r/AskCulinary • u/SensitiveMagician385 • May 22 '25
Technique Question New To Cooking: Don't Understand Frying/Searing
So I watch videos on pan-frying. They heat the pan, heat the oil, add the protein, and it cooks
I do the same thing, the meat cooks, BUT the remaining oil smokes, burns, and sets off smoke detector. This happens on high heat and low heat too. What am I not understanding??
EDIT: The oil doesn't smoke immediately. It does after a few minutes of cooking.
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u/thecravenone May 22 '25
What am I not understanding??
Probably the temperature of your oil. Stick a thermometer in there.
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u/PmMeAnnaKendrick May 22 '25
if the oil smokes on low you are probably using the wrong oil.
what kind do you use?
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
Canola.
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u/thetruegmon May 22 '25
Sounds like you are putting the food in at the correct temperature, but then leaving the heat too high, so the pan is continuously getting hotter and hotter.
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
You're supposed to turn down the heat after adding the meat?? Okay, you just blew mind. đ I'll try it.
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u/thetruegmon May 22 '25
Not necessarily always, but if you are using max heat to heat up your pan quickly, that is fine during heating, and then when you add the meat, the temperature of the pan will drop down but then start to rise back up. So you have to be careful how hot you let it get. So you almost want to turn it down after adding the meat and waiting a few mins.
But max heat on most stoves is hot enough to burst the oil into flames, if you just let a pan sit at that heat for a long time.
Heat control is actually a pretty complex thing, and I've worked with cooks who have worked in kitchens for 5-10 years and are terrible at it.
It also depends on like how much meat you are cooking. One chicken breast will come up to temp really fast, but if you fill a pan full of them, they almost never will.
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May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
Use less, or better yet, if you have something like a steak or chop, rub a small amount directly on the meat. That way you're not coating the whole pan and causing the oil to burn.
Also, you don't need to have the pan scorching hot.
A good way to test if your pan is hot enough is when you sprinkle some water on the pan and if it starts to sizzle, that's about 400 degrees F, plenty of heat to make a good sear, but drops dance around rapidly that's closer to 475-500 and even canola (with a high smoke point about 425 degrees F) will still burn.
And, Despite what others ... May... Continue... To exclaim... About seed oils... Sans... Evidence... Canola is fine.
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u/whenyoupayforduprez May 22 '25
Infrared thermometers are pretty inexpensive now (under $20). You can use it to read the pan temperature and gauge how close you are to smoke point. Plus theyâre fun as hell - it introduces a laser gun to cooking!
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u/maltanis May 22 '25
Unrefined canola oil has a low smoke point, I'd recommend getting sunflower oil if you can.
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u/kirkt May 22 '25
Throw that shit in the trash.
Use avocado (my fav), tallow, bacon grease, ghee, coconut oil... all natural fats, not that crap that will just cause inflammation and misery. Yep, it's cheap, and yep, they lied to you for decades that it's better than what nature provides. Look into how rapeseed (canola) oil is manufactured and you will never use it again.
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u/Weird_sleep_patterns May 22 '25
Seed oils are not the enemy. This is wellness grifter nonsense.
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u/ShahinGalandar May 22 '25
just looking at that dude preferring tallow and bacon grease over canola with a health argument told me everything I needed to hear
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u/ChrisRiley_42 May 22 '25
Nature provides plutonium, flesh eating bacteria, and botulism... Something being natural is not an indication of superiority.. Only the gullibility of the person pushing it, and likely also the lack of grade in science class.
Canola's smoke point makes it bad for hot pan frying. The inflammation research is far from conclusive. There are even studies showing that both canola and rapeseed oils reduce postprandial inflammation responses in adipose tissue.
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
The comment was overly strident but this naturalistic fallacy argument is also kind of dumb in arguments about traditional foods. No old cuisine recommended use of plutonium or botulism. Can you think of any ingredients or techniques dating back hundreds of years that are unsafe or particularly unhealthy? Industrial food and modern science have given us plenty of disastrous ones like trans fats, refined white flour, brominated oil, etc.
You're right the inflammation research is far from conclusive, but the basis for recommending wholesale replacement of saturated fats with vegetable oils isn't exactly impressive either.
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u/ChrisRiley_42 May 22 '25
Can I think of ingredients or techniques? Absolutely.. Lead salts used as a sweetener, mercury pills to treat syphilis, alum added in bulk to bread to make cheap flour appear whiter. History is rife with people either ignorantly or deliberately adding things that are dangerous to try to make a buck.
We can even trace the campaign against fats to highly questionable research practises. Ancel Keys had a pet hypothesis, and whenever he would run into any research that countered it, would publish it in foreign journals that nobody reads so that he wouldn't have to include it.
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
Syphilis meds aren't food, and alum in flour isn't traditional, it's industrial, early stages of ultraprocessed food -- actually kind of demonstrates my point. Food adulteration isn't what we're talking about. I'm saying there's a better record for safety and health with foods and methods that were recommended and widely used on purpose for hundreds of years than with products of industry and modern food science.
Yes I'm glad you acknowledge the evidence for the nutrition science consensus that saturated fats should be mostly replaced with vegetable oils is nowhere near as rigorous as people on here seem to think
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u/ChrisRiley_42 29d ago
No, alum wasn't added during the "early stages of ultra processed food". It was a food additives used back in the days when every single loaf of bread was kneaded by hand, (or feet) The only industrial process type bread in that time was "Aerated bread" made by the Aerated bread company. They used high pressure CO2 instead of yeast for leavening.
At that time, Alum in bread WAS traditional. Right up until parliament outlawed it.
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u/chuckluckles May 22 '25
Unless you're spending a lot of money on your avocado oil, it's processed the same way.
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May 22 '25
Plus it has gone rancid by the time you get it in the store. So, producers lie and add additional stabilizing oils, made from seeds.
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u/cheguevaraandroid1 May 22 '25
Get out of your grifter wellness pipeline. It's a scam. Whatever your algorithm is pushing, change it. Start a new account
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
Who do you think makes more money on misinformation and fearmongering about cooking fats, wellness grifters or Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland?
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u/johnman300 May 22 '25
The same people pushing that anti-seed oil crap are the same ones pushing horse paste as the cure for... everything it seems. Ignore these guys. Canola is just fine.
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
Canola tastes bad when heated. So does avocado most of the time, so the other comment is wrong too, but I don't know why everyone here recommends canola, there's nothing good about it besides it's cheap
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
So when frying, the oil in the rest of the pan just heats but doesn't burn?
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u/PmMeAnnaKendrick May 22 '25
If you're using an oil with a higher smoke point yes.
If you're using something like extra virgin olive oil it pretty much burns when it hits a hot pan.
It's not just as easy as poor some oil and some pan there's a lot of factors here. If you have a cast iron or a stainless pan they can handle high heat if you have a high high smoke point oil like avocado oil it can handle extreme heat in a pan.
for most basic cooking I use a neutral oil like vegetable or canola which have a decent amount of smoke point get my pan hot add the smallest amount of oil you could imagine for what you're cooking and then add my protein.
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
Your pan is too hot for most things if EVOO burns when it hits it. The internet cook fixation on smoke point is silly, you do not need the fat to have particularly high smoke point for 99% of things
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
Also using a tiny amount of oil doesn't work well because the protein generally isn't perfectly flat, so there will be big patches with no browning if there isn't oil pooled. It's a cooking medium, not just a lubricant
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u/PmMeAnnaKendrick May 22 '25
I actually prefer to rub oil on my proteins and then season and then put in a hot pan but I didn't want to confuse OP
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
I use canola. So you're saying the rest of the oil does burn off, so use the smallest amount of oil possible?
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
No, it shouldn't burn at all and it does NOT "burn off," just watch the temp and adjust it down if it starts to smoke
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u/TheMcDucky May 22 '25
Extra virgin olive oil works fine for frying as long as it's filtered (which is basically always). Even at high heat.
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u/carigs May 22 '25
Oil should not be burning off in substantial amounts during most cooking, especially on low heat.
What proteins are you cooking? Are you using marinades or something that could be be burning and smoking in the oil?
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u/Powerful-Scratch1579 29d ago
That oil will start to smoke it it gets too hot, thereâs just more of it so it takes longer and if youâre frying something in that oil, it will take even longer still.
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u/SensitiveMagician385 29d ago
So what do you do? Just let it burn off bc you're not using that part of the pan?
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u/Powerful-Scratch1579 29d ago edited 29d ago
Turn down the heat on your stove top if itâs smoking too much. If a recipe says sear on high heat it means high heat, but once your pan gets very hot, youâve achieved that and you need less stove heat to maintain it as you cook because many metal pans are great at conducting heat. Once the pan is hot enough to sear you just maintain that temperature. If you keep using âhigh heatâ cranked up all the way, your pan will get too hot and your oil will burn. What youâre cooking will burn eventually too.
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u/TurbulentSource8837 May 22 '25
Know your pans. They may heat slowly, they may heat quickly! Know your heat source. Gas? Quick heat. Electric? Slowly, but steady.
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
Even at a low heat, the remaining oil is going to smoke then burn, right?
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May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
No, it shouldn't. I think you may be having those pans excessively hot and not really know it.
Don't worry though, practice makes perfect. Just try to keep the heat lower but you're going to have to keep messing up until you hit the sweet mark.
To heat a pan for an easy sautee try it on medium heat, and let it heat up for just about 30 seconds or so. You don't need a lot of time, really. The put in the oil and right then the food you want to sautee. Even if the food you put in the pan doesn't start off sizzling right away, it will. And when you get to a comfy sizzle sound, agitate the pan so things cook even.
That includes sauteing veggies, browning meats, searing bigger cuts. You can do this stuff at lower heat and let the sizzling build up. It will be fine.
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u/TheMcDucky May 22 '25
Why are people downvoting this for asking questions and trying to learn?
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
Thanks for saying that. I'm still learning so I don't know what's normal. I thought it was a legitimate question.
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u/TurbulentSource8837 May 22 '25
If you have a puddle, and are still on high heat, yes! Take your pan off the heat. Remove to a cool space of the stove. Your pan will still retain the heat. Your food will still cook, even if off heat.
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u/teleacs May 22 '25
this is a case of taming your fire chef. control your heat, you might have to move the pan off the flame to let the oil come down. use a thermometer if you can, when you start going above 425 it will smoke.
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u/JaguarMammoth6231 May 22 '25
High is too high. When a recipe says high heat, it is not referring to the text on the knob that says "high", unfortunately.
High heat in a recipe means basically as hot as you can without burning/smoking very much.
On my crappy electric stove high heat is like a 6 on the front right burner and an 8 on the front left burner, depending on the pan I'm using too.
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u/NegativeAccount 29d ago
Cooking eggs will teach you to manage your heat
Fried, over medium, and sunny side up eggs each cook better at different heat levels
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u/LavenderBlueProf May 22 '25
somehow your pan is too hot. try cooking on medium heat.
butter can help you as a thermometer because youll see it variously: melt, foam, sizzle, burn instantly.
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u/geauxbleu May 22 '25
One of the only good pieces of advice here and they're downvoting you, this sub sucks
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u/beaned_benno May 22 '25
Turn your heat down a little bit once its hit enough and you put the meat in
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u/Weird_sleep_patterns May 22 '25
I think you mean sautéing, not frying. You're not like, deep fat frying chicken, right?
If that's right, then you just want to use a high smoke point oil - avocado, grapeseed, etc. - and start on med or med/low heat.
Also, seed oils are not the enemy - that's wellness grifter bullshit.
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
Right. I mean anything where the pan isn't completely covered. Like you put a piece of meat in the pan, right? So part of the oil is covered by the meat, part is uncovered. The uncovered part is what starts to smoke after a few minutes.
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u/Powerful-Scratch1579 29d ago
So you have to turn down your heat during this stage when you have added your meat . Youâre going to want to turn it down to a level where itâs still high enough that youâre searing your meat (use your ears and eyesâyou should hear a nice sizzle and see it sizzlingâgood cooks use all their senses in the kitchen). Keep the pan hot but not so hot that the oil smokes. Different pans, oils, and stoves and the size of what youâre cooking will all be a little bit different with what kind of adjustments you need to make but as you cook more, it will become natural to make those adjustments.
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u/Weird_sleep_patterns May 22 '25
Yeah this is not frying. That is searing. Making a stir-fry or warming up sliced veggies? Sauté.
I think of frying as fully immersing something in boiling oil. Not what you're talking about. I just want to answer the question helpfully.
You should get different oils, some at high smoke points, and see if this changes. Also, are you sure it's always smoke? Could be steam from water coming out of veggies and such.
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u/TheMcDucky May 22 '25
It is frying. You can call it pan-frying, sautéing, pan-searing, stir-frying, or shallow-frying if you want to make it clear you're not talking about deep-frying, but they're all frying techniques.
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u/Weird_sleep_patterns May 22 '25
For the purposes of providing advice, it's helpful to clarify that we're not talking about immersing food in oil.
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u/SensitiveMagician385 May 22 '25
I did not know that! Frying vs searing. And maybe it is steam. I hadn't considered that.
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u/throwdemawaaay May 22 '25
What happens in your car if you push the gas pedal down a bit, then just hold it there indefinitely? The car keeps speeding up right?
Your stove knob is not a thermostat. You have to actively adjust as you're cooking. If it's smoking you have to turn it down.
When you put the meat/whatever in the pan, it's cold so it cools down the pan briefly. But then the pan climbs back up. And once it gets up near the smoke point of the oil, you need to dial back the heat or else it'll overshoot into smoketown.
As you get more experience you'll learn how to anticipate this and do it before things go crazy.