It takes a bit of a learning curve to master, but chefs favor stainless steel skillets for a reason. Where home cooks will run into trouble with eggs and stainless steel is not heating the pan up enough. If you place an egg on a stainless steel pan that's still cold or lukewarm, the egg will likely stick.
The Best Pan for Frying Eggs For ease and reliability, choose a non-stick skillet when frying eggs. A non-stick skillet allows you to use less fat, making it ideal for a quick, easy cleanup. However, if you're after crispy edges, a cast-iron or carbon steel skillet will do the job beautifully.
If there's one frypan to outlast them all, it's cast iron. It can actually be handed down through generations. Chefs utilise cast iron frypans for their extreme toughness and ability to sear, char, bake and broil dishes and ingredients at high heat.
Our Favorite Egg Pan
The Zwilling Madura Plus 8-Inch Pan aced all of our tests thanks to the slick surface, balanced handle, and even heat distribution. For a nonstick pan that can easily tolerate the high heat of the oven and stay impossibly nonstick, we always reach for the Caraway Frying Pan.
Ceramic cookware excels in even cooking and heat retention, making it great for simmering stews and sautéing mushrooms. On the other hand, nonstick cookware is ideal for frying eggs or pancakes due to its smooth surface that prevents sticking. Nonstick also makes cleaning up a breeze.
Stuck-On Residue
Perhaps the simplest reason that some non stick pans start to stick, especially if the pan isn't very old, is that there's a layer of stuck-on food residue getting in the way. Even the thinnest layer of dried egg white or residual starch from stir-frying potstickers can cause food to stick.
Our experts in the Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen tend to use nonstick pans for their egg recipes. Eggs are notoriously sticky, which can make it difficult to flip or clean from stainless steel or cast iron. To finesse cooking eggs in stainless steel you will likely need to use a generous amount of oil or butter.
The other secret is that diner chefs typically make fried eggs on a flat top griddle. This is better than even your best pan for two reasons. The biggest is that it's completely flat (and ideally level), so fried eggs can't slide around. That flatness also helps maintain a more consistent, even temperature.
This staple material is certainly beginner-friendly, but that doesn't mean it isn't just as useful in professional kitchens, too. In fact, non stick cookware is utilized in some of the world's best restaurants, day in and day out.
Writer and cookware expert Allison Robicelli says in her HexClad skillet review: “HexClad cookware might be pricey, but it's worth the money and will pay for itself 10 times over. Not only does the hybrid pan do the work of three other pans, but it's also built to last. It might very well be the last pan you ever buy.”
But stainless steel cookware is the most prized and frequently sought-after by professional chefs and serious home cooks alike. Known for its durability and high heat retention, it can achieve an excellent sear or perfect sauté. And it can last a lifetime.
If you wanted to fry an egg or sear a delicate fish, you'd use a nonstick pan. If you want to saute vegetables or whip up a quick stir-fry, you'd use stainless. Why? Because nonstick pans are all about preventing any sort of stick at all.
You start by adding a small amount of oil to the skillet and cracking in the eggs, just like you normally would. Then, about 30 seconds in, you add hot water to the pan, basting the eggs until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny. It creates tender, soft fried eggs with no overdone edges in sight.
The approach is simply to crack the eggs into a non-stick sauce pan, add in a few pats of cold butter, turn on the heat and begin to stir constantly and vigorously, on and off the heat. The result of this technique is creamy, soft, silky scrambled eggs. You won't believe the difference.
Fried eggs have a higher fat content compared to other cooking methods. A large fried egg has around 14.8 grams of fat per 100 grams. This includes both saturated and unsaturated fats. Additionally, fried eggs are high in cholesterol, with about 196 milligrams per 100 grams.
If you want PTFE-free cookware, then ceramic nonstick is the best choice for you. All nonstick loses its properties over time, but regular nonstick retains its properties for a longer time, so, if you want a longer-lasting finish, then nonstick is a better choice for you.
Sticking often occurs when you use too much heat. Our technology allows our cookware to heat up much faster than typical cookware. We often find that new customers tend to cook on too high of heat, but low heat is key! We recommend starting on medium-low heat with a little bit of oil.
I've used the Caraway cookware set daily for over a year and am really pleased with how the pots and pans have held up. Naturally, you can tell my pans are well-loved (hello egg residue on the side of my fry pan). But the scratch-resistant ceramic coating is just as great as it was on day one.