— Cindy Lundey

So this is a perennial question because by and large, there's not a great answer. Eggs tend to stick, and you know, if, if you have a pristine non-stick pan, you can make eggs, and that non-stick quality will last for a while, but it tends to go away because non-stick pans will start to accumulate what I call micro scratches. And I'm gonna take a little tangent here again, and, and talk about non-stick pans, and I'll come back to your question. Okay, Joyce, or, um, Cindy, I'm sorry. Um, and that is to say that when you buy pans, I recommend that you avoid a full set of non-stick pans because they do acqua, uh, accumulate scratches over time, and the non-stick quality diminishes. And therefore, I consider non-stick pans to be a disposable item in my toolkit. And I'll have one, maybe two, but the rest of 'em will be just something else that will last the rest of my life, whether it's stainless steel or cast iron or, um, something else. Um, so, uh, coming back to, uh, Cindy's question here about cooking eggs without oil, it's a challenge. And, you know, you, um, uh, might try a different cooking method than the fried egg in a pan method. So a different, you know, method would be one in water and poached eggs, you know, would be the closest that would sort of, you know, mimic the, the look and and mouth feel of a fried egg. There's, of course, the, uh, eggs that are cooked in the shell, and you can, you know, do a soft cooked egg, but, uh, that's a, a different end result, and it might not be really what you want for one reason or another. Um, there are, uh, certainly folks that I bump up against once in a while that will say that there cast iron pan, uh, has, uh, you know, such a, um, a, a a a layer of seasoning built up that, you know, they can cook eggs without the addition of oil, but in order to get there, um, you know, you need to use oil in order to build up that finish. So again, coming back to the core question here, I don't know of a consistent method for, for cooking fried eggs without oil. So this is where perhaps a compromise is in order where you use, say, a non-stick pan with minimal oil to get the results that you want. Totally up to you, of course, but, you know, just think about the fluidity and flexibility of cooking and, you know, versus how rigid you know, you want to be in your approach to cooking. Okay? The alternative, of course, is to simply stop cooking fried eggs, and then, you know, find, you know, like I mentioned, a different cooking method, whether it's poaching or something else.