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You guys, I love my cast iron skillet. Seriously, love it. I use it almost every single day to make breakfast.
I especially love using it for scrambled eggs, which are a go to breakfast around here during the summer when the hens are laying more eggs than I know what to do with. I almost never have trouble with eggs sticking to the pan, much less cooking into a crusty mess. So, I was completely shocked to find out that people were struggling so much to cook eggs in their cast iron.
Here is the method I use for cooking scrambled eggs in cast iron so you never have to deal with stuck on eggs again.
Seasoning
Make sure your pan has been seasoned. I promise it’s not hard or scary to do, but you’ll always be fighting to keep food from sticking to your pan if it hasn’t been seasoned properly.
If your cast iron pan is already seasoned, then you’re good to start cooking eggs. If not then you need to season your pan before starting to cook with it. It takes a couple hours, but most of it is hands off time.
I wrote a whole post with all the details for you to check out if you need instructions on how to season your cast iron.
Preheat Your Pan
The first thing I do is to preheat my pan. I turn my stove on high and put the cast iron pan on the burner while I mix the scrambled eggs.
Don’t add any oil or fat yet!
I’m pretty quick at mixing up eggs so it usually preheats for three to five minutes. If it sizzles when you put a couple drops of water in the pan, it’s hot enough.
The reason it’s so important to preheat your pan is because cast iron takes a few minutes to heat up evenly. It retains its heat really well but it does take a few minutes to come up to temperature.
Add Fat
Once the pan has preheated turn the heat down to medium to medium high.
Then you’re going to add some fat to the pan. This can be butter, olive oil, lard, vegetable oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, it really is up to you and your preference for fats. Just be aware that butter will burn at a lower temperature than some of the other options, so you may want to turn your pan to a lower heat when cooking with butter.
If you are using a solid fat, like butter, lard or coconut oil, you need to let it melt before adding your eggs. With any of the fats, you need to let it start to heat up for about thirty to forty-five seconds before adding eggs.
Be careful not to let it get so hot it’s smoking or your eggs will burn as soon as you put them in the pan.
Add the Eggs
Once you’ve added your fat and let it warm up for a moment, you can add the eggs.
While the pan is preheating crack the eggs into a bowl and add about a teaspoon of milk per egg. Season them with a dash of onion salt, garlic salt, celery salt and a generous amount of pepper. Mix them up well with a fork.
Dump them all in the pan at once and then leave them alone! Don’t stir them, don’t poke at them, just don’t touch them at all.
Once the eggs have started to set you can stir them with a spatula and break them apart. Don’t get too crazy while you’re stirring the eggs around or you’ll break them into lots of tiny pieces of scrambled eggs instead of large fluffy pieces.
Don’t Overcook the Eggs
I don’t like soft scrambled eggs, so I cook mine all the way through. However, there is a difference between eggs that are cooked and eggs that are overcooked.
Eggs are completely cooked if they are fully set, meaning they don’t have any jiggly wet spots. Eggs are still good when they have just the tiniest bit of golden-brown color to them.
But! Eggs that go much past golden-brown are going to taste burnt, and nobody likes burnt eggs. Also burnt eggs will stick to the pan horribly most of the time. Just don’t overcook your eggs.
A good way to avoid overcooking the eggs is to pull the pan off the heat when the eggs are close to done. Since cast iron retains its heat so well, the eggs can finish the last minute or so of cooking in the gentle heat from the pan, and they won’t burn.
Wash the Pan Immediately
As soon as the eggs are done cooking, wash the pan out. If you’re not sure how to wash your pan, go check out my guide to everything you need to know about cooking with cast iron.
The sooner you wash the pan out, the easier it is. When I wash the pan while it’s still hot the eggs wipe right out, and this method works for most other foods that I cook in cast iron as well.
I wash the pan under running water while it’s still hot but be careful while doing this. If the pan is still really hot it will create steam which can burn you. However, if you’re careful, this is by far the easiest way I’ve ever found to wash cast iron.
If you aren’t comfortable with washing a hot pan, let it cool for a few minutes and then wash it while it’s still warm. It still comes clean fairly easily, it just isn’t quite as easy as washing the pan while it’s still hot.
Whatever you do, don’t leave your cast iron pan dirty for hours! For one, it will stick if you leave dried on food on it. For two, it can cause the pan to rust if the seasoning isn’t in good shape.
Cooking scrambled eggs in cast iron may sound a bit complicated, but I promise that it’s not as hard as it sounds.
Just as a reminder, preheat the pan, add plenty of fat, add the eggs all at once then leave them alone until they start to set, and wash the pan out immediately after you finish cooking.
That’s all there really is to it! To make it even easier I made you a step by step recipe card that you can print out and put right next to the stove so it’s easily available while you’re cooking.
