# Butter & eggs



## Eziemniak (Aug 25, 2020)

Can someone post a detailed reason why eggs won't ever stick to a pan greased with butter, but they will to one with oil (scratchy sticky)
It doesn't let me sleep at night


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## ian (Aug 25, 2020)

Seems like it’s gotta be about either

1) the milk solids, or
2) the water content

Maybe the boiling-off water helps? Maybe as the butter clarifies and the milk solids float on top, the egg floats a bit on the solids? Probably one or both or these are BS. Try it with:

1) letting the water all boil off completely first
2) Hot oil sprayed with water before dropping the egg in? Or clarified butter that’s then rehydrated? 

Report back. (Or wait for someone smarter to answer.)


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## Eziemniak (Aug 25, 2020)

I was thinking smoking point but it seems you can put an egg in a barely melted butter and it wont stick so to my uneducated eye it is not it


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## juice (Aug 25, 2020)

ian said:


> 1) the milk solids, or


I don't think it's that, as I use ghee and it's fine as well.

Bottom line, use butter or ghee (or lard, I used lard this morning), industrially-processed seed oils are terrible for you


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## chiffonodd (Aug 25, 2020)

It's due to the midichlorians


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## daveb (Aug 25, 2020)

When I'm cooking for my crowd, 60ish, I use a "margarine solid". Not fake butter but fake margarine. Swab the pan with a brush of the **** and eggs don't stick. At home I use a wee bit of oil and a little bit of real unsalted and eggs don't stick. 

Since your pan is a constant, me thinks it's temp control of your pan and melting point of your oil is the variable that's causing your eggs to stick. .And of course not properly cussing the wayward egg that doesn't want with the program.


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## juice (Aug 25, 2020)

daveb said:


> And of course not properly cussing the wayward egg that doesn't want with the program.


The key


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## spaceconvoy (Aug 26, 2020)

I can't explain it in scientificish terms, but notice if you tilt a pan to one side, melted butter will leave a film across the whole pan while oil will just slide off and pool in the corner. Is that stiction? Surface tension? Something like that
edited to add: I think eggs will displace the oil. The oil gets pushed to the sides, leaving the eggs in direct contact with the pan's surface


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## MarcelNL (Aug 26, 2020)

or is something more mundane such as the egg liking butter better than oil ?

Egg white is lipophilic, can it be the saturated butter fat molecules adhere better to the egg than the unsaturated oil fat molecules?


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## ian (Aug 26, 2020)

MarcelNL said:


> or is something more mundane such as the egg liking butter better than oil ?
> 
> Egg white is lipophilic, can it be the saturated butter fat molecules adhere better to the egg than the unsaturated oil fat molecules?



I like this. Thought about adding something about saturated fats to my post above but wasn’t smart enough to word it correctly. I’ve seen coconut oil also listed as saturated. Is that accurate? If so, does it work as well?


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## juice (Aug 26, 2020)

ian said:


> I’ve seen coconut oil also listed as saturated. Is that accurate?


Very much so.



ian said:


> If so, does it work as well?


Yep, it's excellent. Used it on the weekend, we use it a lot.


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## MarcelNL (Aug 26, 2020)

my fave is duck fat, makes the best roast potatoe IMO and it works wonders to seal meat keeping it juicy! I keep kilo or so in the freezer at all times, cutting out a chunk when needed is easy enough if a bit hard at -22'C.
Don't tell anyone you are using it, just use it and explain what it is when asked why things are so much better!


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## juice (Aug 26, 2020)

MarcelNL said:


> cutting out a chunk when needed is easy enough if a bit hard at -22'C.


A good trick is to freeze it in ice-cube trays, then pop them out into a ziplok bag when frozen, then you can just grab a cube when needed. We do this with all sorts of things, like gravy, cheese sauce, tomato paste, etc.. (We have a variety of sizes in the silicon trays, so we can use the appropriate size.)


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## MarcelNL (Aug 26, 2020)

That in fact is a great tip! Thanks!

Will definetly start doing this as I have a BIG freezer upstairs and only a tiny one in the kitchen, I found that access to stuff is key in using them yet mise en place makes it a bit easier as you have more time to find things.
(we have a dedicated herbs and spices cabinet standing in the kitchen, still struggling with a logical order of things)


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## juice (Aug 26, 2020)

MarcelNL said:


> mise en place makes it a bit easier


...for everything. Yes.


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## MarcelNL (Aug 26, 2020)

true, I was sweating it when starting to cook chinese food, since I started doing mise en place (and getting to know the ingredients better) it's so much easier!


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