Question about seasoning a carbon steel pan

[Jovidah]

I finally seasoned my pan and did the best i could. The bottom of the pan is very smooth. But the edge of the pan has some areas that feels a bit sticky. I think perhaps i didn't wipe it enough after pouring out the oil. Is this a problem?

I will only use it to cook eggs and i only cook eggs on the bottom of the pan. So as far as food sticking, the sticky parts on the edge in the middle/higher up of the pan shouldn't matter. But i don't know if it will harden and flake off into my food. Should i scrub it off with vinegar and re-season the edge? If that's possible. Or should i try to remove the entire seasoning and start over?

Thanks for all the great advice!

I wouldn't worry too much about the sides. Sometimes you'll get some sticky buildup there anyway from splattering fat.
If it concerns you I'd at most give the edges a good scrub with a regular dishwashing scrubbie and soap; whatever stays deserves to stay. Then reseason one layer and just go cook with it. No need to overcomplicate this.
Starting over and throwing vinegar at it is just about the last thing I would do. I wouldn't worry too much about it flaking off... I've rarely seen it happen except with flaxseed oil (reason I don't use it anymore), and even if it does... it's polymerized oil, not nuclear waste.

Is there a benefit to heating up the pan that much before adding oil? I do that when i cook steaks on a stainless steel pan, but when i try to add butter in a very hot stainless steel pan, it's very prone to burning the butter. I personally don't like to cook eggs with oil. They soak all the oil up and i end up with incredibly high calorie eggs which don't help my weight goals.

So for my carbon steel pan, i just put butter in a cold pan, let the butter melt and then immediately put in my eggs.
Not sure if this is bad or not. This is how i used to cook eggs in my teflon pan when i still used them. They did stick a bit in some places, but that's probably due to the seasoning being only 1 layer and the butter amount being at an absolute minimum.

If you put stuff in a cold pan it's likely to stick (this applies to both carbon steel and stainless pans). The bad habbit of throwing stuff in a cold pan only really works well in teflon coated stuff.
If you're worried about stuff soaking up too much fat, that's also something that happens less when the fat is at a higher heat. So if you have enough heat, there shouldn't be much of a difference between frying eggs in butter or oil.

The tricky thing with butter is that butter is basically an emulsion of about 80% fat, 15% water and milk proteins. While the fats are actually fairly resistant to high temperatures (which is why you can use clarified butter / ghee in high temp cooking), the milk proteins are not. Those are what starts to burn at around 150 degrees. The water is what makes it foam, and while it's still foaming it generally won't go above 100 degrees celcius. If you're worried about burning your butter, what you can do is heat the pan up with the butter inside, and basically go throuhg the stages of foaming, foam dissapearing, and waiting until the butter is just starting to color before throwing in your eggs; then you'll have a decent temperature in the pan without burning it. I don't know if that's enough for 'instant sliding' but even if they stick for a bit they will release soon enough, just give them some time.
If you throw the eggs in right after the butter melts that's a recipe for disaster since the pan will still be too cold.

Leidenfrost effect can also work as a temperature gauge (it happens at around 190 degrees) but this temperature is on the high end for butter.
In the end frying with butter is a lot about careful temperature control, but it is making your life a bit more difficult if you don't want to burn the butter.

I never understood why the 'mixing oil with butter' trick is recommended. There's probably some reason, but the commonly quoted 'it stops the butter from burning' makes no sense to me; milk proteins will still burn at the same temperature regardless of they're floating in butterfat or oil. Maybe it's a bastardization of the common practise of starting with oil and finishing with butter.

 

[Jovidah]

Thanks everyone! I have 1 last question.

When i put some butter in my carbon steel pan that i seasoned, almost immediately i start to see smoke, even on very low heat. I wonder if this smoke comes from the butter melting, or because of the seasoned coating of the pan. It's strange because it is on low heat, so it's not like the temperature is hotter than the smoke point of the oil in liquid form. Not sure if this smoke is dangerous or not, but not sure what i can do about it either or if it's normal.

Sounds like the water from the butter evaporating. Normally a seasoned pan shouldn't smoke... generally you polymerize the oil until it stops smoking.

 

[rickbern]

Did you put oil on the outside bottom of the pan by any chance?

 

[foodnoobie]

Thanks everyone for the replies! Especially Jovidah always coming through with the detailed wisdom. I really appreciate it.
I tested the pan on low medium heat with nothing in it and i didn't see any smoke. So therefore the smoke must have been the evatoration of water itself from the butter. All is well. I will continue to try different temperatures to see what provides the least sticky eggs. Thank you!