No, this isn’t a cast iron thing. Using stainless pans, you can get nonstick effects that, in my experience, far outperform Teflon anyway. The process is called “spot seasoning.” I have cooked crispy, cheesy rice noodles with eggs with zero sticking.
I love my cast iron pans, but stainless is my daily go-to. Added bonus: use 100% copper wool to clean your stainless pan. The copper-coated wool at most grocery stores is problematic; you might get a few uses out of the coated garbage and then it starts shedding metal bits.
First of all, congratulations on the baby! :) If you don’t mind me asking, what sorts of dishes are you struggling to make on stainless steel?
I’m going to be presumptuous here and make a few suggestions, so feel free to push back if you’ve tried some of these things and they haven’t worked or aren’t as easy as I’m presenting. If you do still want to transition to stainless, it’ll be easiest to start by only doing it bit by bit, rather than all at once. Dishes that naturally contain some acidic element (like tomatoes, citrus juice, vinegars, or wine) will be easiest to cook without a bunch of sticking. I’d recommend starting with a tomato-based pasta sauce. If, as it reduces, you notice bits sticking to the sides, it’s easy enough to loosen up just by stirring a bit of the sauce onto it. Once you’re more comfortable with this, you can try sauteing vegetables in the pan. Even with preheating, it’ll might result in some stuck on bits, but adding a splash of lemon juice or champagne vinegar at the very end and agitating all of the ingredients should both brighten up the overall dish a bit as well as lift most (if not all) of those browned spots you saw. When it comes to searing meats, you might also have to adjust how often you’re flipping. If it feels stuck when trying to flip it for the first and second time, waiting a bit longer will eventually lead to the meat releasing from the pan. After the initial release on both sides, it won’t be anywhere near as sticky and you can flip as often as you’re used to. I wouldn’t worry about any browned spots either. While resting the meat, you can toss a bit of wine along with some stock in, turn up the heat, and stir continuously to loosen those bits up as well as flavor your pan sauce. Once it’s reduced to about your desired consistency, you can throw a slice or two of cold butter in and stir for a relatively low effort but still tasty pan sauce. Plus, you make washing the pan much easier. I think this tends to be easier than trying to achieve a nonstick effect with stainless, and sort of demonstrates that there’s ways to work around the issues some people have that aren’t strictly heat management.
My cat really wanted to press the submit button halfway through and force me to edit it to complete the thought as quickly as possible. Sorry if it isn’t quite helpful, and I’d be happy to follow up on any of it.
That’s all wonderful advice. I’m trying to make scrambled eggs. It’s one of the baby’s favorite foods. Any advice there?
Unfortunately, scrambled eggs are one of those things that are a bit harder to cook in stainless. If you’ve been using oil, switching to butter can help with some of the sticking, but you might end up using more butter than you’d like and some heat management is still necessary. Honestly, a lot of people keep a single nonstick frying pan just for things like eggs, seared fish, or sauteed tofu, so don’t feel pressured to make it work on stainless.
If you really feel compelled to move off Teflon completely, a carbon steel or cast iron pan will be much better suited to replacing nonstick for the instances where you’re getting excessive sticking, at the cost of needing to avoid acids in the pan. But if I were you, I’d just keep using my Teflon pans until there’s any flaking or chipping before making up my mind.