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dangwhy

can someone recommend a pan to make eggs in the morning without sticking or having to put tons of grease.

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If you don't want a non-stick pan?

Just use a stainless steel pan and a pat of butter.

There's no option to not use fat/oil if you don't want non-stick.

Cast-iron is not a great choice for eggs because it holds too much heat, so if your temperature goes too high up you can't bring it back down quick enough and your eggs will crisp/burn. And both cast-iron and carbon steel are a pain to maintain (keep seasoned and avoid rust). (Cast iron is ideal for other uses though, particularly searing meat, where holding heat is the main feature.)

Also, the idea that a cast-iron (or carbon steel) patina is somehow non-stick is a myth that keeps getting repeated. It's better than the raw metal (and therefore quite necessary for those materials) but it's nothing like an actual non-stick pan. Nowhere even close. And you still always need a normal amount of oil for cooking in them, in fact just for maintaining the patina.

The other day I tried making scrambled eggs in my cast iron pan for the first time in years. Turns out that years of use had finally got it to the point where the eggs actually cooked beautifully without sticking at all! I used butter, of course, but I'd have used the same amount of butter in any pan.

You can create a perfect non-sticky surface on cast iron pans like this:

- clean well with strong soap and a metal sponge until it's one smooth silver surface

- put a few drops of flax oil on a paper and rub the pan with it (also inner sides)

- take off all excessive oil with a dry kitchen paper

- remove any non-metal handles from the pan

- open your windows

- heat your oven to the max and put the pan in for about 20 minutes

- repeat about 5 times

After using the pan, wipe with a kitchen paper. Maybe a little bit of warm water, better not. Never any soap.

Flax oil had been debunked over and over again. Just use canola.

Cast iron works great for me. Another popular option is carbon steel. Both options require a bit of a learning curve as far as care/cleaning goes, but once you have a well-seasoned pan, eggs are easy.

You have the added bonus of being able to put them into the oven, and you can get a much better sear than on teflon.

Poach them or boil them if you don't want to add fat to fry them in. But are you sure that frying them in butter or lard is actually bad for you?

Cast iron you can scramble and end up with a clean pan afterwards. Just have to let it heat up all the way first.

I recently switched to this guy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000K9FKC4 and, after seasoning, I can still cook my eggs in a normal-amount of butter. It's not quite as easy as non-stick but getting better with use.

Last year I tried switching to stainless but it was just too much trouble for my daily egg cooking. I just never figured it out.

I use cast iron for many/most dinners but I wanted the sloped sides and reduced weight for flipping eggs.

I still use the non-stick occasionally for things like crepes but moving from daily use to weekly or less seems like a win.

I use a stainless steel baking pan, line the insides with a foil square, and spray it with a little PAM. Put it in an air fryer for 10 minutes at 178C flip it and do the other side for 2 minutes at 160C.

Carbon steel is much better than cast iron! It takes some time to build up a nonstick coating (seasoning), but once you do fried eggs will glide around like they’re on ice.

I have a Mauviel that I love, but the Matfer Bourgeat is better for eggs because it doesn’t have the steel rivets on the inside of the pan. Both are made in France and cost like $70.

This is a solid explainer on carbon steel pans: https://youtu.be/-suTmUX4Vbk

A well used cast iron pan with the proper technique will be just as non stick as teflon, and much more versatile.

If you version of cooking is "put anything in the pan at whatever temperature and expect it to not stick" then stay with teflon because nothing will save you

We use one cast iron pan and just leave it on the stove. It's basically self-cleaning if you use cooking oil, just a wipe with a paper towel will get the burnt bits out from the previous meal.

You don't need tons of grease, you just need the correct technique.

To make fried eggs in a non-nonstick pan? Of course you do. You need enough so it doesn't stick. There no technique that can rescue egg stuck to a pan.

The thing is, any more oil than that just stays in the pan. Fried eggs don't absorb oil.

So put plenty of oil in the pan, because it won't wind up on your plate. There's zero reason to skimp, otherwise you'll just get eggs that stick.

Just put tons of grease, cut excess elsewhere.

Ceramic pans.

cast iron

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