When you’re going to fry something, especially when cooking on high, you need to get the heat to flow from the pan into the food. If, for example, you toss a frozen sausage patty or link into a pan, it stands away from the hot surface on small irregularities on the surface of the sausage, and it’s mostly air between the sausage and the heat. A dry piece of bread is even worse – air between the bread and the pan. The pan will overheat, and your food will stay raw.
The simple secret is to use a liquid to provide a thermal interface between the food and pan. A single drop of vegetable oil on a frozen sausage link, a teaspoon of water under a hamburger patty, or a swipe of butter on a slice of bread to grill will do the trick. The heat will flow from the pan into the food, cooling the pan and heating the food. You’ll find you can maintain high heat much longer without “letting the smoke out” of what you’re cooking, especially with food with more thermal mass, like sausage. But moderation in all things – once the vapor coming from the pan turns from water vapor (steam) to the first wisps of oil vapor (smoke), reduce the heat and continue cooking to achieve a nicely browned exterior and a warm (165F+ for raw meat) interior.
It’s like bringing a high-powered new engineer into a great company. You need to connect them to what’s great about the company – the people, the technology, the systems, the lunch gatherings – the heat in the pan – to get them cooking to their full potential. You need to be intentional about such interfaces – what a waste to just throw them in and see what happens. Cold, singed employees will quickly seek other opportunities.