years of daily use, unless you're in a restaurant kitchen making a hundred omelettes per day. And even restaurants use nonstick pans for some things, though they use them as little as possible because for efficiency they prefer equipment that can take a lot of abuse.

A home cook making a couple of meals per day and not abusing their equipment should never have to buy a second nonstick pan. (Hence the never-ending attempts to persuade you that there's something superior to upgrade to. You're lost to them as a consumer if you realize that what you have will adequately express your cooking skills for the rest of your life.)

Everything useful becomes a crutch, and except as fodder for micro-mastery, there's no reason to do something the hard way for the same results.

I've never had a nonstick pan last more than 2 years at the most. They were the good Tefal pans, and I only ever used wood and plastic utensils in them. Even cleaning them by hand, they would lose their slippery nature and eventually the coating started flaking off.

In contrast, my carbon steel pan was less expensive, has so far held up to over a decade of use and is nonstick enough that any difference is negligible.

The only thing it can't do well is simmering acidic sauces, but for those I've got stainless steel pots and an enameled cast iron pan.

You have two options: get a carbon steel pan, which will give you close to the nonstick ability of Teflon once properly seasoned, and they're typically a better pan than stainless (closer to cast iron).

Another trick for fried eggs is to not flip them, but put a lid on the pan while cooking. The bottom fries properly, while the yolk cooks from the trapped steam.

Do you add the butter right away, or do you wait until the pan is hot?

I tend to get the best results if I let the pan heat up and then add butter. That said, I use “earth balance”, which is really oil and not butter.

I cook eggs almost exclusively on my stainless steel pan.

I know how it sounds coming from a stranger on the internet but you're doing yourself a disservice using seed/vegetable oils instead of butter.

Here[1]'s a visual and accompanying article that explains it in more detail. And here[2]'s a 5 minute video that does it in less.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Repeatedly-heated-cookin...

[2] https://youtu.be/8aXTuBYb5-c

The article you link about repeatedly heated oils, specifically reusing oil when deep frying. That doesn't seem relevant to the use described above.

Whoops. I tried to google something (besides a video) to sum up fats discussed in a book[1] and came to that. Didn't notice it was referring specifically to RCO.

The points from the video[2] (and book) still stand though.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451624425

[2] https://youtu.be/8aXTuBYb5-c

I use butter in my steel pans and it’s possible not to get the eggs to stick.

If I’m feeling lazy, I’ll add sunflower oil to the butter to raise the smoke point

This doesn’t raise the smoke point. The solids in the butter will still burn at the same temperature regardless of what it’s mixed with.

> The solids in the butter will still burn at the same temperature regardless of what it’s mixed with.

The higher the fat to solid ratio, the less of the solids will be exposed to air (down to potentially none at all), and so long as they aren't exposed to the air they won't burn irrespective of the temperature (eventually, you’ll reach the smoke point of the data, and as well as burning themselves, they'll also stop protecting the solids.)

Coating other things to allow them to be heated while preventing surface reactions that would otherwise occur when they are heated is one of the main uses of fat in cooking.

Butter is already about 1%–2% percent milk solids and 80%–82% fat. Adding extra fat to this equation is not going to have much of an additional protective effect.

The other comment is true, but also worth considering is that sunflower oil has a lower smoke point than the fats in butter (230°C vs 250°C) so you'd actually be lowering the smoke point by adding it.

This is only relevant if you're using clarified butter though.

You can season stainless steel pans to a degree by bringing oil up to its smoke point. YouTube has some tutorials.

Have you had good success? To me it’s still a grab bag with this method. So much so that I still keep a non-coated anodized aluminum nonstick pan around just for eggs. Everything else into the stainless or enameled cast iron.

I recently switched fully to a non coated iron pan and can't be happier. The trick for the right oil-coating is to apply oil with low smoking point and then to remove it almost completely with a cloth. When the pan looks dry again, briefly put it on the stove over high heat and after 3 minutes it is perfectly burnt in. Let it cool and repeat 3-5 times.

Pan will end up fully black. I had a previous attempt where I used too much oil (then the coating ends up sticky and it smokes during the heating) the pan must really be dry again. There will still be enough oil in the surface. Used flaxseed oil.

I tried it according to many of the video tutorials and it doesn't really work. It just smelled up my kitchen with oil smoke, and made my pan look amber-ish but not non-stick. Also whatever coating that created, it gets ruined by cooking.

Just use some oil and high heat before putting things in. And use a Teflon pan for more delicate things that don't need to be seared.

The coating needs to be very thin. I think of it more as filling in little scratches and then polymerizing to create a smoother surface. I still use oil/fat when it's time to cook.

I use avocado oil for my omelettes, and everything else for that matter.

Coconut oil

Vegetarians use butter, but if you're smart you use a well seasoned high carbon steel pan, or cast iron.

The best seasoning for a pan is done with flaxseed oil, as far as I understand, as it has a low smoke point so the oil will polymerize and turn into a glassy surface.

The theory is that flaxseed oil (also known as linseed oil) is a polymerizing oil, which is supposed to help with the quality of the surface. Other polymerizing oils (eg Tung oil) aren't food safe.

I notice from the table that unrefined canola has a similar smoke point to unrefined flaxseed oil, so that would make an interesting comparison

Flax seed oil polymerizes to a very slick surface, but it’s relatively brittle, and there are reports of it flaking off of cast iron.

Really the best thing you can do is get a hundred year old skillet, because they literally don’t make ‘em Like they used to.

I keep my eyes open for old pans, but I was busy filling my kitchen with smoke with my modern cheap lodge pan while I wrote the previous comment and it works very well for me.

How could the quality be lower? Isn’t it just a cast piece of iron?

The pores are so much smaller and the skillets weigh noticeably less. I’m not surprised you can’t season a modern cast iron skillet, the surface is so horribly rough nothing can bridge it. I fought for years with seasoning skillets and did the flaxseed and the anodizing baths and everything between then gave up and bought a Griswold dating to just before the turn of the century - never had to do a thing after cleaning and oiling it the first time, it’s probably been five years or more.

I also gave up with my new pan. I took the sander to it and now it's nicely smooth and seasoned :-)

That is part of the reason why I bought a good carbon steel pan instead of a cast iron one.

The way they're produced (stamped from sheet steel rather than cast) ensures they have a perfectly smooth surface, rather than the pitted uneven surface of a modern cast iron pan.

Professional chefs have been using carbon steel pans for decades for a reason. In my view, they have all of the upsides of cast iron, with none of the downsides. And they're surprisingly inexpensive at kitchen supply stores.

> I’m not surprised you can’t season a modern cast iron skillet, the surface is so horribly rough nothing can bridge it.

Many sources recommend sanding before seasoning, and note that manufacturers that preseason don't usually do that.

Outside of some fairly intense misuse, I've honestly never had to do reseason after even boring old canola/soy seasoning without sanding, so I've never bothered.

> gave up bought a Griswold dating to just before the turn of the century

So under 20 years old?

The flaxseed thing comes from a 2010 blog article [1], which purports to be a scientific approach to seasoning pans. As people have found out, it's unfortunately not a good idea.

Aside from the fact that flaxseed is ridiculously expensive compared to the traditional alternatives, it creates a brittle surface and flakes off after a while. It also requires a ridiculous number of coatings to get to the right level of smoothness. It's just not worth it compared to something cheap like canola or soy.

A lot of people have looked into it. Here [2] is a good Reddit post from /r/castiron.

But among all of the technical discussions about seasoning it's easy to forget that a pan generally only needs to be seasoned once, and most pans you can buy are well pre-seasoned, and using the pan for cooking is also a form of seasoning.

[1] http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-te...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5owtnm/why_i_dont...

In my experience, you’ll eventually cook something in the cast iron that sticks really hard, and the only easy ways to get the burnt-on gunk out end up stripping the seasoning, so re-seasoning ends up being a roughly semiannual process in my house. Would love to know how to avoid this.

Scrub out any gunk with salt and oil and either a sponge or half a potato, depending on what you have. Then rinse with super hot water and dry well.

It has worked amazingly well for years for my carbon steel pan.

I usually heat up the pan directly after cooking and wash it under the hot water. Just heat enough so it makes a bit of steam when it hits the water, scrub with a wooden spatula.

Or while cooking, add water if it fits whatever you cook. Make a sauce out of what is left after the sunday steak is out of the pan.

Boiling water in the pan helps sometimes. Scrape a bit with a wooden spoon while it boils.

The best seasoning method I've found for cast iron and carbon steel is the method advised by Matfer-Bourgeat, which is the brand of my favorite carbon steel pan.

Clean the pan well, to get rid of the shipping wax if it's a new pan, or scrub it well with salt as an abrasive if it has substandard seasoning already.

Then saute the peels of two potatoes in a a generous (at least ½ cup each) amount of salt and oil, while moving the mixture around and using the peels to really rub the oil and salt on the metal, for around 15 minutes until completely crisp and dark. Clean out the pan and repeat the sauteeing steps, clean out the pan again with just hot water and dry it well.

No other method has come even close, and it just gets better with more use. My fried eggs just slip and slide around like a hockey puck. If gunk does get burned on, scrub it out with salt and a bit of oil, there's no need to soak or use soap.

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