How did I get here? I'm not good with saucepans!

[rho]

The following is about the limit of my culinary talents:

1. Take some bacon, cut it up into a pan. Apply heat.
2. Take a leek or two, cut it up and add to the pan when the bacon looks less raw.
3. Crush a few cloves of garlic into the pan.
4. "Stir" (I'm sure there's a better word; I don't know it) occasionally with a fork until it looks done.
5. Remove from pan and serve on toast.

However, I have thus far discovered two slightly different ways of doing this. The first is to put some sort of fat or oil at the bottom of the pan before I start, resulting in the end dish being overly greasy. The second is not to put any sort of fat or oil in the bottom, which results in everything sticking to the bottom of the pan, burned bits in the end dish, and an annoying washing up task.

What am I doing wrong?

Comments

[zarhooie]

Echoing the previous comments about non-stick pans. Try using just a few drops of butter or olive oil, or possibly using a fattier bacon.

[rho]

The next dumb question, then, is this: where do I get a non-stick pan? What do I look for in a non-stick pan? Is there any way to screw up attempting to buy a non-stick pan?

[marcelle42]

This is not a dumb question. There's a couple kinds of non-stick pans -- anodized aluminnum, Teflon, etc. It's trendy to hate Teflon (and there are some good health reasons for it, burning Teflon = bad for you), but I don't care -- you can never take my Teflon pan away from me!!!!

If you think you'll ever want to put the pan in the oven (like, for a frittata), you should definitely look for something that is oven safe -- that is, it should have a metal handle, not a plastic one. Teflon isn't good for this, mostly.

Fancy anodized aluminum pans : http://www.calphalon.com/calphalon/consumer/jhtml/productLine.jhtml?catId=CLCat100197

Less fancy anodized aluminum: http://www.target.com/Rachael-Ray-Hard-Anodized-12-Skillet/dp/B000HTU6MQ/qid=1239298361/ref=br_1_6/188-4358656-3731637?ie=UTF8&node=13002781&frombrowse=1&pricerange=&index=tgt-mf-mv&field-browse=13002781&rank=pmrank&rh=&page=2

Teflon pan: http://www.amazon.com/Next-Day-Gourmet-Platinum-diameter/dp/B0001MS9MI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1239298501&sr=8-1

[zarhooie]

At a store.
In the pan aisle.
No.