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I've been playing around with making my stainless steel skillet stop sticking to my food. I found that seasoning with oil that's just about to smoke works a bit, but doesn't work that well when frying eggs at high temepratures (to get a good crust with a runny yolk).

However, one thing that's been working with great success in frying an egg with very minimal sticking is to fry an egg beforehand in the same cooking session (even if the first egg sticks completely). I really don't understand why this happens. I don't think the second egg cooks at lower temperature because I leave the pan to heat after taking out my first egg and I can also tell by the way it reacts when it hits the oil.

My best guess was that the cold first egg causes the open pores of the hot pan to close and capture the oil in the pan and that this action is too slow to make the first egg not stick. I tried to replicate this by putting my oil in freezer 20 minutes before cooking and pouring some before the pan heated and then more after it was hot to simulate the first cold egg, but the eggs stick stuck, and the next eggs still didn't. Please help me in figuring out this mechanism so that I can utilize it properly without having my eggs stick at all.

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I presume the albumin protein of the first egg coats the pan, maybe even in areas that are not overtly white, and this is what creates the nonstick barrier.

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  • That sounds very possible. Could it occur even after some scraping with the spatula in your opinion? If so then it's the most likely mechanism. I've also been experimenting with letting the oil heat up more before the first egg under the presumption that they always stick and not the next ones because I don't give the oil enough time to heat up and I've been getting some success. However, the way they slide on the pan after the first egg is still miles better than the first egg with heated oil.
    – Brother58697
    Jul 16, 2018 at 1:10

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