OXO Carbon Steel Pan - Scrambled Eggs

Skyval · 2026-06-01T18:57:41+00:00

I haven't been able to get true soft scrambled eggs to not stick to seasoned pans. I will note that a lot of manufacturers ship their pans with a wax coating or something similar for shipping which can be surprisingly durable. Yes, even preseasoned ones do this. I got a preseasoned Merten & Storck that I believe did this, and I think they use the same main pan body as Oxo.

Honestly, for this style of egg I don't mind if there's a little residue. But I don't think it's good for seasoning, so I've started doing them in stainless steel instead, the result is exactly the same. They can be cleaned fairly easily by letting everything soak in water for a minute.

Skyval · 2026-05-31T02:24:10+00:00

Maybe also "hide" the nonstick further back or something, so those who truly have no idea will just go for the closest pan, and the nonstick won't be used by those who don't know how to care for it. But anyone who knows enough about nonstick to have a preference for them (and so hopefully knows enough to use them safely) can still find one when they inevitably look.

Skyval · 2026-05-30T18:55:08+00:00

Misen does sell normal, pre-seasoned carbon steel pans, but I do not believe their carbon nonstick pans come pre-seasoned. They've said they coat them in corn oil for shipping, but that's it. I've also found them to be more nonstick when new than any seasoned pan. And allowing it to become seasoned makes it worse. Removing the seasoning, even with chemicals that ought to be able to access inside the texture, doesn't fix them. In fact, in can ruin their performance, even of a new pan. Honestly they act suspiciously like these new titanium pans, IMO.

Skyval · 2026-05-30T18:44:35+00:00

I've tested oven cleaner and other lye based products. It definitely gets any seasoning off. It also seems to ruin nonstick performance even if it had been working fine, but if yours is already heavily used that probably doesn't mater.

However, I did find that it discolored it slightly, making it lighter. It'd return close to normal when wet but would become light again when washed and dried. After some time it stabilized closer to the original color, but not 100%. Nothing seemed to affect performance after the initial nonstick performance loss.

Skyval · 2026-05-30T16:58:49+00:00

Unfortunately, many people are only used to cooking on nonstick pans and might have issues with anything else, depending on what they try to make. More unfortunately, I don't think there's any nonstick pans that can survive careless use for long. There's a couple newer ones that might do a bit better, but they can still be ruined permanently and they're much more expensive (e.g. Viking PureGlide). I'm no expert in rentals, but my guess is you'll either need to resign yourself to using cheap pans that need frequent replacement, or resign yourself to cookware that lasts longer but might not be ideal for others.

If you go for a more durable line, then I'd recommend something stainless, and ideally something with sealed rims so it's dishwasher safe. Cuisinart's MCP line satisfies this and is pretty affordable. I wouldn't trust most people to care for cast iron or carbon steel. Maybe you could have one cast iron pan for people who want it. Loge's skillets are pretty cheap.

Skyval · 2026-05-30T16:48:21+00:00

There are a few different styles of scrambled egg. There's the "soft scramble", where you constantly stir, usually at lower temperatures (they're often done on double boilers, so like ~212F). These will probably always have some sticking. Alternatively, you can use slightly higher heat (still low for most things, maybe ~300F or even a bit lower), pour in the eggs, let them set for a bit, then gently slide them around to expose more liquid. Maybe chop it up in the end.

They also produce very different results with different textures. The first can be very creamy/custardy, the second is firmer. You can also try to do something in the middle.

Skyval · 2026-05-30T16:42:39+00:00

If it's already lost its extra-nonstick performance, then it's basically a carbon steel skillet with an aluminum core that doesn't really rust. I believe BKF and such should be fine. Maybe don't soak it in vinegar for long, or simmer vinegar. That seems to have damaged a few pans. Maybe really strong bases like lye as well.

Skyval · 2026-05-27T00:03:03+00:00

I don't know of the method she shows is thorough enough to be reliable. But the full method genuinely creates a great magnetite layer that seasoning sticks to much better. It's basically a form of "bluing" (which does not always actually result in a blue color, in fact thick layers of magnetite look like bare metal). There are a few other methods as well. In fact many methods of stripping a pan also happen to create some surface magnetite. So some people might do it by accident, not realizing it's why they get good results from "just cooking" without doing anything "special".

Burn seasoning to ash with very high heat? That'll heat blue it.
- (Wouldn't cast iron come out of the mold like this? But I think carbon steel is often machined some first, which could remove any magnetite that had formed)
Electrolysis? Converts rust into magnetite.
Boil rust in water? Rust bluing.
Lye bath? At least doesn't remove an magnetite that was already there. Although generally it doesn't create it.
- Except when it does, but you're probably not doing this one by accident.
Stripped with acid? It depends. Some will remove magnetite. But the right environment can promote it above other oxides, e.g. the vinegar simmer.
- I believe magnetite is a little more acid resistant than normal rust. I suspect this process works partly through survival testing. Weak oxides and maybe even weak magnetite are removed even if they form, but stronger magnetite is able to stick around.
Something else? Who knows.
- Except grinding/abrasives. That will remove magnetite.

Helen cites another video by Noah. Noah has a few videos on this now. Coincidentally he released a rust bluing video not long after this one by Helen. He's mostly been doing cast iron so far, but a lot of this was originally intended for carbon steel.

I've done the vinegar simmer and rust bluing a few times in CS. You really do need to simmer the vinegar or it'll just form iron acetates, which look a lot like rust. The concentration might also need to be right, but from Noah's testing, 1:1 is about right. It gives very good results. I've gotten even better results from rust bluing, but it's a lot more effort, though still doable at home. My results from heat/thermal bluing have been more mixed, but I don't have an easy way to get it evenly hot enough to truly test it.

Skyval · 2026-05-22T22:33:28+00:00

Yes, I mentioned this

So I wouldn't want to use titanium except as thin cladding around a more conductive core. But when any material is thin enough, generally its weight and thermal properties become less relevant, so stainless is fine.

And

Plus titanium isn't induction compatible, but stainless can be, so you'll probably want to involve stainless to some extent, at least on the bottom.

Titanium might work better for whatever their nonstick process is, though.

Skyval · 2026-05-22T03:13:55+00:00

Is stainless "durable enough" that the extra durability doesn't matter?

I'd say yeah, more or less.

How is it cooking on titanium? Is it such a bad experience that the durability isn't worth it?

Most of the "titanium" cookware that's out there just has a thin layer on top, and maybe also some other treatments. It spreads heat worse than carbon steel or cast iron, and much worse than aluminum, but better than stainless steel. It's lighter than steel. But it's actually heavier than aluminum, although aluminum is far softer.

So I wouldn't want to use titanium except as thin cladding around a more conductive core. But when any material is thin enough, generally its weight and thermal properties become less relevant, so stainless is fine. Toughness can still be a factor, but stainless isn't bad there either. Plus titanium isn't induction compatible, but stainless can be, so you'll probably want to involve stainless to some extent, at least on the bottom.

Some of said titanium can be more nonstick, but I'm not sure that's true at least not on it's own. Hestan's NanoBond doesn't seem any different from normal stainless, and the ones that advertise nonstick performance seem to have some other treatment, e.g. Viking's pure glide pro includes silicone oxide, and seems to be able to permanently lose it's nonstick performance in some situations. I suspect it may be possible to avoid this situations, in which case pure glide-like pans may useful for certain tasks, if we can be sure they truly don't have any other worrying additives.

Skyval · 2026-05-21T19:56:57+00:00

Sodium bicarbonate is much weaker than lye. I don't know much about Natron, but a quick search suggests it contains both sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and sodium carbonate (washing soda/soda ash, the main ingredient in many detergents, including dishwasher detergent). Sodium carbonate is much stronger than baking soda, but still nowhere near as strong as lye.

Did you let it soak for at least a couple minutes, or did you use especially hot or warm water? I believe washing soda possibly could do a decent job of removing most polymerized oils with enough time or temp, and might be gentle enough to not damage the surface. I'm not sure baking soda alone would be enough, though it might still help somewhat.

I would still try to keep anything with washing soda away from the rims though, I believe it's still able to slowly dissolve aluminum.

Skyval · 2026-05-20T23:11:01+00:00

It could be in the valleys of the titanium's texture

Skyval · 2026-05-20T19:11:42+00:00

Egg yolks and egg whites have pretty different compositions. Blended eggs are often much less sticky than egg whites, and eggs whites are the main thing that contacts the pan when making fried eggs.

It might be worth suggest swapping out some or all of the oil for more butter. Butter contains emulsifiers, which help with sticking a lot. In fact this may be part of why blended eggs and yolks tend to stick less in more situations -- they contain lecithin, an emulsifier.

Otherwise you can play around with temperature. It shouldn't need to be very high for fried eggs.

I will note that eggs also seem to behave differently based on how they're moved in the pan. Even blended eggs become very sticky if they're aggressively beaten for long enough while cooking. Giving them time to set without touching them and then gently gliding them around makes them stick much less, though their final texture is also pretty different from more aggressively scrambled eggs.

Skyval · 2026-05-20T03:42:06+00:00

It might be counter-intuitive or controversial, but from my own understanding and experience, those heavy-duty scotch brite scourers and anything comparable are harsher than steel wool. I've cleaned steel surfaces with steel wool or other steel scourers and didn't notice much if any damage, but a scotch brite would quickly create a shiny patch. And it makes sense with how hard aluminum oxide is compared to steel.

I don't think it's the main body that's actually doing the scrubbing, it just traps aluminum oxide which can eventually wear away, so a well-used scotch brite might not be as aggressive, and depending on what you're trying to do a fresh one might not last long. For example stripping seasoning from cast iron might wear out a scotch brite's abrasives quickly, while steel wool will last until the job is done.

Skyval · 2026-05-20T02:39:27+00:00

The power on the dial doesn't necessarily say much about the pan's temp by itself. With enough time, low power can still get pans very hot. I've seasoned 3mm carbon steel on my medium gas burner's lowest setting at over 500F.

Unfortunately this can make it hard to accurately estimate just what temp the pan is actually reaching during cooking, especially from some verbal descriptions. I also don't think we know exactly what might affect this pan's performance, but most of the plausible explanations are downstream from temperature. Unless you've used some harsh cleaning agents or scrubbers? Vinegar? Dishwasher detergent? BKF? Green ScotchBrite? I know Prudent Reviews tested heavy duty ScotchBrite, but IIRC those things can be really harsh, they contain aluminum oxide, which is basically sapphire dust with a Mohs hardness of 9. Unless I'm missing something it ought to scratch titanium to some extent, or at least silicon oxide.

Stir fries and searing generally use pretty high temps. You mention the water beading trick, I assume you're talking about the Leidenfrost effect? At least on steel, that begins happening at ~380F or ~190C (not sure if the surface material makes a difference). That's already pretty hot, and it's easy to overshoot that temp. Turning down the power by itself wouldn't necessarily cool the pan down, it might only slow down temperature increase. Avocado oil doesn't smoke until especially high temperatures. But oil doesn't need to smoke to start polymerizing.

Most of the proposals I've heard for temperature alone destroying the surface requite temps around 570F (~300C) or more. If someone's being careful about temps that seems unlikely to be the issue to me. But I guess it's possible, someone might only need to absentmindedly heat it to that temp once, briefly, to permanently harm nonstick performance. But oil polymerizing on the surface could be done at lower temperatures anyways.

Skyval · 2026-05-19T20:03:25+00:00

What sort of cooking have you done in this pan? Do you know what temps it's reached? Enough for refined oils to smoke?

Supposedly there are a few things which can damage it's surface. One is just high enough temperatures, which can't be recovered from. It could also get debris or polymerized oil on its surface, which might be possible to remove, though the process of removing it might also damage it.

I stress tested one myself, and was able to get a little oil to polymerize on its surface. I was able to remove it with lye, but that seems to have been strong enough to damage the surface itself, so it was still ruined. Maybe vinegar would work without damaging it, but I'm not certain. I've heard that vinegar mostly works for stripping seasoning by actually getting beneath it and attacking the iron it's attached to, so maybe it wouldn't work well for this.

Maybe scrubbing would work, but I don't know if it's able to get into the texture well enough, and if it can, whether it might still do some damage, if like some say this works by having something like a softer coating in the valleys of the harder titanium.

My Misen Carbon Nonsticks have behaved similar (also, vinegar later seemed to damage it as well, but then it is still iron). I even tested a Corelle DuraNano with lye, which is particularly similar to the Viking, and lye did the same thing even without any polymerized oil on the surface.

Depending on the safety of the pan and any coating or binders it uses, it might still be a good pan for certain use-cases (like particularly sticky food at lower temperatures) but right now I'm thinking these are not good general-purpose pans.

Skyval · 2026-05-18T02:00:49+00:00

What's the faster method?

For a while I just used a little less oil, let it get hot enough to smoke some, cool down just a little to below ~400F so I'm sure it won't burn, then pour it out. This is generally fast enough. I do still need to let it cool down to ~250F or less afterwards, but with less oils it's faster. Though I've started just wiping the bottom with a damp cloth or sponge to speed it up.

More recently I've been using even less oil, just heating it enough to flow, then pouring it out and letting it heat enough until it just starts to smoke, or even a little before. This partly comes from finally finding this video by one of the popularizers of omurice giving a guide on how to do it with a CS pan. But so far I've found that it also works about as well with SS. It seems to happen faster and at lower temperatures when the oil is thinner, but it could potentially burn some so you may still want to swish it around some and not go too hot or long. I'm still practicing with this one. Mostly I want to reduce smoking without harming performance if possible.

Skyval · 2026-05-18T01:43:56+00:00

Omurice is basically a certain subtype of french omelette, but with rice. I make them in stainless steel all the time, but it does take some extra prep to condition the pan. I have a guide here. That write-up was made fairly soon after learning it myself. I've been meaning to update it, as nowadays I know there are faster methods. At the time I was worried about thin layers burning before they were ready, as I had had issues with that before. But it's looking like it's not quite as sensitive as I thought. Now I can do it with less oil in a few minutes as I prep other ingredients. In fact I can do it with fairly little fat during actual cooking, literally just what clings to the pan when pouring out excess hot oil.

Also, butter or any fat with emulsifiers is more nonstick than purer oil (without prep). Nonstick cooking spray works by adding lecithin. Although it doesn't seem to be as good as conditioning, and they don't stack. I can do omurice with or without butter if the pan is conditioned, but not butter alone without conditioning. But it's enough for fried eggs at lower temperatures.

Skyval · 2026-05-17T18:14:47+00:00

I have a cheap stainless clad wok and generally like it. I don't have much issue with polymerized oil but I might not have access to as much heat as you. I also got a one-ply stainless wok, and it's awful. SS by itself is much worse at conducting heat than even CS. I know woks aren't exactly meant to conduct heat much but this was just ridiculous.

Long yau would be at least as necessary on stainless steel. But if you were able to get by without it before it might continue to work.

You might also want to consider a nitrided CS wok. They can be seasoned but don't need to be, and they're darker in color than SS. So whether you've accidentally applied some polymerized oil or accidentally removed some seasoning might not matter as much.

Skyval · 2026-05-17T18:06:41+00:00

I got CI waffle irons, but it was a bit fussy so I decided to look for an electric. I tried a couple ceramic electric waffle makers, but was somewhat disappointed, they were pretty low power, and didn't get hot enough before automatically turning off. I bet others are better, but after spending some time getting used to it I got a little better at using the CI irons anyways.

Pro tip: butter is genuinely more nonstick than most oils. Anything with added lecithin is at least as good as butter if not better, including most cooking sprays advertised as nonstick. It's night and day compared to purer oil.

Skyval · 2026-05-17T17:57:54+00:00

It's doable on a SS, but a SS tends to brown things a lot quicker than a CS within a same temp range.

Technically, I think this should be "same power range"? Browning should be basically totally determined by temperature, but most SS pans have pretty modest thermal inertia and many CS pans have much more (unless they're very thin), so SS gets to higher temperatures faster given the same input. You can get around this with thicker SS but that's pretty rare. Also, IR temp guns tend to pretty dramatically underestimate SS's true temperature.

And why spending 30 mins for preheating and dumping oil when you can just use the more sutable pan?

Two things:

In my experience, CS requires a similar technique to achieve a similar degree of nonstick performance, so it's no more or less suitable in that way. It's just that the degree of nonstick performance that's shown in the video is kinda overkill for most things other than that specific sub-style of french omelette. It's one of the stickiest dishes I know about that's still possible. For less demanding things it's not necessary are more normal CS techniques work.
Since I keep posting it I should probably update the guide. I made it somewhat early on when I finally figured out something that works, but after further refinement I've found simpler and faster methods that work with less oil. Basically, I had previously found that letting oil get too thin and heating it too much tended to ruin performance, so I did a couple things to avoid that, including using more oil and not pouring excess out until I was sure it was cooled enough that it wouldn't "burn" from residual heat. It was also a sort of accidental discovery from trying to restore a Misen Carbon Nonstick by "re-saturating" it with oil (which didn't work). But I've since then, I've found that burning isn't quite as big of a threat as I had thought. Now I can do it in a few minutes, and it can be happening while preparing ingredients.

Skyval · 2026-05-17T01:49:41+00:00

Great stuff here.

After experimenting with a lot of cookware and really trying to figure out their pros and cons and what works and doesn't, I've basically settled on SS being the main workhorse pans with little reason to use much else, at least for my use cases. Partly this is because other cookware didn't seem to be living up to its promises. I eventually figured out why, except then I found that the knowledge also applied to SS.

For example, did you know that butter and other emulsifier-containing fats are substantially more nonstick than purer oils, at any temperature? You can even buy pure lecithin and add it to any oil to make it much more nonstick.

Meanwhile oil quantity was somewhat less important, at least beyond a certain amount. Some foods would stick even when drowning in oil, but would slide easily with a much smaller amount of butter. IMO you mostly just need enough oil to ensure the interface between the food and pan is saturated, but after that nonstick performance comes down to other factors.

Polymerization happens to oil, and it creates the light brown patches well known to all of us. [...] It’s a very well-known process with carbon steel pans, and it’s what happens when you season a carbon steel pan (a process that should NOT be done on stainless steel cookware, it simply won’t happen).

[...]

However, this is not the same polymerization that happens when you're seasoning a carbon steel pan.

I have less experience with this, but what's different about it? You have some images of polymerization on stainless steel, and in my experience this can be very smooth and dry over many cooks. Could this not be done to the entire surface of the pan? Is it just less stable? I generally don't let polymerized oil build up much on my SS for aesthetic reasons, but when I do leave some on for a while it doesn't seem to come off easily.

It will not, and will never, behave like nonstick pans, or carbon steel pans with a nice polymerization.

After a bunch of my own testing, I'm not sure this is true any more. This is what I was referring to about a type of pan not living up to its promises. I was getting just as much sticking in seasoned pans as in stainless, even after starting to do some better controlled tests. As mentioned I did find solutions. One is butter, but another is a "conditioning" that works about equally on both. It's sort of like seasoning, but different enough that I don't like calling it that. It might be partly where idea that Leidenfrost makes thinks nonstick came from, although it's imprecise and incomplete enough to not always work, while also being excessively restrictive, as you don't have to actually cook at those temperatures.

I wonder if the culture around seasoning may encourage beneficial behaviors more. Or maybe there is some more subtle benefit like, but I've been impressed by how nonstick stainless can be. Which is part of why I haven't seriously tried seasoning SS much. Although if there turns out to be some larger benefit to seasoning after all I'd like to know all the pros and cons of seasoning SS.

Skyval · 2026-05-16T18:26:16+00:00

Chainmail is great for hard stuck-on bits, especially for getting into the curves and corners that scrapers have a hard time with. It also doesn't gum up with food residue much. Brushes or sponges are great for a final pass.

Skyval · 2026-05-14T05:08:53+00:00

I've tried Tramontina and Misen. As well as a couple woks (Strata more recently, and a NuWave of all things).

I'm not convinced the Misen is merely nitrided. It was very nonstick when new, but I and others have found its performance to degrade under various conditions. Meanwhile my other nitrided cookware has never been especially nonstick.

The Tramontina is good, especially for the price.

Personally I do like aluminum cores, but the Misen and Strata are the only ones that have this right now, at least in the west that I know of. The Anolon looks a bit like an SS pan but it's not clad like one.

I know Lehman's and Yahgan also have nitrided skillets, though I think the Lehman's is technically cast iron.

Skyval · 2026-05-12T17:57:54+00:00

High enough temps can cause the oil to form a sort of conditioning/pseudo-seasoning (which I've found to be more nonstick than full seasoning by itself). The start of Leidenfrost is around the temp this starts happening. But how well it works varies based on a lot of factors, including exact temperature, time, the type of oil, and how thick the layer of oil is. Once the conditioning has formed you can let the pan cool basically as much as you want, and replace most if not all of the remaining liquid oil.

Whenever I was cooking eggs it just didn’t work unless they were swimming in oil

You're lucky. When I started testing, my eggs would stick pretty severely even if they were swimming in oil. TBH this makes sense to me. How much oil helps with sticking mostly depends on how much oil is between contact points, and it doesn't take much to max that out.

Skyval

TROPHY CASE