[Sca-cooks] hot pan, cold oil ( was Re: ot help with soy...)
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Sat Jul 21 13:20:40 PDT 2007
On Jul 21, 2007, at 12:46 PM, Barbara Dodge wrote:
> "Cold oil hot pan, food won't stick" seemed to be the Frugal
> Gourmet Jeff
> Smith's mantra. I've never forgotten it.
>
> Felicia
Me, neither. I don't know that I buy this "layer of steam" stuff; it
sounds highly speculative unless someone has done a pretty serious
and controlled study of this, and if it wasn't Harold McGee, I'd be
curious as to who it would be. (Don't even mention Robert L. Wolke to
me in this context.) But certainly it bears respect as a hypothesis
and starting point.
My own would be that you heat the pan first to make it expand and
become slightly more porous, then add unheated oil to both control
potential overheating of the pan and prevent the oil from spending a
prolonged time heating without any additional heat sink (such as
food), thus perhaps protecting it from burning, plasticizing, going
rancid, etc. The further possibility (I think) is that when the
expanded/porous pan with oil has cold[er] food added to it, it cools
and contracts in that spot, pushing up a minute layer of oil (like a
squeezed sponge) that may have an effect.
Also an untested hypothesis...
Adamantius
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