Why I don’t crowd the frying pan

The pan is already hot — and the hand tips everything in at once “to be quicker”. Easy: juice runs as a puddle, the meat goes grey, no crust — only steam. I put only as much as leaves space between pieces: in batches, not a heap to the rim.

Why I don’t crowd the frying pan. Frying without a cloud on the ceiling is another note; the pan whose heat I know its own; browning mince before the liquid another story. Here it’s the space on the base itself: heat, air, a crust — not a lecture about “restaurant steak”.

If I already piled a heap — I lift some onto a plate, I finish in batches, I don’t feel ashamed. Juice in a puddle is not a sauce by itself while there is no colour. I’m not reviewing a new pan brand in this note — it’s about the base that already sits on our heat.

I don’t need a pan where everything steams in its own juice. I need space on the base from which supper still smells of crust. At yours does the pan leave air — or already get a heap “to be quicker”?