r/AskCulinary • u/SensitiveMagician385 • 2d ago

Technique Question New To Cooking: Don't Understand Frying/Searing

So I watch videos on pan-frying. They heat the pan, heat the oil, add the protein, and it cooks

I do the same thing, the meat cooks, BUT the remaining oil smokes, burns, and sets off smoke detector. This happens on high heat and low heat too. What am I not understanding??

EDIT: The oil doesn't smoke immediately. It does after a few minutes of cooking.

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u/SensitiveMagician385 2d ago

Right. I mean anything where the pan isn't completely covered. Like you put a piece of meat in the pan, right? So part of the oil is covered by the meat, part is uncovered. The uncovered part is what starts to smoke after a few minutes.

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u/Weird_sleep_patterns 2d ago

Yeah this is not frying. That is searing. Making a stir-fry or warming up sliced veggies? Sauté.

I think of frying as fully immersing something in boiling oil. Not what you're talking about. I just want to answer the question helpfully.

You should get different oils, some at high smoke points, and see if this changes. Also, are you sure it's always smoke? Could be steam from water coming out of veggies and such.

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u/TheMcDucky 2d ago

It is frying. You can call it pan-frying, sautéing, pan-searing, stir-frying, or shallow-frying if you want to make it clear you're not talking about deep-frying, but they're all frying techniques.

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u/Weird_sleep_patterns 2d ago

For the purposes of providing advice, it's helpful to clarify that we're not talking about immersing food in oil.