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> Eggs overeasy without breaking the yolk is really hard though.

This is strange to hear from a professional chef. I cook eggs overeasy on my cast iron all the time. What works for me is preheating the pan on moderate heat for a minute or two, putting in a bit of butter, and using a metal spatula. Haven't had a broken egg in forever.

I've certainly found you need less oil to prevent sticking on a well-seasoned cast iron compared to others. It really is a semi-nonstick layer. I've made eggs on mine with no butter just to test it out and with the right heat they didn't stick.

But I guess if you have other tools that are easier for the same result, there's not much reason to learn the harder one. Personally I like having a small collection of cast iron I can do anything with, one part saving space and one part just having a thing for cast iron.

> cook eggs overeasy on my cast iron all the time

Cast iron is great in a professional kitchen. It wears well. And it benefits from frequent use. Most home cooks won't use their cast iron cookware daily, let alone multiple times a day. That affects the seasoning.

This is FUD. Cast iron seasoning has been mythologized, it's not that hard to maintain good seasoning. Even if you wash with some soap.

To be fair, the vast majority of people I've lived with or know-well-enough-to-know-this-about-them (we need a word for this concept in English) can't be arsed to clean their pans immediately. Especially those who rely on a dishwasher.

Cast iron isn't compatible with that approach.

You have to be the type of person who can appreciate and capitalize on the fact that cleaning off eggs immediately after cooking takes 1 second while chiseling them off tomorrow can take 5 minutes.

Yeah, I don't consider a meal done being prepared until the counters are wiped down, everything is put away, pans are cleaned, and it's plated for everyone.

Part of why I do this is because I have 3 kids. They are off playing while I cook, and I take the extra few minutes to get the kitchen in a decent state before calling them to the table. Otherwise I'm never gonna get it done because once they have my attention it's difficult for them to let go of it.

I use my main pan daily, but I've also never had an issue pulling out my other pan after it's sat for a month or two and just using it. A really good seasoning helps with long term storage too.

I wonder if the source of eggs you are both using might factor into it? Size, age, fridge/not, free range and what the hen was fed.

I overlooked I've pretty much only been eating duck eggs for a long time. Maybe I'll try it again with chicken just to see how it goes.

the key is warm it up over medium low heat for me on cast iron for at last two minutes (I use the water test usually) then put in some butter/oil and do your thing. has to be hot, but not too hot. has to be well seasoned of course.

i guess it matters how much oil and butter you're adding.

I add heaps of oil, and never have trouble cleaning my stainless steel pans.

But the whole “clean eating” thing seems to vilify any kind of cooking fat, and guests often give me the “guess we’re not on a diet today”. But from what I recall, cooking oil is not the thing driving the obesity pandemic, and the innocent muffin they had at work would easily be several multiples of the cooking oil, calorie-wise.

people are eating too much, plus sugar is really bad for humans and that's what is everywhere. Most of the danger of fats is gone with the vast reduction in amount of hydrogenated fats out there. Sugar is still king though.

With a well-seasoned pan it mostly comes down to temperature control

You can get a nice carbon steel or cast iron pan nonstick enough to do things like classical omelets through seasoning alone. (Though the shape of cast iron generally makes it impractical in that particular example.) All the French old timers did. But they need to only be used for that and most home cooks aren't willing to have a pan they only use for one thing. Also, most home cooks-- even the ones that really think they do-- just don't have the kind of pan/utensil handling and heat management experience to make that happen because it's super fussy. Even thin light fishes can be totally fine with enough fat. I wouldn't consider making a sole meuniere in a nonstick pan because you can't build a fond... but most home cooks won't use that much fat either. I never worked in a professional kitchen that used nonstick for anything other than eggs, and they were ONLY used for eggs, and most of the cooks brought their own egg pans when they needed them. All the fish went into regular aluminum skillets or carbon steel pans. At the temperatures required to cook eggs, there's like zero danger using a modern teflon coated pan. It's the people cranking those pans up to smoking temperatures that you have to worry about. That shit is nasty.

> But they need to only be used for that and most home cooks aren't willing to have a pan they only use for one thing.

I have a cheap 10" Lodge skillet that we use for everything. It pretty much lives on the stovetop. We make omelets every morning, wash it off, and put back on the stove to dry. Quesadillas at lunch. Red sauce for dinner. Potato gratin. Pineapple upside-down cake. You name it, it goes in the skillet, often without any oil.

The only time I ever have trouble with stuff sticking is after several days in a row of tomatoes or similar. Acidic stuff like that does damage the seasoning, and if you let it sit it will stick. Other than that, stuff comes right off even after hours of sitting around.

So many people seem to think you have to baby these skillets, and that's just not been my experience at all. It's not as nonstick as a brand-new teflon pan, but it's better than that same pan will be after 6 months, and if I damage the seasoning on my cast iron it really does repair itself through normal cooking (with a bit of extra oil in the meantime).

Sure. You don't need to baby a cast iron skillet to get decent stick protection for those applications. Even an egg dish like Tortilla Espanola or an American omelet would fare fine in a decently seasoned home cast iron skillet with proper heat control. But a classical french omelet requires vastly more stick protection and surface smoothness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYlKkG1A7yk

In Jaques Pepin's well known video on making classical french omelets, he laments that he uses a non-stick pan because his carbon steel omelet pan isn't in the proper condition to make a proper french omelet. I guarantee you that Pepin has better pan and utensil technique than damn near anyone you'll meet in your life, but a surface for that dish requires babying.

There are good reasons that the only place you'll see cast iron skillets in a commercial kitchen is for cute presentations. They work decently for home cooks in many circumstances but they're too inconvenient to replaces the trusty commercial aluminum sautee pan as the classic blunt instrument, and not precise enough to perform the more specialized duties of commercial nonstick and carbon steel pans.

>> At the temperatures required to cook eggs, there's like zero danger using a modern teflon coated pan. It's the people cranking those pans up to smoking temperatures that you have to worry about.

Citation?

go look it up, if you keep teflon (PTFE, and not PFOAs which are all but gone in pans less than 10 years old) under 500 you're golden. No one is going to give you a bibliography for something you can google easily in seconds.

Did you google ‘is scratched Teflon safe’?

If you do, and you take the ‘first hit’ for the truth as parent suggested in a reply (it says it is not safe), does that lead you to believe that this issue is so simple as ‘don’t let your pan get hot’, or could there be other factors to consider, like, for example, exposing the pan to other chemicals, abrasion, etc?

PTFE is basically completely safe for humans because it goes right through you as it doesn't break down anywhere along the digestive path and basically completely unreactive in the human body, it is used often in biological implants. PFOAs are the villains and yeah if you have cheap nonstick pans 10+ years old then toss them. Yes I know exactly what I'm talking about and what kind of pans I have because I did my own research on the topic t-fal, hexclad, etc are perfectly fine.

Here's the first hit on gooogle.

https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/is-teflon-coating-safe

I discovered a trick to use a sanding attachment for a drill to progressively polish my stainless steel frying pans to a mirror finish.

If you then put fish / eggs in it after heating up a generous amount of oil to >boiling, it effectively acts nearly as good as a brand new nonstick pan.

Mirrored finish is worse for some things (browning vegetables) but great for delicate tasks like French omelettes.

> it's not like frying eggs is ever any easier in cast iron than it is in stainles

It’s significantly easier to fry eggs on seasoned cast iron vs stainless. I routinely use both.

How tf do I do stainless sunny-side up without them sticking all over the bottom of the pan? I can do scrambled perfectly with no sticking at all[0], but sunny side up is a mystery. Can't get the whites cooked through without cooking most of the yolk/overcooking bottoms of whites. I cook eggs every morning.

[0] the trick is getting the pan hot enough for a water flick to jump and dance before putting oil or butter in.

Here's what I do to avoid sticking:

1) Put drop of vegetable oil in stainless steel pan

2) heat until oil begins to smoke

3) quickly spread oil with paper towel or silicone brush, or by tilting the pan, then remove pan from heat

The pan now has a thin non-stick film, but it is too hot for butter or eggs, so...

4) let the pan cool down a bit

5) add butter

6) add egg

If I do that the stainless steel pan works almost as well as a teflon pan.

Getting sunny side up eggs perfect is still hard, in my experience. In a hotel, I've seen the cook carefully spread out the egg-white with a spatula so it cooks faster, while leaving the yolk liquid.

Interesting. Do you add heat back before or after step 6?

I add heat back when adding butter, but I use use less heat than before.

Also I realised that I mixed up step 2 and 3 -- I spread the oil before it starts to smoke.

Also, sometimes I cool the pan by holding it under the tap with a dash of water. Then it cools down instantly and stops smoking.

I think what's happening is that the oil polymerizes due to the heat and creates a thin film on the stainless steel pan, similar seasoning cast iron cookware. Afterwards you can cook the egg on low heat and it doesn't stick. But the film comes off when washing, so you have to do it again every time.

I think that's a fair point.

I don't cook anything that causes me a problem using stainless steel but I accept there may be cases where non-stick is essential.

My earlier point could be expanded to:

Make stainless steel your primary cookware and only fall back to a non-stick option when absolutely necessary. In doing so, you're risking far less exposure than someone who uses that stuff for everything they cook.

Nonstick is never absolutely necessary. It's a minor convenience over learning to control heat or washing a pan if you don't.

IR thermometer is a good thing to have and it takes a lot of guessing out from heating the pan correctly and heat control. I haven't burned oil in ages. Works best with the cast iron pans, due to the black non-reflective finish.

not a professional, but i do love to cook. eggs for me are 100x easier on cast iron vs. steel. i only use steel for sauces and veggies, everything else cast iron.