Sticky All-Clad Stainless Steel Frying Pan Saved!

Hoooooooo boy. I love my All-Clad 12" Stainless Frying Pan. Not many days go by when this workhorse isn't on the stove in my kitchen at some time. It makes omelettes, fritatas, scrambled eggs, fried eggs … and that's just breakfast duty! By the end of the day it has probably sauteed some veggies, too.

All-Clad pans aren't cheap. From the costly metals to the no-compromise manufacturing processes, these are first-class all the way, and they cook like a dream. So you can imagine my horror when food suddenly began sticking to my pan — and I don't mean "a couple of crumbs". Omelettes that used to slide out perfectly to be plated suddenly were glued in place.

What was I doing wrong? Nothing had changed. "Oil the pan before you heat it." Done. "Use low to medium heat." Done. I even wondered if I had changed brands of olive oil, butter, etc … but no, that was all the same too.

Off I went (in, for me, a rare outburst of "reading the manual") to the All-Clad site to look up "use and care." There I read, "Is Sticking A Problem?" Yes! Here comes the answer!! The FIRST question was …. "Is Your Stove Level?" Huh??

Here's how much I wanted my pan back — probably some measure of the passion All-Clad users have for the product — I actually went traipsing out to the garage to find a level to check. Could … this … be …. the ……… answer??

Nope.

Next step … let's have a close look at the surface of my pan. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …… what's this? Little scratches all over the place.

Okay, so I know enough about adhesives to know that when you want something to stick, you rough up the surface. Could something have happened to the surface of my pan that was causing this?? Well — only one way to find out. Change (gulp) the surface.

I realize the folly involved here. A rank do-it-yourselfer redoing the work of masters is typically a recipe for disaster. Believe me, it was not without a heaping tablespoon of fear that I commenced the attack. However, I had passed through the five stages of grief about this pan and had come to grips with the fact that it had been rendered useless as a cooking utensil and was too heavy to use as a flyswatter.

Here was the recipe that worked. I used valve grinding compound. That's a fairly strong abrasive paste used in rebuilding car engines. You can find it at your local auto parts store, and I'd recommend you get the kind that is water soluble. (It also comes suspended in grease, but that's NOT as pleasant to work with, and you will be having a somewhat lengthy relationship with this stuff.)

I took the pan firmly in hand, sat bravely in front of the television and spent about a half hour polishing and polishing the surface of the pan with valve compound applied to a soft cloth. I worked in large circles, trying to match what looked like the original machining marks on the pan. During the commercials I'd go out to the kitchen, wash the valve compound off the surface, and have a look. After about a half hour of polishing, it was approaching a mirror surface. Good enough for a try!

In goes the oil, up goes the heat, in goes the egg …… VICTORY!

So why did my formerly awesome pan start sticking, anyway? Maybe someone cleaned it with a non-recommended abrasive somewhere along the way, and made scratches just large enough to create a "nice" sticky surface. Or maybe I got too aggressive with a metal spatula one night. Most likely, someone burned something in the pan and grabbed some oven cleaner to loosen it up. Oven cleaner + stainless steel = pitted stainless steel. Re-polishing the surface removed those almost microscopic scratches and restored the pan to full function.

Who would have thought you could solve a culinary problem in an auto parts store?

About the Author

Michael Burnette writes about food and related subjects at All-Clad, the global community of friends who love to cook.

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