The Best Sautee Pan

You don't need an All-Clad or other expensive pan to cook a steak or a good piece of fish like a pro. And you definitely do not need teflon-which, when heated to high heat, can even be hazardous to your health. However, you do need a pan you won't find at Bed, Bath & Beyond or any other regular home suppply store. What you need is this.

No, this is not a product promotion. These no-brand pans, usually from France, are the next best thing to a stainless steel flat top found on high-end home stoves or in a restaurant kitchen. This is a pan made of pure steel, nothing else, and it gets very hot. This is just what you need to get that tasty sear on the outside of a steak or good piece of fish.

A few things you should know about these pans. As you can see from the link, they're cheap, around 20 bucks. But they will last forever if treated right, just like a good cast iron pan. They weigh almost as much, I think the small size shown weighs probably over 5 pounds.

You don't want to wash these in soap and water. What you want to do is build up a good seasoning on the pan.

Before first use, coat it with a light coat of vegetable oil and put it in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes. You can continue to do this every few weeks. When you do use it, use only a little oil on the bottom, or coat whatever your cooking (the steak or the fish) with a little oil, salt and pepper of course, and put it in the pan once the pan is nearly smoking hot. Don't move the food; let it develop that nice tasty browning. Turn when ready to the other side. To finish a piece of steak or fish cooked in the pan but not done through to the middle how you might like it, just stick the whole thing, pan and all, into your preheated oven.

When you're done cooking, let the pan cool on the stove for a while. Then add some kosher salt and wipe well with either an old rag you don't care about, or with a few paper towels. Use the salt to scrub off any cooked on bits of food. You don't want to get the pan wet with water or it will rust, and even less so with soap and water, or you'll remove the seasoning you want to build up. The longer you use it the better it will get, and you will soon notice that you only need a minimal amount of oil to get a nice browning, and absolutely nothing will stick to it if you do it right.

This is not a pan to use for making pan sauces or anything else. Save the pan only for cooking fish or meats, nothing else.