Scramble Those Eggs like a Pro

I made an attempt at cooking eggs in one of my steel pans again this morning.

In the past, I had just thrown in butter, non-stick cooking spray, or a little olive oil and then followed it quickly with the beaten eggs. This always left me wondering why they would stick, even though I was taking preventative measures; hey, it works in the non-stick pan so why wouldn't it work in the steel pan, right?

I read a web page the other day - and I can't find it now, by the way - that said to first heat the pan up to the point that droplets of water will dance around on it before they evaporate off. When that temperature is reached, add cold oil, followed by the cold eggs.

It sounded good, but I'm not too keen on adding cold oil to a hot pan, as it can cause a fire; don't ask how I know, just believe me when I say I know. Last night I realized that that method falls in pretty closely with the way I cook cornbread, in that I heat up the oil in the pan before I add the batter.

So this morning I tried it. I put the heat at Medium and added the oil and let it preheat for a few minutes so that when I added water, it wouldn't pop but sizzle before it evaporated out. Then came the cold eggs.

This works the same way as the cornbread in that by adding the cold mix to the preheated oil, it ends up floating on the oil rather than coming in contact with the pan. What I do is put the burner on medium-low heat, add the oil and wait for it to heat up to the point it starts rippling around the perimeter from the heat, then add the eggs. The trick is to not start scrambling them immediately. Let the eggs set a little bit, so that the sides get firm and white. From there, gently pull back a bit of the egg from the side of the pan and let the uncooked egg on top flow into the oil. I tilted the pan a little to help. After that's set and there's not much raw egg left on top, start scrambling away.

Your eggs won't stick to the pan and clean up will be a lot easier!

Now I must admit I made a couple of mistakes, the first being I put too much olive oil in the pan and my eggs came out a little too oily for my taste (didn't even finish eating them). I can't say how much oil is too much or how much is just right, that's something you're just going to have to experiment with on your own.

The second mistake was adding the cheese while the eggs were still in the pan. For some reason the cheese made its way straight to the metal and stuck. Lesson learned: add the cheese after the eggs are removed from the pan.

Happy cooking!