Pan roasted meats: burned fond We have a carbon steel pan that we love and use a lot. We get boxes from Hello Fresh lately and we seem to have the same problem over and over: We will get a recipe that calls for pan roasting a piece of chicken or beef or whatnot and they expect you to make a pan sauce with the fond.

In our case, however, by the time the meat is cooked acceptably (and for beef that's medium rare and for white meat chicken that's 155+ in my book) the fond in the pan is invariably charcoal, and totally unusable for a pan sauce. We wind up either cleaning the pan and reducing the sauce "nude" from the remainder of the ingredients or accepting a muddy black colored pan sauce that isn't very appetizing.

What are we doing wrong?
If your fond is burning, your pan is too hot.  Preheat your pan over medium or low heat.  Add your protein. Monitor the cooking so that you get browning, even deep browning, but not burning.  It is ok to remove the pan from the flame if it seems to be smoking or getting too hot.