Why your frying pan should be your most-used kitchen tool

You can keep the oven turned off and cooking times down by making good use of your trusty frying pan

When you think of cooking with a frying pan, what kind of dishes spring to mind? Pancakes? Fried eggs? Stir-fries? Well, what if we told you this humble bit of kit could also be used to make dishes like apple crumble or pizza?

Cook, food writer and author Silvana Franco has found a way to make all manner of unlikely dishes on the stove top instead of the oven, saving both time and energy.

Here, she explains how we can get the most out of our frying pans, and why we should be using them more.

Don’t be afraid to tinker with the recipe

“I started thinking differently about my frying pan when a recipe I was following said to heat the oven for toasting nuts," says Franco. "It just wasn’t worth the bother, so I dry fried them instead. I much preferred the result – the nuts weren’t as evenly toasted as if they’d been in the oven, instead having more varied colour and flavour."

She soon started to think about other oven cooked dishes that her frying pan might be able to work its magic on – and set her sights on apple crumble.

“The apple only needs a gentle cook, so why would you put it in the oven for 45 minutes when you can just sauté it quickly?” she says. Her frying pan crumble recipe proved so popular that she went on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen to make it.

To make your crumble more suited to cooking on the hob, you just need to tweak your usual recipe.

“Forget the traditional crumble mix with flour – you want the topping to be more like granola. Making it this way also means you don’t get that soggy layer of crumble between the top of the crumble and the fruit mix.”

Organisation is key: you’ll want to have all the topping ingredients measured out before you start to cook. That’s because you prep both the fruit and the topping in the same pan, but not at the same time. You want the fruit – which you cook first before spooning into your bowl – to still be hot when the crumble topping is ready to be heaped on.

A flash under the grill can work magic

When Franco came up with her frying pan flapjack (yep, it works perfectly) she knew she needed to find a way to make sure it cooked all the way through. She drew inspiration from tortillas, which are cooked from the bottom up in the pan and then finished off under the grill for a crispy top.

For Franco, three or four minutes under the grill is a far more attractive prospect than heating up the whole oven. So, she uses this method for lots of her imaginative stove top recipes – including her frying pan pizza.

“I think the frying pan method is a really great way to make pizza. Not just because it's quicker and easier than with the oven, but because it’s the closest result you’re going to get to a woodfired pizza while cooking in a normal indoor kitchen.

“That’s because the pan gets really hot so there’s a ‘whoosh’ of energy that cooks the dough really quickly. Plus, if you’re making more than one, you build up patches of char on the pan which makes the bases even better.”

It’s not just the cooking method that makes frying pan pizzas quicker than their oven baked alternatives, though. The dough that Franco has developed for her stove top version is much quicker to whip up too, with no proving and barely any kneading required.

“It’s not a yeasted dough that takes time to prepare. Instead, it’s essentially like a big scone, so as soon as you mix the ingredients, you’re ready to cook.”

Before you fire up that grill, though, make sure your frying pan is suitable for oven use – the bottom of the pan may have a symbol telling you if it is. If it’s made entirely of metal you’ll probably be fine, but if you have a silicone or plastic handle it’s likely not just the cheese that will melt under that heat.

More frying pan inspiration

• Chicken shawarma
• One-pan pastitsio
• Frying pan chicken pie
• Frying pan chocolate chip cookie

Lean into imperfections

In the same way everyone’s ovens work slightly differently, hobs can have some unique quirks too. Plus, there are variables that come with the different fuel and heating methods they use. For instance, induction hobs will get hot almost instantly, whereas traditional electric rings are going to take longer to reach temperature and can't always be adjusted as precisely.

This means that cooking times in stove top recipes might slightly differ depending on your heat source and kit. But that's nothing to get nervous about, says Franco.

“I think when following a frying pan recipe, it's more useful to pay attention to whether the heat needed is low, medium or high and then translate that to your own appliance instead of worrying about being too precise.

“Everything from the type of pan you use to the hob position will impact the way your frying pan dish cooks. Embrace that. You're never ever going to get an immaculately golden, perfect base all the way around, no matter what you’re making.”

There will always be variables with whichever cooking method you use – even your oven has hot spots – but the upside of using the hob is that you're able to keep a close eye on your food as it cooks, meaning you can tweak the temperature and cooking time as needed.

One person's imperfection might be another person’s favourite part of a dish, too. Franco’s bacon and kimchi fried rice might need more attention than an oven baked dish, but if you slack a little on the constant stirring, the worst outcome you’re likely to get is some deliciously crunchy rice on the base, which will only add to the taste and texture.

If one imperfection your food usually has is a missing ingredient, then it’s in your best interests to favour the frying pan over the oven, thinks Franco.

That's because it's such a flexible cooking method. Being able to throw ingredients into your pan whenever you like, without the worry of lost heat caused by opening the oven door, gives you full control to make sure you’re not under or overcooking different components. You can adapt recipes much more easily when they’re cooked on the stove top, continually tasting and gauging what they might need.

“My noodle pancake recipe is great for experimenting with. It’s a bit of a mishmash of other dishes – like the Korean pancake, or Italian frittata and Japanese okonomiyaki. You can put whatever you like in it: spaghetti or macaroni will work perfectly in place of noodles, while the cabbage can be swapped out for whatever you’ve got in the fridge at the time.”

Originally published March 2023