You can use butter, but there is a greater risk that it will burn, since you need to heat the pan over medium-high heat to properly heat it. To prevent the milk solids from burning, you can use half oil and half butter or use clarified butter, which has a much higher smoking point. Cheers!

No wonder I seldom pan fried anything, I always got mixed results that were usually bad. I grill a lot, but I must say since this lesson the grill is a bit jealous of the fry pan. Thoughts on peanut oil?

Peanut oil has a high smoke point, which is why some people really like it. It just comes down to personal choice, some chefs love it, some do not.

For more on the "which oil to use" discussion, I would read through this thread. Here in a permalink to where the discussion seems to take off. Cheers!

Can you suggest any vegetarian recipes for practicing pan frying? All the ones suggested in the practice section are non-vegetarian. (I'm not sure if you'd ever pan fry vegetables, but tofu, seitan or similar vegetarian protein products perhaps?)

PS: The last sentence of the first paragraph in the practice section seems garbled, "Note how long it take with you’re the heat source (electric or gas) you are using [...]" ?

Chris had asked about the temperature of the pan at the mercury ball stage. I was also curious. The phenomenon of that little ball of water flying around the pan is caused by the Leidenfrost effect and generally occurs at around 160 °C (320 °F) for water in a frying pan.

I put my stainless steel pan in to the oven for, say 1h, and it turn into a slightly darken color. No mater how hard I cleaned, it is still slightly yellow
Do you have any suggestion on cleaning it?

There are many discussions on this in the forum already. Here is a link to one of the previous threads on "Cleaning Stainless Steel Pans". You can also type in the word "stainless" or "cleaning pans" in the search bar at the top right of the page and then click on the "Forum Discussions" tab. Here you will see a few more threads and a variety of ways to clean stainless-steel pans. Cheers!

To be perfectly honest I am not sure if I can suggest things to practice pan-frying for a vegetarians. You can fry things like tofu, vegetarian wontons or gyozas, certain cheeses and even vegetables but you will not achieve the same results and/or sucs etc. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help in this department.

As for the question in the practice it has since been fixed. Cheers!

I wonder if the water test can only be achieve when the pan reach a specific high temperature (no matter the heat is medium or high)
or it depend on the heating that the temperature of the pan at this rate would be either medium or high

You can learn some more about the physics behind the water test at Wikipedia, search for "Leidenfrost effect". Note that, as the Wikipedia article explains, "The temperature at which the Leidenfrost effect begins to occur is not easy to predict. [...] As a very rough estimate, the Leidenfrost point for a drop of water on a frying pan might occur at 160 °C (320 °F)." Any case, AFAIU it depends on the temperature of the surface of the pan, not on the rate of heating; but the faster you heat the pan, the more easily it will get to the temperature where the Leidenfrost effect no longer occurs.

I don't understand where "flouring" comes into this, if at all. My habit -- just from imitation of my memories of my mother cooking -- has always been to flour cube steak but not to flour anything else when pan frying. (My mother floured chicken, also, but that was for frying with much more oil...Crisco shortening, actually.)

I vaguely had the idea that the flour was sort of a breading. I notice, though, that most instructions call for shaking it off pretty vigorously such that hardly more than a dusting remains. Does this have a role in reducing the moisture to enhance browning?

I am planning to do some pork chops tonight and, for some reason, see them as more of a candidate for flouring them some other meats. I want to make a pan sauce, too.

So should I flour my chops or any food that is pan fried in a minimal amount of oil with the intention of making a pan sauce? Thanks.

Flouring meat before browning can help to thicken an eventual sauce (i.e. cubed beef for a stew), but the sucs and browning will not be as good if you were to just sear the meat plain (refer to the lesson on Stewing in the Cooking School). Flour can help to seal in moisture during cooking, but when cooking a stew, that's not the point, since it is the cut of meat that provides the moisture and it is ultimately slowly cooked in a liquid. Flouring does have a place and can work well when pan frying certain fish.

We do not recommend flouring the pork chops if you plan to make a pan sauce. You will develop better sucs and flavor if you don't flour the meat. If properly cooked, you don't have to worry about sealing in any moisture and there are other ways to thicken the sauce as shown in the lesson. Hope this helps! Enjoy your dinner :)

Any advice on how not to burn the sucs from the first batch while cooking the 2nd? If I could I'd just use a larger pan, but it's not always an option.

You shouldn't have a problem with burnt sucs with a second batch. The most important thing is to monitor the heat. Make sure there is enough oil in the pan. Sometimes I place new pieces of meat over areas that might appear to be getting a bit dark (also when I flip each piece). The moisture will prevent the remains from burning. Make sure to monitor the heat and you should be good to go. Cheers!

Thanks, Kimberley, for your wisdom on flouring. I ended up doing a Garlic-Thyme sauce for my chops. Neither the chops nor the sauce were real special, although the pan-frying went very nicely...they browned up prettily and honored me with some nice sucs. Watching the little water ball, I got the pan hot enough for once!

Could I ask about splatter screens? I am sure that commercial cooks would scorn such a thing but since home kitchens don't come with ceramic tile floors with built-in drains and people paid to clean the place every day, well, splattering grease is a bit of a problem. But when I tried a splatter screen in the past, I felt that it was an impediment to air flow and caused a bit of a steam bath in my pan, which is not a good thing. So I threw the thing away. Now, though, I am getting antsy about grease splatter again and wonder if I acted too impetuously in tossing the thing. In your opinion, is this a useful device? I'd really like to limit the splatter but not at the expense of interfering with what I am trying to accomplish in the pan. I'd be interested in anyone's views.

Glad to hear you had good success with the sucs and pan frying. It takes some practice to fine tune a pan sauce, so keep at it.

I sometimes use splatter screens. At home, I have a ceramic top stove and can't stand all the grease splatters that occur. It always seems that after I clean the house all day I wind up pan frying something that same night! Argh!

I have a few mesh screens, but I don't think they are very effective. I still wind up with fine specks of grease everywhere. I haven't had a problem of them causing steam - maybe yours was so fine that that happened? A bit of grease is just the nature of cooking I guess and makes the meal at the end worth it.

I guess it's part of your mise en place too - have a sink full of hot, soapy water and keep your work areas clean while you're cooking. You'll have less cleaning to do by the time dinner is over. Cheers! :)

Thanks for your stoic advice, Kimberly. I'll try to let it go without obsessive zeal to "engineer" a complete solution, a tendency I have that is not always helpful ;<)

Today I used my brand new Allclad saute pan to pan fry some boneless skinless chicken thighs. It took some patience on my part to wait until the water did the mercury act, but it worked beautifully!! I've never been able to cook with stainless steel pans, and now I know it had everything to do with properly heating the pan.

One thing though. I had to turn down the heat quite a bit to get the 'easy sizzle' while the chicken was frying. On one hand it was good I think because the sucs didn't burn, but the meat was in the pan for quite a while and just would not give me the 'golden crust'. My first thought is to turn up the heat, but I also don't want to burn anything. Then I was thinking maybe I should leave them in longer, but I also had to braise them for a while after I didn't want to overcook the chicken.

I ended up taking the chicken out without a crust so that I could do the veg and braise, and the meal turned out delicious. BUT, succulent as the chicken was, there was no crust on it.

Am I just not patient enough? What do you think, higher heat or wait longer?

Patience and practice. Adjust and monitor the heat next time. You can have the heat a bit higher at the beginning to develop the crust, but can turn it down after a bit to prevent over cooking the food. It all comes down to practice, repetition and experimenting with adjustments. Keep at it. Cheers!

Thanks Kimberley, my wife said I could use more practice (she would too right :)). It never occurred to me that the heat would vary while cooking. I'll try more heat at the start next time.

If you have two batches you start out high, turn it down, take out batch #1, turn it back up for batch 2 and re-adjust? So we're looking for a really aggressive sizzle to start each batch for the crust and then you turn it down to cook?

Pan frying and cooking in general is all about monitoring the heat. Constant readjusting and using all of your senses (eyes, ears, smell) will help you fine tune these skills. There are no strict rules, as ingredients will differ - you just have to develop a sense of what is going on in the pan and keep making adjustments. This is where practice practice practice comes into play. Cheers!

Found the crust! I am so happy :) I used slightly higher heat like you said, and it developed just fine. It came out a tiny bit overcooked, nothing that a little practice can't fix. This weekend I got lots of chicken. It is fun when you start getting it :) Thank you for the encouragement.

For pan sauce I sauteed some minced onion, added some chicken stock, some balsamic, some honey and a little ancho chili powder. Served with some rice and corn, and everyone was happy. My kids gave it a 7 and a 10 (!).

Great job! Keep up the good work. Watching a video and actually cooking are two very different things. This is why we encourage people to practice. With cooking, repetition is where you learn. It takes time to understand the heat of your stove top and what is going on in the pan. As you know, there are many things to watch for to obtain the best results. A month from now...even a year from now, you will have a much deeper understanding of pan sauces and how all of cooking intertwines, so keep at it! Cheers!

Hey Rouxbe,

I really like the water test and have gotten it to work brilliantly on gas ranges. However my college apartment, where I am now, has electric ranges. I seem to go from the sizzle bubble point (too cold) to too hot without ever getting to the mercury ball stage, but electric is hard to work with as you can't just heat and cool quickly. Hence, I was wondering if you recommend pre-heating the pan for a few minutes on a low heat and then gradually increasing it while conducting the water test.

Best,

Michael

I use an electric stove, I heat the pan pretty slowly on 4-5 on my stove.

Its also helpful to be using a good pan, I used to use a crappy stainless steel that took forever to heat and cool so I often went from under heated to over heated.

Now I'm using some tri ply pans (Cuisinart multi clad pro) and its much easier to keep a pan at the proper temp.