I recently started to research into my cookwares and decided a stainless-steel pan was a good budget investment to learn to cook better my steaks and other items. I cooked my first steaks over the last few weeks and they were great, they didn't stick and came out delicious.
FYI: usually I cook the steak by seasoning it with some olive oil rubbed in then salting
and peppering it and letting it rest till it is at room temperature. To cook it I bring the
pan to high heat until droplets of water slip on it as if they were mercury, add a tbsp of
oil and place the steak on, reverse it after about 3min with tongs and remove after about
another 3 min. The cuts I use are often thin.
However there is one problem I have not been able to get over; the steak does not stick but its seasoning will and over the cooking period burns. This causes smoke and a real headache to clean while trying not to use a scourer side of a sponge or metal wire as I have been adamantly told it will ruin the pan's surface (this got me thinking... read on)!
So over to my question which may be a little out the box, I am a materials engineer with access to metal work machines, to my knowledge a perfectly flat surface offers less surface area to stick so if I were to buffet the pan until it were nicely polished on the surface (currently I can see all the circular grooves from the fabrication process such as you see on brushed steel) would this help reduce the sticking? Or can I simply improve the way I cook the steak and avoid the seasoning sticking and burning?