Nice. More science/engineering-minded cooks should learn about this. A close second is the Leidenfrost effect[1]; it's the secret to cooking eggs properly without non-stick. Your omelettes will float on a bed of steam.
It's pretty common knowledge for professional cooks[1], they just don't realize what it's called.
I don't understand the claim that cooks wouldn't know what this would be called.
> Your omelettes will float on a bed of steam.
Due to the effect. Not that the effect can be used to judge hotness of the pan.
It doesn't work for thick, American diner-style omelettes. The technique is useful because it lets you cook French-style (creamy, wet-in-the-center, made with about 100 ml of omelette batter for a 10-inch skillet) omelettes really quickly. Whereas the cooking time for a French-style omelette is typically five minutes, with this technique it is perhaps seven seconds.
My guess about why this happens is that, given that the omelette is a significantly large fluid droplet, the pan doesn’t actually have to be above the Leidenfrost point for the entire cooking process because it takes time for the residual steam to flow out from underneath the droplet.
If Leidenfrost is what makes the omelette slide, why do you need oil at all?
I have some cast iron pans that I took the care to clean an polish smooth, and season well, and they are seasoned better than most other cast iron or steel skillets I've seen in other people's kitchens. It's smooth enough to cook eggs on, _if_ I use sufficient cooking fat. And even then, even my cheap teflon-coated pans are smoother, and can get away with using less cooking fat.
Yes, a steel or iron pan, well-seasoned, can be used for several tasks that someone might think would require a teflon pan. But even then, there are some things that are just plain easier on a teflon pan than they are on well-seasoned iron or steel.
My carbon steel will stick certain things if I throw them in when the pan’s not fully heated and completely dry, so I concede that point to you. I don’t cook like this though and It’s not really a recommended cooking style in general to start with a cold pan and no fat.
Woks are carbon steel and have eggs cooked on them all the time commercially for fried rice and such.
It's not.
I started trusting in my pans, lifting them off the burner as necessary for heat management, and properly distributing the egg curds with a fork as they form. It's a whole new game.
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5454-preheat-your-o...
It's not magic; I use this technique when making omelettes and scrambling, but not when I'm frying eggs.
I googled this and this thread comes up on the first page, and the results do not show this effect being used for cooking, only for verifying temperature.
Why would you even want to do this even if it worked the way you claim? If this worked the way you did, you would be steaming the eggs. If you wanted to control temperature, you could just...lower the temperature to the proper level.