Frying Pan

[poliphilo]

 My friend Stephen Bann- who is a dedicated cook-  used to say you should never wash a frying pan. The ancient grease, impregnated with the flavours of a thousand fry-ups, is a treasure,  adding subtlety and depth to anything you cook in it. I sometimes let my pan go a day or two without washing- and acknowledge that it's a bit of a thrill when the flavour of yesterday's mushrooms turns up in today's bacon and eggs- but then I start to worry about health and safety and the pan goes into the sink and receives a good scrubbing. Am I being unduly cautious? 

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I have this Le Creuset omelet pan. Even though it has some sort of nonstickery inside it, I find that the omelet cooked after washing sticks. So I've stopped washing it. Instead, I wipe it out with a paper towel after each use. (Being on Weight Watchers, I only put a tsp of butter in the pan, so there's not much left to wipe out.)

The Designated Cast Iron Potwasher in the household doesn't wash them, either: instead, he pours some white vinegar in the pan/dutch oven, boils it up (scraping off anything that stuck last time), dumps the vinegar, rubs in a couple drops of some kind of neutral oil such as Mongolian Fire Oil (!), and thta's that.

Like several other commenters, we scrub our stainless steel frying pans.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My frontline frying pan is non-stick- but so old it hardly figures any more.

After all I've read here, I think I'm going to keep it away from soap and water and go with the dry wipe.